Committee on Finance—Vote On Account.

Minister for Finance (Mr. MacEntee)

I move:

Go ndeontar i gcuntas suim nách mó ná £10,490,000 chun no mar chabhair chun íoctha na Muirear a thiocfaidh chun bheith iníoctha i rith na bliana dar críoch an 31adh lá de Mhárta, 1938, i gcóir seirbhísí áirithe puiblí, eadhon:—

		£
2	An tOireachtas	28,400
3	Roinn Uachtarán na hArd-Chomhairle	4,400
4	An tArd-Scrúdóir	6,000
5	Oifig an Aire Airgid	22,900
6	Oifig na gCoimisinéirí Ioncuim	269,500
7	Pinsin tSean-Aoise	1,150,000
8	Deolchairí Cúitimh	3,400
9	Coimisiúin agus Fiosrúcháin Speisialta	3,600
10	Oifig na nOibreacha Puiblí	39,100
11	Oibreacha agus Foirgintí Puiblí	325,800
12	Saotharlann Stáit	2,570
13	Coimisiún na Stát-Sheirbhíse	8,000
14	Cúiteamh i gCailliúna Maoine	16,000
15	Cúiteamh i nDíobhála Pearsanta	300
16	Aois-Liúntaisí agus Liúntaisí Fágála	148,000
17	Rátaí ar Mhaoin an Rialtais	32,300
18	An tSeirbhis Sheicréideach	6,700
19	Coimisiún na nDleacht	1,800
20	Costaisí fén Acht Timpeal Toghachán, agus fé Acht na nGiúirithe	Nil
21	Costaisí Ilghnéitheacha	2,500
22	Páipéarachas agus Clódóireacht	53,000
23	Measadóireacht agus Suirbhéireacht Teorann	10,440
24	Suirbhéi reacht an Ordonáis	10,630
25	Deontaisí Breise Talmhaíochta	450,000
26	Dlí-Mhuirearacha	22,500
27	Longlann Inis Sionnach	3,200
28	Príomh-Scoileanna agus Coláistí	79,650
29	Forbairt Chadhnraide Leictreachais	16,000
30	Oifig an tSaor-Chíosa	1,250
31	Bainistí Stoc Rialtais	15,320
32	Oifig an Aire Dlí agus Cirt	12,500
33	Gárda Síochána	664,000
34	Príosúin	25,000
35	Cúirt Dúithche	12,900
36	Cúirt Uachtarach agus Ard-Chúirt an Bhreithiúnais	16,500
37	Oifig Chlárathachta na Talmhan agus Oifig Chlárathachta na nDintiúirí	16,000
38	An Chúirt Chuarda	17,000
39	Oifig na nAnnálacha Puiblí	1,630
40	Tabhartaisí agus Tiomanta Déirciúla	850
41	Rialtas Aitiúil agus Sláinte Puiblí	415,300
42	Oifig an Ard-Chlárathóra	4,200
43	Gealtlann Dúndroma	5,000
44	Arachas Sláinte Náisiúnta	98,000
45	Oifig an Aire Oideachais	59,400
46	Bun-Oideachas	1,350,000
47	Meadhon-Oideachas	144,390
48	Ceárd-Oideachas	87,950
49	Eolaíocht agus Eladha	17,250
50	Scoileanna Ceartúcháin agus Saothair	55,000
51	An Gailerí Náisiúnta	3,000
52	Talmhaíocht	212,450
53	Iascach	13,920
54	Tailte	702,600
55	Foraoiseacht	51,000
56	Seirbhísí na Gaeltachta	37,000
57	Tionnscal agus Tráchtáil	155,700
58	Seirbhísí Iompair agus Meteoraíochta	24,780
59	An Bínse Bóthair larainn	950
60	Muir-Sheirbhís	3,207
61	Arachas Díomhaointis agus Congnamh Díomhaointis	400,000
62	Oifig Chlárathachta Mhaoine Tionnscail agus Tráchtála	4,970
63	Puist agus Telegrafa	770,000
64	Fóirleatha Nea-shrangach	20,500
65	An tArm	531,900
66	Arm-Phinsin	200,860
67	Ghóthaí Coigríche	30,500
68	Cumann na Náisiún	4,300
69	Scéimeanna Fostaíochta	750,000
70	Deolchairí agus Conganta Airgid um Easportáil	750,000
71	Iasachtaí Coigríche Dháil Eireann d'Aisíoc	2,900
72	Pinsin do Bhaintreacha agus do Dhílleachtaithe	83,333
	An tIomlán	10,490,000

That a sum not exceeding £10,490,000 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, 1938, for certain public services, namely:—

		£
2	Oireachtas	28,400
3	Department of the President of the Executive Council	4,400
4	Comptroller and Auditor General	6,000
5	Office of the Minister for Finance	22,900
6	Office of the Revenue Commissioners	269,500
7	Old Age Pensions	1,150,000
8	Compensation Bounties	3,400
9	Commissions and Special Inquiries	3,600
10	Office of Public Works	39,100
11	Public Works and Buildings	325,800
12	State Laboratory	2,570
13	Civil Service Commission	8,000
14	Property Losses Compensation	16,000
15	Personal Injuries Compensation	300
16	Superannuation and Retired Allowances	148,000
17	Rates on Government Property	32,300
18	Secret Service	6,700
19	Tariff Commission	1,800
20	Expenses under the Electoral Act, and the Juries Act	Nil
21	Miscellaneous Expenses	2,500
22	Stationery and Printing	53,000
23	Valuation and Boundary Survey	10,440
24	Ordnance Survey	10,630
25	Supplementary Agricultural Grants	450,000
26	Law Charges	22,500
27	Haulbowline Dockyard	3,200
28	Universities and Colleges	79,650
29	Electrical Battery Development	16,000
30	Quit Rent Office	1,250
31	Management of Government Stocks	15,320
32	Office of the Minister for Justice	12,500
33	Gárda Síochána	664,000
34	Prisons	25,000
35	District Court	12,900
36	Supreme Court and High Court of Justice	16,500
37	Land Registry and Registry of Deeds	16,000
38	Circuit Court	17,000
39	Public Record Office	1,630
40	Charitable Donations and Bequests	850
41	Local Government and Public Health	415,300
42	General Register Office	4,200
43	Dundrum Asylum	5,000
44	National Health Insurance	98,000
45	Office of the Minister for Education	59,400
46	Primary Education	1,350,000
47	Secondary Education	144,390
48	Technical Instruction	87,950
49	Science and Art	17,250
50	Reformatory and Industrial Schools	55,000
51	National Gallery	3,000
52	Agriculture	212,450
53	Fisheries	13,920
54	Lands	702,600
55	Forestry	51,000
56	Gaeltacht Services	37,000
57	Industry and Commerce	155,700
58	Transport and Meteorological Services	24,780
59	Railway Tribunal	950
60	Marine Service	3,207
61	Unemployment Insurance and Unemployment Assistance	400,000
62	Industrial and Commercial Property Registration Office	4,970
63	Posts and Telegraphs	770,000
64	Wireless Broadcasting	20,500
65	Army	531,900
66	Army Pensions	200,860
67	External Affairs	30,500
68	League of Nations	4,300
69	Employment Schemes	750,000
70	Export Bounties and Subsidies	750,000
71	Repayment of Dáil Eireann External Loans	2,900
72	Widows' and Orphans' Pensions	83,333
	Total	10,490,000

