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Dáil Éireann díospóireacht -
Wednesday, 4 Mar 1936

Vol. 60 No. 11

Committee on Finance—Vote on Account.

I move:—

Go ndeontar i gcuntas suim nách mó ná £9,850,000 chun no mar chabhair chun íoctha na muirear a thiocfaidh chun bheith iníoctha i rith na bliana dar críoch an 31adh lá de Mhárta, 1937, i gcóir seirbhísí áirithe puiblí, eadhon:—

That a sum not exceeding £9,850,000 be granted on account for or towards defraying the charges that will come in course of payment during the year ending on the 31st day of March, 1937, for certain public services, namely:—

£

£

1. Teaghlachas an tSeanascail

670

1. Governor-General's Establishment

670

2. An tOireachta

38,100

2. Oireachtas

38,100

3. Roinn Uachtarán na hArd- Chomhairle

3,900

3. Department of the President of the Executive Council

3,900

4. An tArd-Scrúdóir

5,500

4. Comptroller and Auditor-General

5,500

5. Oifig an Aire Airgid

22,600

5. Office of the Minister for Finance

22,600

6. Oifig na gCoimisinéirí Ioncuim

252,600

6. Office of the Revenue Commissioners

252,600

7. Pinsin tSean-Aoise

1,150,000

7. Old Age Pensions

1,150,000

8. Deolchairí Cúitimh

11,000

8. Compensation Bounties

11,000

9. Coimisiúin agus Fiosrúcháin Speisialta

4,300

9. Commissions and Special Inquiries

4,300

10. Oifig na nOibreacha Puiblí

37,780

10. Office of Public Works

37,780

11. Oibreach agus Foirgintí Puiblí

277,460

11. Public Works and Buildings

277,460

12. Saotharlann Stáit

2,460

12. State Laboratory

2,460

13. Coimisiún na Stát-Sheirbhíse

7,300

13. Civil Service-Commission

7,300

14. Cúiteamh i gCailliúna Maoine

36,000

14. Property Losses Compensation

36,000

15. Cúiteamh i nDíobhála Pearsanta

400

15. Personal Injuries Compensation

400

16. Aois-Liúntaisí agus Liúntaisí Fágála

152,600

16. Superannuation and Retired Allowances

152,600

17. Rátaí ar Mhaoin an Rialtais

31,000

17. Rates on Government Property

31,000

18. An tSeirbhís Sheicréideach

6,700

18. Secret Service

6,700

19. Coimisiún na nDleacht

1,800

19. Tariff Commission

1,800

20. Costaisí fén Acht Timpeal Toghachán, agus fé Acht na nGiúirithe

Nil

20. Expenses under the Electoral Act, and the Juries Act

Nil

21. Costaisí Ilghnéitheacha

2,500

21. Miscellaneous Expenses

2,500

22. Páipéarachas agus Clódóir- eacht

48,500

22. Stationery and Printing

48,500

23. Measadóireacht agus Suirbhéir- eacht Teorann

10,300

23. Valuation and Boundary Survey

10,300

24. Suirbhéireacht an Ordonáis

10,950

24. Ordnance Survey

10,950

25. Deontas Breise Talmhaíochta

450,500

25. Supplementary Agricultural Grant

450,500

26. Dlí-Mhuirearacha

21,700

26. Law Charges

21,700

27. Longlann Inis Sionnach

1,580

27. Haulbowline Dockyard

1,580

28. Príomh-Scoileanna agus Coláistí

77,900

28. Universities and Colleges

77,900

29. Forbairt Chadhnraide Leict- reachais

2,500

29. Electrical Battery Development

2,500

30. Oifig an tSaor-Chíosa

1,200

30. Quit Rent Office

1,200

31. Bainistí Stoc Rialtais

15,200

31. Management of Government Stocks

15,200

32. Oifig an Aire Dlí agus Cirt

12,000

32. Office of the Minister for Justice

12,000

33. Gárda Síochána

653,000

33. Gárda Síochána

653,000

34. Príosúin

25,000

34. Prisons

25,000

35. Cúirt Dúithche

12,900

35. District Court

12,900

36. Cúirt Uachtarach agus Ard- Chúirt an Bhreithiúnais

15,900

36. Supreme Court and High Court of Justice

15,900

37. Oifig Chlárathachta na Talmhan agus Oifig Chlárathachta na nDintiúirí

15,670

37. Land Registry and Registry of Deeds

15,670

38. An Chúirt Chuarda

17,000

38. Circuit Court

17,000

39. Oifig na nAnnálacha Puibli

1,600

39. Public Record Office

1,600

40. Tabhartaisí agus Tiomanta Déirciúla

800

40. Charitable Donations and Bequests

800

41. Rialtais Aitiúil agus Sláinte Puiblí

400,000

41. Local Government and Public Health

400,000

42. Oifig an Ard-Chlárathóra

4,000

42. General Register Office

4,000

43. Gealtann Dúndroma

5,000

43. Dundrum Asylum

5,000

44. Arachas Sláinte Náisiúnta

97,650

44. National Health Insurance

97,650

45. Oifig an Aire Oideachais

56,750

45. Office of the Minister for Education

56,750

46. Bun-Oideachais

1,355,000

46. Primary Education

1,355,000

47. Meadhon-Oideachas

140,000

47. Secondary Education

140,000

48. Ceárd-Oideachas

81,400

48. Technical Instruction

81,400

49. Eolaíocht agus Ealadha

15,100

49. Science and Art

15,100

50. Scoileanna Ceartúcháin agus Saothair

60,000

50. Reformatory and Industrial Schools

60,000

51. An Gailerí Náisiúnta

2,050

51. National Gallery

2,050

——

——

52. Talmhaíocht

222,000

52. Agriculture

222,000

53. Iascach

15,000

53. Fisheries

15,000

——

——

54. Tailte

646,000

54. Lands

646,000

55. Foraoiseacht

51,500

55. Forestry

51,500

56. Seirbhísí na Gaeltachta

37,700

56. Gaeltacht Services

37,700

57. Tionnscal agus Tráchtáil

151,700

57. Industry and Commerce

151,700

58. Seirbhísí Iompair

600

58. Transport Services

600

59. An Bínse Bóthair Iarainn

940

59. Railway Tribunal

940

60. Muir-Sheirbhís

4,000

60. Marine Service

4,000

61. Arachas Díomhaointis agus Congnamh Díomhaointis

477,700

61. Unemployment Insurance and Unemployment Assistance

477,700

62. Oifig Chlárathachta Mhaoine Tionnscail agus Tráchtála

4,920

62. Industrial and Commercial Property Registration Office

4,920

——

——

63. Puist agus Telegrafa

750,000

63. Posts and Telegraphs

750,000

64. Fóirleatha Nea-shrangach

19,000

64. Wireless Broadcasting

19,000

——

——

65. An tArm

510,000

65. Army

510,000

66. Arm-Phinsin

205,300

66. Army Pensions

205,300

——

——

67. Gnóthaí Coigríche

27,150

67. External Affairs

27,150

68. Cumann na Náisiún

5,000

68. League of Nations

5,000

——

——

69. Scéimeanna Fóirithinte

250,000

69. Relief Schemes

250,000

70. Deolchairí agus Conganta Airgid um Easportáil

730,000

70. Export Bounties and Subsidies

730,000

71. Iasachtaí Coigríche Dháil Eireann d'Aisíoc

2,300

71. Repayment of Dáil Eireann External Loans

2,300

72. Pinsin do Bhaintreacha agus do Dhílleachtaithe

83,370

72. Widow's and Orphans' Pensions

83,370

AN TIOMLÁN

9,850,000

TOTAL

9,850,000

In moving this Vote, I may explain that its purpose is to provide sufficient money to carry on those public services which are not charged against the Central Fund until such time as the Dáil has discussed the Estimates and voted the final supply for the year. It is customary to assume that this will be done within the first four months of the new financial year, and accordingly the amount required for the Vote on Account is calculated on that basis. This year it is estimated that we shall require £9,850,000. From the White Paper which has been circulated it will be noted that the total amount required in the coming year for the supply services for which there is existing statutory authority amounts to £27,514,783, representing a decrease by comparison with the amount ultimately voted for the corresponding services in the current year of £823,806. I have to point out, however, that there are two important facts to be brought into consideration when we are discussing that figure. The first is in connection with the Supplementary Agricultural Grant in respect of which the White Paper shows a decrease of £370,000. When the printed volume of Estimates in its final form is circulated within a week or so it will indicate that as soon as the Oireachtas has passed the necessary legislation a supplementary Estimate for a further amount of £370,000 in respect of Vote 25 will be presented, bringing the total of the Grant for the relief of rates on agricultural land for the present year up to £1,870,000, that is to the same figure as last year. Again, Vote No. 52, for the Department of Agriculture, shows a decrease of £333,060. In this connection it will be remembered that in my Budget statement last May I pointed out that, by reason of the amendments which it was proposed to make in the original Cereals Acts, the greater part of the £314,000 which had been included in sub-head O (9) of the Vote for the current year would not be required. The necessary legislation has been enacted, and accordingly the estimated expenditure on that sub-head for next year has been reduced by approximately £295,000. If we take those two facts into consideration, it will be seen that the net decrease by comparison with the Estimates which formed the basis of last year's Budget is £158,000. In that connection may I point out, in case that any undue optimism may be occasioned by the very favourable revenue figures which are now appearing, that the recent decision to remit the import duty on coal will result in a decrease in next year's revenue of about £475,000, and that by reason of the fact that the greater part of our sugar supplies will be produced here at home we shall experience a decrease in the yield from sugar duties of over £200,000. It will, therefore, be seen that those who engage themselves in preparing estimates of the revenue for next year on the basis of the current returns must make an allowance for those two very significant figures.

In referring to the several items of the Vote on Account I should perhaps begin by pointing out that the provision for old-age pensions is up by £10,150, and that the total for the coming year will be £3,466,850 as compared with £2,756,500 for the year 1931-32, an increase on those social services of £710,000. Furthermore, the figure which appears in the current estimate is a complete refutation of those who alleged that the administrative tightening up which was carried out last year imposed any hardship upon any person who was rightfully entitled to the old-age pension.

The decrease in Vote 11 is accounted for in greater part by a reduction of £47,533 on sub-head B, for new works, alterations and additions, and is almost an entirely incidental variation arising out of contingencies which must be provided for in a large constructional schedule of this kind. I may mention, however, in connection with this particular Vote, that under item 60 a sum of £200,000 has been provided for building, enlarging and enclosing the national schools. With this figure there is to be compared the figure of £100,000 provided for the same purpose in 1931-32. In Vote 41—Local Government and Public Health—there is an increase of £104,984, bringing the total amount for the coming year for that Department to £1,204,652, which is to be compared with the figure of £517,517 which was asked for for the same service in 1931-32. The increase in the Vote is represented very largely by the greatly increased grants to local authorities and private persons which are being made under the sub-head for housing, and which in the coming year will amount to £736,000 as compared with the £650,000 which was voted last year and the £212,000 which was provided in the year 1931-32. In addition to the increase in the provision of grants for houses, grants for local authorities in respect of tuberculosis treatment is up by £4,500 and now amounts to £127,250 as compared with £109,250 in 1931-32. There is, of course, also a grant for the acquisition of land under the Allotments Act of 1934, which is up by £2,800 and now stands at £4,000 as compared with nothing at all in 1931-32. Then we have the grant for the supply of milk to necessitous children, which this year, as last year, will cost £90,000 and for which nothing was provided in 1931-32. There are a number of increases in the Education Votes which make the total expenditure under these heads about £75,000 more than in 1931-32.

That 1931-32 was certainly a famous year.

I am taking the year 1931-32 as the datum year because that was the year of universal depression from which we are now emerging.

Is the Minister comparing the general estimates for 1931-32 with the total for this coming year?

All in good time. I am explaining the increases.

Yes, and the general prosperity of the country.

If the Deputy will devote himself to an explanation of the details when housing was neglected in 1931-32, and when the country was better off and could afford it better, I should be glad.

I am asking for a comparison of the total of the Estimates for these years.

Full provision of £385,500 is also being made for the teachers' pensions, which are up by £15,500. The position this year is to be contrasted with the unsatisfactory state of affairs which existed in 1931-32, when the total provision amounted to £73,460 only, with the result that the assets of the Teachers' Fund were being rapidly exhausted, so that very shortly the Fund would not have been in a position to meet its liabilities, with the inevitable consequence that the teachers would be compelled to forego their pensions, or else the taxpayers at a very early date would be required to shoulder an enormous burden for which provision should have been made during the ten years when our predecessors were in office.

In respect of the Department of Agriculture it will no doubt be noted that there is an apparent decrease of £333,060 in the amount to be provided for the coming year, leaving the net amount under that head at £665,600. In this connection a sum of approximately £295,000 is due to the alteration which has taken place in the arrangement for paying the guaranteed wheat prices to the farmers. While a reduction of £135,000 is shown in sub-head O (13), this also is due to the amendment which was made last year in the Slaughter of Cattle and Sheep Act. As against these figures, when the volume of Estimates appears in its final form it will be noticed that we are estimating for an increase of £199,700 in respect of Agricultural Products (Regulation of Export) Acts, 1933-1935, and an increase of £10,606 in respect of the Pig and Bacon Act, 1935. Provision is also being made for an increased advance to the Dairy Produce (Price Stabilisation) Fund. I should point out also, and I think it is important that the House should note this, that, even at the net figure of £665,000 odd, the Vote for Agriculture represents an increase of more than 50 per cent. on the provision made in the year 1931-1932, when only £434,964 was voted.

You have got taxes to make it up.

I know the Deputy thinks he can produce money as he grows rhubarb. I know no other way of paying for Governmental services except out of the taxpayer's pocket.

What are you talking about reductions for then?

Might I interrupt the Minister? My mind is in a state of confusion which, perhaps, he can clear up. I understand him to be drawing unflattering attention to the fact that the Government which preceded his was not spending enough money. But, previous to to-day, I understood the Fianna Fáil view had been that in those days they were spending far too much.

It seems to me that the Deputy could have reserved his interruption until he was making his speech.

I am not going to make one.

Apparently the many facts which I am adducing, and which cannot be controverted, carry their own moral to the Deputy.

It is the Minister's comments in that respect.

Let me get back to the Vote-on-Account. I understand the Opposition are going to have a field day, and I think if they are going to discuss these Estimates they ought to have all the facts and figures before them.

Why did we not get them before 4.30 p.m. yesterday?

For the Department of Lands, which, of course, now is mainly the Land Commission, the amount required for next year will be £1,578,379, or £132,000 more than last year and about £1,000,000 more than was provided for the Land Commission in the year 1931-1932. As compared with last year, the most notable increase is under sub-head I, for the improvement of estates, for the amount to be voted will be £606,550, as compared with £530,050 last year, and £211,250 for 1931-32. Then under sub-head H, for payments in respect of interest and sinking fund on land bonds issued under the Land Act of 1923 as a contribution towards the purchase price, and in respect of the costs fund, the expenditure this year will be £112,000, as compared with £109,292 last year and only £34,000 in 1931-32. That is a measure of the manner in which the activities of the Land Commission and the programme of dividing and breaking up the ranches have been speeded up under the present Administration.

Ranches?

Ranches. Again, under sub-head R, £585,000 is required this year in accordance with subsection (2) of Section 27 of the Land Act of 1933 to meet deficiencies in the Land Bond Fund arising from the reduction of annuities under the Land Act of 1933. This figure of £585,000 is to be compared with the figure of £560,000 required for the same service last year. In the year 1931-1932, however, as land purchasers under the 1923 Act were paying their full annuities to the amount of £1,170,000, nothing was provided for this service.

They are paying four times that now.

In regard to forestry, where this year the net provision is £154,000, as compared with £230,000 last year, I ought to point out that, whereas last year, in order to build up the pool of land required for the most efficient operation of the forestry programme, £109,500 was provided for the acquisition of land this year, and at this stage it is thought that only £1,000 will be required for this service. Consequently, there is a decrease on this sub-head of £108,500. As against that, this year there is a notable increase under sub-head C (2), for cultural operations and maintenance, etc., which stands at £142,561, as compared with £109,714 last year, or an increase of £32,847. The corresponding provision in the year 1931-1932 for cultural operations was £45,800, and the net total for the whole Vote was £64,588, as against £154,439 for next year. For industry and commerce, the total provision for 1936-1937 is £455,245, as against £337,789 last year. But of this, £226,510 will represent capital expenditure on the industrial alcohol factories, and the balance will be represented by the ordinary costs of administering the services under the control of the Department and by the provision which is made for minerals exploration and the activities of the Turf Development Board, the Industrial Research Council, and the Prices Commission. The figure for the Department of Industry and Commerce for the year 1931-1932 was £106,180. Of course, then there was no such thing as a Turf Development Board, practically no provision for minerals exploration and, of course, nothing at all for the Industrial Research Council.

There was more turf being cut.

Then the figure for unemployment insurance and assistance is £1,433,000, as compared with £1,522,000 last year, and £160,374 in 1931-1932. The difference, as everybody knows, is not accounted for by an increase in unemployment, but is merely indicative of the extent to which our predecessors failed to make provision in 1931-1932 for the poor and needy and for those who were in want or in destitution due to unemployment. The Army pensions account this year is for £615,000, as compared with £390,000 last year. This increase is largely occasioned by the provision which must be made, as from 1st October, 1934, for pensions granted under the Army Pensions Act of that year.

In respect of relief schemes, while the total Vote is the same as last year, I should point out that it represents an increase of £150,000 on the original Estimate. That has arisen in the following way: In the Budget statements for the last two years I have announced that it has been possible to make an additional provision of £150,000 on the original Estimate for this service. The postponement of this announcement until Budget Day has given rise to some difficulties in administering and accounting, and has impeded the preparation of relief schemes. As I anticipate that I shall be able to make the necessary provision in the coming Budget for the £150,000, which formerly was provided in the Supplementary Estimate, I have decided to include it now in the original Estimates for the year, bringing, as I have said, the Estimate up to £500,000, which has to be contrasted with a sum of £140,000 which was provided in 1931-32. Then, of course, in accordance with statute, a sum of £250,000 has been provided for widows' and orphans' pensions. Nothing was provided for this service in 1931-32.

It was provided last year.

I am afraid it is really too much to expect that Opposition speakers would study these figures, or would base their speeches upon the known facts, but the position is that the increase in the Vote for old age pensions; the increase in the vote for public works and buildings, mainly in respect of primary schools; the increase in the supplementary agricultural grants; in the Vote for Local Government and Public Health, mainly in respect of housing grants, the grants for the provision of milk for necessitous children, and the increases in the grants to local authorities in respect of tuberculosis treatment; for agriculture; for forestry; for the Land Commission— the increase being almost entirely due to the expenditure under three heads: increased expenditure for the improvement of estates, increased expenditure for meeting the increased contribution to the Purchase Price and Cost Fund and the increase necessitated by the reduction of the annuities under the 1933 Act; the increased Vote for Industry and Commerce, mainly due to the provision which is being made for the industrial alcohol distilleries, for peat development, for mineral exploration and for the Industrial Research Council, the increased Vote for unemployment assistance, and the increased Votes for relief works, export bounties and subsidies and widows' and orphans' pensions account entirely for the difference between the Estimates as presented for the year 1931-32 and those now submitted to the House.

Could the Minister say what the total is?

About £6,700,000, after allowing for the deletion from the Estimates for 1931-32 of the provision for local loans.

Do I understand that this £6,000,000 odd is the sum of the various individual items the Minister has read out?

Has the Minister added them up?

They represent practically the whole difference.

Has the Minister added them up?

Yes, to some extent. I want to see what Deputy Mulcahy is going to make out of them.

Did the Minister add up the figures on the right-hand side or on the left hand side?

On the right side. The point, however, is that we are going to hear a great deal to-day about over taxation.

You never know.

I have been asked by two Deputies to state what matters would be in order on this discussion. It is not a function of the Chair to say what is in order, but rather to bring back erring Deputies to the fold of correct procedure. It is not in order on this Vote to discuss taxation, the incidence of taxation, or the variation of taxation. This Vote deals with expenditure. Neither may the details of administration be discussed nor may the items be taken seriatim. It is a matter, as the Minister said, of getting a Vote of a certain amount of money to tide over the period which will elapse between now and the consideration of the Estimates and the main Vote being given by the House, hence the question of taxation does not arise.

Will it be in order——

It is not for the Chair to guide Deputies as to what is in order, but to point out what is not.

Might I ask if it will be in order to discuss the way in which this amount of money will be administered by the different Ministers?

Administration, yes; the details of administration, no. Details may be discussed on the Estimates.

Does ruling out over-taxation also rule out over-expenditure as a subject for discussion?

Then it will be quite in order to discuss the point that the full amount expended for 1931-32 was £21,722,888, and the Estimate presented this year, which is admitted not to be the full demand, will be £27,500,000.

The Deputy has made his point very neatly.

I want to get clear on the matter.

I am glad, Sir, that you intervened. The reason I referred to this question of taxation at all was that I understood the Opposition had intimated to our Whip that they proposed to discuss over-taxation.

The Minister too will refrain from discussing taxation.

I am quite prepared to discuss the question of taxation at the proper time and in its proper place.

On the Budget.

On the Budget, but if the debate is to be addressed to the increase in the Estimates for 1936-37, as compared with the Estimates presented for 1931-32, I submit that the question to which the Opposition and those who wish to advocate a reduction in this expenditure must address themselves is: Which of these services do they propose to reduce? Do they propose to reduce old age pensions? Do they propose to reduce the provision for public works and buildings, the provision for the Department of Local Government, for the Department of Agriculture, for forestry, for unemployment assistance, for widows' and orphans' pensions, for the Department of Industry and Commerce? If they do propose to reduce the provision which we intend to ask the House to make for these services, what are they going to put in their place? Are they, with respect to the Department of Industry and Commerce, going to throw the country back to the position which existed here in 1931-32, when the boots on our feet and the clothes on our backs, the bread we ate and the furniture upon which we sat were virtually all imported into this country from abroad——

Tan-sad chairs.

——while citizens of this country who, as experience has shown, could turn out these articles of a type and of a quality that would be attractive to our people were walking about workless and hungry? If they like, they can propose to reduce the Vote for Local Government and Public Health, and cut down our housing policy thereby. If they are going to reduce the Vote for forestry, are they going to go back to the position which existed in 1931-32, when less than half what we are asking the House to provide for forestry was voted in respect of that service? These are the questions to which those who wish to debate this matter seriously must address themselves. Unless they can show that they have a practical alternative to the policy which is being put forward by the Government, the policy which is expressed in these Estimates, the Estimates and the Vote on Account ought to be passed by the House without discussion.

The Minister said that he had added up certain figures. To some extent it would help us if we knew the extent to which he had added them. It might save us some addition. It is important to get the full total of these figures.

Would the Minister explain to Deputy Mulcahy the reason for the deduction of £3 in the Governor-General's establishment?

That is a luck-penny.

The Minister never can resist a certain amount of aplomb when he comes into the House. The conduct of a Minister who gives us this book of Estimates—three copies of them only to the Opposition—some time about 4.30 yesterday afternoon and wants now an examination of it, a thorough examination of it, is quite in keeping, I admit, with the whole conduct of the Minister and the Government in these important matters. Many of us have seen the book of Estimates certainly not more than a couple of hours ago. In addition, we are asked, apparently seriously—if one can take a statement coming from the Minister seriously—to discuss the confused statement he has just made and the confused adding up of figures that he has given us. There was one thing, however, that did emerge from that extraordinary statement to which we listened and from all its confusion. The Minister set out elaborately to prove that various Departments were spending much more now than they were spending in 1931-32. I think the country is well aware of that. I think the country is only too well aware of it. It did not require the elaborate arguments of the Minister to prove that. The lump sum proposed in 1931-32 and the lump sum proposed now are in themselves sufficient evidence, and the whole course of Government policy for a number of years has amply proved what extravagant expenditure we have to face to-day, expenditure that had not to be faced in 1931, although the figure in 1931 was denounced by the present Minister and his colleagues as being altogether beyond what the country could afford. For the Minister to indulge in a long statement going in detail into the various Departments to prove what everybody, to his cost, knows, namely, the increased extravagance of the Government, required a certain amount of “coolness,” in the slang sense of the word. He has taken up the time of the House to prove what there was no necessity for him to prove, that we are spending now what he boasts to us is nearly £7,000,000 more than was spent in 1931. What he has not done is to justify that increased expenditure. He has proved that the various Departments have spent more than they did before. Of course if there is a confessed increase of £6,000,000 or £7,000,000 in the total sum, there must be increased expenditure in individual Departments. This House is accustomed to many somersaults and changes of front from Ministers, but to find Ministers of the Fianna Fáil Party, who once were eloquent on these benches in their demands for reduced expenditure, actually boasting of the increased expenditure and boasting of that increased expenditure at a time when the country, as a result of their policy, is less able to bear that increased expenditure, was a somersault and a change of attitude which we hardly dared to expect even from the Ministers opposite. Of course we all know the difficulties—they are becoming more elaborate every year— of really trying to find out the extent of the taxes now borne by this country. As a result of the manipulations, or what the Minister calls alternating the procedure, neither the Budget statement nor the book of Estimates gives us any indication of the amount of taxation raised or the amount of services necessary, or the money that we must raise to meet the services that apparently the Minister thinks the country requires. Quite a number of services no longer appear on the Estimates. I merely refer to that as an illustration, just as many taxes now borne by the people do not appear in the Budget statement. As I said, it is becoming increasingly difficult to get any definite complete statement either as to the financial position of the country or of the amount of expenditure necessary to run the country.

That is a situation which is being deliberately developed from year to year and which can have only the effect of concealing the real position from the people. In the few moments that this book has been in our hands there are some features which struck us. It is strange the Minister did not deal with them in the very elaborate uninformative statement he made. If the Minister remembers, one of the matters on which his Party were particularly eloquent when they were on these benches—I shall only refer in passing to their celebrated promise of the immediate reduction of £2,000,000 in expenditure—was the reduction of expenditure. He now acknowledges that a minus quantity of £2,000,000 has become a plus quantity of £7,000,000— a slight divergence of £9,000,000 even on the Minister's own statement. They were particularly keen on the cost of administration. On one occasion they pointed out that administrative costs in this country could be halved. What was the position then as compared with last year? We know perfectly well that as compared with 1931-1932 more and more civil servants have been added. Last year I had occasion to refer to the fact that the one industry that does seem to have progressed during the Minister's tenure of office is the Civil Service. The one great industry that gives increased employment is the Civil Service. I had occasion to refer to that last year; so let us compared this year with even last year and take one or two of the separate Votes as a means of illustration. Taking the Minister's own Department, there is an increase of £5,000 in salaries. I am not now talking of other expenses that are administrative expenses. So as not to diverge too much into detail I shall confine myself to the question of salaries in one or two Departments. In his own Department there has been an increase of £5,000, and that from the Minister who was to cut the total administrative expenses of this country by half! We turn to another popular service, the Revenue Commissioners. Under subhead A—Salaries, Wages and Allowances—there is an increase of £45,000. I found it very hard to follow the Minister through all his figures, but I do not remember, and I doubt if any member of the House does, having heard that sum of £45,000 mentioned. There was, it is true, a reference to public works; but the reference was to the buildings that are being put up; there was no reference made to the increase in salaries of £13,000. Are they productive in the old sense that the Minister used when he was a Deputy? Will he pretend they are? Similarly, when you come to the Vote for Local Government, there is an increase of between £9,000 and £10,000 in salaries and wages alone. The Minister made a reference to the question of national teachers and he compared the pensions. But he did not compare the salaries of primary teachers in these years. It is by the teachers that the teaching is done. Perhaps the Minister forgets that. We come then to the Department of Agriculture, which shows an increase of £15,000 in salaries. Mind, I am only making a comparison with last year. On going through the Estimates one finds increases, especially in these big Departments.

You have increases in the cost of running the Departments. In the case of the Department of Lands, there is an increase of £16,000 in salaries and, for Industry and Commerce, there is an increase of £23,000 in salaries. I have not had time since I got the Estimates a short time ago to follow the Minister's example and "more or less" add up these figures. For a Party that put forward, as one of the principal planks in their programme, the reduction of administrative expenses, this is certainly an extraordinary book of Estimates. It is remarkable, coming from a Minister who was so keen on the necessity for reducing expenditure and from the Party that, year in and year out, tried to prove, from 1927 to 1931, when they were in Opposition, that this country was being asked to pay more in taxation than it could afford on account of the cost of Government Departments. What have we to-day? The Minister took up the line, thinking possibly it was the safest line, not to excuse that expenditure but to boast of it. It is almost like a burglar caught in a man's house saying: "I admit I am coming to rob you; I am not pretending I am not going to do it," as if the confession excused him! This Government is confessedly spending £6,000,000 to £7,000,000 more than the State spent when they took up office, or confessedly £9,000,000 more than they pretended would be necessary to meet all the expenses of running this country and provide all the social services as well.

The Minister, instead of trying to justify the conduct of the Government, comes here and boasts of it. One thing he did not even try to do; and that was to justify the increased expenditure, to show that the people were getting any value for the increased expenditure of which he boasts. Let the country realise that we have a Ministry now committed not to try to keep down expenses; that we have a Ministry that boasts about increasing expenses and which makes no attempt to show any justification whatsoever for the increased expenditure or to show what value the country gets from it. I can understand Ministers living in Dublin and Deputies who represent Dublin not being aware of the value the country gets from all this expenditure. But any Deputy who represents one of the country areas, the countryside or the country towns, knows too well the type of value given for this confessed increase of £7,000,000 in expenditure. It is not merely the farming community that, to their cost, know the value that they are getting for this increase. The farmers and farm labourers know the value they are getting too well, but the people in the country towns know it equally well. They are suffering to the same extent from the policy and from many of the measures of the Government. If these measures were designed to wipe out the country towns as economic units, they could not produce much different effects from what they are producing.

It is not merely the farmer or the farm labourer who is in a position to appreciate to his cost the value the Government is giving for this increased expenditure; it is the shopkeeper in the towns, the ordinary business man and the employee, who depends on the success of the business, who is equally in a position to appreciate the type of value that the Minister gives. A man must be living in a Government office and must never go to the country at all if he is under the impression that he country now is in a position to meet an expenditure of this kind at all comparable to the position as it was in 1931. There is always that complete gap in the Minister's statement and policy—there is no consideration whatsoever for the capacity of the country to bear these increased charges. Since the year 1931-32 you have had increasing expenditure. Even this year, when everything is taken into account, I doubt if you will have the £100,000 to which the Minister referred as a balance on what we call the correct side, but for which he apparently thinks he must apologise. A comparison of the increasing expenditure with the decreasing capacity of the country in the long run to meet it is the thing that the Minister never takes into account. But that is the real thing that is before the minds of the people in the country—their growing incapacity to meet the situation that has been created by the Government and to meet the payments that are being imposed on them by the Government.

What do we see? A Party that complained, in eloquence of which only the Minister for Industry and Commerce and the Minister for Finance are capable, about the cost of Government machinery. We see that machinery becoming more and more elaborate every day and pressing more heavily on the people, whose economic position as a result of Government policy has become more and more unhealthy. Has the Government any policy so far as this country is concerned? Here is a Vote on Account of some £9,000,000. The total sum is much more than three times that.

On a point of order. It is a disgrace that when we are considering a Vote on Account of £9,000,000 there is not a full House here.

That is not a point of order.

Attention drawn to the fact that a quorum was not present. House counted, and a quorum being present,

As Deputy Belton has pointed out, during the statement on this Vote, when Government policy ought to be justified, a Vote which inevitably will put such a burden on the people, we had present here only one Fianna Fáil representative, as far as I can judge, of a constituency outside Dublin; one University representative, one City of Dublin representative, one County Dublin representative, and one from the rest of the country. That is the interest which the Fianna Fáil Party shows in this elaborate statement of the Minister. Is there any policy worth standing over, or even any policy that they are standing over, in justification of this particular Vote? I see only one policy on which the Government are consistent, and in support of which they can ask the House to give them this money, and that is the policy of keeping the country unsettled. The one line of policy to which they have been consistent right through is that there should be no settlement economically for this country; that at any cost there cannot be a settlement; no matter what it costs us in markets, of which they now realise the value, there can be no settlement with Great Britain. That is the Government policy.

There is one other thing on which they have been consistent all along; the Government have started a number of industries. That might be considered the other plank—but I say it is a secondary plank so far as they are concerned—in their programme. I am not now going into the question of the conditions of labour which obtain in some of those industries. The Labour Deputy who is present may deal with that. But I will make this point. Those industries have been started at great public expense, at great cost to the taxpayer and the consumer, and without any advertence at all to the capacity of the country to support them in the long run—a capacity very detrimentally affected by the Government's general policy. How does the Minister for Industry and Commerce expect those various industries to have a future—be they sound or unsound; be they mushroom growths or possessing some elements of permanence; be they great or small—when he takes into account the general policy of the Government, which is ruining three-fourths of the people of this country outside the couple of big cities? How can he expect that? Can we believe that that policy of starting and fostering industries in the towns is anything more than mere window dressing so far as the Government are concerned?

I have often asked here, and I am not aware of ever having got an answer, whether the Government have any agricultural policy to which they can adhere for 12 months. I admit they boast of their desire to promote the growth of wheat; again, let it be clearly understood, at the expense of the taxpayer and the consumer. They have devoted energy and they have devoted large sums of the taxpayers' and the consumers' money to help on that particular policy, but on what does it largely rely for any success which it has achieved or is likely to achieve? Not on its own merits, even in so far as it has been subsidised; far more does it rely on the fact that the Government have made cattle breeding, cattle rearing and cattle exporting uneconomic. The main strength of their wheat policy at the present moment is less due to that policy itself, even when backed up by Government subsidies and subsidies from the consumer, than it is due to the fact that the Government deliberately set out to ruin the main source of wealth for the ordinary farmer in this country. Any success which the wheat policy has achieved is due a great deal more to the destruction of the cattle industry than to anything positive that has been done by the Government themselves.

On the last day I asked what is the attitude of the Minister for Agriculture to the cattle industry. I pointed out to him that it was impossible to reconcile the blatant contradictions of which he was guilty in this House. Even these Estimates compel that question to be raised. I asked on that day whether the new coal-cattle pact with England meant a reversal of the Minister's policy as regards the killing of calves, or whether it did not. If we are to consult those Estimates we can gather that there is at least a partial return to sanity, but unfortunately only a partial return to sanity, on the part of the Minister. Apparently there is going to be less slaughter of calves this year than last year, but as in the case of everything else that is of any value the Minister is ready to undertake only half measures. We do not know where we stand as regards the cattle trade, or what is now the attitude of the Minister towards it. If real importance were to be attached to the coal-cattle pact then one would imagine that there might be some prospect of an effort to promote the cattle industry.

One of the things of which the Minister boasted was the amount being spent by the Department of Agriculture. One of the things that has been ruined by the Ministry is the agricultural position of the farmers in this country, and yet the Minister comes along and boasts of increased expenditure. What was it all for? Was it to reduce the farmers and the farm labourer to the position to which the Government have reduced them? We pointed out last week that the Government—and even the ingenuity of the President cannot conceal the fact—are now conniving with the British Government in the collection of the land annuities. That being so, what justification is there for the continued collection of them in this country? Whatever excuse may be put forward for the Land Commission's collection of these annuities before this coal-cattle pact, what excuse can there be put forward now, when despite the very subtle distinctions that the President draws, there is what amounts to practical agreement between this Government and Great Britain for the collection, of the amounts due or said to be due by this country to Great Britain? If that is so what is that justification for the collection of the annuities or for the particular branch of the Land Commission that deals with annuities?

This is a huge Vote, particularly huge when you take into account the capacity of the country to bear it. It is a Vote to bolster up the policy and support the policy that amounts to ruin for most of the countryside. I admit quite freely that men who live in Government Departments in Dublin or men who live in the City of Dublin have not that side of the case brought before their minds, in the same way as those who live in the country. They do not know how it means ruin to all, not merely to the farmer but the farm labourer as well. The Minister, in introducing the coal-cattle pact last week, said there was a loss to the Irish Exchequer of I think £200,000. He is not long in making good that loss. If there is a loss of £200,000 to the Revenue it is not the farmer or anybody connected with agriculture, directly or indirectly, is going to benefit. The loss to the Revenue has been made up in remarkably quick time. There has been no improvement in prices as a result of that pact. There was a fair in my native town, Killarney, last Monday. I spoke to several people who were at that fair, and they told me that the prices were worse than the prices were a month ago. I quite admit that on the same day the town of Tralee was getting a certain amount of excitement and business, but not owing to a fair. It was not owing to a fair that the town was crowded but owing to the appointment of 19 warble fly inspectors—a much more remunerative thing to the town than a fair.

At the cost of the local ratepayers.

Yes, but that does not appear on these Estimates. The one industry that flourishes under the Minister and his colleagues is bureaucracy and the making of appointments.

How can the farmer afford to pay a decent wage for labour at present? How can he compete with the English farmer? Quite recently, speaking again in my native town, the Minister for Industry and Commerce boasted that the flight of people to the West had been stopped. A little change in the orientation, in the quite literal meaning of the word, might have saved him from making that boast. The flight to America has been stopped but not by the policy of the Government—it has been stopped by American quotas. The flight to America has changed to the flight to Great Britain.

And to the British Army too.

Yes, to Great Britain. That is where the young men and young women have to go. What then is the good of the Minister speaking of the decrease in emigration when it has only changed from one country to another? Go down to Kerry and learn the facts. I can only speak for my own county, but Deputies have told me it is the same in the West and it is travelling on to the Midlands. I am told by various people in different parts of Kerry that there has been emigration from every part of that county and I am told that in some districts the number of people travelling to England from the country side recalls the scenes of the people leaving for the emigrant ship 40 years ago. Some stations there are crowded with the number of people who are leaving. From what I can hear it is not the supporters of Fine Gael who are emigrating and flocking in their thousands to Great Britain. Supporters of the Fianna Fáil Party and the Republican Party are going in numbers to Great Britain and getting employment there which by the Government policy is being closed to them here. I wonder will the Ministers deny that this emigration is going on or will they simply ignore it? How can the farmer here compete in wages with what the farmer in England is giving? As a result of the Government policy he is unable to do so. Much as young men and young women might like to be amongst their own, might like to find employment near their own homes, how can they do that in face of the Government policy?

In more ways than one in the last couple of months this Government has demonstrated quite clearly our dependence on the British market. They seem to have set out deliberately to prove to Great Britain and to everybody interested in the question that we could not do without that market. The Government in the last couple of months have produced the best possible proofs in support of this. With their coal-cattle pact they have proved it. They have proved that we can have no prosperity in this country until we can get back the British market. Yet the general policy of the Government is that they are not going to try to get it back. They are adhering to that policy in face of their admission of the dependence of this country on Great Britain. As a result of the last three and a half years of Government policy that is the position. That is an outstanding result of the economic war; the proof that the British market is essential to us. In addition there is a second aspect of the question. As a result of Government policy we have to get, elsewhere than at home, a market for our labour. I cannot give the numbers that have emigrated from Kerry to England in the last 12 months. It is difficult to do so, for there are no figures published. I can only say that scenes have been described to me by several witnesses. One man—he may be a supporter of the Government, certainly he is one in touch with them—told me that he made inquiry and he puts the number down as 8,000 emigrants from Kerry alone in the last 12 months. I cannot stand over that figure, but the scenes at the stations are known to everybody in Kerry and I leave the people there to judge of the truth of the statement I am making about this matter of emigration.

The Government have tried with the expenditure of large sums of money to set up industries in this country. Before they undertook that big task they set about destroying the existing wealth that was in the country. How under those circumstances they could expect the industries to succeed or to have long life altogether passes my comprehension. It used to be one of the great planks in the Government programme that we were going to have full self-sufficiency. They have demonstrated the unsoundness of that policy. They have proved to the hilt how untenable and how unwise it was to have embarked on it to the extent to which they did. If we had done even a few of the things which Ministers have done in the last couple of weeks or months, I can well imagine Deputy MacEntee or Deputy Lemass standing up in these benches and denouncing us for bartering away the economic freedom of the country in entering into an agreement such as they have entered into.

My objection to the Minister and to the other Ministers is that they only took a quarter step in the proper direction and did not enter into negotiations that would put this country in a sound position. Nobody really knows what the negotiations are, between the statements of the Ministers which they had nothing to do with and which they have forgotten about. The distinction in the President's speech last week was very neat—one Minister knew nothing about it and the other has forgotten all about it. It is impossible to know what secret negotiations have gone on, what suggestions have been thrown out, even by the President. We had yesterday reproduced in the Independent the account of the correspondent who had the pleasure of a four-hours' interview with the President. One thought apparently emerged from that four hours—how it did is more than I can understand—and that was that the President was quite willing to give away the question of the land annuities if he would get it back on the question of defence. I cannot say whether that is so. There were negotiations at Ottawa but we know nothing about them. There have been negotiations and conversations from time to time which have been kept from the people. We have seen the Ministry haul down the flag which they raised—I am sorry they ever raised it, but they hauled it down. Therefore, we are entitled to think that there may be something in these conversations which we hear a lot about from time to time, not always by any means from quarters hostile to, but rather friendly and in very close touch with, the Government.

I am dealing merely with the general question, as you asked us to do. I return to my opening statement, that we have had a long, elaborate and confusing statement from the Minister. These Estimates were given into our hands at 4.30 yesterday—three copies only for the whole Opposition. We have got a confused statement—it may have been meant to have been a confusing statement—from the Minister. Not once in that whole statement was there a policy to justify or an attempt to show that this huge expenditure was justifiable. The Minister should have devoted his time to that question, instead of this elaborate boasting and proving what did not need to be proved, namely, that "we have increased expenditure and we are proud of it." That, I suggest, was the one factor and the one real proposition that clearly emerged from the mixture of figures which the Minister flung at the House—"There is hardly a Department of State in which we have not increased expenditure and we are proud of it." Five years ago they stood for the opposite policy, but now the higher the expenditure the better the Government.

A few nights ago, or rather more, we had a protracted debate here on the trade agreement, and half way through the President of the Executive Council intervened, and at some length he directed the attention of this House and the country at large to the true nature of the burden of the land annuities, and for that purpose he reminded the House that a calculation had been made which he, the President, accepted as correct, that the taxable capacity of this country as compared with that of Great Britain was as 66 is to 1. I think it might be profitable for the Minister for Finance to contemplate to-day the expenditure in which he proposes to involve the State in terms of 66 to 1, because he has received express instructions from the President to keep that comparison before his eyes in estimating every financial burden and in contemplating every financial gain.

The Estimate which appears on the cover of the printed book this year for the Supply Services is £27,514,783, and if the Minister will do the little arithmetic he was volunteering to do at an earlier stage he will find that President de Valera regards that Estimate of expenditure for Supply Services as equivalent to an expenditure in Great Britain of £1,815,924,000 per annum. That is not the whole story, because when you contemplate at any time the proposed expenditure in this country you have to consider not only the Supply Services, but the Central Fund expenditure and the concealed expenditure that is going on all the time. The Supply Services may be taken this year as amounting to £27,500,000, and the concealed taxation under the Wheat Act and the Cereals Act——

Does taxation arise?

Taxation does not arise.

I should have said expenditure. The expenditure under the Wheat Act, the Cereals Act, the Bacon Act and the variety of other measures which have passed through this House amounts in all to a sum of about £4,000,000 per annum.

There is nothing in this Vote for concealed expenditure— it is all open.

It is very necessary that we should direct the attention of the country to the fact that it is not in this Vote and it ought to be. It is the dishonesty of the Fianna Fáil Government that excluded it from the Vote. It is very frequently necessary to direct the attention of the country and the House to what the Government ought to have put in Votes and do not put in. It is perfectly orderly to draw attention to the fact that these Estimates are fraudulent, and that they give no true picture of what the Government is in fact doing. That is the purpose of the debate.

He hopes to discuss taxation by calling it expenditure.

The Local Loans Fund has been transferred, under another piece of legislation of this House, and is now not included in Supply Services. I propose to take, for the purpose of comparison, the amount that was estimated for the Local Loans Fund in the financial year 1931-2, to which the Minister has frequently referred. I add to that the Central Fund expenditure, which I put at a round figure of £5,000,000. That gives a total prospective expenditure for this year of £37,770,000. Now let us apply the 66-to-1 formula to that. Remember, the President has stated on divers occasions in this House that he accepts that as a fair and proper estimate of the capacity of this country to bear taxation. Multiply that total expenditure by 66, and we discover that to ask this State to provide such a sum in this financial year is equivalent to asking Great Britain to provide in one financial year a sum substantially in excess of the total public debt of Great Britain, to wit, £2,492,820,000. That is a calculation based on figures supplied by the President.

Does the Ministry, of which he is the head, show any signs of shame or apology to this State for proposing to spend such sums? Not a bit of it. They are proud of it, and they expect the people of this country to swallow the futile ramblings of the Minister for Finance when he attempts to justify an expenditure in this country which, as compared with Great Britain, would mean that Great Britain should redeem her entire National Debt by one year's taxation and provide for her Supply Services as well.

We heard a protracted comparison being made between the Estimates of 1931-32 and the Estimates of 1936-37. There is an old French proverb which says that he who excuses himself accuses himself. The Minister himself realised how desperately unfavourable that comparison is, and was when he was making it. The Central Fund and Supply Services for 1931-32 called for approximately £26,135,000. This year the expenditure, including the concealed taxation, calls for £37,770,000. Let us see now what the Minister for Finance thought of the expenditure of his predecessor in office when his predecessor proposed to expend £26,000,000 in the same period in which he proposes to expend £37,000,000. Deputy MacEntee, as he then was, said:

"They call it folly. What do you call it? The Free State Party have nominated Vincent Rice as their candidate in this election, and they proposed the other day in Leinster House that they should be allowed to spend a huge sum of £27,674,548 on governing the Twenty-six Counties. When the Fianna Fáil Party proposed a reduction of £3,000,000 Cosgrave denounced the proposal as childish folly, and used the automatic majority, to which he is now trying to add Vincent Rice, to vote down every argument used by the Republicans in favour of this reduction."

Well may the Minister for Finance blush.

"The Irish people are far poorer than they were during the Great War. Yet during the Great War the British governed the whole of Ireland at a cost of £12,761,000, and everybody knows that England was not niggardly in spending Irish money. The Irish people had more trade in 1911-1913 than they now have. Yet in the three pre-war years the average cost of British government for the whole of Ireland was £11,975,833"—

very little more than the Vote on Account which is being asked for now.

—"for the Twenty-six Counties the Irish people now have to pay £27,674,548."

To-day they are going to have to spend £37,770,000.

"The cost-of-living figure shows that, at the very most, the cost of governing Ireland should have increased by 75 per cent. since 1914. In fact, it has increased from less than £12,000,000 to almost £40,000,000 for the whole nation."

So said Deputy MacEntee on this historic occasion. It is now nearly £40,000,000 for the Irish Free State alone. Deputy MacEntee, going on, said:

"To-day agricultural prices show that for every £100 he made in 1911 the Irish farmer now makes £131."

Might I here interpolate that for every £100 the Irish farmer made in 1911 he now makes £85?