The purpose of the Vote on Account, as the Dáil is aware, is to enable sums to be made available for the carrying on of what are termed the Supply Services during the interval in every financial year which must elapse before the Dáil has had an opportunity of discussing each Supply Service Estimate in detail and passing it. Normally, the greater part of the first four months of the financial year has elapsed before all such Estimates have been considered by the Dáil, and before the annual Appropriation Act has become law, and it is therefore customary to provide in the Vote on Account sufficient moneys to cover the working of the various Departments and services for a period of four months. The amount necessary, accordingly, is, in most cases, one-third of the Estimate, but in certain cases where special circumstances exist a departure from that fraction is necessary and the necessary modifications in the fraction have been made, accordingly, in those Estimates in which such a departure is unavoidable.

The total net provision to be made for the Supply Service Estimates for the coming financial year is £29,262,269, and, as may be seen from the general abstract of the Estimates which is included in the volume circulated to Deputies this figure shows a net increase of £49,251 over that of last year.

I think I ought to direct the attention of the House for a moment or two to this figure of £49,251. I have seen it stated that it has been "calculated by an erroneous and fallacious comparison" that, actually, "as compared with the corresponding figures of a year ago, the present Supply Estimates represent an increase of no less than £1,740,486." The first of these statements raises a grave issue for, in so many words, it charges the Executive with issuing in an official publication figures in regard to this important matter of public expenditure which are false, misleading and deceitful. What is the basis for the charge? It is that the table entitled "General Abstract of the Estimates for Public Services for 1937-38," compared with 1936-37, which forms one of the documents prefixed to the details of the Estimate is "erroneous and fallacious." In that General Abstract there is set out in regard to each of the services the estimate, which we have been able to frame, of its cost in the coming year and its estimated cost in the present year. In some cases there are increases; in other cases there are decreases. But the net effect is to show an increase in the estimated cost for 1937-38 of £49,251. How could such an abstract be made upon a basis which would be "erroneous and fallacious" and a knowledge of that fact escape this House? The House knows what has already been provided for each service covered by the Supply Estimate in this year. The House has discussed these Estimates in detail and has voted the sums which are set down here as being the sums which the House is prepared to supply for these public services. If the Estimate is "erroneous or fallacious" it could only be either because it understates or overstates the amount which is required and which has been voted in the present year or because the Estimates, which are submitted for the coming year, are framed upon such a basis that past experience shows them to be deliberately "erroneous and fallacious." When we say that a statement is an erroneous one we imply that it contains errors of fact which vitiate it. I should like that the organ responsible for that grave charge against not merely the Government but the officers of the public service as a whole would tell the country which of the Estimates contains errors or is vitiated by errors? If it should happen to be that we have misstated the figures for the Supply Services in the current year, no doubt the Opposition will call our attention to the fact and, no doubt, the authority which has made itself responsible for this grave statement is prepared to point out in which of the 72 services covered by these Estimates that erroneous statement is made. If, on the other hand, the allegation is that the cost of these services for the coming year will be, according to past experience, much greater than we have set down in the volume as our estimate of the cost, then I suppose the authority which has made itself responsible for levelling this charge against the Executive will not delay in coming forward and giving the specific item or items on which it bases its allegation. Is the charge levelled against the Minister for Local Government and Public Health, whose net Estimate for the coming year is £32,066 higher than it has been for the present year? Or is it against the Minister for Agriculture, whose net Estimate for 1937-38 is £637,350 as compared with a net Estimate of £665,610 for the year 1936-37? Or is it against the Minister for Lands, whose net Estimate for 1937-38 is £1,743,146 as compared with £1,610,821 in the current year? If the charge is levelled against none of these Ministers or, indeed, any other Minister, shall we be told by this august authority that, in fact, no error can be discovered in the abstract of Estimates and that, therefore, this grave allegation against the honour and probity of the Executive is withdrawn?

The second assertion which is being made in regard to Supply Estimates which we are discussing is that they actually show, in comparison with this year's Estimate, an increase of £1,747,000. I wish to say that this statement can be shown by an examination of the printed facts, each of which ought to be within the knowledge of anyone professing to be an authority, to be, in the words of whosoever is responsible for this charge, "erroneous and fallacious." This year, the volume of Supply Estimates in its final form, was available to the House and to the Deputies on the 25th February. Last year, however, on the 3rd March, only a limited number of uncorrected proof copies of the volume were available, and the volume in its final form was not distributed until the 14th March. The Vote on Account, however was taken on this day last year. In moving the Vote on Account on that occasion I said, as reported in volume 60, column 1563:—

"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 the same figure as last year."

It is to be noted that this statement was made before the volume of Estimates was published, and that the footnote mentioned in it was duly appended to Vote 25—Supplementary Agricultural Grants—in the volume as published. It is clear, therefore, that the Dáil, the Press and the public, in so far as the public was kept accurately informed by the organs which profess to serve it, had full knowledge that though the nominal amount for Supply Services was given as £27,514,000 odd, in actual fact it was going to be greater by at least £370,000, as soon as the necessary legislation, which at that time and for several years before had been enacted annually, was passed by the Oireachtas. Everyone interested, therefore, was warned by my statement in the House and by the footnote, and everyone therefore knew, at this date last year, that the expenditure to be provided for was £27,884,000. I presume that a fact so generally known would not be unknown to the author of the statement that "the present Estimates show an increase of no less than £1,747,000 as compared with last year's figures." Yet, the difference between £29,262,000 and £27,864,000 is considerably less than £1,747,000. How, therefore, are we to explain this latter "erroneous and fallacious figure"? I do not propose to ascribe it to ignorance of the facts, but the alternative explanation cannot be any more satisfactory to those who have to make it.

From the same source as this "erroneous and fallacious figure" has come, there have emanated a number of other reflections on the present Estimates which warrant some examination. We are told, for instance —I cite this not because I desire to discuss it at length but to show how, in anxiety to misrepresent the true position in regard to the finances of this State and the public expenditure thereof as in other matters of fundamental importance, the same wanton disregard of published official reports and documents is manifested—that five years ago, taxation was £7,000,000 less than now. The House, of course, knows that reference to the respective White Papers for 1931-32 and 1936-37 and a simple sum in subtraction would show that comparison to be "erroneous and fallacious" by millions of pounds.

What again is to be made of the statement that

"in connection with the Estimates, it is to be observed that the various pensions paid by the State under different headings now reach the colossal total of £4,763,000"?