"But for every £100 of taxation in 1911 under the British Government Cosgrave's Government now levies £376. When Fianna Fáil pointed out these facts in the Free State Parliament and declared that they showed an absolute necessity for a reduction in the appalling cost of government, Cosgrave and his automatic majority called it childish and voted down the proposal even for a reduction of £3,000,000. Vincent Rice stands for this impudent refusal to reduce taxation nearer to the pockets of the people. He asks North Dublin to vote for more impoverishment still. Vote for Mrs. Clarke and taxes the people can bear."

Is it not astonishing that the man who wrote that has the effrontery to come into this House at all, much less to get up and talk?

Who wrote it?

The Minister to-day adopts a very hoary and futile scheme when trying to defend Estimates over which he knows he cannot stand himself. He says to the Opposition: "What reductions do you propose? Are you in favour of abolishing the social services?" I want to say a word on that now. It is something I have referred to in this House on more occasions than one and it is something upon which people like to turn their backs because they do not care to face it. We have got considerable social services in this country, and it is a good thing that we have got them, but, in my opinion, a far heavier obligation rests on this Oireachtas to maintain such social services as we establish than rests upon it to provide new services. If the present policy of taxation, the present policy of expenditure, continues, the time is going to come when the Government of this country must turn to the social services to provide at least a part of the money they require. In my opinion, no disaster could be greater than that we should have to retrace our steps in respect of the social services, but you cannot maintain the social services if you have not got the money to maintain them, and if you are going to spend the money, right, left and centre and, at the same time, impoverish the source from which you hope to get that money by taxation, the day will come when you will have to cut down expenditure in one direction or the other. When that time comes, the social services of this country are going to suffer. Our anxiety is to prevent that situation. Our anxiety is to preserve the sources of taxation and to keep expenditure within the capacity of our people to pay it, and thereby to maintain those kinds of services which we consider it to be the moral duty of the State to maintain.

A great deal of the expenditure in these Estimates before us at present arises from the agricultural policy of the Government, and when one proceeds to examine a question of that kind, one is brought back to a realisation of the amazing shortness of the public memory. It is a standing miracle to every man in public life. It is hard now to réalise that Deputies sitting upon the Government side of the House stumped this country denouncing the live-stock industry as a shameful and disgraceful thing; it is hard to realise that one of their leaders triumphed in the thought that he could destroy in 100 days the live-stock industry that took 100 years to build up; it is hard to believe that a man like Deputy O'Reilly, who is sitting here now, got up in this House and solemnly moved, with the entire approval of President de Valera, that, as an alternative to the established agricultural policy of this country, we ought to initiate the growing of tobacco and to make it absolutely independent of all supervision by the Revenue Commissioners, and he meant it. He was so completely dead to the realities of what was going on about him, so completely ignorant of the essential preliminaries of agriculture in this country——

How can Deputy O'Reilly's responsibilities arise on the Vote on Account?

Deputy O'Reilly's opinions do not arise, but the policy of the Government does.

Deputy O'Reilly was put up as a stalking horse. He was given the dirty job to do. And he came in here and made a complete ass of himself.

On questions of policy, the Deputy should be guided by the statements of Ministers.

It is to the policy as set out by the Minister that I propose to address myself. Let me assure Deputy O'Reilly that I do not wish to be personally offensive to him. He was sent in here to make a foolish case which had been adumbrated by President de Valera. President de Valera took the field in the Evening Herald of Wednesday, the 19th June, 1928.

The Deputy can hold the Government responsible only for Government policy.

This is the policy of the Government.

What Government?

Of President de Valera.

He was not President then.

Unfortunately, he has become so since.

Is it not allowable, in order to find out what is in the mind of the Government, to quote previous statements before they came into office, because the policy is a continuous policy?

The Deputy's contention is sound. There is before the House a Vote containing a number of items. Tobacco is not included. That being so, it would be very difficult to show that a reference to a speech on tobacco in 1928 is in order now.

You have specifically drawn our attention away from the details and asked us to concentrate on matters of policy, reserving our consideration of the details for the various Estimates. A great part of the extravagant expenditure of the Government arose from the fact that these inept and incompetent persons who constitute the Government have upset the whole agricultural economy of this country. They did so because they allowed themselves to be rushed by the silly, hare-brained schemes which were suggested by Deputies like Deputy O'Reilly and President de Valera, such as the growing of tobacco, and I am going to show that the President on this historic occasion——

The Deputy has correctly said that on this Vote wide questions of policy are discussed. Discussion would need to be very wide to embrace matters debated in 1928 and not included in this Vote.

The alternative to the system of agriculture that was in force when the Fianna Fáil Government came into office, was, we were told, that we should grow beet, wheat and tobacco. I am submitting to the House that each and every one of those schemes has collapsed in ruin, that they were fraudulent when first proposed, that they are fraudulent now, and that they are all going the same road that the tobacco scheme went. The country was induced to adopt that alternative agricultural programme by the representations of Fianna Fáil. One of the representations was that tobacco was going to be a gold mine for every farmer in the country, that it was going to be taken out of the purview of the Revenue Commissioners, and Deputy O'Reilly argued for that just as President de Valera——

If the Deputy would pursue the agricultural policy of the Government, including their policy on tobacco as it exists now, he would be in order.

I say that if the agricultural community were given a tobacco scheme on the lines held out by President de Valera, it would be worth something, but on the lines it is at present operated, it is worth nothing at all. It is a complete fiasco. The lines that were set out by the President as the prospective alternative to the existing system were as follows: "I believe," said President de Valera, "that the growing of tobacco here should be altogether free from duty."

There is an Act which decided that matter. Legislation cannot be criticised on this Vote.

I take it then that you, Sir, will not allow me to read President de Valera's statement in regard to tobacco in 1928?

Precisely. The Deputy may not read it.

All right, Sir. Deputies can look it up themselves and they will be as surprised with it as I was. A great deal of the expenditure that is being caused here arises from the confusion and the injury that are being inflicted on the agricultural community by the prosecution of something that we used to know as the economic war. In my opinion a completely new era has been reached in that matter, with the conclusion of the debate on the coal-cattle pact of 1936. I desire to draw the attention of the Government to one or two points in that connection because I believe that if they devote their attention to these matters, a very great deal of the embarrassments with which we are confronted might be avoided. When this quarrel broke out between Great Britain and Saorstát Eireann, the policy of the Executive Council was: "We will not pay the disputed moneys." The Opposition warned them that that was a wholly unprofitable line to pursue. We said: "If you believe the moneys are not due, go over and negotiate with these people on the other side and arrive at some friendly settlement. Do not embark on a war, because the results may be very grave indeed for our people." The Executive Council said "We will embark on a war. We are fit for war and we shall endeavour to withhold the annuities." We know what happened; the burden of the annuities and the other payments in dispute were transferred from the Exchequer on to the backs of the agricultural community. They have had to bear it although they were not liable, or were only indirectly liable for a very great part of it.

The second stage of the dispute was reached when President de Valera admitted in this House, although he had been denying it up to then, that these moneys were being effectively collected, and were being collected in a way that was more injurious to this country than if he had paid them directly. He then said, "We are going to try to devise ways and means of withholding the annuities by finding alternative markets or something of that kind." So long as he was in either of these two positions, although one might hold that he was neither wise nor prudent, he was at least consistent. His position then was "I do not believe that they are due and I am going to resort to every means to withhold them." It was legitimate then to argue that the system resorted to was not efficient, but at least he was entitled to reply that he was making the effort and that there was a variety of expedients which he could try until he would find one that was going to work.

Now, we come to the third stage, the coal-cattle pact of 1936, and the President says again "I do not think the annuities are due; I have tried to withhold them." Then speaking as reported at Column 1329, Volume 60, No. 4. the President said:

I am quite willing to admit that, if I were a negotiator with the British and—I do not mind saying it here to everybody—if we were in a stronger position than we are at the moment, I would not make that agreement.

Mr. Belton: In other words, the flag had to go down?

The President: The flag had to go down to that extent, yes; but not in the sense that we do not still retain our right, or that we do not hope that right will yet triumph.

It is a highly undesirable idiom to talk of striking the flag. Everybody knows that there has been no genuine war as between us and the British people. Throughout the last four years there has been daily contact between our Ministry of Finance and the British Exchequer; there has been daily contact and consultation between our Ministry of Agriculture and the British Ministry of Agriculture. There has been on both sides, one is happy to say, an anxiety to accommodate one another in any way that they could. A very good example of it is the Warble Fly Order, which is going to cost this country a good deal of money. It is going to involve a lot of expense and trouble, and it is all done for the purpose of fitting in with a similar scheme that is being put into force in Great Britain for the special advantage of the British leather and tanning industry. As regards the Warble Fly Order, it may be very difficult to put into force and it may be complicated at first, but it is the kind of thing in which we ought to co-operate with the British.

There was never a real war; there was never any marching into battle with our flags flying; there was nothing like Great Britain having to lower its flag or the Free State having to lower its flag. We have reached a stage when, as a result of refusing to compromise, we have the Government of Great Britain admittedly taking from us every penny they claim and we have the Irish Government in the position of going to Great Britain and saying: "We have made up our minds that you are in a position to take from us whatever moneys you claim; let us sit down and come to some arrangement whereby you can get the money and do us the least amount of injury that can be done. Therefore, you should increase the number of cattle you take from us and lower the duty. We will send you more cattle and you can take all the land annuities and the pensions attached to that greater number of cattle, but it will help us greatly if you allow us to send the larger number of cattle." The moment we arrive at that point we admit that the British are going to get the money and it is really a question of how conveniently we can send it over; it is really a question of sending it over in a manner that will do our people the least amount of injury.

The simple answer to the whole thing is to write a cheque and send it over. If, instead of going through this elaborate business of collecting tariffs and trying to get the loss involved in the tariffs properly apportioned amongst the people here, the Government will write a cheque and send over two or three civil servants or even the Minister for Finance to hand in the cheque and say: "Gentlemen, we deny you are entitled to this; we protest it is robbery to take it from us; we assert our inalienable right to retain it, but we propose to give it to you in a way that will cause the least inconvenience to anybody," it would solve the whole problem in a very simple fashion. The Government should do something of that nature. They could send it over even in monthly instalments and make a protest once a month. They could even send a different Minister every month with the cheque.

Why not send the Parliamentary Secretary?

Yes, the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Finance could take a turn.

And he might be able to tell them a few stories.

If that were done, the inconvenience and the suffering of the people would be infinitely mitigated. No damage would be done and I assure the Minister a great deal of the expenditure called for in this Vote on Account could be dispensed with. We could face the future with comparative equanimity because we would have reason to hope the prosperity of the people would continue to grow. We would be restored to some kind of normaley, and all this hopeless wrangle about the economic war would be put out of the way. We would be able to deal with our neighbours on terms of trade equality. We would be able to ascertain from time to time whether a tariff or other fiduciary departure in this country was designed for a purely economic purpose or whether it was part of the general barrage fired at the British Government. Lastly, it would make this important change, that it would be possible to apportion the burden of these annual payments fairly and not have the people producing live stock and live stock products bearing the whole thing. These charges ought to be a charge on the general Exchequer, not on any selected section of the community. Until the Exchequer takes charge of these payments and makes them, it is impossible for the Exchequer to distribute them evenly and properly, as they ought to be in accordance with the law. It is very necessary from the point of view of equity that that should be done.

I pointed out here, in answer to the Minister for Agriculture last Wednesday, that, while it is true the numbers of live stock which we are exporting have remained either stable or declined very little, the average prices received have fallen from over £16 a head to £8 0s. 8d. Any Deputy who has experience of the live stock trade will agree that cattle sold for £8 0s. 8d. are being sold at a loss. If that is true, and we increase our live stock exports to Great Britain without increasing the average price, we simply increase the measure of our losses and accelerate the rate at which we spend our reserves. I want to stop that. Every Party now admits what only the Fine Gael Party held three years ago, and that was that the essential lynch-pin of the whole agricultural economy of this country is the live stock industry. Take wheat, beet, and peat. Suppose you grow all the wheat you want—let us admit that policy prevails and you grow 600,000 acres of wheat. The minimum rotation which the cultivation of wheat will allow is a four-year rotation. You must have wheat on a given area of land with three other crops to follow it and then wheat again. That is the minimum rotation. There are some who recommend a five-year rotation. What are you going to do with the produce of that acre of land during the three years after it has grown a crop of wheat? What can you do with it except feed it to live stock, and what is the use of feeding it to live stock if you cannot sell that live stock in a profitable market? Look at this question from another point of view. The natural resources of this country are the ultimate source of the nation's wealth. What are the natural resources of this country? There is no coal worth talking about. I admit there is some, but there is no coal on a scale such as they have it in Great Britain or in Germany or in any of the great coal-producing countries. There is no iron worth talking about. There is no gold.

A Deputy

In Wicklow!

There was plenty of talk about it.

I deliberately avoid developing the question of that mineral. But there is one asset that we have got in this country. There is one natural resource which, in my opinion, is of incalculable value, and that is 12,000,000 acres of arable land. Some of the simple members of Fianna Fáil used to talk about developing our home market, and getting in that home market a high price, which we could from time to time control, for the produce of that arable land. Many experts will tell us that 4,000,000 acres of land will supply all the foodstuffs that every stomach in Ireland can hold, assuming that every stomach is filled to capacity for 365 days out of every year. Throw in 1,000,000 acres, to give every stomach in this country indigestion, and what are you going to do with the remaining 7,000,000 acres? Are you going to let them run wild? Are you going to let them go fallow, or are you going to use them to produce upon them what can be profitably sold in the markets of the world to provide a higher standard of living for our people, and the social services that the poor and the afflicted require? You have got to make your choice between those two things. I hear a lot of talk about settling the people on the land. Settling the people on the land is no ultimate solution of the economic problems of this country. You have got to settle people on the land in such a way that the people can not only make a decent living for themselves, but contribute something out of their surplus to the community wealth. If you do not set your mind to that end you are going to have a nation of peasants and cities of paupers.

I hear a lot of talk about the economic policy that drove thousands of our people abroad. I often wonder if the economic policy that made our people a power in the world, the economic policy that made our people wealthy and happy and comfortable in the United States of America, the economic policy that made it possible for our people to go out and claim a predominant influence in Australia, the economic policy that made it possible for our people to emulate the game that Great Britain played through the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, had not a good deal to say for itself. What was it in every crisis of the national life of this country that stood to Ireland? What was it that made us a power adequate to face Great Britain in contest after contest? Was it the 3,000,000 people here, or was it the 8,000,000 people who were here in 1848? It was the countless millions of Irish throughout the world who made it possible for us to say that the day Great Britain attacks Ireland she will face an enemy in every great nation.

I thought the Deputy was going to say the 4,000,000 cattle.

You know very little about them.

I hear a great deal about the horrors of emigration; about the awful disaster it is to this country that enterprising young men and women should go abroad. I have no desire to force any man or woman to go abroad. I believe it is the duty of this State to make it possible for any person who, for reasons of health or for insuperable family reasons must stay here, to earn his living in this country, but I would be a hypocrite if I pretended to subscribe to the general doctrine that it is an evil and a bad thing for the enterprising element of our youth to go out and conquer the world. I do not. I believe it is a good thing. And I say this, though it may be looking far ahead, that this being a Catholic country, the natural tendency is for young people to marry and rear large families; that we have got to face the fact, that either our young people who have a desire to go will be free to go and conquer the world by the only form of imperialism that can be justified, and that is peaceful penetration, now that we have the resources to give them a chance to get on their feet in whatever country of adoption they choose, or else in the course of time we are going to face the situation which Japan has to face, when we will have a population sinking lower and lower in the scale of living, and when we will have to ask ourselves are we to go out and rob and steal some other person's territory to provide for our population, or are we going to see our own people starve in an island no longer big enough to support them?

Abyssinia!

I take it, Sir, we are to ignore the interjections of Deputy Kennedy, because if we are not I shall be tempted to describe them for what they are.

I should like to hear the description.

Then I take it, Sir, you will restrain Deputy Kennedy from making imbecile observations.

The Deputy should refrain from making any observation when another Deputy is on his feet.

And is it in order to characterise an observation made by any Deputy as "imbecile"?

There are many things that are in order and that are not explicable.

It is perfectly in order.

I believe we have got to face the fact that a choice has to be made between two policies. One is a policy which drives our people to a steadily decreasing standard of living, and the other is the policy which insists on the maintenance, not only for our city dwellers, but for our rural dwellers as well, of a higher standard of living, and that, in my opinion, can be secured only by the profitable sale in foreign markets of the produce of that 7,000,000 acres of arable land which constitute the only natural resource of this country. I hope and I believe that the Government is slowly coming around to this view, that in order to get a price for the produce of land which will make it possible for the standard of living of our people to rise, we have got to exploit the only unique advantage that we have got, and that is the advantage of being able to deposit in the British market perishable agricultural produce in a fresh condition. That is an advantage which no other nation in the world can take from us. That is an advantage which no other nation enjoys in the same measure as we do. No other nation enjoys it in the same measure as we do because no other nation enjoys that geographic advantage while at the same time enjoying the constitutional advantage of membership of the Commonwealth of Nations. That joint advantage can be exploited for our people to ensure that they will get in the British market prices which it is the policy of the British Government to insist on their own British farmers getting.

I remind this House again that with the British Government's change of policy from free trade—laissez faire— a situation has arisen in Great Britain where we can get not only what would be economic prices for our produce, but economic prices for our labour. We would have added to this, for our smallholders, allowances for wages which our farmers do not pay because they do the work themselves. The British farmer works to produce an article at a given commodity price. This includes a figure for labour, and he adds to this the profit which the British Government insists that he gets with his price. The British Government ensures a price for labour and a price for profit. To that the Irish farmer would have the price for wages which he does not pay added to his profit. Admittedly the cost of production may be the same in both countries. Then we have for ourselves the labour allowances as well. We can build up the prosperity in this country on that market. We can build up the prosperity of not only the agricultural community, but the prosperity of everybody whose business it is to supply the agricultural community with industrial goods or with the services they require. Without that there can be no prosperity in this country. It has taken four years to teach that lesson to the Fianna Fáil Government.

I remember being told that the production of live stock was solely the mark of a traitor; that anybody who bred a good beast or who depended for his livelihood on stock-raising in this country was not doing his share of the work. I remember the Minister for Defence saying in this House that such a man would have his land taken from him and that it would be given to somebody else. Yet quite recently President de Valera told a deputation that interviewed him that he had come to the conclusion that the best rural factory he could provide was the bullock. It took him a long time to learn that lesson. It has cost this country millions and millions of pounds to teach that lesson to the Government. But the money has been well spent if they have learnt the lesson at last. The Government have had to be taught a lot of things. The process of teaching them has been extremely expensive on each occasion. I am one of those people, however, who attach so fundamental an importance to democracy, to democratic government and to majority rule that, great as has been the expense, I am glad to have contributed my share, on one condition, and that is that we have come to the end of teaching them the things that they ought to know. We have lavished money on them, and we have lavished more than money. They have been very slow to learn, but if they would learn now we might start getting somewhere.

I want to direct the attention of this House to another branch of agricultural policy to which this Government has set its hand, and that is the cereals legislation. I want to direct the attention of Deputies on the opposite benches to the fact that the cereals legislation has ignominiously collapsed, that its maintenance at present has involved us in staggering expense, and that we get absolutely nothing out of it. The maize-meal mixture scheme was introduced in this country for the purpose of raising the price of oats and barley. What are the facts? Maize meal was introduced in 1932, and I asked the Minister recently what the price of barley and oats was for the past five years in this country. The prices, as reported in column 1123 of the Official Debates, for the month of November, when barley is being freely sold, was:—1930-31, 7/- per cwt.; 1931-32, 7/-; 1932-33, 7/5; 1933-34, 6/1, and in 1934-35, 7/3. In fact there was no change whatever as a result of the operations of the cereals legislation. Take the price of oats for the same month of November in the following years:—1930-31, 5/5 per cwt.; 1931-32, 7/10; 1932-33, 6/5; 1933-34, 4/8, and in 1934-35 it was 7/11. Virtually it had no effect on the price of oats at all, for the price of oats fluctuated as widely while the cereal legislation was in force as the price did previously. At the same time the maize-meal mixture is costing the farmers of this country 8/2 per cwt. retailed in the West of Ireland. I can only speak for the centre I know. Pure maize meal is being bought in Derry at 5/- to 5/3 a cwt. Then we have it that 3/- a cwt. is the difference between the cost of pure maize meal and the maize-meal mixture. It is difficult for anyone to say what the price of pure maize meal would be if it were freely available in this country in bulk. But it is a fact, as the Minister is about to discover——

The Deputy is now criticising legislation.

No, I am criticising the Orders made by the Minister for Agriculture under the powers conferred on him by the Cereals Legislation. The Minister can by Order alter the whole situation in the morning. When his first Order was made the Minister deliberately and directly by the power conferred on him, made an Order that the meal might only be sold in quarter stone packets so that it would be convenient to buy only small quantities of it. To-day he is making an Order which reduces the size of the packet to one pound weight because he discovered that it could be milled and sold so cheaply. Now we get no advantage from cereal legislation.

We have to pay 3/- more per cwt. for the maize meal mixture than the price at which we could get the pure meal. The price of barley was lower last season than it was at any time during the last seven years and only that Messrs. Guinness interfered it could not have been purchased at all. Cereal legislation did not operate to raise the price. Why is the Minister retaining a scheme that has proved itself a dismal failure?

What is Deputy Dillon's proposal?

Abolish the whole thing. It was a fraud from the first day. Let the farmer buy meal and mix it with the cereal he produces on his farm himself. At present you cannot buy pure maize meal. What you have to do is to sell your own oats or barley to the miller who mills it and sells it to somebody perhaps in some other part of the country. The farmer can grow cereals on his own land, he can have them milled locally and mixed with pure maize meal. The maize meal mixture that we use in the West of Ireland has been produced from oats grown by perhaps Deputy Gibbons in Kilkenny. There is added to that the cartage and freight to perhaps a mill in Sligo and it may be sold to somebody there whose oats Deputy Gibbons is using in the mixture that he buys in Kilkenny. I could buy pure Indian meal and mix it with the oats grown in my own land, but now I have to buy Indian meal which has been mixed with oats which has been touristing all round the country. At the present moment Deputy Gibbons may possibly be buying oats which was grown in Donegal and brought down to Kilkenny, while I am buying a mixture containing oats which was grown in Sligo.

That is a tourist speech.

These are the facts. You find at certain periods in the year that millers are required to get in a certain quantity of cereals. They have to get them in at the scheduled time, and it frequently happens that they have to go far afield to get the requisite quantity they require in order to conform with the law. So you have this ridiculous situation arising and intolerable expense being heaped up on the feeders of live stock and all to no purpose. Nobody is getting a penny out of it.

Will the Deputy suggest an alternative?

Wipe out the whole scheme and make pure Indian meal freely available to the farmers.

And allow the oats to go out of cultivation.

Nonsense. The Minister is labouring under a complete illusion. Let me feed my oats to my own stock. Let every farmer do the same. Let the man who grows barley for malting purposes sell it to the malster. Let the man who grows barley of a feeding quality feed it to his live stock. You are driven to this sound aphorism, which should be engraved on the mind of every Fianna Fáil Deputy, that there is only one method to produce cereals profitably in this country, and that is to walk them off the farm. Until you can do that you will never produce cereals successfully.

I gather the Deputy is advocating walking foreign-grown Indian meal off Irish farms.