I do not challenge the accuracy of the figures but I do say that the statement, in the form in which it is made, is a deliberate suggestio falsi. It is “erroneous and fallacious” in the sense that it is intended to be deceptive and deceitful. It is intended to convey to the public mind the implication that almost £5,000,000 is paid out by the State as pensions to former public functionaries, members of the Civil Service, the Army and the Guards. The plain truth is that this aggregate figure includes £3,466,000, odd, for old age pensions, £443,000 for superannuation and retired allowances, £602,000 for Army pensions and £250,000 for widows' and orphans' pensions, so that, of this sum of £4,700,000, no less than £3,700,000 is ascribable not to pensions in the generally accepted sense of the term of pay deferred and earned by years of previous service but to two social services the benefits under which might, with equal accuracy and reason, be described not as “pensions” but as “allowances.”

The implication contained in the statement that

"the various pensions paid under the different headings have now reached the colossal total of £4,763,000"

is that these services ought to be cut and that, of course, the pruning should take place among the more colossal. That, I presume, is the policy of the Opposition because that is the policy of the organ which supports them in the country and that is the policy to which, when they were originally put in office by the people of this country, they gave effect, when the first of their official acts was to reduce some part of this "colossal figure" of, at that time, £3,200,000, which was being paid out for old age pensions and allowances to blind and infirm people.

This year, we may presume, the Opposition will have an opportunity of putting its policy before the country. This year, as in other years, the Party organ which has made this statement—that no less than £4,700,000 is being paid by way of pensions by the State—is going to ask the people to vote for the Opposition, when the plain implication of the statement made in regard to these Estimates and in relation to this particular branch of the social services is that the "colossal figure" ought to be pruned and that, if pruning is to be done, it has got to be done on the larger services. Yesterday, when a measure to amend and extend the original Widows' and Orphans' Pensions Act, which was introduced by this Government, came before the Dáil —a measure which ought to have been passed by the Opposition years ago if what they say about the happy condition of the country when they were in office is true—the Opposition got up and welcomed the measure and the very same organ of the Press which refers to this "colossal expenditure" upon pensions writes a leading article this morning praising the Government and commending it for that Act. Next year, however, that Act is going to cost us an additional £200,000. That additional provision will have to be made in the coming Budget. When the Estimates for 1938-39 come to be published, notwithstanding the enthusiasm which was manifested yesterday in the House and which is manifested this morning in the newspaper to which I have been referring, I have no doubt that we shall be reading in the selfsame editorial columns the statement that "it is to be observed that the various pensions paid by the State under the different headings now reach the colossal total of £4,963,000." Is it not time that we had done with such hypocrisy? The public is sick of the attitude of the Opposition in this House and down the country. To every clamour and every demand made upon the public purse they lend their voice and their assistance but when it comes to a suggestion of paying for it, then we hear a great deal about "the crushing burden of taxation."

Mr. Curran

"that the largest increase is under the title of public works and buildings, a service which will cost the taxpayer £145,136 more than it now costs."

It omitted to mention, however, that this figure is represented mainly by the following items: £150,000 which is being provided for the Shannon airport as against £20,000 in the current year; £70,000 for the Dublin airport as against £10, and £40,000 for the erection and equipment of the new preparatory college at Ballyvourney as against £20,000. It would be very interesting if the critics of the Vote for the Office of Public Works would tell the country which of these items they would propose to delete from the Vote on Account.

As I have said, there is no use criticising expenditure and proclaiming that it is "wanton extravagance" unless those who criticise it have sufficient conviction to vote against it when it is proposed in this House. I do not think that a division has been challenged by the Opposition upon a single proposal relating to the development of aerial navigation and aerial transport in this country. Either the Opposition agree with the policy of the Government in regard to these matters and are prepared to acquiesce in the Government raising the necessary funds and therefore imposing the necessary taxation, or they are opposed to it. If they are in favour of the Government's policy, and, therefore, do not divide the House and oppose it, then they and their supporters in the country at least ought to have the common honesty to state that fact openly, and to say that whenever we make the necessary provision for these developments, and, as I have indicated, imposed the necessary taxation to meet the cost of them, we are justified in doing so. We should hear no more about the size of the Estimates for the public services, and certainly we ought not to be told, as we have been told elsewhere, that, with the exception of a certain other gentleman,

"there is no Government which has so unique a record in fooling the public with promises that were dishonest."

These are new developments. They were not foreseen at the time. These are new social services which our predecessors might have realised the necessity for but which they were not prepared to give effect to. They appeal to the public. The people demand them, and the proof that the people do demand them and do want them is the fact that not once, in regard to the measure for unemployment assistance, in regard to the Bill for extending old age pensions, in regard to the Bills for providing widows' and orphans' pensions—the first Bill and the amending Bill—in regard to the Bill for the development of aerial transport: not once have the Opposition had the courage to demand a division or to oppose any of these measures in this House.

Mr. O'Leary

The Minister said in 1932 that it was too heavy.

Mr. MacEntee

——it is their duty to tell the country plainly and straightforwardly and honestly which of the services they are prepared to forego, which of the services they are going to ask the people to forego. Are they going to stop housing? Are they going to abandon aerial development? Are they going to reduce the Supplementary Agricultural Grant? Are they going to revise the scale of old age pensions and bring the old age pensions down to the level of what they were in 1931-32? Are they going to refuse to provide the £1,500,000 which is being used for employment schemes—or what might be more properly called development schemes—in this country? Are they going to reduce the provision which is being made for local government and public health? It suits them, on occasions, to deplore the housing conditions which exist in this country. These housing conditions did not come into being with the advent of the Fianna Fáil Government to office in 1932. They are the fruit of generations of neglect. The slum problem was here, and in a much more acute form in 1931-32 than it is to-day. At any rate, however, we are facing up to the fact and to the reality that the problem is there and that something must be done to cure it.

If we are going to be told that Ministers are misstating the facts in regard to the economic condition of the country—and I presume that one of the arguments which would be used to substantiate that statement would be that taxation has gone up— I would ask the Minister for Local Government and Public Health, if he speaks in this debate, to tell us this: He knows the extent of the housing problem in Dublin and elsewhere in the country. He was in office when the provision for this Department amounted to £517,000, and to-day it has gone up to £1,259,000. Will the Minister for Local Government and Public Health tell the House, if he speaks in this debate, whether he is going to save on that particular Vote or not, and will he tell us where he is going to economise? Is he going to abolish the grants for milk, or is he going to repeal the Housing Act of 1932 and subsequent Acts and go back——

General Mulcahy

A much simpler cure.

Mr. MacEntee

——to the emasculated measure of 1931? The Deputy speaks of a simple cure. The trouble about simple cures is that one never knows whether they are going to be fatal or not——

General Mulcahy

That was the Minister's cure.