The Minister does not understand the problem which he is called upon to deal with. He could not understand it because, without any desire to be rude to the Minister, he would not know one end of a pig from another. No sane man would feed any live stock of any description with undiluted maize meal, because he would either kill or render them worthless. You might as well try to feed the Minister altogether on blanc mange. Any intelligent farmer will balance the ration which he gives to live stock, often with greater care than some city people balance the ration given to their children. It is a hard thing to say, but it is true. He knows precisely what is most suitable for his live stock and he insists on their getting it. Many a wealthy woman in this city if she displayed the same prudence with her children, would not have to bring them so often to the doctor. It is when you use Indian meal combined with cereals produced on your own land and the manure of your live stock to maintain the fertility wherewith to produce cereals and roots in the year to come, that you get a balanced ration, a balanced economy, and profitable agriculture—the kind of agriculture that built up this country, the £100,000,000 of sterling assets which are at the present moment the apple of the Minister for Finance's eye; the £100,000,000 of sterling assets that have made it possible for the Minister to carry on during the past four years; the £100,000,000 of assets that are now beginning to melt.

Plus the Wicklow gold.

The Deputy has some experience in these matters. Any man who is deeply versed in trade union administration ought to understand what it means when the reserves of a trade union or a nation begin to dwindle. It means that there is something wrong. It means that risks are appearing on the horizon that he does not want to see. If he is prudent he will pull in his horns, retrench as best he may, until he sees the reserves moving in the right direction. The Minister got reserves into his hands. They are moving in the wrong direction. It is time that he changed and did something more constructive than propose an expenditure to us which, on the estimate of his leader, represents an expenditure of £2,492,000,000 in this country, as compared with the trivial £750,000,000 that Great Britain asks of her people. That is 66 to 1.

I want to touch on two other questions. These Estimates reveal generally that the Minister for Agriculture has embarked on a series of commercial transactions, many of them running into hundreds of thousands of pounds. It is becoming the policy of the Government, apparently, to trade extensively with public money. I ask that the Minister for Finance shall require the Department of Agriculture to lay before the House an exhaustive and full commercial account showing the net profit or loss made on each head under which they have traded. I warn the House that if that is not done grave abuses are inevitably going to arise, because losses or profits will be made of which no account will be kept, misrepresentation may ensue, and perfectly bona fide operations may subsequently assume in the public eye a very undesirable appearance.

Communism.

Surely the Deputy who is solicitous to establish in this country a workers' republic, will not blanch at the threat of Communism. Deputy Davin wrapped the red flag round himself.

I hope it will not blind you.

There is not the least fear of its blinding me, but it may choke the Deputy. The other matter I want to touch upon is fisheries and the Gaeltacht. No more cynical or shameless betrayal has taken place in this country than the attitude adopted by Fianna Fáil to the Gaeltacht. When I contemplate that question I always remember the appearance of Senator Connolly, when Minister for Lands and Fisheries, arriving in Anagry in Donegal. There were torches and bands, and there was wild enthusiasm. Senator Connolly was to be seen on a barrel, and he proclaimed to the assembled Rosses that there was going to be work for everyone. There was going to be a factory in Croly and a factory in Anagry. There was going to be an end to any interference by foreign trawlers with the fishing off the Donegal coast. There was going to be knitting in Gweedore and in Dunlewey. They had arranged for the establishment of a substantial industry in Ardara. In fact, there was going to blossom out on the hill-sides of Donegal an era of prosperity and abundance unrivalled in the history of the country.

What has been the issue? There are now 13,000 people in Donegal drawing unemployment assistance. There is a steadily increasing number on outdoor assistance. There is no factory in Croly now—there are the four walls derelict. There is no factory in Anagry —there was one there the night he came. There is practically no fishing, because the people cannot sell the fish. The only consolation the Senator can hold out is to say that, having gone round the Gaeltacht and examined it, his view is that the only thing that can be done is to put a barbed wire fence around it, take the people out of it, and forbid anyone else to go in. That is the end of four years exertion on the part of Senator Connolly on behalf of the Gaeltacht. That is the redemption of the promises made by a gentleman from the top of a barrel in the torchlight. Is it any wonder that Senator Connolly does not go up to the Rosses now? Is it any wonder that he is gradually fading out of the public life of the country? Is it any wonder that there is a rumour floating round that he is going to retire into the comparative peace and calm of a public position in the Government service?

The Deputy does not seem to like the Minister for Lands.

I do. He is rather a decent man, but, politically, he has absolutely no shame or scruple, and I do not blame him. He is in bad company and has become contaminated. That is the most charitable thing I can say of him. I categorically ask the Government to undertake, by Order, within the powers they already have, certain items of expenditure which I believe would, in the long run, pay for themselves. I understand that £6 a ton is the price which makes it possible for the people living along the coast to produce kelp. I know that at the world price of iodine you cannot economically produce kelp for £6. It means that you are going to lose a substantial sum on every ton you buy, and it may be that the world price of iodine will not always stand at what it now is. In any case the gathering, burning and preparation of kelp was a great business along the west coast of Ireland. I urge the Government to pay £6 a ton for kelp, to get what they can for the iodine and write off the difference, instead of relief moneys which are being spent scraping the sides of roads, and instead of unemployment assistance to men who are willing and anxious to get kelp and to burn it, but who find it more profitable to stay at home and draw the dole. That is one constructive suggestion I make to the Government.

I make a second suggestion. The cured herring industry all along the west coast of Ireland is being destroyed for want of a market. I understand the difficulties the Government are confronted with in trying to find a market for them, but they are at present engaged in negotiations for a trade agreement with the German Government. So far as any cattle which the German Government will take are concerned, it would be much better if they did not take any at all, because the German Government are buying cattle here at a price that pays nobody, and any trade agreement founded on a price of 22/- a cwt. for Irish cattle were better not made at all. It is no good. The German trade agreement is a £3 to £1 agreement. Germany ought to be well pleased to get any such terms from us. In my opinion, they are unreasonably generous, but I should be quite prepared to stand behind the Government if they said: "We have certain things we want to get rid of in the shape of cured fish. It is peculiarly urgent for us to get rid of it inasmuch as it forms the only source of revenue for a very poor section of our community, and it is extremely difficult to furnish that particular section of the community with an alternative source of income. We are prepared to make a £2 to £1 agreement—for every £1 worth of fish you will take we will take £2 worth of goods from you of a character which you want to get rid of as well."

I know that the German Government do not want cured fish. They would sooner buy it from other sources or put boats of their own on the North Sea and get them themselves, but if we are going to make a £2 to £1 agreement, surely we ought to get something out of it that is worth paying for? We are not getting anything out of it if we are selling cattle and live-stock products which are readily saleable in Britain at economic prices at two-thirds of what they are worth to Germany. I think the Minister would find a generous attitude adopted by every Party in this House if he came before the House with what would appear at first glance to be an uneconomic Irish-German trade agreement, if he were able to say: "On the economic merits, we cannot stand over the agreement, but as a subsidiary social service for the Gaeltacht we can, and do." That is the kind of alternative market that might be really useful if we were buying our way out in order to get employment for a body of independent and hardworking people, who are at present being driven on to the dole, and, mind you, these are fellows who have gone to Scotland, worked on the rocks all their lives and done anything rather than take charity. There are over 130,000 of them in County Donegal at present drawing unemployment assistance.

I beg your pardon. I should have said 13,000 who are drawing unemployment assistance in Donegal. It is highly undesirable, but it is inevitable when there is no other method of keeping the wheel turning, but how much more preferable would it be if you could get these people back to work? You can, I believe, in that way. If we could get markets for fish and a market for kelp, we would make an enormous contribution to that area.

I am fully aware of the difficulties of getting markets for knitted goods, but I do say to the Government that they make a great mistake when they do not set their minds more earnestly to getting markets for Irish homespun.

Who would do the marketing?

That is the very thing I am going to tell you. For years we have been trying to get a market for homespun. The fault that has always arisen is that the distributors of homespun in this country never could realise that, on our external markets, homespuns are a luxury. They have come so to associate homespuns from the West of Ireland with rough clothes that it has never dawned on them that what is a rough suit in Letterkenny is the height of luxury on Fifth Avenue. Unless you can make it a fashion, the outré thing, on foreign markets——

I chose that word deliberately. Does it offend your sense of purity?

A very odd word.

It enables the Deputy to get away from the marketing point.

What was the Deputy's deliberate choice?

Outré. Unless you can make it remarkable, something that only the rather daring leader of fashion will wear, you miss the real market where you can profitably dispose of those goods. The great difficulty is in having 15 or 16 very small men handling a highly delicate market of that kind. I remember once getting a lady of my acquaintance to interest Paris dressmakers in it, and she succeeded in doing so. Two or three Paris dressmakers did actually communicate with me asking to be put in touch with the vendors of this material. I did, but I found that there was no machinery whereby I could get the kind of patterns that were likely to win the confidence of a fashionable Paris dressmaking house which was accustomed to having patterns laid before them in the most up-to-date and attractive way. That may have been largely my fault in that I did not know how to go about it, but, anyhow, it was partially the fault of the industry itself. The fact was that there was no competent marketing authority before whom Deputy Davin, Deputy Dillon or anybody else who got a hopeful inquiry could put the inquiry and say: "There is an inquiry of which something might come; tackle it in an efficient, businesslike way, and put up a proposition to that potential customer which will attract him and get him interested in what we have to sell." I have no hesitation in saying that if the Government makes up its mind that this industry is necessary to the Gaeltacht—and I think it is—they ought to say: "So far as the home market is concerned, let those who are already operating there continue to do so, but so far as the foreign market in this business is concerned, we are going to take it under our definite direction."

Did you not condemn that system 15 minutes ago?

If the Deputy will wait a moment, we will see. You are dealing with a very exceptional commodity in respect of which a very exceptional course of action has to be taken. You are quite entitled, as far as I can see, to say: "Two things are necessary, and we, the Government, are prepared to do them in order to provide what is half a social service. We are prepared to take over the marketing as from this date. We are prepared to put into it a good annual sum towards advertising and towards making available expert designers for the industry as a whole. We mean to provide a grant-in-aid for five or ten years, to try to secure by the most modern methods that are available to commence the popularisation of the best quality homespuns that the industry can produce in the markets where they command a remunerative price. We mean to spare no money. We mean to make a final comprehensive attempt, with the co-operation of and in consultation with the producers of this cloth all over the country. We are open to any suggestion, and we make it freely known that we will spare no money to make this thing a success, on this clear understanding, that this is going to be the last attempt that is going to be made. It is going to be comprehensive and generous; there is going to be no reservation as to necessary expenses in order to make it a success."

If that fails, then neither I nor any other reasonable man can ask the Government to interest themselves in the proposition further. I do not believe we need to. I believe if the product for the external market is standardised, properly designed and properly put up, it would become as popular in time as the Harris tweed, but unless it is subjected to the same regulations as obtain in the case of the Harris tweed, it can never hope to compete successfully in the best markets in the world.

How are you going to market the fish in Germany?

If you could get a quota, that could be easily arranged. With the fish there has to be a quota. The Germans, I imagine, would be able to catch all the fish for curing that they require, but if you get a quota that quota would have to be divided amongst the existing fish exporters. Arrangements of that kind are rather unsatisfactory, and they would have to be carried out in consultation with the trade, just as the bacon quota, the quota for oranges, or the quota for any other article is distributed. You have no other method of dealing with it. I do strongly urge these considerations on the Minister, as I really believe they are the only competent and effective instruments for the assistance of the people in areas which stand badly in need of assistance.

I can only speak for West Donegal. It is the only part of the Gaeltacht with which I am familiar. The tendency in these areas is to eliminate railways on the ground that it is no longer possible to maintain them. The Minister for Local Government and Public Health himself stated—and the Minister for Industry and Commerce has subscribed to this as well—that he recognised that it is not advisable to suspend the railway services in these areas until adequate road services are established instead. I put it to the Minister that in areas that are Fíor-Ghaeltacht the scenic properties of these districts are very great. The Tourist Development Association is doing all it can to bring tourists to this country, but it is virtually impossible to get a permanent tourist patronage for this country without motor roads. It is absolutely outside the financial resources of the local authority in Donegal or the local authority in any Gaeltacht county to provide proper motor roads. Therefore I ask the Minister seriously to consider setting up in the Gaeltacht areas a system of roads quite superior to what the actual transport requirements of the district itself would require, having in mind a national investment in scenic roads, on the same principle that we have a national investment in trunk roads. We can provide through these roads an alternative to the railways that are being shut down.

Was not that question inquired into by a Commission that sat in County Donegal?

It was inquired into by a completely fraudulent body that was set up in order to save the faces of Deputies Blaney, Brady and O'Doherty.

Has the Minister power to do anything in this case, other than to administer legislation?

He has not.

Has not the Minister power to make grants for it? The Minister can issue money by way of a grant by order.

By increasing taxation.

And Deputy Dillon will have to select the commission.

The Minister can make a grant.

Only with the authority of the House.

Deputy Moore mentioned the Commission which was appointed. That was one of the gigantic frauds which was got up to save the faces of Deputies Blaney, O'Doherty and Brady, who had announced that the trade of Cobh was going to be transferred from Cork to Donegal, and that there was going to be a vast port on the west coast of Donegal, which would provide accommodation for transatlantic liners.

Is it in order to describe this body as a fraudulent Commission?

I do not think the Deputy was referring to the personnel of the Commission. He referred to the activities, rather than to the personnel of the Commission.

I put it to you, Sir, that this Commission was set up by the Dáil and that it is not right to describe it as a fraudulent Commission.

I think the Deputy was not referring to the personnel of any Commission set up by the House. He was making no disparaging remarks about the personnel of the Commission.

The words used by the Deputy were "fraudulent body."

Does not that rather indicate that he was referring to the body rather than to the personnel?

Mr. Flinn rose.

Is this a point of order?

It is. I would not think of interrupting the Deputy on anything else. A body consists of members. A fraudulent body consists of fraudulent members. I do not know what your ruling is, but my point is: is it in order to describe that Commission as a fraudulent body?

I think it may be taken as axiomatic that a body cannot be said to have a reputation.

It will not after Deputy Dillon has finished with it.

The members of this Commission were all decent, respectable men. I have no doubt they were.

And very competent.

They were very decent men. That is another story. I am going so far as to say that they were decent men.

But they were an incompetent and fraudulent body?

I am going so far as to say that the Commission was a pure fraud and eye-wash, which was got up to persuade the people of Donegal that the promise to set up a deep water harbour in Donegal was going to materialise as soon as the Government had the plans prepared, and which would enable these Deputies to say afterwards, if anybody asked them, what became of the deep sea port: "Oh, sure they would not let us build it." Like Deputy Smith found, the judges were feeble and innocent men——

That is scarcely relevant to the matter under discussion.

The Chair surely does not deny he said that?

No, but it scarcely arises at this stage.

I quite agree with you that it ought not to be referred to, because it is the most scandalous episode that ever took place in this country. No doubt, Deputy Brady will get up here and say that they put decent men on this body and then they found that they were old and feeble, that the people were deluded and the Government were prevented from building a grand harbour. But, nevertheless, it will be "Up de Valera", "Up Fianna Fáil" and "We will build one after the next election." That was the purpose of that Commission and the sad part of it was that the gaff was blown before the day of the election and everybody in Donegal is now laughing at the Commission. The findings of that Commission, I can assure the Deputy, will have as much effect on the future policy of the Local Government Department in connection with the road scheme in Donegal as, let us say, the representations of Deputy Victory.

Was there an arrangement between the members and the Minister that they would not take their job seriously, because that is the only inference one can draw from the Deputy's remarks? Surely the terms of reference were all right?

They were admirable, but in my opinion the Government had no intention of doing anything and never had; they simply wanted to pull the wool over the eyes of the more easily deluded members of the Donegal electors, and they did so with their Commission. One useful thing may emerge from this exchange of views, and that is that we will have so scandalised Fianna Fáil in Donegal that something will eventually be done. Poor Deputy Brady must be in a state of absolute pandemonium.

I suggest the Deputy should not pursue that matter any further.

It was Deputy Moore who started the hare. I have no desire to pursue it. I have put forward four concrete suggestions to the Minister which may materially assist in the Gaeltacht and which, if carried into effect, would reflect some credit on the Government responsible for these Estimates. I ask the Minister, in addition to dealing with the matters I have raised in connection with the Gaeltacht, to address himself with special emphasis to the Estimates prepared by his own leader, President de Valera, and explain to us how it is that if £27,000,000 per annum were quite beyond the capacity of the people to bear in 1928, when prices were materially higher for everything they had to sell, how is it that £37,000,000 are well within their capacity now? I invite him also to address his mind to the problem: how is it on a 66 to 1 basis this country can afford to pay £2,492,820,000 per annum, or spend that sum per annum, while Great Britain is staggering under the burden of £800,000,000? I ask him to explain if, in his opinion, the 66 to 1 is an honest calculation, or does he believe President de Valera uses it for the purpose of deceiving the more gullible of his listeners? If it is not for the purpose of deceiving and gulling the public, then the duty devolves on the Minister to defend the expenditure. It is an expenditure that is going to lead this country into destruction. It is an expenditure, accompanied as it is by the continuance of this imbecile economic war, which is going to make an end of our social services and our standard of living. I ask the Government to bring it to a stop before events stop it in spite of them.

I listened to Deputy Dillon almost all the time. He delivered a long speech and I thought, when he was about threequarters of the course, that he had decided where he was going to go, but towards the last quarter he changed his mind and the result is that no one exactly knows what his policy is. He rather seemed to advocate a bit of quite a number of policies. He found himself getting into what we might describe as heavy going when he tackled the Gaeltacht problem. The whole confusion in Deputy Dillon's mind is that a complete change has taken place in the economy of this country, just as a change has taken place in the economy of other countries. In other countries it was due to the economic depression that has arisen. In this country something exceptional existed, not for ten or 20 years, but for quite a long time. As far back as the Act of Union we had men like Grattan and others bewailing the position of our country in that it did not have any industrial development. In fact, the Volunteers of those days, according to the accounts, were said to have threatened force in order to get certain rights.

We as a Government are trying to put into effect such a policy as will bring about that state of affairs. We are anxious to become a normal country, carrying a normal population, interested in normal activities. We are not the originators of that policy. In other years many Deputies on the opposite side got elected on that policy. Very severe fighting took place. There were quite a number of casualties. The people, by agitation, attempted to put that policy into practice. They resorted to other means and they succeeded. The late Government did not think it desirable to put that policy into practice. They thought that perhaps peace and quietness would be the best thing, and they felt that such an ideal state of affairs could not be brought about without a good deal of agitation and they were not prepared to go in for that. The real reason was that they got tired. We had to face this problem when we took up office. We at once decided we would try to change the economy of this country. A few months after that change took place the whole world changed. England, a professedly free trade country for 60 years, decided it was no longer possible to continue as a free-trade country and they turned protectionist to a very large extent. We were bound for other reasons to do it.

Owing to the world collapse, there were many people here who would not have a chance of getting employment. It may be said that we did not get employment for them the next day, and that seems to be on the minds of Deputies opposite, but they should know that when changes take place of such a colossal character as that, a good deal of time must necessarily elapse before arrangements are completed. Even in the case of a farmer who decides to produce live stock, it must take a couple of years before he gets any results out of his changed system of economy; he needs to have a certain amount of capital or get some credit to tide him over the transition period. The principal criticism which has been directed against this Estimate is that it is excessive. The real reason of course is that it is clearly indicated that there is going to be very substantial saving. There is a dread amongst certain people that those savings will not be good for their particular policy. Those savings, coupled with the increased profits of public companies and bodies, go to indicate that a certain substantial basis has been laid down here; that a certain amount of progress has already been made, and that there are very clear indications that in the next two or three years substantial progress will be made, and that a good deal of the difficulties under which we labour at present will be eliminated.

The best way to examine expenditure under present conditions, which I believe are conditions indicating something in the line of Christianity anyway, is to discover in what way those moneys are expended. What direction do they take? Do they flow towards the benefit of the people of the country? Do they act towards putting in a better position those who were neglected hitherto? Have we made an effort to give the children of this country an occasional drop of milk, anyhow? Have we made an effort to help the aged? Has there been any effort made to assist the defenceless old widows and orphans? It is taxation which serves to eliminate the hardships on those people that can be appreciated, provided it can be found. The difficulty with the Opposition is that this taxation can be found, and is found, and is doing no serious injury to the community. If it were doing any serious injury to the community we would not have the results that are published generally towards the end of the year. Those are published by the majority of public companies, banks, and other such concerns that the ordinary people take as headlines of prosperity. Those institutions, practically without exception, reveal a state of affairs which shows that decided progress is being made in this country. When such decided progress is being made, I think that wild, lavish and foolish statements such as have been made by Deputy Dillon should not in all conscience be made. He should have some control over those wild and foolish statements; there may be an odd foolish person through the country who might pass remarks in regard to them, and it does infinite harm not so much to himself as to the Party to which he belongs.

The situation that arose in this country when we took over power demanded that increased taxation immediately be put in force. It made it absolutely clear that we would have here a great number of people who, owing to dislocation of the system or otherwise, would be in a particularly bad way, and would need special assistance to tide them over the difficulties. Those people have all been provided for, and I do not think it is on the records since we took over power that any person in this country died of absolute starvation. I would not like to make the statement that it did occur before, but I have an idea that such a statement was made and was not refuted. That was a period in which we are supposed to believe that there was continued prosperity. I think that is altogether wrong. There was no prosperity in the ten years during which Cumann na nGaedheal ruled here in this country. Most of the taxation that it recovered — possibly from somewhat different sources to those from which we recover taxation—was not recovered from people who were able to meet it. It was not recovered from profit. A large part of that taxation, as well as the rates, was recovered from overdrafts. Deputy Cosgrave mentioned here the other day the sale of assets and credits abroad. He meant moneys invested, to put it in plain language, in different industrial and other concerns across the water and elsewhere. They represented the savings of the people. The farmers had savings and they invested those savings. I think it can be proved without any doubt that from 1925 on those savings were being continually drawn, and placed in the banks, in order to help the farmers to meet their rates and whatever taxes might be due.

I should like to remind the Deputy that we are not discussing the Cosgrave Administration, and we are not discussing taxation. We are discussing administration, purely and simply.

I only just tried to draw a parallel between the policy proposed by Deputy Dillon under this particular Vote and the policy in practice, but of course I bow to your decision that we are not entitled to go back to any other Administration. At the same time the other Administrations have had their influence on the present problems. The present problems were largely created through actions taken by the late Government; nobody can deny that some of our greatest problems were created by the actions of the late Government. Deputy Dillon criticised the price of oats. I remember here in the Dáil there was a long discussion on the price of oats; Deputy Hogan was then Minister and he opposed the policy as proposed by us that there should be some protection given to oats. He opposed it on Thursday night, and on Friday morning he came in with the announcement that there was to be a tariff imposed. Deputy Dillon states that there should be no change made; that there should be no interference at all with the price of oats; that we should have no powers to prevent anything that was competing with oats here from coming into this market; that we should have no power or take no steps whatever to induce people to use entirely their own produce. The object in inducing people to do this was to give those who are unemployed, and to some extent a charge on the taxpayer, remunerative employment in the production of such commodities. That is the only way in which taxation can be relieved. I want to point out, further, that there is nothing serious in the amount of taxation that is raised in this country under present conditions. Under the present Government's policy no loss can accrue to the community, provided that the community are able to carry on their business and meet this taxation, because this taxation is spread amongst the people and none of it leaves the country. It goes to increase the only market over which we have any control or over which we may expect to have any control; it increases the purchasing power of the community here in this market, and that, to my mind, is the only policy which can be adopted under present conditions.

I remarked the other day about the danger of statements made here, especially by the Opposition—statements that are not fully considered or that are not serious statements. Every Deputy on the other side knows that since 1921 there has been a collapse in what they call our main industry; what Deputy Dillon called the only industry which God Almighty ever hoped or expected this country to pursue. No matter how important an industry may have been, if through severe or keen competition or other causes it shows signs of decline, and indicates that it is not going to continue permanently as it is, it is the duty of every Government to indicate as far as possible to those engaged in that particular industry that the time has come when they should reduce their activities, or take a timely warning that great changes are imminent. It is quite obvious that great changes are imminent in the cattle trade. As long as we can supply stores and as long as the Englishman can sell his meat we will supply the stores and there will be demand for them. But the Englishman is up against difficulties. If he is unable to sell his beef at a profitable price with even the subsidy of 5/- a cwt. it is all right, but if the price does not seem profitable to him and to those engaged in the trade, then it is another question.