Mr. MacEntee

——but the country that escaped demise under Deputy Mulcahy is, I think, unlikely to revert to his simple remedies.

I see Deputy Roddy, who used to be in charge of the Land Commission. During his period of office in that Department, the amount of the Land Commission Vote was £579,000. This year it is £1,743,000. In other words, it is up by £1,164,000. Will Deputy Roddy, if he comes again into office, go back to the 1931-32 conditions, and will he save no less a sum than £1,164,000? It is a considerable saving. It represents a tax of about 10d. on the tea——

Mr. O'Leary

Tea is a luxury, according to you.

Mr. MacEntee

—— and at least 1¼d. on sugar. Will Deputy Roddy make that saving? Of course, if he says he will, he ought to tell the country that it means that land division is going to be slowed down; that, instead of the Land Commission work being completed in five years, as is now anticipated, it would probably take another generation to do the job; that, not merely that, but all the annuities, under the 1923 Act and later Acts, will be restored to their former level; and that, instead of enjoying the 50 per cent. reduction, as tenant purchasers do now, under the 1933 Act they will have to pay annuities upon the same level as they were paying them prior to the Act of 1933. I think that I am putting fair questions to the Opposition. I think that, in the course of this debate, these are questions to which the Opposition must seriously direct its attention, for these are plain and straight questions to which the public are expecting a plain and straight answer in this debate and during this present year.

Mr. Dillon

Sir, I think the House will agree that that was a pretty tedious performance. It began with an attack upon the Irish Independent.

Let us remember that when the present Minister for Finance took office, he had the Estimates prepared for him by his predecessor. These Estimates, which he presented bore on their cover the sum of £21,921,000. In the last Budget of this Parliament, our Estimates are £29,262,000. That represents an increase of £8,300,000, and even from these, the Estimates for locan loans, which amounted to over £1,000,000, have been taken out. I admit that these figures are complicated and susceptible of misrepresentation. They are useful for bemusing the public mind and confusing it. An unscrupulous Minister for Finance can do that but it is not a good policy either for the Party to which he belongs or for the Minister for Finance himself. It is very much better to tell the people openly and plainly what their commitments are and let them pass judgment. That the Minister has tried to avoid and in so far as the Irish Independent or any other paper directs attention to the chicanery of the Minister in that regard, it is doing a public service.

The Minister says that if the Opposition do not vote against the Vote on Account, they automatically endorse what the present Government stand for. The Minister knows that that is claptrap. The Vote on Account has not been voted against in this House for the last ten years. He was the last person who led such an irresponsible movement into the Lobby. The Vote on Account is the instrument whereby the public services are carried on until such time as an opportunity has been given to study the Estimates with the leisure and the attention which they deserve. I can quite well imagine that the Minister for Finance and the Minister for Industry and Commerce may have gone into the Lobby to vote against such a Vote, but since then they have learned a good deal of sense, and I am happy to say that we have acted no small part in teaching it to them. I believe in doing that that we have done a public service because we have made something that was unbelievably bad into something that is only just third rate.

The last cogent observation of the Minister for Finance in the course of his speech was to the effect that he wondered if Deputy Mulcahy would be in favour of reducing old age pensions by 1/- as Mr. Blythe, the last Minister for Finance, did in the course of his administration. Certainly the Opposition Party to-day are not in favour of that. But I think it relevant in that connection to mention this point, and I take occasion to direct the Minister's special attention to it. I took the trouble to inquire into the domestic budgets of two old age pensioners in County Donegal who are in receipt of the maximum pension. Under the cut made by Mr. Blythe they lost, I think quite unfairly, 2/- between them. They got that back under the Old Age Pensions Act of 1933. This year I got from them the list of goods that the old woman had bought as a weekly food supply, and the shopkeeper from whom she bought them was good enough to open his books to me and we compared the prices that the old couple paid for the foodstuffs they required for a week with the prices that they would have paid for these foodstuffs in 1931.

Mr. Lemass

Why 1931? The cut was not made in 1931.

Mr. Dillon

That was the last year in which the Cumann na nGaedheal Government was in office. The Minister can speak after me and rebut my arguments if he can. I am going to show that the present Government— and he will not put me off this point— is stripping the poor of this country. When I make that point, he can try to rebut it, but he will not be able to get away with his rebuttal. I then compared the purchases made by this old couple this year with the purchases made by them in 1931, and I found that the goods, which consisted exclusively of foodstuffs essential for their existence, cost them 4/3 more in 1936 than it cost them in 1931.

Mr. MacDermot

A week?

Mr. Dillon

Yes.

Mr. Lemass

The cost-of-living index figure must be wrong.

Mr. Dillon

When I say foodstuffs that they required for their subsistence, I include in them 4d. worth of snuff for the old woman. I suppose she could have done without that. According to the Minister for Finance, tea, tobacco and snuff are luxuries that the poor ought not to have, but I regard snuff for an old countrywoman in the West Donegal area as something that it would be a very material hardship to deprive her of. Of course, I live closer to those people than does the Minister for Finance. Anyway, they were 4/3 worse off on these essential commodities. That represents 2/1½ each. Do I do the present Government an injustice if I say that, if we look back with regret on the reduction some years ago of 1/- a week in the old age pension we must contemplate with horror and dismay the reduction of 2/1½ in the old age pension of to-day? Remember that that reduction is being made by the gentlemen who are storming this country telling the people about the awful crime committed in 1924-25, when the 1/- was taken off the old age pensions.

There is no use putting cap or cloak on the fact that I think most of us on these benches regret that reduction of 1/- in the old age pension. But the man who made it, made it with the full knowledge that he could not do a more unpopular thing politically. He did it, having been warned by his supporters that it was tantamount to cutting his throat, politically speaking. He eventually prevailed on his colleagues, and, without counting the political cost, he did it and he paid for it bitterly in political kudos.

The present Government are swaggering round as the Government of the people, the plain people, the Christian Government that loves the poor. Admittedly they restored the 1/- to the old age pension, but then they came like a sneaking thief in the night and they snatch out of the larder the few mouthfuls of food that will bring back to the Exchequer 2/1½ in place of the 1/- that they gave back. Compare the political folly, if I may so term it, of Mr. Blythe, with the political chicanery, the slippery chicanery, of his successor in office, and ask yourselves from the social, the economic, or from any point of view which was the better course for this country.

I referred to the failure on the part of the Minister for Finance, when dwelling on our national expenditure, to address his mind to the question of national income. The two things are indissolubly associated. We have sounded a note of warning more than once that it was criminally wrong to raise the standards of our social services until you had made prudent provision for maintaining them. I want to be perfectly clear on this. It may shock some orthodox economists. My ideal in any State with the public life of which I was associated— and I believe I speak for most of my colleagues in this—would be that everyone in the State would have enough before anybody would be allowed to enjoy a surplus.

So far as I am personally concerned, I offer this challenge to the Minister or the Labour Party or any other Party in the House. Produce a scheme that will effect that ideal and that will work, and I am prepared to campaign the country. I have read a good deal on economics, and I have listened to those learned in the science and who are sympathetically inclined towards the view I now express, but I have yet to hear of anybody who can evolve a scheme which can produce that highly desirable state of affairs. Until such a scheme is available, if we continue to believe in the capitalist system and the system founded on individual liberty and individual enterprise, as all of us most emphatically do, we have to address ourselves to the task of alleviating the evils inherent in that system, and the common generic term for the means taken in democratic countries to alleviate these evils is social services. The more of them we have, the better it will be for the country. The more of the evils arising from a disparity of income amongst our people that are abolished, the better it will be for the country.

But Deputies have to bear in mind that you cannot get things by wishing for them; you cannot have two and two make five by passing an Act of Parliament. There are many Deputies who think you can give 9d. for 4d. if you pass a law to that effect. You may do it for a short time, but if you do, the catastrophe at the end of that kind of policy is going to be infinitely greater than if you never embarked on the policy at all. But you can, by prudently exploiting your natural resources, by snatching every advantage that offers for the people, raise the standard of living for the people steadily and continually, and that should be the object of any Government. And it is because I allege that the present Government have no proper regard for this consideration, that I believe them to be reckless and foolish in much of what they do.

Our external assets are one extremely useful barometer of how the nation goes economically, and the gross external assets of the joint stock banks of this country amounted, in December, 1932, to £142,248,000. In December, 1936, they amounted to £131,624,000. That represents a decrease of £11,000,000 in their value, but those are gross figures. I believe if you take the net figures that the decrease will approximate more closely to £14,000,000 than to £11,000,000. That figure is alarming, but not unduly so. It is capable of explanation. But it does show a trend and it would be well for Deputies to remember that, in considering that figure, they must not only look at its capital element but they must realise that so much of our invisible exports as the interest on that decrease represents are gone. We are not getting the income from our external assets that we used to get, because from £11,000,000 to £14,000,000 of these external assets are gone.

The national capital of this country really consists, not only of our external holdings in stocks and shares, but also of our industrial enterprises in this country, of our land and of the foundation stock of our agricultural industry. Statistics in relation to those four categories are hard to come by, particularly in regard to land and the foundation stock. I want to submit this to the House and I ask their particular attention for it. I say that you have an infinitely greater depreciation of that national asset which is represented by the agricultural land of this country than you have even in the external assets held by the joint stock banks. The greater part of the property of the small farmers of this country is included in the third and fourth categories I have mentioned. I think it is true to say that 80 per cent. of the people in this country are living on the land. Of these people, almost all have their entire assets sunk in their land, their houses and outhouses, and their stock.

I say that the arable land of this country is steadily depreciating and has immensely depreciated in the last four years. I say that fences, drainage, and outbuildings on the farms have depreciated immensely in the last four years and that but for the grants made available under the Gaeltacht Housing Acts that depreciation would be greater even than it is. Remember that the grants from the Gaeltacht Housing Acts may be ignored for the purpose of this argument only. They do not represent profits made by the farmers out of their enterprise and reinvested in the farms. But the improvements financed by profits made out of land have practically ceased and the land is deteriorating from one end of the country to the other. That is evident to anybody who drives through it and who sees rushes where he never saw rushes before, who sees gorse growing on land where gorse was never allowed to take root before, who sees gates and fences broken down and drains filled up, and who sees outhouses falling into disrepair. Unless he is accustomed to living in the country, he will pass these things by, not noting them, because on each individual holding they represent a comparatively insignificant change. But when you realise that that change is taking place on every holding all over the country at the same time you begin to realise that there is capital depreciation going on in this country on an appalling scale which escapes the attention of the majority of the people responsible for the national welfare.

In this same period of five years to which I refer I say that the stock of this country has depreciated in value immensely. In that connection you must note that we are referring to foundation stock and foundation stock consists of the cow population. The cow population in terms of cows has increased; there are more cows in the country now than some years ago. The cow population at present is approximately 1,348,625, that is an increase of 100,000 cows on 1932. But this is a fact that escapes the attention of a great many people. In 1934, at the nadir of the economic war, people were quite unable to sell a rough beast at all. Unless they had something choice to offer, it was not a question of taking a bad price— they could get no price at all. They had to get money to pay the things that were falling due. During that disastrous year the best cattle in this country were brought out and sold for half their value. Out of this country at that time went a flow of good heifers and good cows that it would take a generation to get back, and we now have in this country a larger population of inferior cows.

The cost-of-living index figure, as compiled, is the same. But does not the Minister himself know from his own figures and admissions in this House that the cost of foodstuffs that the unfortunate farmer has to buy are going up? And that is not all. In this year are included the cost of clothes and the cost of coal, both of which the Minister has been responsible for advancing very considerably by his own intervention. There is something missing from these figures, and there is something no statistician can put his finger upon. These figures are compiled on the basis of price, but there is no reference in them to quality. I spoke here of a labouring man from Gloucester Street, or from Mary-borough, who was able to afford the luxury of a cotton singlet and spent up to 2/- on it. He can still be spending 2/- on it to-day, but he is getting to-day for 2/- a singlet he could have bought for 1/- four years ago. That is not in the cost-of-living figure. According to the cost-of-living figure, the price of that cotton vest has not risen at all. But, in fact, the cotton vest he bought four years ago for 2/- would last him for 12 months; the cotton vest he will now buy for 2/- will last him for six months, while the price has gone up by 100 per cent. There is no reference to that in the cost-of-living figure— there never has been—because it is quite impossible to assess variations in quality. The Minister knows that as well as I do. That is repeated time and again in parts of the cost-of-living index statistics, which are heavily weighted for the purpose of getting the final figure. The cost of food in this country has been inflated. Flour is selling at the inflated price of 12/- per sack more than it is selling for in Great Britain. I ask the House to remember this, that the mills in this country are all licensed. There is one mill in Limerick, controlled by a great Liverpool firm, which can to-day buy a cargo of wheat on the Atlantic, and can instruct that boat to call to Limerick to deposit half of the cargo there, and then put to sea again and go around to Liverpool and leave the other half there. These two halves of the same cargo of wheat are then milled into flour, and for every sack of flour milled in Limerick that miller gets 12/- more than he gets for the sack of flour milled from the same wheat in Liverpool. The Minister knows that. He is the Minister who denounced Deputy McGilligan as being the corrupt servant of that particular miller, the fact being that, owing to Deputy McGilligan going out of office, that miller is making 12/- more on the sack of flour than Deputy McGilligan ever allowed him to get. The Irish people are paying it, and this is the Minister, the champion of the Irish people, and the hammer of the miller and of his predecessor in office, who was the paid slave of the miller, and the hammer of the Irish people. When we get to that stage, we have got to the stage when "yes" means "no," and "no" means "yes." These are the kind of things that are happening at the present time. To-day the Government choses to close its eyes to that, and its supporters refuse to see, and no man is so blind as the man who will not see what is under his nose.