English farmers are at present engaged in a serious agitation. They are combined to organise themselves and to get some tariffs imposed on meat coming from countries like the Argentine so as to prevent undue competition from that source. But the Argentine producers have got themselves established to supply the demands of the world. They can supply a highly standardised article in the way of meat. That advantage has given the Argentine people, and people like them, a superiority over other countries who produce meat or other marketable commodities in a very irregular fashion, in which there is no organisation to assist them. It is quite obvious to anybody who studies the position how the situation in the cattle trade stands. There are some Deputies who know what the position is outside. They have discussed the matter outside the House with me, but when they come in here their opinions change quite unreasonably. I want to say that there is no one on these benches who has any grudge against the cattle trade. If the cattle trade showed signs of improvement and if it were capable of providing a livelihood for a larger population than we have at present, I am quite sure that the Government here would help that trade in every possible way. I am quite positive that no member of the Government would have any spleen against the cattle trade as a cattle trade. The objections to it are: (1) That it is a declining trade, and (2) it is not a trade which, if developed here, is going to maintain any population. On the contrary, it was always a trade that was going to reduce the population of this country year by year. Any Deputies who have examined the position in the great cattle-producing countries will agree with me that the cattle trade which has developed in Kildare, Meath and Westmeath is not a trade with which anybody who had at heart the prosperity of this country could agree. Many Deputies on the opposite benches have, outside this House, admitted that to me. For the last 10 or 12 years in Westmeath, Kildare and Meath large tracts of land were taken on the 11-months' system. Cattle were brought in there in the spring from the West of Ireland. They were big, four-year old cattle. They never eat a bit of hay there. They were spread over this land in March and April. If the cattle did not thrive, well and good. There was no expenditure whatever connected with these animals in the way of employment. In October, when a little fat, they were taken in and sold at, perhaps, short profits, but the profits were enough to keep an individual or a syndicate of individuals. That was the development that was taking place and that side of it was well known to members of the Opposition. They have agreed that it was a system that should not be continued because it would mean that the whole of this part of the country would be depopulated if it were allowed to develop. Some time ago a series of prosecutions took place against these men for starving the cattle on their land. They had them on the land with no grass on it and no hay available.

We are not in a position to imitate the Argentine and we are not in a position to follow those other big countries like the western part of America. This is a small island and it bears no comparison with those other countries. We do all we can to develop a cattle trade of a different character. But we find that circumstances are against us. We know that those other countries who are engaged in this cattle trade have practically no over-head charges whatsoever for they are in a position there to rear the stock practically without human aid. Their cost of production is extremely low. They are in a position to turn the cattle into meat of a standardised quality and commercialise it. We who know these facts are merely bound to indicate to the people that it is a probability and almost a certainty that an industry such as that cannot be depended upon any longer. In 1921 the loss in the price of cattle per head in Meath was from £15 to £20. With the exception of one or two years, there has been a considerable loss every year since 1921, so that the people of Meath were not unaccustomed to making a loss, and these people were not in such fierce rebellion over the new economy as were the people in other counties. What was done here in this country was not to stampede or to victimise a certain section of the community. It was not a case of revenge on a certain section of the community. There was nothing of that in what was done. What was done was done for the benefit of the whole community. It was the putting into practice of a policy that was preached by Arthur Griffith—a policy that was subscribed to by many of the leaders and members on the Opposite Benches. The people who subscribed to that policy did not visualise any such thing as the continuation of the free trade policy. That was the policy which shipped out of this country people as well as cattle. It left the greater part of the best grazing land of this country with no population on it while the waste lands, the bogs and the rocks carried a population that it could not maintain.

That speech was rather an amazing one to hear from a man like Deputy O'Reilly. Why, one would imagine on listening to the speech that he was not aware of the concessions which the Government have made towards Britain so that they would be induced to take our cattle. This proves that the Government think the cattle trade is a very valuable trade at the present time. We have Deputy O'Reilly then coming along and telling us about the changes that were necessary in our economy. Why were changes necessary in our economy? Deputy O'Reilly does not think that either he or any member on the Fianna Fáil benches have any antipathy towards the cattle trade as such. That is news to the House. He says that because of the world collapse in cattle prices we had to change our economy. I must say that is sheer nonsense. Deputy O'Reilly and the Fianna Fáil people know that there was not any world collapse as far as we were concerned. If there was world collapse then our condition at present is doubly deplorable. Let us take for instance the figures returned by the Minister for Agriculture in 1930 and 1931; I am taking July, 1930. This is the sheet issued by the Department of Agriculture in July, 1930. I could not get the figures for a later month in 1930 or in 1931.

Let us make a comparison between that and the 1st July, 1935. Let us see has there been a collapse and when the collapse occurred. Did it occur in 1932 or before 1932, when Deputy O'Reilly says it was necessary to make a change? He mentioned 1929 and 1930. According to this leaflet issued by the Department, on the 1st July, 1930, calves not six months old returned prices from £3 2s. 6d. to £4 15s. 0d. On the 1st July, 1935, they are returned as fetching from 10/- to 37/6. Certainly there has been a collapse between these two dates, whatever was the reason of it. Of course we all know the reason. Deputy O'Reilly will say that it is a world collapse. It is not a world collapse. We all know it is the economic war and nothing else. In 1930 first-class yearlings, from six to 12 months, sold at from £8 5s. 0d. to £10 10s. 0d. First class yearlings, from nine to 12 months last year sold at from £2 5s. 0d. to £4 0s. 0d. That is what the farmers, whom Deputy Corbett declared last week were too lazy to work, have to live on. These are the people who are being asked to pay extra taxation. Then we have first-class stores, one to two years old, in 1930, £12 10s. 0d. to £14 10s. 0d., and last year the same cattle, £3 12s. 6d. to £5 17s. 6d.

Has the Deputy got the figures for 1927?

No, I am taking the years 1930 and 1935.

Why not compare the figures for 1927 with 1931?

I am comparing these accidentally. I went to look for the earlier ones and they have not got them in the Library. The earliest I could get was 1930. There is none for 1931 in the Library. Then, first-class stores, two to three years old, in 1935 were from £5 15s. 0d. to £9 15s. 0d.; in 1930, they were from £17 10s. to £20 0s. 0d. Fat bullocks and heifers were in 1930, from £18 0s. 0d. to £24 0s. 0d. Now they are from £7 15s. 6d. to £15 2s. 6d. The Minister for Industry and Commerce will be interested in this. I have been reading "Truth in the News" to-day and I saw where the Minister for Industry and Commerce made a speech in Dublin last night and quoted certain figures and blamed certain people for not taking advantage of the figures which his Department produced and delivered free. I accuse the Minister of deliberately not taking advantage of the same figures and using them for his own purpose. In 1930, best fat cows were from £15 0s. 0d. to £20 0s. 0d.; in 1935 they made from £4 5s. 0d. to £8 10s. 0d. I wonder how is that.

I wonder why have we over 102,000 more cows in the country to-day than in 1931? Does the Minister not know that in every farm where there are four or five cows kept there is a stag or two they cannot get rid of? If the Minister wants proof of that, I will give his own figures. Here they are from the statistical abstract, which the Minister, in his speech last night, said Deputy Cosgrave ought to have studied, and he would find there that there were 101,694 more cows in the Free State now than in 1931. That is true. If these were prolific cows, and provided there was no slaughtering of calves, we ought at least to have 101,694 young cattle under one year old. What have we? 346,072 less cattle under one year old. That is the position according to the Department's figures. How does the Minister account for that? How does he account for the 500,000 young cattle that ought to be there and are not there? The Minister for Agriculture will account for about 250,000 of them. But the Minister for Industry and Commerce, who advises his opponents to read his statistics and the books which he published, ought to look into them himself and find out what is the meaning of the 102,000 more cows. The meaning is that they cannot be got rid of. They are not having calves. We have 346,000 less calves than in 1931, when we had 101,000 less cows.

Deputy O'Reilly mentioned that some person died of starvation during the previous Government's administration. If he wants to make capital out of something like that he is welcome to it. I do not know whether such a thing occurred or not, but it is still possible for a person to die of starvation in this country without its being detected by anybody. That is an instance of the conditions that prevailed at the time. You will find eccentric people living in cottages or in basements, or possibly on some island, and you can have an isolated case like that at any time. To bring that matter up in the House and state that at least nobody has died of starvation during the Fianna Fáil administration is not evidence of anything. Deputy O'Reilly, as well as the Minister for Industry and Commerce, and I believe the majority of the Fianna Fáil Party, have a peculiar mentality. They allege, at least by implication, that all people in this country who are not Fianna Fáil do not want to see the country going ahead—that they are really hurt at any progress which this country makes; not alone that, but that they are out to sabotage Irish industry. Deputy O'Reilly told us that what appeared to hurt people was that there were some very drastic cuts being made in the Estimates presented this year. Of course there are no cuts.

Listening to-day to the Minister for Finance, one would feel like exclaiming, "Oh, for the days when the Minister for Finance was in Opposition!" These were the times when he railed against the Government for expenditure and said this country could not stand over the expenditure. To-day, from beginning to end, his speech was a boast of the expenditure for which Fianna Fáil is responsible. Expenditure can be justified—it is all a matter of whether you spend wisely or unwisely. The Minister, of course, will allege that he is spending wisely and that consequently all his expenditure is justified. Of course he was careful to say that he did not want any undue optimism. No matter what the Minister said, I do not think there will be much optimism, because people have become so accustomed to Fianna Fáil saying one thing and doing another that they are not looking for any reduction in the Estimates, any more than they are looking for a settlement of the economic war. That is finished also.

The question for the Government and for this House is not exactly the increased demands being made on the people, but their capacity to meet these demands. What is the capacity of the country at the present time to meet those demands? Deputy O'Reilly thinks that nobody is being hurt by the taxation, and, as a matter of fact, he made the most extraordinary statement I ever heard made. He said that taxation in this country helps the purchasing power of the people. Deputy O'Reilly, of course, would look at this through Fianna Fáil glasses and say that the Opposition know perfectly well that the country is making progress, but that they do not want to admit it, and that they are so sore about the progress the country is making that they are opposing this. Neither Deputy O'Reilly nor the Minister for Finance has told us where the country is making progress. Neither has anybody else. The President has told us that so far as the withheld annuities are concerned, they are being paid with much greater hardship than was the case.

If the farmers of this country are the mainstay of this country and if, as the Minister for Industry and Commerce always takes the opportunity of saying when he goes down the country, the success of industry depends on the success of the agricultural community— and I agree with him in that—let us examine the situation from that standpoint. I think it will be generally admitted that agriculture is the main industry, that everything springs from it, and that the purchasing power of the people depends on the success or failure of agriculture. There is no use in industries manufacturing articles unless you have buyers for those articles, and you cannot have those buyers unless the main industry makes a profit. There is no use in the President telling us, as he did some time ago, that people ought to work for the good of the country irrespective of profit. That is nonsense. You will not get it done in any part of the world. The only incentive to work is the profit which a man can make for himself and his family, so that he may feed, clothe, rear and educate his family in comfort.

Is that the position of agriculture, the main industry? How many farmers are there in this country to-day who are able to leave something by for their sons and daughters, and to make some provision for the future? Is that happening in the country to-day? Not a bit of it. If it was possible for it to happen to-day, the farmers should all have been millionaires before Fianna Fáil came in. The farmers to-day have to pay the £5,000,000 to Britain, £2,000,000 of which they were never asked to pay before. That amount came out of taxation. They have to pay half the annuities at home and they have to pay it all out of prices for stock which are depleted to the extent of the British annuities, no matter who buys the stock. Then we are told that this book of Estimates is quite a sound proposition and hurts nobody.

Personally, I did not expect that President de Valera would finish the economic war, or that he would make it part of his policy to do so, because I did not expect him to get rid of his stock-in-trade all at once. He cannot do it. Part of his stock-in-trade, the principal plank in his platform, is to be at war with somebody. We are at war with England and yet we make an agreement whereby the farmers must pay the annuities to Britain while they are collected here at the same time and, for that, we are giving concessions. Then the President, Deputy O'Reilly and the Minister for Finance tell us that whatever shortcomings there are at present are due to the fact that the predecessors of the present Government did not do their part. I do not want to go back, and I do not suppose the Ceann Comhairle would allow me, to what the previous Government might have said about what was put across the country when they came into office and what they had to do.

The Minister for Agriculture thinks that the purpose in life of the Opposition is to keep the farmers complaining. Have they nothing to complain of? Have they any reason to complain? Does the Minister for Industry and Commerce think that the prices which are realised now, and which are carrying the British annuities, no matter where the stock goes to— whether they go to Spain, Germany, Belgium or any other place—they are bought at prices less the British annuities—are going to provide the purchasing public of this country with a greater purchasing power? Let us consider the whole matter seriously, and it has to be considered seriously. There is no use in the Minister endeavouring to establish factories in this country unless he has buyers for the goods of those factories. The Minister knows that, but he thinks, at the same time, that it is quite all right to let farming go on, not alone not showing a profit, but not paying for itself. You have no business endeavouring to build up industry on the ruins of agriculture in this country, because agriculture is the main industry. You must remember that and keep that in mind all the time. Once you get away from it, your industry falls.

The Minister for Finance told us, in introducing this Vote on Account, that certain reductions were being made, but he did not tell us, and I suppose no other man in his position would tell us, about the indirect taxation which this country has to carry—the indirect taxation which it has to carry with regard to bread and sugar, for instance. We were told about certain reliefs to the Exchequer with regard to the wheat subsidy, but that is no relief to the people. It is a relief to the Exchequer but the people have to carry it. The same applies to sugar —the people have to carry it or a large proportion of it. There is another matter which the Minister told us about but for which he did not explain the reason. That is the question of the Agricultural Grant this year. A sum of £370,000 is not being included in the Estimate, but is to be brought in later on. He has not told us why he did that and I am very anxious to know the reason, because there were some statements made in this House by the Minister with regard to advances to local authorities this year which do not seem to be borne out by the facts or figures since.

The Minister boasted that the Government made available certain sums of money to local authorities which were sums accruing to county councils when the funded arrears would have matured but which were now being made available. If the Minister was correct in that statement, the county councils should have received certain extra payments this year. What I am anxious to know is whether there is anything in this matter which relates to the deferring of the inclusion in the Vote on Account of this sum. It appears to me that if the Minister is taking advantage of these moneys, which are justly the property of the county councils and if they are being regarded now as portion of the money already voted by this House to the county councils, the county councils are not being fairly dealt with.

The Estimate cannot be taken until the necessary legislation is passed.

How was that got over last year?

This is the first time this method was adopted. A Supplementary Estimate was taken every other year.

It is really immaterial, as far as that is concerned, whether it comes now or whether it comes later. Personally, I am not satisfied with certain statements the Minister for Finance made with regard to certain agricultural grants which have not materialised. Of course, that matter will probably arise again on the Estimates for the Department of Finance, or the Department of Local Government. It is no use pursuing the matter at this time, but it has certainly caused me a good deal of thought. I shall want to know later where exactly we stand in the matter.

I should like also to call the attention of the House to the fact that it is not fair to the people that the policy which Fianna Fáil endeavoured to put in force in the beginning, namely, to provide a subsidy out of the Exchequer for wheat, should now be abandoned, and that the cost of that subsidy should now be imposed on the poorest of the people, because that is what is happening. The Minister for Finance cannot boast of doing it in that particular way. The burden is going to be heavier and the whole position has been thrown into chaos inasmuch as people who will have no interest in preventing inflation of prices, namely, the people in charge of the flour-milling industry, will now have control of the situation. I do not think that any case has been made by the Minister for the increased expenditure which he has asked for in this House. In fact, he has not endeavoured to make any case. I do not think that the present condition of the people justifies the making of these demands upon them, and consequently I say that the Vote on Account should be rejected.

I think that in a matter of such importance as that now before the House, Deputies should at least be provided with facilities for the debate, by being informed exactly what will be the total demand for the Minister for Finance for the coming year. The complaint of the Opposition was that they got only three copies of the Estimates, and that they were delivered only yesterday. It was news to me to learn that the Estimates were printed at all. I asked Deputies on these benches if they had got a copy and they had none. If one copy could be got at this stage, 153 copies could be got out and placed in the hands of the 153 Deputies, just as easily. I think, in all fairness, that that should have been done, and that Deputies should have been given a few days to look over the Estimates.

I understand, a Chinn Comhairle, that you said that it was not your function to rule as to the order of the debate, but I believe we are limited to a discussion on expenditure. I am glad to have this opportunity, the only one I have had for some time, to try to nail down the Minister for Industry and Commerce to something that is relevant. I hope that he is not going to twist and twine himself around a corner, and try to put a fair face on matters. In this Vote on Account, the Department of External Affairs wants £27,000, the Department of Agriculture wants £220,000 and the Department of Industry and Commerce almost £151,000. This is the Department of External Affairs which has acquitted itself so well in the current year by wasting our money, sending out delegations to Geneva to declare war on a friendly nation at the dictation of England. The Minister for Industry and Commerce smiles at that. It was, unquestionably, at the dictation of England that we adopted sanctions, and that we are spending money sending delegations out to Geneva.

May I draw the attention of the Deputy to the fact that all that was approved of by the Oireachtas?

Am I not in order——

In criticising an Act of the Oireachtas?

If the Oireachtas does what I consider wrong, can it not be criticised?

Only by repeal.

So then the Oireachtas, the Fianna Fáil Government, looking both ways and every way, is like Caesar's wife. We shall leave it at that.

Can the Deputy not make the point that they should not spend the same money again?

Deputies should not suggest ways of getting round a ruling.

As regard this £27,000 for the Department of External Affairs, how do we know that this money will not be used to pursue further sanctions, that England may not dictate that we should impose oil sanctions on Italy or any other country, against whom England wishes to declare war? If Geneva decides one day that our ports should be closed to Italian shipping, and if the British Prime Minister or the Dominions Secretary phones President de Valera and tells him "You are a Minister of His Majesty's Government in the Irish Free State, I want you to introduce a Bill imposing oil sanctions or harbour sanctions against Italian shipping," how do we know but that some of this £27,000 is going to be used to carry out these orders of the British Government, as the Vote of last year was used to carry out the British Government orders to impose the economic and financial sanctions that were imposed? However, to draw attention to it will, I am sure, be sufficient.

It is astonishing that in this House there is such repetition of falsehood. A picture is being painted of the country outside that no more represents the situation than a lump of green cheese is like the moon. We had here last week a debate that inaugurated a new era in the life of the present Government, a new era in the existence of the Party that controls the Government here. It was admitted in this House that the flag that was raised so high—this was admitted by no less a person than the President—has been hauled down. The Minister for Industry and Commerce said last week that it was not hauled down, that we stand in the same position we always stood in up to then. Unfortunately, his chief let him down, because the President admitted subsequently that the flag was hauled down. On every occasion on which he touches on the economic war, the Minister for Industry and Commerce is always emphatic that we must win the economic war; that we cannot afford to lose it; that if we lose in this fight England will have demonstrated her strength and never again can we challenge England on any matter, even though it may mean life or death to us. With that reasoning I agree 100 per cent.

I want to draw the Minister's attention to a statement made by the President frequently here, that our economic strength to Britain is as one is to 66. How does the Minister expect when two forces are pitted against each other with a relationship of one to 66 that the smaller one will win? Yet he is one of the Minister responsible for going into this conflict. He says that now we are in it we must win, because if not, England has merely to shake her fist at us on any subsequent occasion. Why did not the Government realise that before they embarked on this venture? Does not everybody know that with the figures one to 66 the bigger number is bound to win? Is it not now acknowledged, after nearly four years of hostilities, that the flag has to be lowered? The President admits it. He says he would not lower it if we had the power to resist, but in face of the forces against us it had to come down. Is the Minister on good terms with his chief when he declares that we must fight it out until we win because we cannot afford to lose? The President said we were not strong enough to continue.

Another fairy tale of the Minister for Industry and Commerce, in common with other Ministers, is that the official Opposition here suggested to the British Government to impose levies on our produce going into Britain. It is suggested that the dull, ignorant, foolish Britisher, who has codded the world for the last 300 or 400 years, was not able to rise to the occasion when the Government here withheld the land annuities and had to be told what to do by a body of Irishmen. The Minister and his colleagues want the people of this country to believe that story. Was it not sticking out that all the British had to do was to levy and collect the levies?

The Minister tried to take me to task. He suggested that because I indicated I was voting in a certain way that I was voting for a tariff of £6 a head instead of £4 5s. 0d. The Minister for Agriculture said that the pact would mean a rise in the price of cattle by £1 a head. By a process of calculation he worked out the number of cattle that would be exported at 780,000; hence we were going to get £780,000 more for our cattle under the pact than in the conditions which obtained without the pact. The Minister seemed to forget that that reasoning cut the whole ground from under the case they have been trying to make for the last four years. If the economic war did not affect agriculture and, ultimately, the whole financial stability of this country, then what need was there for pacts? If a reduction of about quarter of the tariff means £780,000 in the cattle trade alone, surely the abolition of the tax altogether would mean an increased income of about £3,000,000? That is what the Government over there are responsible for imposing on this country. They went with their heads up into a fight against a country that is 66 times as strong, according to the President's calculation, and now after nearly four years we have had to strike our flag. No case can now be made for a continuance of the present strife.

The Minister for Industry and Commerce is always eloquent as to what should be done. No man with commonsense is going to suggest that this House should adopt a resolution and send it to Britain saying, "We are prepared to settle the economic war." I quite agree that such a step would be tantamount to saying, "We are prepared to surrender on the economic war." But before the flag was hauled down why were not some steps taken to sound the British and make some settlement before any sign of the white flag was shown? The Government failed to do that. It is the history of the present Government Party that they never see danger ahead. They always want, so to speak, to keep the flag flying, and then ignominiously surrender at the last moment. I have bitter recollections of the empty formula. The Minister knows that. We know how soon that was discovered. We know it was discovered four days after the Minister was eloquent saying the very opposite on Burgh Quay. It was discovered——

Some years previous to this Vote?

Yes, but unfortunately it is the history of that Party, a Chinn Comhairle. I could go to earlier history, but if the incident I have related is a bit out of order and a bit out of date, perhaps if I go back a bit further it will be more out of order and more out of date, so I will not go back any further. The Government challenges the next biggest Party in the House: "What would you do? Do you want to surrender?" Well, the next biggest Party can answer for itself. I would not like to see the Government surrendering, but I would like to see them taking that diplomatic action which all countries take through diplomatic channels when they find themselves in an awkward situation, and in a situation which they know they cannot ultimately hold. I do not want to go back into history, but the Minister is aware, and this House is aware, that those were the considerations which actuated Collins and Griffith in signing the Treaty. "Economically," said Collins, "we could not hold out. Militarily we could hold out for a little while, but before there is any sign of striking our flag is the time to make a settlement, and the Treaty gives us that opportunity." Why did not the Minister and his colleagues, seeing that they had to surrender on the principle embodied in the coal-cattle pact, make soundings through other channels in order to see how far a general settlement could be obtained? That would have a double advantage. It would have the advantage of holding the only shot in our locker—coal. If we could touch England economically on anything it was on coal. Last year she had trouble in South Wales, but we have relieved her of that trouble.