It was 6/11, and remained at that figure approximately, or 7/-.

Mr. Moore

Was it only 7/- a barrel?

Mr. Dillon

The Minister can confirm it.

A lot of people will say, "Oh, but that sugar beet gives us sugar, and national security, and the farmer only gets £2 10s. more out of mangolds or turnips. Is it not a good thing to have him sowing beet?" But those people forget that the farmer gets £20 out of mangolds without getting a penny from the Exchequer at all. The farmer who is getting £17 10s. out of beet is getting from the Government a subsidy of £24 an acre. When the farmer delivers his beet to the factory he gets £17 10s., but when the factory comes to unload it they find sitting on the top of every acre of beet delivered to the factory six-and-a-half notes put there by the Government. They get the beet for nothing and £6 10s. into the bargain for being kind enough to open the door and take it in. Compare that crop with other crops as a substitute for the things of which the farmers have been robbed. Deputy Corry will say, "If you are going to knock the bottom out of beet, what about wheat?" Deputy Allen, the expert from Wexford, said that wheat grown in this country is superior to Manitoba No. 1. When he has said that, there is no necessity to listen to him any more.

Now we come to the men who are a little nearer to earth, the sons of the soil; we come to Deputy Corry. Will Deputy Corry deny that last year some of the men who sowed winter wheat and farmed it well got a yield as low as five barrels to the acre? Will Deputy Corry deny that if the wheat last year was bushelled in accordance with the regulations laid down under the Wheat Act, half the farmers of this country would not have got paid for it at all? Will Deputy Corry deny that he knows of men who tilled their land well, sowed it and cultivated it well, got a crop of wheat off it, and lost money last year? I do not think he will. Will Deputy Corry deny that where a man was able to get out, having sown oats or barley, a man similarly circumstanced who sowed wheat was absolutely ruined—that the weather was so adverse last year that it crippled many a good farmer who put his land under wheat? Will Deputy Corry deny that this year, if we had achieved his ambition of having 800,000 acres of wheat in this country we would have to face one of the greatest agricultural catastrophes that ever overtook this country? Imagine, if we had 800,000 acres prepared for winter wheat now there would not be 200,000 acres sown. People in many parts of this country were not able to get the wheat into the land, and any quantity of winter wheat sown now will never ripen. You can sow certain varieties of spring wheat up to the middle of April, but if there were 800,000 acres under wheat to-day there would be hundreds of thousands of acres ploughed and harrowed, and no man would be able to sow wheat on them. They may not be even harrowed because the horses would not be able to get in to do the necessary work of preparing the seed bed. It is for those reasons I say that wheat is so precarious a crop, so dangerous a crop. It is slavish to put our people on it and waste all our good land on its cultivation. I know a man, a friend of a Deputy in this House, who spent more on seeds, manure and cultivation than he got out of the wheat crop last year. He lost money, even at the increased price made available for him by the Government in the heel of the hunt.

How does all that come about? It comes about very simply. Let us look at the story that is told of our trade with Great Britain as compared with the other States members of the British Commonwealth of Nations in 1932. During the years 1925, 1926 and up to 1930, the trade of all the States members of the Commonwealth of Nations with Great Britain was falling. Then we come to the Imperial Conference at Ottawa. From that moment the trade of Canada began to rise; the trade of New Zealand went up; the trade of Australia shot up, but the trade of the Irish Free State went steadily down. It is dramatic, if you look at the graph, to see how the line representing the trade of all those other countries turns sharply upwards, but the line representing that of the Irish Free State goes steadily downwards. Those figures that I am about to quote are approximate. Our exports to Great Britain in 1931 would be about £37,000,000. They had dropped in 1933 to £17,500,000, and they went up in 1936 to approximately £21,000,000. That is the picture for the Irish Free State—a heavy drop, and then a very slow, flattened out increase. What is the picture for Canada? In 1931 Canada exported to Great Britain approximately £32,000,000 worth of goods. In 1936 Canada exported to Great Britain £75,000,000 worth of goods. The picture for Canada is a deep decline in 1932 and then an uninterrupted rise. What is the picture for Australia? In 1931 they exported to Great Britain about £46,000,000 worth of goods——

Mr. O'Leary

They were not playing bridge while they were in Ottawa.

Mr. Dillon

——and in 1936 they exported to Great Britain about £62,000,000 worth of goods. Here again there is a steady rise. Take the case of New Zealand. In 1931 they exported to Great Britain about £36,000,000 worth—very much what we ourselves were doing. New Zealand and ourselves stood almost together in 1931 in our exports to Great Britain. In 1936 New Zealand sent to Great Britain £44,000,000 worth of goods, and we sent £21,000,000 worth. We stood together in 1931 and, since then, New Zealand is sending £2 worth of goods for every £1 worth we send.

Mr. Lemass

I hope we are making more profit out of it than New Zealand.

Mr. Dillon

New Zealand seems to like it. I can guarantee the Minister one thing: New Zealand is making more profit on her exports to Great Britain than we are making on our exports to Valencia or to Belgium. The Minister can go into those figures and satisfy his mind about them. He can invite the German buyer who patronises our cattle market to say what he is paying for the best Irish cattle near Grangegorman every week, and he can ask him, the next time he bids for cattle there, if he thinks he is in the lunatic asylum or in the city market, because that buyer must think he has found his way into the lunatic asylum when he finds himself in our market and our farmers selling cattle to him at the prices they will take for cattle at present.

We missed our chance at Ottawa, and I want to ask the Minister for Finance this question, if he knows anything about the general policy of the Government to which he belongs: Are we going to the Imperial Conference in London this year, or are we not? Can the Minister tell us that, because it is vital that this country should know? The Minister will spring to his feet and start reading returns about the imports of pianos and clock and china ornaments, and say that, when he goes to the pictures in the evening, he sees every evidence of wealth and prosperity about him and that the country looks to him to be blooming. That is the phenomenon which was exactly reproduced in Australia just before Australia went bankrupt and had to renege on all her external loans and reduce her currency. Anybody living there will tell you that the cities of Adelaide, Melbourne and Sydney were booming. Why? Because the country had become so impoverished that the people left the land and came into the cities. They could not get a living on the land and they came to the cities, and you had the extraordinary phenomenon of the cities being on an expanding scale while the country itself was perishing at the same time.

Mr. Lemass

We have more people on the land than we had in 1931. The reverse has happened here.

Mr. Dillon

The Minister has a gift for absolutely ignoring the statistics available to his own Department as no other Minister in the Administration has. He will have plenty of time to answer me and I urge him to do so. Let me remind him, however, that at the present time the people are notoriously flying from the land. They are coming to the cities and flying to Great Britain. I admit that a person living in Dublin would never realise what was the condition of affairs in rural Ireland. Dublin is comparatively prosperous, but I now assert and I challenge any Deputy representing any rural constituency to deny, that the standard of people living on the land is steadily going down. There are parts of Ireland at present in which a lower standard of living obtains for the ten to 50 acre farmer than has obtained here since 1879.

The Coal-Cattle Pact has just been published and, admittedly, it has brought a considerable amount of relief to the horse breeders, but so far as coal and cattle are concerned what benefit has it produced for our people? It has produced one concrete result and that is that the British Government said: "Look here, if we are going to take the tariff off horses, you will have to send us so many more cattle so that we will get back on the cattle what we lose on the horses" and, accordingly, the Minister for Agriculture has arranged and measured the extra number of cattle he has to send in order to ensure every penny which the British Government claims being paid in tariffs on them. In order to enjoy the privilege of transferring a sufficient number of cattle to Great Britain to pay the annuities, he has undertaken to induce our people to buy more coal than ever before. If you can get the tariff off horses by negotiation, if you can negotiate the tariff off horses, why can you not negotiate the tariff off cattle and pigs? If it is no breach of principle, if it is no selling of your lofty principles, to get the tariff off horses, how can it betray lofty principles to get the tariff off cattle and pigs? You have said to the British Government: "We would sooner pay the annuities through pigs and cattle rather than partially through horses" and the British Government said: "Certainly. We do not care how you pay so long as you pay," whereupon you said: "Oh, we do not owe them and we will never admit that we owe them, but, by-the-by, we would sooner pay them through cattle than through horses." That is in order that the President can get up here, and, looking like a male Caitlin Ní Houlihan, say: "We will never surrender."

I suggest that if you are going to stand on that ground, the sensible thing to say to the British Government is: "We will never pay—not a penny; but seeing that we are going to pay, although we will never pay, we would sooner pay it by cheque than through cattle and pigs." You can lodge a strong protest. You can send over 12 cheques, one every month, and say every month: "We protest most emphatically and we deny your right to accept this payment; we assert that we will take every step we can to prevent your getting it but we would sooner not pay it through cattle and pigs"—that is only if the President is going to maintain the position of a male Caithlin Ní Houlihan. If, on the other hand, he is going to show an altogether unexpected vein of common sense, I suggest he should go to the British Government and say: "Look here, we have been fighting for the last five years over this. It has hurt you and it has hurt us and it is better for all parties that we should make an end of it. Seeing that you will not admit that you are a fraud, a rogue and a thief; seeing that you will not agree with us that the first President of the Executive Council of Saorstát Eireann is a dirty rogue, a fraud and a thief who robbed his own people, who betrayed his trust, sacrificed his honour and prostituted his word before the whole word—we should like you to agree and we have tried to persuade you that that was so for the last five years—if you will not agree in putting out that kind of information for world consumption about the first President of the Executive Council of Saorstát Eireann, we will not insist on it, but we do suggest, seeing that you cannot see our view and we cannot see yours that we should make a compromise. Let neither side insist on getting all they claim to be their due, but let us get the trouble out of the way." If they do that, is there any rational man in this House who does not believe that a compromise can be arrived at?

There is no question now of giving anything away. You are giving away every penny that is claimed and a great deal more. The British Government are actually collecting more money than they at present claim themselves. Suppose they stood for the last penny, they will take less than you are already giving them, but it is certain that, as they have frequently said, they are prepared to make a deal along the lines of compromise. Why can that not be done? Why is it so important to the Government to maintain the thesis that the men who laid the foundations of this State and carried it on for ten years were traitors to their trust, betrayed the people, dishonoured their word and sold this country for no consideration? Why must their desire to perpetuate that slander stand in the way of settling this business for the benefit of the Irish people?

I tell you that the standard of living of our people is going down. The Minister says that the consumption of manufactured goods is going up. Will he repeat that statement now in regard to boots and shoes?

Mr. Lemass

Certainly.

General Mulcahy

What? I believe the Minister would.

Mr. Dillon

I say now that the standard of living of the people is going down. We have warned the people who are interested in industry in this country repeatedly that if agriculture is allowed to perish, sooner or later industry will feel the repercussions of that. I say that the boot and shoe trade, owing to the decreased consumptive capacity for boots and shoes of our agricultural population, is going to feel the backwash at no far distant date. The symptoms of that backwash may alarm and disturb those who are most concerned with the industrial revival in this country, but I warn the House now that if that decline in agriculture is allowed to continue, those symptoms will manifest themselves, not only in the boot and shoe trade, but in every other trade which caters for the consumption of the Irish community. The plain facts are that the prosperity of this country, its industries and social services depend not on Arigna coal which does not exist, nor on Wicklow gold which has not yet been found, but——

Mr. Briscoe

That is not true. Just look at what I have in my hand.

Mr. Dillon

What is that?

Mr. Briscoe

Wicklow gold. The Deputy should talk about what he knows something about.

Mr. Dillon

The prosperity of this country rests ultimately on the 12,000,000 acres of arable land and the profitable exploitation thereof. Deputy Corry rejoices that the home market has been preserved for the farmers who live on that land. Now we have to remember that 5,000,000 acres of our land will provide all the foodstuffs— beet, wheat, potatoes and everything else—that we require, or all the foodstuffs that the Irish people can consume. You have got to sell the produce of the remaining 7,000,000 acres profitably or this State is going to perish; the social services for which this House is going to be responsible are going to collapse unless we can sell profitably the produce of the remaining 7,000,000 acres. Unless we can do that, every industry founded in this State before the advent of the present Government, and every industry founded in this State since the advent of the present Government, is going to collapse. The only way in which you can exploit that 7,000,000 acres profitably is by getting the British market. You can get the British market at the present time by going to the British and pointing out to them that they have got to get foodstuffs in time of war. You can point out to them that if their expenditure of £1,500,000,000 on guns and munitions is to be of any good they will need to have a guarantee of sufficient foodstuffs. You can point out to them that unless they are prepared to take our agricultural produce in time of peace, that agricultural produce is not going to be maintained in time of war. You are going to get at present a better bargain from the British than ever before if you go and point out these facts to them. By acting in that way a standard of living can be procured for our people higher than can be secured for any nation in the world. If this is not done now, the chance is going to pass, because Great Britain is going to make provision for her food supplies in the immediate future. The provision she is going to make now must fit in with her general defence plans. If England is going to be able to purchase or secure food supplies in the time of war she must make her arrangements now in peace time. If we do not take advantage of the present opportunity the time may come when England will not take our goods at any price.

The Government will very soon be going to the country, and it has this opportunity of mending its hand in regard to this economic dispute with Great Britain. The Government has a chance of mending its hand, and the country, too, has a chance of mending its hand at the next election. I put it to the Government that, unless we do that, the social services adumbrated in this Budget are going to become impossible of being maintained. The creation of social services without prudent provision as to the means of maintaining them in the times to come, is one of the greatest crimes anyone can commit against the people of this country. Social services are at present being built up, while the means of maintaining them are being neglected. I warn the Government that they are undermining the whole social fabric of this State. They have a chance of mending their hand, and the country, too, is going to get a chance of mending its hand, but it may be too late. I urge the Government to consider well the liability that rests on them in this matter of providing a market for the 7,000,000 remaining acres of arable land. Let them stop posing as Caitlin Ní Houlihans or super-patriots who know not the meaning of the words conciliation or conference.