A couple of years ago, with a flourish of trumpets, the Minister brought in a cement Bill here. He rushed it through and made it an Act. He drowned us with statistics. He had the whole thing worked out mathematically. The consumption, the amount of production that would be profitable, every detail was worked out to a nicety a couple of years ago. But where is the factory? I notice that the Minister is getting more money this year. I wonder is it to buy a larger bunch of keys for opening factories this year than last year. What about the cement? At that time we were using only about 200,000 or 250,000 tons of cement. We are using over 300,000 tons of cement now. I suppose £400,000 or perhaps £450,000 represents our cement bill, or will represent it in the current year. I would refer the Minister to his own arguments in favour of the Bill which he himself introduced here a couple of years ago. I need not give him another argument; he knows them all. Has anything gone wrong with those arguments since? Are they not more applicable to the case to-day than they were on that date? Our consumption at that time was hardly 60 per cent. of what it is at present, and the Minister wanted to shut that out and start a factory. He got the authority of this House to do that, but he has not done it. He came in here last week and supported the proposal to give one-third of our market to Britain for a consideration. I understand he is in consultation with Continental people to give them two-thirds of the market—those very Continental people who met in Brussels on 31st December last, and decided to raise the price of cement coming into the Free State by 6/- per ton. I heard Deputy Mulcahy saying here to-day that it was only 8d. I do not know where he got that information. I have got mine from a very reliable source, but I shall be glad if the Minister will contradict it in his reply. We are asked to pass a big Bill here for agriculture. We are so concerned with cattle that every county council in the Free State has been ordered to appoint inspectors to take office and have all machinery set up to start washing all cattle of warble fly from 15th of this month to the end of June.

That expenditure is on the rates, is it not?

I think some of it is on the Central Fund, but the orders have come from the gentlemen who get this money.

Quite true, and so have many other orders, but those details should be raised on the Estimate or the policy on the Minister's Vote.

Quite so. I am not developing that aspect of it. I only just mention in passing that the Government is meticulous in details like this. They are, I admit, very good and useful details which should have been attended to 40 or 50 years ago. I have no objection to them, and neither has any local authority in Ireland any objection to them. It is only a question of the increased cost during the present depression, both the universal depression and the national depression that is in this country. I concede to the Minister that there is universal depression, and that we would have had difficulty with agriculture if there had never been an economic war. It was there before the Minister took office; agriculture was going down then due to world depression. I concede all that. Those were the facts of the situation. I want to mention and not to run away from the situation that was created when we had superimposed upon that world depression, a depression represented by £6 a head on cattle. Here I want to give a quotation from the Minister for Agriculture where he said that the concession will be worth in the cattle trade alone a sum of £780,000 this year. If the whole lot were taken off, the concession would be four times that or £3,000,000 on that item alone. The Minister for Agriculture admitted this. He said:

"Everybody knows that the price of our meat is governed by what we can get for it in the export market."

When in addition to the world depression, a further depression is superimposed on our agricultural industry, Deputies can understand the conditions that obtain in our own market.

Has not the Minister for Industry and Commerce a desperate cheek to stand up in this House and say that there was an organisation against the payment of annuities to our Government? In the pact he has agreed to pay to the British Government the annuities, the local loans, the pensions, and so on. These are all imposed on the farmers. The County Council of Dublin, of which I am a member, pays the Local Government Department £20,000 a year under the local loans advanced by the British. The farmers of County Dublin have to pay £4 5s. 0d. per beast shipped. That money is knocked off the price of their cattle, and our Government benefits to the extent of £20,000 but the producers get nothing. I wonder what explanation the Minister has to offer for that. I know the farmers and their organisation as well as any man in Ireland knows them, and I know that there has not been an organisation against paying annuities to our Government while the British are collecting them. The surprising part of it is that there is no such organisation. There is no other section of the people who, if treated in the same way as the farmers have been treated by this Government, would be without an organisation to defend themselves. Any other section of the people would have struck in the circumstances of November and December, 1932, when asked for the first annuities payable after the economic war started. If the farmers looked after their interests as well as any other section of the community would look after theirs, they would have organised at once and said to our Government: "The British Government are collecting the annuities off us —if not, for what have the £5,000,000 been collected?—and, while we are paying them, we are not going to pay you." They would have been perfectly justified in doing that, and if they came together and asked my advice on it, I would have told them to do it on any platform in the country. Until they do something like that they will get no redress from this or any other Government. Why should they be asked to pay these moneys twice? The question is, are they asked twice to pay? If not, what is this £4 5s. 0d. that the Minister for Commerce, in association with his colleagues in the Ministry, and the members of his Party voted for and ratified in the past week? What is this tax but giving the British the land annuities? While that was being done and before he had finally accomplished that matter the Minister for Industry and Commerce had the cheek to get up here and accuse the farmers of having organised against the payment of the land annuities.

The Deputy, apparently, is replying to speeches made on another occasion. The debate must end some time, and the Deputy should not try to get a discussion here to-night on whether there was or was not a campaign against the payment of annuities. That should not be introduced into this debate.

I do not want to make a major point out of that, but I want to draw a contrast as regards what the Minister says about the organisation against the payment of annuities to our Government in the present circumstances. I do not want to go further into the question, but, just in passing finally from it, I want to say if such a campaign was actually started I would support it, and I would be prepared to debate the question with the Minister for Industry and Commerce on any platform in the country. The contrast I want to draw is that the Government is so meticulous about the cattle trade that they must exterminate the warble fly and while they are doing that they impose a severe burden of about £5,000,000 a year on our agriculture and that during the period of the depression.

Is the Deputy in favour of the warble fly?

No, but the warble fly is not half as bad as the Fianna Fáil fly.

That is the fly in the ointment.

But the fly in the ointment might get entangled and might not get out of it. It would be much more profitable to agriculture to get rid of the Fianna Fáil fly and suffer the warble fly. When we are better off we will be better able to pay for the cost of exterminating the warble fly. Then we will get rid of both and we will get prosperity, but not until then. As to the other Estimates, there is not much to be said for or against them. They are about the usual amounts, and under normal conditions there would be very little to be said on this side of the House on that Vote. If abnormal conditions were not present we should apply ourselves better to the criticism of this Vote on Account. But when we have such an absurdity as I have just mentioned it is very difficult for us to apply ourselves to the normal line of criticism on this matter. The Local Government Vote is increased by about £200,000. I wonder does the Local Government contemplate helping agriculture in any special form this year? We were asked by the Minister for Finance in introducing this Vote what social services we would suggest should be dropped or curtailed. When he asked that question he knew well he would not get an answer. I will put this poser to the Minister for Industry and Commerce. If present conditions continue and the money is not there to pay for all the social services that now obtain——

That is a contradiction in terms.

——what services will the Minister suggest should be curtailed first?

If present conditions continue there will be no need to curtail anything.

Will the Minister spend a day with me and I will show him the conditions that obtain?

He will not come with me.

Perhaps he will go for a night out with you.

The Deputy who represents a county which was not able to pay its road men a couple of weeks ago should be the last to butt in with a remark at this stage. We have paid our road men, but we have £130,000 out in rates. We have the best social services and we pay the highest wages in Ireland. I am not trespassing on the Lord Mayor's preserves. I do not refer to the Corporations of Dublin or Cork. We have the best services and we pay the best wages, and now we have to collect the rates with the aid of the sheriff.

What is the rate?

£280,000.

Nineteen and sixpence in the pound.

It is not.

Nineteen and tenpence.

In the County Dublin.

It will be if we have much more of the Minister and his Government. It is impossible to collect the rates. I heard to-day that the rate collector, on stern instructions from the Minister for Local Government, had 180 ratepayers up at the Swords Court. These are not hardy annuals. They were never in court before in cases of this kind. The rates may be collected by seizing on the stock they have and getting them run over the Border by certain gentlemen whose names are a by-word in every house in the country, and enrich the people across the Border. That may happen or it may not. Assuming it does, how are we going to carry on next year? Where will we get the rates next year? What social services will the Minister for Local Government tell us to curtail then?

Litigation.

For what?

For political purposes.

What political purposes?

Has not the Dublin County Council been engaged in litigation?

Not to my knowledge, and I am the chairman of it. The Minister must be dreaming.

As a ratepayer I had to pay part of the cost of it.

That is so much satisfaction. I do not want to be making debating points. The Minister for Finance asked us to suggest what social services we should cut down if we want to cut down taxation. I say none. We want all the social services we have, on one condition—that we are able to pay for them, and that those services will be an advantage and not a curse to us. If we try to carry on a system of social services for which we are not able to pay, we are going to go bankrupt, and the Minister can appreciate that that last stage would be much worse than the first. As a community, we must provide ourselves with the services that we can pay for. Just as individually we must mould our standards of living according to our purses, so must the community and the nation. Our substance is being wasted through the economic war which the Government have surrendered upon and which they have shown ineptitude in carrying on, just as when they allowed it to develop into a fight. There is no hope while we are spending in this lavish way and piling on such a double burden on the only industry capable of paying its way here without any protection, and exporting its surplus to win its own place in the world's market. Agriculture is the only industry capable of doing that here. I endorse the industrial policy of the Minister for Industry and Commerce, with the exception of some details here and there, as to which I consider he is going too fast. He is devoting too much time and importance to developing little industries which may never be economically sound here. But these are only details. In the main, I endorse his policy. In the industrial revival in which he is engaged he should be concerned to see that the people engaged in another industry which provides the market for manufactured goods here will have the purchasing power to buy the produce of our factories. In other words, if agriculture is not on a paying basis you cannot raise up an industrial arm. The Minister said last week, and I agree with him, that our best and surest market is the home market. In fact, our only market at present, with very few exceptions, for our industrial produce is the home market. That home market will not be much good if it has not purchasing power. If the Minister supports a policy that destroys the purchasing power of agriculture he is making industrial revival an impossibility.

I have heard criticism of the agricultural policy of the Government. This is hardly the time to go into any criticism of that. I will just say that I support the principle of the agricultural policy of the Government. A lot has been made about the high price that has to be paid here for wheat. If we want to have tillage here we must pay an economic price for its produce. I agree with the high price that is being paid for wheat. My view of tillage is that if, under the conditions obtaining here, it is not a paying proposition, there is a problem to be faced. Why is it not a paying proposition? We should ascertain why it is not a paying proposition and solve that problem. I do not agree with the view that because it is not a paying proposition we should scrap it and let the land run into grass. There is a big problem facing the country. Whatever is the cause, there is an increase in the population. Every year some thousands of young people grow into men and women and we have to provide in our economic system a livelihood for these people at home. In framing our national economy, the Government must take cognisance of that fact. I have yet to find anybody able to convince me that a field under grass will give the same national return as a field under the plough, and while we want to get the maximum return out of the soil of this country, I stand foursquare behind any Governments in this House that stands for a tillage policy. If, as I said before, it does not pay on its first trial, then you should apply yourselves to that point until you unravel it and find out why it does not pay, and try to advance from that. Do not say that it does not pay just because of the necessities of certain people in connection with store cattle. I quite agree with the maximum production and I hold that, by that, you will get the maximum return and support the maximum population on the 10,000,000 or 12,000,000 acres of fertile land in this country. An objection is raised to that by people who say that there is a lot of land in this country that is not arable, and who ask whether or not you have any policy with regard to the bottoms and the bog-lands, and so on; but the fact that you put the arable land under the plough is enhancing the value of the land that you cannot put under the plough, because you can produce more store cattle if you utilise the arable land for something else, and when the produce of your tillage requires store cattle to eat it up, people on the arable lands will have to go away to the mountainy districts and the cutaway bogs, and areas of that sort, to get the store cattle. However, I shall not say any more on that point, as I am sure that there will be more in that connection later on.

I intend, Sir, to make a few brief references to some of the items in this Vote on Account. The Minister for Finance asks for a sum of £9,850,000, and that represents, I understand, about one-third of the amount which the House will be asked to pass when the full Estimates are before the House. Therefore, we can safely forecast that the complete Estimates will represent something like 31½ or 32 millions of money. Now, what I am most concerned with in this Vote on Account is to direct a straight question to the Minister for Finance, or to the Minister for Industry and Commerce who is now deputising for him. That question is: Has he, and have the other Ministers on the Executive Council, had any regard whatsoever to the capacity of the people to pay? Deputy Belton has spoken at some length on the incapacity of the people to pay, and he warned us that we were reaching a stage when, perhaps, the people would be unable to pay. I would direct the Minister's attention to what is known as "the stocking" in the rural areas of this country. Anybody conversant with farming or agricultural life in the rural areas of this country must know that, year after year, it has been the practice of frugal couples in the country to put by or set aside for the children so much after each fair-day. That was the practice in the old days but, of course, as has been referred to here last week, these fair-days instead of being events where business used to be combined with some pleasure, are now the tragedies of the countryside. However, we know that from time to time, after these fairs, money was put into the "stocking" and sometimes into the thatch.

Surprise has been expressed that this country has been able to stand up to what they have had to endure in the last few years since a Fianna Fáil Government came into power. They have been able to stand up against it, and I must say it is a surprising fact. We know what Ministers on the other side said they were going to do as soon as they got into office. We know what President de Valera said when he was a Deputy on this side of the House. They were to reduce taxation by £2,000,000 and so on. However, to return to the question of the stocking. The Minister may not be aware that the contents of the stocking represented the accumulated savings of a family, most of whom gave their labour for nothing on the farm. That money was put by in order to be used, perhaps, as a dowry for one of the girls or as an apprenticeship fee for another boy or girl, and so on. That stocking is now exhausted. There may be, perhaps, a little left in it and I hope there is, but the Minister, in my view, has not had regard to the capacity of the people to pay.

There are a few other items also to which I should like to direct the Minister's attention and the attention of the House. We have a huge expenditure here represented by the Army Vote (No. 65) and also Army pensions. Surely, the Minister will agree with me when I say that we thought finality had been reached in this matter of Army pensions some time ago. Can this country afford to pay these pensions? I know that I am going to say something unpopular now. We were told that all these armies were volunteer armies, and it was represented to us very strongly that all the other armies fighting in Europe, in or about that time, were not volunteers; that they were mercenary armies. It appears now, from what I can gather, that there are more people applying for pensions than were ever soldiers or volunteers. Then we have another Vote here—the Vote for the Secret Service. This is a Vote that is causing a good deal of alarm in the country on account of the amount of money that is being set aside for it. I have heard it said from time to time that the only people who appear to have money now, especially in the rural areas, are people who are in receipt of secret service pay, or persons connected with factories producing highly tariffed commodities. I know that it is difficult, and possibly undesirable, to get information from the Minister as to the people who are in receipt of this secret service money, but there must be a very large number of people in receipt of such moneys in view of the fact that this Vote has gone up by thousands and thousands of pounds since 1932.

What is it now?

Well, I have not got the figures to my hand at the moment.

The Minister has estimated for £20,000.

Yes, I understand that it is £20,000.

But the Deputy spoke of thousands and thousands of plutocrats in receipt of this money.

Well, I have not the exact figures, but I think that it was, roughly, £5,000 during Deputy Cosgrave's régime. Of course I have not had the advantage of access to documents which the Minister has. I have not had one of these secret and confidential communications to which Deputy Belton referred a moment ago. All I can say is that this Estimate has gone up, roughly, from £5,000 during Deputy Cosgrave's régime to something like £20,000 now.

Will the Deputy give the figure for 1931-32 in that connection?

And will the Minister tell us how much was spent that year?

I was pulled up for going back to that year.

Will the Minister say if £1,000 was spent that year?

Do not ask the Minister to say what was spent.

I find here a sum of £2,180,000 for subsidies and bounties. Is it not ridiculous for the Government to ask the people to provide that sum of money to get into a market which members of the Government say is gone, and which, as they say, if it is not gone, is not worth looking for? I feel that some future generations of schoolboys will read with some amusement, if not with amazement, that the Government of this country asked to be provided with this sum of money to enable them to get into a market which they themselves say is gone. Deputy Belton referred to the fact that the flag had been hauled down by the Government. I say that it was filleted. All the green was taken out of it, and the yellow and white left. Deputies know what yellow and white represent. All this reckless expenditure is reflected in the increased prices charged for commodities in our cities and towns. I suggest to the Minister for Finance that he should cry a halt to this reckless expenditure.

I suppose that some of the proposed extra expenditure on the Army is for the purpose of placating a number of people. After all, we cannot placate everybody and, in my opinion, this country cannot afford to pay all those pensions. We are fast approaching the stage when one-half the people will be keeping the other half on pensions. There is a limit surely to the resources of this country and, therefore, we should not have this reckless expenditure on pensions and extra armies if we do not require them. Any schoolboy can see that this State, with its 26 counties, does not require two armies: a regular army and a reserve force composed of some thousands of men. When the Minister is replying I would like to know whom it is he intends to fight?

Abyssinia.

Suppose these men are required for home defence, of what use would they be if they were attacked by a few thousand bombing planes?

These are questions that should be reserved for the Estimate for the Department of Defence.

I was trying to emulate Deputy Belton, but I find now that I was not as ingenious as he. When this country was budgeting for something like £21,000,000 the Minister and his Party protested that the country could never afford to pay that amount of taxation. The position to-day is that we are called upon to raise over £31,000,000 in taxation, and it is likely, by the time the Supplementary Estimates are introduced, that the full demand will be about £32,000,000. I suggest to the Minister that an Estimate of such magnitude requires some explanation from him. When replying, it is not unlikely, as Deputy Belton has said, that he will ask me what social services I would like to see curtailed. I do not want to see any of them curtailed, but, like Deputy Belton, I would like to cut my cloth according to my measure. If we cannot pay for those social services, then we should not have them. In my opinion, the country cannot afford the extra taxation asked for by the Minister.

I would like to have a statement from the Minister as to the necessity for a Secret Service Vote in this year of £20,000. I referred to it last year. I am satisfied that there was necessity for it, but we have not had any statement from the Minister as to the sum expended under that head during the current financial year. I would like him to tell us what the probable expenditure will be, and if he thinks that the time has not arrived in which this Vote could be considerably reduced. Everybody knows that a Secret Service Vote is a Government's pocket money to some extent because it has not to give any account for it either to the Oireachtas or to anyone else. In view of that, we should have some assurance from the Minister that the Government consider it necessary to retain it and that they are only spending as small an amount as possible.

I note that the Vote for unemploy ment insurance benefit and unemployment assistance has been reduced this year. I suppose that in taking this action, the Minister means to suggest that conditions have improved for the workers. People living in the rural areas know that that is not so. Rather the contrary is true, because conditions are daily becoming worse. I live in a rural area in which we have a number of small farmers. These men work hard and they are not drawing assistance of any kind. I know their condition well. Knowing them, and knowing the ordinary labourers who cannot secure employment, I can say that the reduction under this heading is a very serious matter for them. The Government have made no effort to organise employment that would be profitable for them from the national point of view. Neither the Labour Deputies not those sitting on the Government Benches representing rural areas should agree to the reduction of this Vote, knowing as they do the conditions that obtain amongst the people in their areas. They should not agree to this reduction except on the condition that the Minister organises, or makes some attempt to establish, works on a national scale that will give those people productive employment. I put it to those Deputies that they should not agree to a reduction on this Vote unless they get the assurance I suggest from the Minister. I do not suppose that he would give it to Deputies who sit on this side. I appeal to the Deputies opposite to get that assurance from him, that if he is going to reduce this Vote he will do something in the way of providing productive employment for the unemployed in the rural areas.

I notice that, as compared with last year, there is a proposed increase of £225,909 in the Vote for Military Service Pensions, bringing it up to a figure of £600,000. I wonder if that is bluff? We all know the delay that is taking place in the payment and adjustment of these claims. I believe that the Minister has no intention whatever of paying any such sum this year, and that this figure is simply put in the Estimates for the purpose of lulling applicants into the hope and belief that they are going to get pensions when, in fact, they are not. I do not propose to develop this point as I will have another opportunity of going into it, but I may say, in passing, that at the rate the board is dealing with applications it is in my opinion old age pensions a number of the applicants will be getting instead of military service pensions. Has the Minister any idea of the number who are likely to get pensions this year?

Should not that question be addressed to the Minister for Defence? It would be impossible for the Minister for Finance to answer questions on points of detail.

I submit that the Minister for Finance must have got some provisional figure from the Minister for Defence when preparing this Vote on Account.

It is a question for the Estimates surely.

At the same time you are going to get this Vote on Account. I submit that it is a question of very grave importance to a number of people throughout the country. However, I will deal with it in another way. To the back benchers of Fianna Fáil I say that an increase in the Army Vote should not be given, not on the grounds that I do not agree to having a defence force for this country, but solely because of the statement of policy that the President made here; the policy for which he said the Volunteer force was being organised. I think Deputies should hesitate before giving approval to that policy. The President told us that the Volunteer force was organised for the purpose of defending the shores of this country in case of an enemy attack on Great Britain. That might be one reason, but it is the principal reason why we should not vote this money, unless the President changes his point of view and his policy. I stressed before that I agree that the Army and the people should be responsible for the defence of this country. I stand by that. But when the head of the Executive declares a certain line of policy for the Army, to the exclusion of all other things, I think Deputies should think twice before giving approval to that policy, or before voting the money to give it effect. I am not going to deal very extensively with this matter now. As other Deputies have dealt with the agricultural position, and with local government, I do not feel called upon to go any further into these questions. As the question I put to the Minister, through the Chair, are of importance, and are agitating the minds of large numbers of people, they deserve an answer.

This Vote on Account is a very good indication of the trading and commercial position in the country, seeing that substantial reductions in expenditure can be made. I would have understood, if the Estimates had to be increased, that the Opposition would raise very strong objections, but it is difficult when the very opposite is the case, and when substantial reductions are indicated, to find the Opposition so forcible in their attitude. Their policy is in no way useful and is merely one of opposition for opposition sake. It is a repetition of what they have said in the House and in the country for the last two years. If the Opposition were consistent in their attitude there would be an expression of appreciation at the reduction in expenditure, seeing that they have been preaching that for two years. Deputy Belton and Deputy Dillon referred to a pulling down of the flag in the settlement entered into a few weeks ago and known as the coal-cattle pact. The figures in the Vote on Account show substantial savings in the bounties to be paid in future on cattle. That is the best indication of the value of the pact to the farmers and to the people of the country. To say that the flag has been hauled down is to talk nonsense. There has been no hauling down of the flag, but an ordinary bargain was made to barter cattle for coal.

And the British levy off the cattle.

Mr. Maguire

The right of the English people to collect the money involved has not been admitted.

Deputy Belton and the Opposition Party do not understand the difference between national principle and an ordinary bargain dealing with coal and cattle. That is what the Opposition fail to appreciate and that is why many statements are trotted out by people who have no sense of responsibility.

Hear, hear! Now you are criticising yourself.

Mr. Maguire

Deputy Belton said that the flag was hauled down. The flag was never hauled down. The flag was raised. It was never raised by the people in this country who set out to destroy the position from the beginning. Possibly the Opposition decided that the flag has been hauled down because they never raised it. The Deputy asked why other steps were not taken before the pact was made. The benefit of the pact is shown clearly in the Vote on Account. He also asked why approaches were not made as to the British attitude. Deputy Belton was a member of the Opposition Party at the last election, and the leader of that Party stated then that if he was returned to power he would bring about a settlement of the dispute in three days. Therefore the House can take it that the Party had full details from the British as to the terms on which a settlement could be made. They were not announced. I suggest to Deputy Belton and to the Opposition Party that there were far too many soundings of the British attitude. When the Opposition had information it was kept hidden away in the archives of the House.

If they had made these facts known to the country, since they were in possession of them, the country would have benefited. But by these secret negotiations, which they still continue to carry on, they have destroyed the interests of the farmers and of the community in general, and made it much more difficult for this Government to meet the British Government and make a final settlement with them on the matters in dispute. We must assume that these secret negotiations are still going on, judging by the statements of the Opposition that a comprehensive settlement of all the matters in dispute could be, and ought to be, made.

The Glasgow story again.

Mr. Maguire

These are the statements of your leader and of Deputy Belton, made in this House.

The Glasgow story from which your front bench ran away.

Mr. Maguire

There is no question of the Glasgow story or any other story. I am dealing with statements made by Deputies on the Opposite side. Why are you always implicated in these secret undertakings, which you are afraid to make known to the public?

What secret undertakings?

Mr. Maguire

The soundings of the British which you have said should have been made, and the soundings Deputy Cosgrave must have made when he asserted that a settlement of the whole matter in dispute could be made in three days.

I said soundings should have been made in the circumstances. That is very different from saying that they are being made.

Mr. Maguire

I assert that soundings must have been made and that they must have been continued up to the present, judging by the statements made by the Opposition in this House and in the country. They are in possession of facts to show that a full and comprehensive settlement can be made on all the matters in dispute.

A comprehensive settlement should have been made.

Mr. Maguire

According to your statements and the statements of the Opposition, a comprehensive settlement could have been made.

Not "could"—"should."

He does not know the difference.

Deputy Belton wants us to do something that they could not do.

Mr. Maguire

Deputy Belton went on to say that he would have no hesitation in standing on a platform anywhere and advising farmers not to pay their annuities while these tariffs were on.

I made no such statement but I did say that, while Britain is collecting the annuities, I was prepared to advocate to the farmers all over the country that they should not pay them to our Government—that is, when you have arranged with the British to collect them. What is this £4 5s. 0d. you are collecting for?

Mr. Maguire

Your statement bears out what I said.

The farmers should not pay the annuities twice.

Mr. Maguire

The Deputy said he would have no hesitation in advising the farmers not to pay their annuities.

Not to pay them twice. If they were men, they would have it long ago.

Did Deputy Belton pay his annuities?

That does not arise.

Is there anything wrong in that?

I did not say that they should not pay them, but that they should organise and make that case— not break the law.

Mr. Maguire

As chairman of the County Council of Dublin, Deputy Belton says they have the highest social services of any county in Ireland. In the same breath he says that he is collecting the rates to pay for those services by means of the sheriff.

At the moment that is so.

Mr. Maguire

Would it not be justifiable for somebody in County Dublin to say, "We will organise the ratepayers of the county not to pay rates because the county council are extravagant?" Deputy Belton goes on to give a fatherly word of advice to the Government—that they should cut their coat according to their cloth, that they should not spend unless they are sure the money is available. Yet, he himself is collecting rates by means of the sheriff while he has the most lavish social services of any county in the Free State. Why does he not take the advice himself and practice the economy which he recommends to the Government?

I did, but we were "mandamused" and made pay up by your Party.

Mr. Maguire

You gave advice not to pay the annuities and, when certain action was taken, the annuities were paid. There must be consistency somewhere. What do these Estimates represent? They represent a very wide range of social services. I do not think that any of the Deputies opposite have advocated the curtailment or withdrawal of any of these services. Deputy Anthony did assert that I.R.A. pensions should be curtailed—that they should not be paid. He was the only Deputy opposite who was consistent in indicating where some saving could be made. Nobody else has indicated any service which could be withdrawn or curtailed. These services represent a very substantial amount of money which is being given for old age pensions, for the provision of new schools and improvement of existing schools and for housing. All this money is necessary to improve generally the conditions of the people. No Deputy on the opposite side will say either here or in the country that these services are not good services, or that the necessary money should not be provided for them. Nevertheless, one whole day of the time of this House is occupied by Deputies opposite in making foolish speeches and in opposing Estimates which in reality show a reduction in expenditure.

From £21,000,000?

Mr. Maguire

A reduction on the amount necessary for the service of the present year.

From £21,000,000 to £28,000,000.

Mr. Maguire

Deputies opposite ought to give more attention to what is being done in this House, because opposition is rather foolish if it is not practical. Deputy Belton said that, if things were normal, his speech would be much shorter and more to the point. I am inclined to think that if it were not for the abnormal conditions and the existence of the economic war, Deputies opposite would be incapable of making a speech intelligently upon anything, because they have not formulated a practical policy or made a practical suggestion of any kind in this House since they came in as an Opposition. They are not comfortable when they see that the economic problem is being solved. That is the one thing that has made them possible and that is the danger that confronts them, because they would be incapable of forming a Party if it were not for the abnormal conditions.

Deputy Anthony has tried to solve the problem as to how this expenditure has been maintained by saying that the old stocking was in existence. I suppose it was. It may be still in existence, but in modern times I think it has given place to the joint stock banks, the post office savings bank and other institutions of that kind. The stockings do not seem to be wearing down to the toe at all. The post office deposits, the savings certificates, the bank deposits and other investments bear evidence of that. Take the public issues of companies in the Free State, and there is every indication of a growing increase rather than a diminution in the weight of the stocking. These are things which, I suggest, the Opposition should take cognisance of in an intelligent way and discuss from an intelligent viewpoint instead of talking nonsense and wasting the time of the House in discussion without any purpose. The Estimates we are discussing to-night furnish an indication of the greatest progress this State has ever made in one year. They are an indication that prosperity has set in and that the future of the country is brighter than was anticipated.

On one thing the whole House will be united in admiration—that is, the dexterity of the Government Party in somersaulting. There has never been a greater set of political gymnasts in history. We had the spectacle of the Minister for Finance getting up and, with glib satisfaction, comparing these Estimates with the Estimate of 1931. On account of their magnitude, he compared them favourably with the Estimates for 1931, taking the items seriatim. One found it difficult to believe that it was the same person who complained of the magnitude of the Estimates in 1929-1930-1931 and who boasted of the magnitude of the present Estimates. When he had finished the comparison, the Minister asked what item could be cut down. Exactly the same question he put and answered himself a few years ago when he was criticising Estimates amounting to about £20,000,000. I do not propose to follow him in his method of answering the question but I think that attention should be directed to some of the answers he gave. He pointed out that certain Estimates could be easily reduced. "Take the Army Estimate," he said. If I were to take the Army Estimate then and the Army Estimate now, the comparison would not be favourable to the Minister. We were told in one discussion on the Estimates that there was no necessity for the Army but the general plea was that the cost of it could be greatly reduced. The same remark applied to the Gárda Síochána and to the Estimates for other items when Ministers were making their case against them. The Minister has the means of giving effect to the suggestions which he then made. The Minister also made suggestions with regard to the number of officials and the salaries of the higher officials. They are with us to-day — every one of them—with additions. We were told at that period that there were inspectors galore. To-day the number is treble. You can hardly walk down a country road without tripping over some of them. I was in a village on Monday morning and I met seven inspectors—the rate collector, meat inspector, income tax collector and three or four others. All of them were trying to extract money from a village in which there was no money. These are some suggestions I should like to bring to the attention of the Minister when he asks what items can be reduced. He himself suggested four or five years ago that the items I have mentioned could be easily reduced. We are not so much concerned with the amount of expenditure as the Minister was at that time. What we are concerned with is the ability to meet the expenditure that is forced upon us. Even though the amount was £20,000,000 in 1931 and is £28,000,000 to-day, we would not grumble if the people could pay £28,000,000 to-day as easily as they could £20,000,000 in 1931. But the Minister knows as well as any of us that they cannot.

The last Deputy took his cue from the Minister and said that all this new expenditure was a sign of prosperity and that a reduction was shown as compared with the amount for last year. He did not go back as far as 1931. When you come to analyse it, is there any reduction on the amount estimated for this year? So far as we can see, there is a reduction of £800,000 as compared with the amount for last year. That sum of £800,000 is made up of two items which concern the agricultural community—the stopping of the bounties and a reduction of £300,000 or £400,000 in the Vote for Agriculture. All the other items of expenditure remain—some of them with additions. These are the two economies. Deputies on the opposite side can hoist the flag and shout about the dropping of the bounties and the reduction of £300,000 or £400,000 in the Vote for Agriculture, but even these sums are coming off the people. A big proportion of that money was transferred to the shoulders of the consumer and the consumer is now paying in another way what was paid by him by way of direct taxation last year. Many other items are also transferred. I was not fortunate, as other members were, in getting a copy of the book of Estimates and I am not in a position to deal properly with these items. With a wave of the hand, we are asked to pass this as if it was something we ought to glory over. The Minister himself referred to some of the items when going through it, particularly the agricultural part of it. Reference was made to buying and selling cattle for a foreign land. We do not know where they were bought or where they were sold, but we have to vote the money without knowing anything about the transaction. He talked of cattle bought for a home factory. We all know they were bought for Roscrea— £20,000 or £30,000 worth of them. He is selling to the Roscrea factory at 10/- a cwt. but I do not know what we are losing on the transaction.

The Minister pretends we are saving. I have not the exact figures of one transaction at the moment and I can only rely upon my memory. He saved £270,000 or £280,000 directly on wheat but he transferred that next minute to the consumers of the loaf. He calls that saving and presents it as saving to the House. We know that in regard to this expenditure the people can bear it to a much less extent than in 1930 or 1931. We have evidence of that everywhere except amongst the small number of people engaged in the manufacturing business and earning profits gathered up from the rest of the community. There is no section of farmers that is not hit by these heavy taxes. Everyone of them knows that whatever he may get in subsidies it is dragged out of his pocket again five times over in other ways.

There was a reference made by the Minister for Agriculture to the Pigs Marketing Board when he mentioned the sum of £10,000 or £12,000 for assisting in the pigs marketing industry. If I thought that £10,000 or £12,000 would put that industry in any better position than it is in now, I would not grudge that sum, or even treble it, but if there is any branch of the industry in a rotten position at the moment, it is the pig industry.

That matter should be raised on the Minister's Vote.

A sum of £10,000 was provided for it here.

As was explained to the House at the outset, the items may not be taken seriatim on the Vote on Account. The usual proceduce is that one subject or two major questions of policy are selected for debate. It has been the custom to give the Ceann Comhairle written notice of the subject to be debated. I am quite sure it was an oversight, but no such intimation was given on this occasion.

I bow to your ruling, Sir, but I was merely alluding, as I thought, to matters which the Minister specifically mentioned in his speech. I do not think I referred to an item which he did not refer to, but if the Ceann Comhairle says I am not entitled to proceed on that line, I will not do so. We will have an opportunity of going into these matters later on. I do not say, however, that we will all have that opportunity. In very many of the debates in this House, when a subject in which one was particularly interested came up, one found that, in the end, it was impossible to get in. Particularly in relation to these details of expenditure on agriculture, we found last year that it was extremely difficult for men on the back benches who were interested in agriculture to get in.

This Vote on Account represents an expenditure which this country cannot stand at the moment, and for which no case has been made from the Government Benches. Reference was made to the causes for the magnitude of this Estimate. I cannot go into them, nor do I want to. We had a debate on that subject the other day, but if prosperity is going to be restored here, and, if, by increased industrial effort, manufactures and other methods, we can increase all round prosperity in this country and bring the people up to a level at which they can bear an expenditure of this magnitude, every Deputy in this House will be pleased; but every Deputy who is not blind to the facts knows that £28,000,000, plus the items for central expenditure which will come afterwards, is at this moment an impossible burden to put on the people and to expect them to bear with equanimity. It will not be so borne, and wholesale criticism will be levelled at this expenditure throughout the country. There is an obvious remedy. The Minister derides us when we refer to it. It has been repeated in this House time and time again, but further repetition even now will not do any harm. There is an obvious remedy for putting the people of this country into a position in which they can bear even this burden. It is so to reorder the commerce and the trade of the country, internally and externally, that there will be a free market for the farmers' produce. Then, perhaps, we could talk with some degree of serenity of expenditure like that which is presented to us here to-day.

I have not much to say because the ground has been very well covered and the points made more efficiently than I could hope to make them, but the Minister asked the Opposition to point out where a saving could be effected on this enormous burden which he knows the country cannot afford. If I were to make a suggestion, I suppose the Minister would laugh at it. If anybody on this side of the House makes a suggestion as to how savings can be effected, he is laughed at, but I propose to make suggestions at which he cannot afford to laugh, because they are the suggestions of a man for whose opinion the Minister has some respect. He is Deputy MacEntee when he was in opposition. Speaking on the Financial Resolutions, in May, 1930, at column 1235, volume 34 of the Official Debates, Deputy MacEntee, dealing with the Army and other services, said:

"Similarly, in regard to the Army, which costs £1,574,000, the Minister yesterday pleaded that this expenditure cannot be reduced until the possibility of internal armed attack on the State has disappeared. Quite so. So long as the Minister's colleague, the Minister for Justice, spends public money fomenting disorder and goading men to violence, the Army must be there to suppress the results of that vile policy. But suppose the Minister for Justice were to be swept away, back among the debris of the law courts from which he never should have emerged, and suppose the Minister for Finance and this Government gave place to another which secured a revision of the Constitution, so that all sections of the people might avail of it to secure by peaceful means their political aims, then all possibility of internal armed attack, which I do not believe exists, but which the Minister makes his excuse, would have disappeared and a reduction in the cost of the Army by about £500,000 would be made possible.

"The same can be said of the police and prisons."

By the way, there is an increase this time on prisons.

"If there were another Minister than the present Minister for Justice, and another Government in office, the cost of police and prisons could be reduced by at least £300,000."

That is something for the Minister. That is a reduction of £800,000. The Minister could show the previous Government how to reduce the then Estimate which was less than it is now, but he cannot act on the advice himself. Would-be Ministers are always better in opposition than when in a position in which they have responsibility. Now they ask the Opposition to point the way to them. He was pointing the way when he was outside. What is the use of pointing the way to a Minister like him? He knows all about it, but he does not want to put it into practice. What benefit is the money spent on the Army, the prisons and the Gárda to any section of the community? That is a social service which I think the Minister could begin with. He could cut those down instead of cutting the provision for agriculture down. He has taken from agriculture and given to those people. I ask the Minister to take a does from his own bottle. If he does that, he can make a beginning, and, if he makes a start on the right road, he would learn to cut down taxation and expenditure to a level which the country might be able to afford.

Of course, while the policy of the Government is what it is, there is no hope that the country can afford to pay taxation on anything approaching the present scale, but if there was a sensible policy and if the Minister took his own advice, he could make a beginning and bring taxation to a reasonable level, having regard to the capacity of the people to pay. The policy of the present Government, however, has so reduced the paying capacity of the country that it is impossible for the people to pay more than two-thirds of the taxation imposed at present, and I do not believe the country can afford to pay even two-thirds.

It is not merely the taxation which is adumbrated in these Estimates that the people are really paying. It would take a really good auditor to find out how much hidden taxation has to be added to the Estimate. We have not the whole of the Estimates here. Later on we know that there will be more Estimates and that there must be, because surely the Minister does not intend to cut down the burden to the extent he has indicated here, by lopping off the amount payable as bounties on agricultural produce. Certainly the Minister and his Government have done enough to ruin agriculture without giving us that final blow. To carry out that threat is to kill the goose with the golden egg; the people will have nothing at all to pay next year. Surely, it is not equitable to throw the burden for every service, in fact, for services that cannot really be called services at all, upon agriculture and make it pay everything. I see a number of items here for which an increased expenditure is provided. In the case of the Oireachtas there is an increase of £620 although the Seanad is being abolished.

There will soon be a saving on that Vote.

The amount provided last year was £113,631, while this year it is £114,051. Why did the Minister estimate for an increase in that case? I see that there is a saving of £3 on the establishment of the Governor-General, but then the Governor-General is being cut out and the President's Department is being brought more and more to the front. There is an increase of £636 in the Estimate for his Department. In fact, there is an increase in nearly all Departments. It may be said that these are small items, but the remarkable feature about them is that these increases are being utilised, not to improve the social services, but for the payment of officials, for travelling expenses, for pensions for able-bodied men and the payment of civil servants. The increases of expenditure are in a direction that benefits no section of society.

Increased expenditure is a matter about which the Minister and his Party used to wax eloquent when they were in opposition. The cost of administration, they complained, was extraordinarily high and they were going to effect wonderful savings in administration. The fact is that the expenses of administration are going up year by year, even on such social services as unemployment assistance. One would think that every effort would be made to see that the greatest possible amount of money voted for such an Estimate should be given to the people deserving of it. Yet, we find that £1 in every £7 voted for unemployment assistance goes in administration. That is the way all round. The tendency is to increase expenditure on administration. This country is overrun by civil servants, inspectors, etc—inspectors who are costing the country enormous sums and who are of really no use, unless it is to torment men who mind their own business and to prevent people from running their own business. It is almost impossible for anybody to run a business anywhere at present without licences of one kind or another and interference by inspectors. People are controlled and limited in the exercise of their rights in every direction. Every possible restriction is put upon business and every clog put upon industry.

I admit that several industries have been started since the Government came into office. I do not want to discredit the part which the present Government have taken in starting new industries, but I would like to point out that these are comparatively small industries. They have been, perhaps, able to start a few hundred small industries. I was talking to a man to-day who told me that he employs three men. This man, who comes from Ballinamore, told me that his establishment was regarded as a factory although he has only three men employed. If we regard every agricultural holding in the country which gives employment to three or four men—some of them give employment to six or seven men, but let us take three men as the average—how many factories are there which are now on their last legs, if they have not been obliged to close down already? There are 400,000 factories of that kind as compared with the few hundred factories which the Government have started. We all admit that there is something to be said for the setting up of these little factories, but if the policy of the Government is responsible for closing down 400,000 factories, then their policy is a rotten one and is one that is likely to bring the country to ruin. It is bringing it to ruin.

Like other speakers, I appeal to the Minister to change that policy before it is too late, to get down to bedrock and to recognise that the principal industry must be saved, otherwise not only will the people engaged in it be driven out of production but the people starting other factories will not be able to carry on if the agricultural community, and the people who are living by them, have not the purchasing power to buy the products of these new factories. I do not want to occupy the time of the House for any considerable time. The matter has been discussed at great length and various members may have other points to make. I hope that the Minister will bear in mind the few points I have made. He has asked for suggestions as to where savings can be effected. I have given him two instances. Other Deputies may give him other instances, but if they do not wish to do so they can leave it to him to do his own business because it is he, and he alone, who has the means of reducing taxation to the paying capacity of the country. On the other hand, he has the means of improving the paying capacity of the country by stopping his foolish economic war which is at the bottom of all the difficulties and the poverty brought on the country. I hope the Minister will learn sense and not wait until it is too late to bring about a change of policy.

Mr. Lynch

I am going to confine what I have to say to one particular heading in this Vote. That is heading No. 66 which deals with army pensions and for which we are asked to provide £405,300. I have not had the advantage of seeing the volume of Estimates, but I understand the total Estimate for the coming financial year shows an increase of £225,909. I presume that provision is made in order to provide for pensions under the Military Service Pensions Act of 1934. What I think the House is entitled to know is this: Does the Minister seriously believe that at the present rate of progress of the Military Service Pensions Board, anything like the sum of £225,000 is going to be required in the coming financial year? Does not everybody realise—or at least those of us who hear complaints from applicants—that the rate of progress now being made by the board will not render it necessary to provide a sum like £225,000 for the next 50 years? I am afraid the provision of this sum this year is simply a sop to try to satisfy those who are complaining very bitterly, and with very great justification, of the slowness of the board in dealing with applications.

It does not now matter who initiated the legislation or who opposed it. It was approved by the Oireachtas and it gave certain persons certain rights and those persons are entitled to their rights. I think it can be said that the object of the Oireachtas in passing that legislation was something like this: It aimed at placing the men with pre-truce active service, who took part in the civil war on the side of the present Government, on the same footing as the pre-truce men who fought with the National Army for the State at the time. It further provided for a comparatively small number of persons who had pre-truce active service but who took no part in the civil war. From the passing of the Act the pre-truce men who fought against the State in 1922 became entitled to be treated exactly as their pre-truce comrades who fought on the side of the National Army. They were entitled to exactly the same treatment as the National Army men with pre-truce service.

If there are any grounds for all the complaints one hears, and I have no doubt there must be some, I do not think in the circumstances that anybody can contend that the administration of the Act is satisfactory. I have no doubt Deputies on all sides of the House, especially those who were themselves involved in the pre-truce compaign, have been approached on dozens of occasions by persons with complaints about the dilatoriness of the board in dealing with their applications. From ex-parte statements it would seem that some of them have been badly treated by the board in the assessment of their service. Of course, we all know that no matter what board is set up it will not satisfy everyone. There are bound to be hundreds of applications from persons not entitled under the Act to any consideration; but, on the other hand, there are many who are entitled to some consideration and those persons have a genuine grievance if their cases are not dealt with reasonably early.

I think that any responsible person, and especially any of us who were involved in the pre-truce campaign, must feel that if there is one sure way of ending the bitterness of the civil war it would be to bring about such a state of affairs that the pre-truce men on both sides would feel they were being treated with equal consideration. That, I think, would undoubtedly tend to kill the bitterness that has existed over the last dozen years.

I realise that this board has difficulties that did not confront the board dealing with the 1924 Act, and necessarily they have work to do which makes it more difficult to arrive at the fairly quick assessment of a pension or of service and rank. Deputies will remember that under the 1924 Act the Board of Assessors had not to assess the rank of any applicant; that was provided for in the statute. The board had merely to record the fact that a person held such a rank in the National Army, and that was the rank, except in a few cases, which stood as the rank to which the person was entitled. There is a difficulty in this case of assessing rank, but even with that difficulty there is unnecessary delay in dealing with applications.

One is not allowed to advocate legislation when dealing with an Estimate, and I presume the same applies when dealing with this Vote on Account. But I think it would be well if the Minister would revise the type of administration that is provided for in the statute. Deputies will remember that under the 1924 Act the Board of Assessors consisted of three persons, one of whom, the chairman, was to be a barrister of so many years standing. In carrying out what was felt to be the wish of the Oireachtas at the time and the intentions of the statute, the Board was constituted by having a district justice and two old I.R.A. men with 1916 service as the ordinary members of the board. That ensured that genuine pre-truce applicants would get a fair hunt, to use a colloquialism. The chairman had only one vote, just the same as the other members, and naturally the tendency of the members of the board would be to treat as generously as the Act would allow, their pre-truce comrades. I can see no reason why, under this Act, there should not be a similar administrative body.

I can see no reason for having civil servants members of a board of that type. After all one can excuse a civil servant for having the mentality that his reason for being a member of a board of that kind is to see that expenditure is cut down. The board should be constituted something on those lines. That is, if you like advocating legislation, but I think you will not get a satisfactory dealing with the cases until you get a board of that type. I would make a present of this to the Minister, that he should have on that board two pre-truce men who took his side in the civil war, with a chairman—if possible a chairman who acted under the 1924 Act—so that the pensions under both Acts would be co-ordinated. If he took a step of that kind I have no doubt that those on our side of the House—certainly those who had pre-truce service—would support him in bringing forward a measure of that kind. Since the Oireachtas has passed that legislation, since it aimed at treating both sides in the civil war on an equal footing, then I think we ought to take every step to see that the wish of the Oireachtas is carried out in that respect.

Deputy O'Leary rose.

I do not know whether Deputy O'Leary intends to keep the House long——

I do not intend to keep it very long. I just want to answer a question put by the Minister. During Deputy Dillon's criticism of the admixture policy the Minister for Finance asked him what was the policy of our Party with regard to the question. I should like to say that the policy of our Party is this: give the people of this country the market which they enjoyed before the Government came into office and give them, at the world's market price, the Indian meal and raw material which they were able to buy at the world market price, and let them compete with the people in Northern Ireland and Great Britain in the production of bacon. At the present time I understand there is a very great demand for bacon in this country over and above what we are able to supply. Deputy Dillon has quoted the price of the admixture in the Free State, and the price of pure maize in Derry, and he has shown the House that there is a difference of 3/- per cwt. I should like to quote the Minister for Agriculture when he said in this House on one occasion that he admitted it would take 6 cwts. of meal to fatten a pig. Taking that at 3/- a cwt., it means a difference of 18/- to the people of this country as compared with the people of Northern Ireland and Great Britain.

The Government claim that their policy is to produce more off the land in this country; naturally enough if the people who are getting the land were industrious people, and not like the people to whom Deputy Corbett of Galway referred last week when Deputy Belton mentioned the fact that he had got a note saying that bailiffs were in possession of one of his constituents' place. Deputy Corbett said they are too lazy to work. I challenge the statement of Deputy Corbett, and I am not going to let that statement go uncontradicted in this House. I say that there are people in this country who are to-day, and who always were, industrious; but the policy of the Government, as I said before, is to put them into the position to-day that the less they do the less they lose. You can get everybody on those benches standing up and dictating to the farmers of this country how to run their farms. The other night I happened to take up by mere accident an Official Report of 1928. There was a vote of censure proposed on that occasion by the present Minister for Agriculture, condemning the agricultural policy of the then Government. Deputy Hogan on that occasion told those people on those benches to take their hands off the farmers; that the farmers knew their own business. It would be a very good thing for the people of this country if the people on the Government Benches adopted that policy. It would be a very good thing for the people if they had not been carried away by the false promises of those on the Government Benches.

I wonder what will the Minister for Finance have to say now with regard to the increased taxation which he is going to impose again this year? How does it compare with the statement of his when taxation was under £20,000,000, when he said that the people of this country could not stand the burden of taxation? Were not the people on that occasion better able to stand that burden of taxation than they are to-day? We are carrying about £10,000,000 extra taxation to-day. And what is the position? You never had more unemployment. A Kerry Deputy said, I think, in Listowel on last Saturday or Sunday week that there was no distress in this country at all. Anybody who goes to any police barrack in the country on any Thursday and finds out the number of people waiting in those barracks to get unemployment benefit will be able to judge of the honesty of that statement. The Government, by their policy, have demoralised the honest workers of this country. They have driven them to such a position that they say it pays them better to take unemployment assistance than to work for the paltry wage which the farmer is in a position to pay them. There were quoted here last week statistics to prove that farm labourers in this country are in receipt of 4/- per week less than they got four years ago. After all, should not that convince the Government that there is something wrong with their policy. I should again like to repeat the statement of Deputy Corkery at the Ard-Fheis, when he said that it was coming to breaking point with the poorer people in the country and that it was about time that the Government investigated the effect of their policy with regard to the agricultural industry. After all, as I said before, you have a commission for this, that, and the other thing. Agriculture is the main industry of the country. Why not set up a commission and find out from the people who are engaged in that industry what is their condition? I am not confining this to any Party in the country. I am not confining it to the Fine Gael or the Fianna Fáil Party. Let them get supporters of both Parties and examine them—especially people from the poorer parts of the country. I represent a constituency a large portion of which is in the Gaeltacht, and I should like the Minister to say whether he is prepared to set up a commission to examine those people as to the effect of Government policy on them.

With regard to the land annuities, there is a point which I should like to put before the House. I do not want to say very much on it, but I should like to say this; we were told by the Government before they came into office that if they got into office they were going to retain the land annuities, but you have the President coming into this House now and admitting that he is not retaining them. The point I want to make is that he talked last week about the sanctity of agreements. What about the sanctity of the agreement that the tenant farmers of this country entered into with the Irish Land Commission when they agreed to pay an annuity for a certain number of years? Is not that agreement smashed to pieces to-day, and so long as this economic war continues is it not a fact that the British Government will be collecting those annuities from the people? There are a great many people in this country who purchased their holdings under the Ashbourne Act, and in the case of those who did not take the decadal reductions their places will be free in 49 years. When that time has expired they will have to continue to pay £4 5s. 0d. on every two-year-old beast entering the British market. The President talked last week about the attitude of the British Government being like that of a person who took a watch by force. I referred last week to the case of two men who were visited by the flying squad on last Monday week. One of these is paying an annuity of £4 14s. 10d. Now, he had two two-year-old heifers at the fair. To show Deputies the type of mountainy cattle they were, he sold one of them for £5 7s. 6d. and he was offered £5 for the other. His father at home met a Kerryman, a cattle dealer, passing the road and this Kerry dealer offered the father £4 for the two other cattle. Is it not clear that that poor man is the type of individual of whom Deputy Corkery speaks? He and his family are working hard in order to try to carry on during this very great depression. That man has to pay £4 5s. on each of those four cattle, that is £17 while his annuity is £4 14s. 10d., and that is all he is benefiting.

It is all very fine for the President to talk about the highwayman taking his watch but there are people in this country from whom ten, 15 or 20 watches have been taken. I am a large farmer myself, but I say this that it is the small industrious farmer who has suffered more than any large farmer. We had the cry raised about these people being ranchers. The large farmer was not in such a bad position for the last few years. He suffered at the start, but he has been able to buy cattle from the small farmers at any price he wishes to offer them. All I have to say is that we will do all we can to keep that matter before the people. I would just like to say one word more. After the general election a friend of mine and another were at a funeral. After the funeral they had a little drop, and when one of them got soft he said to the other man, a supporter of Fine Gael: "Michael," he said. "I voted against you at the general election.""Well, Pat," said the other man, "be careful it is not against yourself you voted." I met Pat in Macroom some time ago and we had a drink together although we are not on the same side in politics, and he admitted to me that he had lost £300 as a result of the economic war. If the Minister for Finance wants his name I can let him have it. I tell Deputies that this country cannot go on as it is. I am prepared to stand over that. Agriculture cannot carry on under present conditions. The Government Front Bench knows nothing about it. I want to make some impression on the farmer Deputies of the Fianna Fáil Party. I see two farmers in the back benches and I challenge them to say if agriculture can be made a paying proposition——

Who are the two farmers?

The Minister to conclude.

I have not spoken yet. Even in a discussion that lasts only ten minutes there must be someone last. At the same time, I claim my right to speak.

There has been an arrangement made by the Whips and if the Deputy accepts the Opposition Whip he should agree with the arrangements made.

The only function the Chair has is to indicate to the House such an agreement. The Chair is bound by the Standing Orders, and when Deputies present themselves to the Chair in defiance of an agreement arrived at outside the House, the Chair must hear them.

Very well.

At the same time, during the last few weeks I had intended to raise a few matters here and was unable to do so.

I am not endeavouring to curtail any Deputy's right to speak. When a Deputy stands up the Chair will call on him.

Very well.

As Deputy Lynch says, Deputy Coburn will probably have an opportunity of making his speech to-morrow.

We do not want to take any advantage of the position. The only thing I want to say is that when an arrangement like that is come to notice should be given to the House.

It is not worth discussing it. We will have this out to-morrow and possibly on more to-morrows than one. I think any person looking around the House would agree with me when I say that this has been a very tame debate. It has been a tame debate because there has been no fight in the Opposition. We have had the same old statements regarding the extravagance and the incompetence of the Ministry. But I do not think that the country, with the full knowledge which it has of the circumstances which have existed here since 1932, which realises as well as we do the diffculties which must confront an Administration such as ours, carrying on a struggle with a much greater and stronger power will agree with them. I do not think the country will believe for one moment that the present Ministry are either extravagant or incompetent. It is clear that we are emerging from the difficulties of 1933 and 1934. It may be argued that the improvement in the conditions which in the common experience and common admission has taken place here in this country is a reflection of the improvement which has taken place generally throughout the world. That may be true to some extent, but I think that the people who look at affairs in a dispassionate way will also have to be prepared to admit that there is some credit—not as much possibly as we would claim— due to the Government for the manner in which it has fashioned its policy to meet very difficult circumstances. For that reason, I am sure the country will generally discredit the charges levelled against us to-day—charges of extravagance and incompetence.

Listening to the Deputies we generally hear in a debate of this sort— the heavy guns of the Opposition—I always think that the Almighty is a good handicapper. He has given Deputy Mulcahy industry; He has given Deputy Dillon volubility, and He has given Deputy O'Sullivan ponderosity; yet as He has left them devoid of that sincerity and conviction without which their arguments lose substance and fail to impress, they all finish at a dead-heat. Those of us who listened to Deputy O'Sullivan in the early stages of this debate, as he went on and on and on and on, must have bethought ourselves of a thunderstorm in the mountain. We heard him, but we did not fear him. He complained that the volume of Estimates had been produced late. It was necessary to say something. I presume that in his attack upon the Government he put his strongest argument in the forefront. It was, as I have said, that the volume of Estimates had been produced late and that, therefore, the Opposition was at a manifest disadvantage in criticising the Government's policy.

But the Government's policy has been before the people for the last four years. There is no new and novel service provided for in the new Estimates and there has been no drastic revision or reduction in the services which were provided for in the old Estimates. The provision for the Government's housing policy, the provision for unemployment assistance, the provision for widows' and orphans' pensions, the increased provision for the building of schools to which I referred in my opening statement, the increased provision for old age pensions—all of these have been the known and customary features of the Government's policy from year to year. Therefore, even though Deputy O'Sullivan had not the exact details, so long as he had the White Paper and had last year's volume of Estimates to refer to, he could not have been at any disadvantage in criticising the policy we have put before the House.

We have been told by him and by other speakers that our policy is one of extravagance. I pointed out that if it was clear that so far as expenditure for the year 1936-37 was to be compared with the expenditure for which provision was made by our predecessors in the year 1931-32, undoubtedly a substantial increase existed. It amounted, as I indicated, to something like £6,500,000. But, as I also indicated in the closing stages of my speech, introducing this Vote on Account, this increased expenditure was wholly incurred by the provision which we are making for old-age pensions, for houses, for widows' and orphans' pensions, for schools, and the rest of those very desirable social services.

I challenge the Opposition to tell the House which one of those services they proposed to curtail, and in respect of which of them they accused us of extravagance. Deputy O'Sullivan says that we are extravagant. Are we to assume from that that the Opposition feels that it is extravagant, in the year 1936-37, to provide £710,000 more for old age pensions than was provided in the year 1931-32? Or that it is extravagant to provide £90,000 for milk for necessitious children? Or that it is extravagant to provide almost three-quarters of a million in grants to private persons and to local authorities to encourage the building of houses for the working people, and not merely for the working-class people, but for people of the lower middle class-the clerical workers and the people of comparatively small incomes who have been almost wholly neglected under the previous Administration?

Are we to be told that to the Opposition these things are extravagances, and that if they come into power they will immediately proceed to shut down these useful and beneficial services? If they are not going to do that, then what is the point in Deputy O'Sullivan's charge? If they do not regard these things as extravagant, if they do not propose to dispense with these services, if the country should ever return them to power again, why do they not be honest about it and say: "If you displace the Fianna Fáil Government at the next general election and put us into power, we will not cut down one penny piece of expenditure in respect to these services; the work must go on, and your Estimates will be, not £21,921,000, as they were when we were in power in 1931-32, but will certainly be not less than £27,514,000 which the present Government has proposed for the coming year"?

You will notice that the whole substance of the Deputy's speech was one of apology—apology for not being able seriously to attack or criticise the Estimates that have been put before the House. The first was that he had not got the volume of Estimates in time. His next excuse was that the volume of Estimates did not disclose the true position in regard to expenditure. In my opening statement, I warned the House and the country generally against the acceptance of the view, which was generally expressed in the papers this morning, that our present volume of Estimates represented a net decrease of £823,000, I think. I was very careful to point out that that figure had to be reduced by two very significant items—a sum of £295,000 which was included in last year's Estimates in respect of the bounty to be paid on wheat under the Cereals Act of 1934, and the sum of £370,000 which the House will be asked to vote later in respect of an additional supplementary grant, and that, therefore, the net decrease on last year's Estimates was not the sum of £820,000 odd, which appeared to be generally taken, but was £158,000.

I did not mention that as a figure to be apologised for. I did not mention that as an economy which had to be apologised for. I gave that figure so that the House would know exactly where we stood and would appreciate what additional sum had to be allowed for in order to arrive at a real estimate of the expenditure upon which next year's Budget will be based. I was concealing nothing from the House. There was no foundation whatever for the flimsy excuse which Deputy O'Sullivan put forward that he could not criticise our proposals because he had not full information as to what the Government's expenditure on supply services was probably going to be. I gave him every opportunity. I placed all the figures I had at his disposal, and yet he was able to make nothing of them.

He asked us what policy has the Government and he proceeded to give the answer. Its only policy was that there should be no settlement with Great Britain. I think the Deputy was mistaken. There is no person on these benches, no member of the Executive Council from the President down, who has not stated categorically that he is very anxious for a settlement, and a permanent and lasting settlement, with Great Britain, a settlement that will restore normal conditions of trade and will lead to friendly relations with our neighbours. If Deputy O'Sullivan had cast his mind back to the debate that took place on Wednesday and Thursday of last week, he would know that the present policy of the Opposition is that there should be no agreement with Great Britain, and I am afraid that that was the line taken by Deputy MacEoin to-night. They opposed the pact because they said there should be no settlement with Great Britain. They made no bones about it. They realised that, if this pact were agreed to, their occupation would be gone, and they would be no longer in a way to cry up the British cause and our own down.

Deputy Dillon followed in the footsteps of Deputy O'Sullivan. We had a most amusing speech from Deputy Dillon. It reminded me of a quotation from a poem of Pope's about the wounded snake that drags its slow length along. It took about an hour and three-quarters to go along, and in the course of it we had a disquisition about animal dietetics, which was diversified by a lecture on the proper manner of rearing a baby. The great difficulty in dealing with Deputy Dillon is, that his speeches are so rambling, so diffuse, and so utterly devoid of any central idea, that it is quite impossible to find a solid argument against which one's mind can impinge in order to present a reasoned case against him. He talked about feeding mixtures, baby foods, and Gaeltacht patterns, and the proper way to design clothes, so that they would appeal to leaders of fashion across the Atlantic. I thought of an epigram that was once applied to a learned Don in Oxford. It was said of him that knowledge was his forte, but omniscience was his foible. I think that it is clear in regard to Deputy Dillon, that ignorance is his fault, but omniscience is his foible.

Deputy Dillon was followed by Deputy Anthony, whose speech was just as devoid of ideas as most of the speeches from that gentleman. One of the things he said was that it was commonly believed by the circles in which he moves that the only people who have money in this country are the people who draw their incomes from the Secret Service Fund. The total amount of the Secret Service Vote in the year 1931-32 was £10,000, and for the year 1936-37 it is £20,000. This Secret Service money must have miraculous properties, according to Deputies opposite. It must be able to multiply itself after the manner of the loaves and fishes, for, according to Deputy Anthony, this Secret Service money furnishes the income of everybody in the country who is popularly reputed to be a man of substance. Deputy MacEoin, in dealing with the same matter, describes that money as the Government's pocket money. I am sure that Deputy MacEoin really does not agree with that himself. It seems to be a witty and smart thing to say, but it has very distasteful implications. It would seem to imply that this money is a sort of slush fund. The Deputy wanted to have certain information as to the manner in which this money is expended. It is expended under this Government in exactly the same way as it was expended under the Government of our predecessors. It is spent on the certificate of two Ministers to the effect that it is used only for the proper purposes of the Secret Service; used to secure for the Government such information as will enable it to discharge properly its responsibilities in regard to the preservation of law and order and the safety of the State. There is not one penny of this money used in any other way, and nobody is more cognisant of that fact than Deputy MacEoin. This money is spent properly and for the purpose for which the Dáil has voted it, and there is no person with any knowledge of the practical necessities of government who would for a moment suggest that in a country like ours it would be possible to dispense with the Secret Service Vote. Our predecessors did not find it possible to do so. We do not find it possible to do so, and I am perfectly satisfied that our successors will find themselves in the same position.

Deputy MacEoin and Deputy Lynch touched on the question of pensions and referred to that subject in a manner which was agreeably different to that in which Deputy Anthony referred to it. They were rather pressing that the expenditure in connection with military service pensions ought to be speeded up, and Deputy MacEoin went so far as to say, and was joined by Deputy Lynch in the assertion, that the increased provision we have made in that Estimate was merely a matter of bluff; that it was put in there to lead people to believe that the pensions for which they were waiting with some anxiety would be granted during the coming year. Well, it is hoped that the operations of the Military Service Pensions Board will be speeded up, and that it will be possible to consider a much greater number of applications than it was last year and to grant certificates in a much greater number of cases. But the real reason for the increased provision in the Vote is this: that these pensions are payable as from the 1st October, 1934, and unless we are going to get a situation similar in nature to that which we found awaiting us in regard to the teachers' pensions, we must begin to make substantial provision for these pensions as from the 1st October, 1934. Therefore, in the present year, in addition to the amount which is being provided in respect of pensions already granted, there is an additional provision of something like £286,000 for charges which are likely to accrue during the year in respect of pensions which will date back to the 1st October, 1934.

Deputy Lynch delivered what I think was a real full dress Estimate speech in regard to this matter and criticised the operations of the board. He was good enough to admit, and I appreciate the candour and good feeling with which he discussed the whole matter, that the circumstances under which these applications had to be examined in the years 1935 and 1936 made the examination much more difficult than the examination which took place over ten years ago in respect of the pensions granted under the 1924 Act. Now, none of us wants to see any person, no matter which side he fought on in the civil struggle, who was properly entitled to a pension under the Military Service Pensions Act, deprived of the rights which the State and the nation have been good enough to confer upon him, but at the same time I am perfectly certain that none of us wants to see any of this pensions Vote go to people who are not properly entitled to it. There are great difficulties in administering the 1934 Act, difficulties in assessing rank and in securing satisfactory proof of service. The investigations have, possibly, been a little more complicated and a little more prolonged than under the earlier Act, but it is not true to say that the Pensions Board has not been dealing with these cases expenditiously. I am speaking now from memory, but I think I remember a reply which the Minister for Defence gave to a question addressed to him three or four weeks ago on this matter. He pointed out that almost 1,100 applications had already been considered, and that military service certificates had been granted in 1,000 or over 1,000 cases. It is true that in connection with these matters the earlier stages are the more difficult. Principles have to be laid down and a common measure of assessment has to be agreed upon, but once that has been done, once the spade work has been done, the examination of these applications will go on with increasing rapidity, and I have no doubt that within a reasonable period of time all the applications which are well-founded will have been dealt with, and that military service certificates will have been granted to those who are properly entitled to them.

In the meantime when, as I have indicated, our probable requirements under these Pensions Acts become better defined, we shall have to make increasing provision each year to meet them, and this year we are providing, in addition to the amount which will be required to meet the pensions which have already been granted, a sum of £286,000. It may be necessary, and I want to warn the House of this, to increase that amount during the coming year, and, certainly, I think it will be necessary to increase it next year.

Would the Minister say if the people who are entitled to get pensions have received intimation that the payment of the pensions will be retrospective? If they were told that it would ease their minds considerably.

It is in the Act, and they ought to know. I do not know whether they realise it or not, but one of the conditions under which a pension is granted is that it will be payable as from the 1st October, 1934.

I know that a lot of these people are very uneasy about the matter.

Of course, the Deputy knows that in a case like this a person would be uneasy until he was certain that he had the pension. There is one other point I want to deal with before I conclude, and that is Deputy Bennett's statement that if any industry is in a parlous condition it is the bacon industry. I do not know what foundation Deputy Bennett has for that statement. I do not know what knowledge he has of the bacon industry. I do not know what papers he reads. He comes from the south. As one of the representatives of the constituency of the County Limerick, I assume that he sometimes gets the Cork Examiner or, possibly, if he wants the whole truth, he gets the Irish Press. In any event, I cannot understand any Deputy who is a subscriber to the Cork Examiner and who read the issue for Monday last making the statement which Deputy Bennett made here to-night. I do not think that anyone would ascribe undue bias in our favour to the Cork Examiner. I do not think that even Deputy O'Neill would ascribe any undue bias in our favour to the Cork Farmers' Union; but I have here a cutting from the Cork Examiner which is headed:—

"A Great Year

The Cork Farmers' Union Abattoir

Fifth Annual General Meeting."

I am sure that Deputy O'Neill has read this report of a very interesting meeting, and I am perfectly certain that, having read it, he has already drawn Deputy Bennett's attention to the inaccurate statement to which he committed himself in the House to-day and begged him to take the earliest opportunity of correcting it. Because this is a very interesting statement. We have heard Deputy Dillon attack the general policy of the Government, time after time, in relation to the bacon industry. Deputy Dillon poses as an authority on the subject, possibly because he happens to be associated, I think, with the Claremorris bacon factory, and he has given the House the impression that, so far as he is concerned with the bacon industry in Claremorris, it is on its last legs; on its "trotters," so to speak; but it is rather strange that while the factory with which Deputy Dillon is associated seems to be having such a hard time, the Clork Farmers' Union Abattoir has had, according to the report in the Cork Examiner, a great year. If there is any difference in the fortunes of the two concerns it cannot be ascribed entirely, as Deputy Dillon would ascribe it, to the faulty provisions of the Pigs and Bacon Act. There may be a little question of management involved in the issue, it may be possible that down in Cork they are blessed with better management than they are say in Claremorris, but I do not know. I am only taking Deputy Dillon at his word. Assuming that things are really so bad with that element of the industry with which he is associated, that he feels justified in making the statements he makes in the House from time to time in regard to it, let us hear what some other people have to say on this matter. The Chairman of Cork Farmers' Union Abattoir is Mr. T. O'Sullivan. As Deputy O'Donovan is in the House, I am sure Mr. O'Sullivan is well known to him, and he can contradict me if I am wrong, when I say that I do not think Mr. T. O'Sullivan could by any manner of means be described as a supporter of the present Government or an admire of their policy. Here is what Mr. O'Sullivan has to say about the Pigs and Bacon Act:—

"You are aware," the chairman continued, "that the bacon trade is now very largely controlled by the pigs and Bacon Act, which came into operation at the beginning of October. Certain disadvantages result for us from that control, principally the fixing of limits on our production, and on the progress we had been making in that respect, but there are definite advantages which go some way to counter-balancing the disadvantages. For instance, we can now arrange a definite working programme for a month ahead, based on the allocation given us for production and for home and British sales, and thus we are largely enabled to make reasonable alignment between output and costings. The benefit that must inevitably accrue from this advantage in reserved for the ultimate service of the members of the society."

A complete refutation of all the arguments that the House had listened to ad nauseam from Deputy Dillon, and from Deputy Bennett, on this subject. The chairman, having moved the adoption of the statement of accounts and balance sheet, Mr. D. O'Connor seconded. Again I appeal to Deputy O'Donovan or to Deputy O'Neill: Is Mr. D. O'Connor a supporter of the present Government?

"Mr. O'Connor expressed delight at the excellent report in this time of crisis. He inquired what the total turnover this year amounted to.

Mr. Cussen said in 1933 the turnover was £137,000; in 1934 it was £193,000——"

In parenthesis may I mention that he led the farmers whom he said could not pay their annuities when on lorries they forced their way into Marsh's yard,

"——and in 1935 it was £227,000."

Deputy Bennett said that if there was any industry in a parlous condition in this country it was the becon industry.

"Mr. P.J. Halliden joined in the general chorus of congratulation and characterised the report as one of the finest reports they had head for a long time on the farming industry. It showed that properly conducted co-operation could be of material assistance to the farming community. A year of doubt and uncertainty had been turned into one of profit for the organisation."

I do not think it is necessary to paint the lily and to go further. Deputy MacEion complained that the Vote for unemployment assistance had been reduced. It has been slightly reduced by about £89,000, but that reduction is merely a repercussion of the improving conditions in this country, an improvement that was manifest in the report of the Cork Farmers' Union Abattoir and Marketing, Limited, and in the speeches of those persistent enthusiastic and Zealous opponents of the present Government, and of its policy and indeed of gentlemen some of whom have been over-zealous, for they went so far as to break the law, and to find themselves in prison owing to the unreasonable attitude they took up in regard to the new agricultural economy which the Government have set on foot.

Question put and agreed to.
Resolution reported.
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