Mr. Byrne

While two Ministers most interested in the matter about which I want to speak are present, might I ask if either of them can explain the reason for the increase in the Estimate for Electrical Battery Development from £8,000 in the current year to £46,000 in this Estimate? Might I ask if the Government own all the property and assets of the Drumm Battery Company? Might I ask how much of this sum of £46,000 is intended for the Drumm battery itself, and how much for the purpose of railway electrification? Might I ask what security have we for the moneys advanced? Might I ask if Dr. Drumm or any of his staff are at present engaged in research work with a view to the future electrification or development of our railways? As one who read in the papers some time ago of the great things we were to get from this invention, I would expect something more to be done or some information to be forthcoming. If the Minister is aware of the agreement existing between the Drumm Battery Company and the State, could he tell us if the Government of the country is protected under that agreement, and to what extent? Could he tell us if further research is taking place, and whether any of the money now in this Vote is for the purpose of further research, or is it merely for paying overhead charges and allowing things remain as they are? I think the public is entitled to know something more about the development of the Drumm battery, and whether other countries are interested in what the Irish Free State is doing in connection with this invention. I know both Ministers are somewhat interested, but I will not delay the House further, beyond saying that I would be glad if we could have some information on these points.

Professor O'Sullivan

I think the Minister is a little naïve when he works up passions and indignation about the alleged misrepresentation in connection with his Budget. The Minister must know that for years past it was extremely difficult for a member of the public—and I presume the public are interested in this matter—to know where we stood both as regards total expenditure and total taxation. More than once before I called attention to the growing tendency on the part of the Government in this matter of Supplementary Estimates. I admit that a certain amount of Supplementary Estimates are inevitable, but everyone must have noticed that there is a growing tendency on the part of the Government to create a gap between the annual statement on the Budget and the various additions during the year, one might call them collations to the principal meal. These collations are asked for by the Government during the year.

Let us take the volume as it stands. The policy of the Government is before us and surely the country is at least justified in drawing attention to this particular lesson that this country has to face year by year of an increasing Budget and an increasing demand for expenditure. That is obvious even from this particular volume now before us. Remember that what I might legitimately call all the services are not by any means represented in these Estimates. I am not referring now to matters like the Judiciary and other such items that do not appear here. I am referring to the policy of giving help to the various industries and these items no longer appear in the way in which they used to appear in the Budget or in the Estimates. Consequently, the public are no longer in a position to know what services they are required to meet nor are they in a position to know what taxes they are likely to pay. There was a time when the various industries were financed out of the Central Fund. In those days at least the public were able to take some idea as to what the total services of this State cost. They are no longer in that position. Many a man is at present contributing to services that do not appear in this book of Estimates. He is paying taxes that will not appear in the Budget. This is really a very successful effort—I congratulate the Minister upon it— to conceal from the public the real burden which is being placed upon them. This volume of Estimates does not represent the full burden to be placed upon the people. Nor will the Budget represent the full burden of taxation, either. Taking good care that the country would swallow the camel, we saw the Minister, for almost three-quarters of an hour, straining at the gnat. The country is not in a position to judge the bill which it has to foot. A couple of years ago, the Government showed a tendency in this direction. As the years go on, they are perfecting that system. They have learned one thing, at least, remarkably well, as Deputy Dillon has indicated in regard to old age pensions. That is, that if you take a shilling from a man directly, he will almost revolt but if, by way of indirect taxation, you deprive him of 2/6, he is almost thankful to you. The Government has learned that particular piece of jugglery well. There is hardly any limit to the burdens you can impose upon everybody in this country by way of indirect and concealed taxation. These burdens can be placed not alone upon the rich, but upon the poor. The rich are, in fact, more alive to these burdens than are the poor. The Government has taught the country that this sort of thing can be done and that the Government that does it can get away with it. This volume of Estimates indicates the ever-upward trend of taxation in this country. A great deal of the burden does not appear in this volume but, if you look through the various Estimates, you will find that the cost of administration has, almost in every case, gone up. With the notable exception of the Ministry of Agriculture, there has been, I think, an increase in the personnel of virtually every service. The Fianna Fáil Party promised that the cost of administration would go down. There is hardly a Department of Government in which we do not see an increase year by year. The Minister for Industry and Commerce is always keen on pointing out the number of men who have been put into employment. He is prepared to judge the prosperity of an industry by that canon. Applying that test to one Department of Government, we find that is it a great success. I refer to the tax collecting Department. Year after year, there have been considerable additions to the staff of the Revenue Commissioners. They were noteworthy additions—not additions of ten or 20. This year, we see a further addition to their staff. In fact, the most successful industry in the country at the present time is the collection of taxes.

The economies with which the great promises are redeemed are found in an early portion of this volume—the salary of the Governor-General and the cost of the Seanad. I presume the latter item is only temporary. These are the items they have to show in fulfilment of the rosy promises they made before election to office. The millions of additional taxation, direct and indirect, which they have imposed are all debited by the Government to social services. If you complain that the burden of taxation is now much higher than it was in 1931, answer "social services." Again, when we come to deal with the question of the land annuities, as the Minister did, and when we ask where the money saved by the retention of the land annuities is going, the answer is "social services." The cost of the social services bears no comparison to the burden which the Government have imposed on the people. That is shown by an examination of the figures here. We are reaching a position of stabilisation of ever-high expenditure and, at the same time, we are reaching a position of stabilisation of the conditions under the Coal-Cattle Pact. I gathered from the reply given by the President to-day that that was his intention and that he was not aware of the suggestions contained in Deputy MacDermot's question—that the British tariff on cattle is causing continued distress amongst small farmers and under-nourishment of their children. If the President is not aware of that, and if Ministers are not aware of that, it may be because they are completely out of touch with the country and because members of their Party who ought to be in touch with the country do not make it their business to tell them what is happening. How could the position be otherwise in country districts when we have before us the figures, which are now almost classic, given by the Minister for Agriculture. There we had a confession by him of the catastrophic fall in the return from agriculture, the catastrophic fall in the average income of the farmer and the farm labourer. With figures of that kind put forward, and even paraded, by the Government, how could the position be anything else than appalling for the people living in the country districts? These of the Minister are average figures. They include the big farms as well as the small farms and, therefore, the return to the small farmer must be much less than the £1 per week to which the policy of the Minister has reduced the average farmer. How can it be said that the country is not feeling the pinch and that agriculture is in a healthy position in these circumstances? It is a pity that when the Minister for Finance said that the country was sick, he did not stop at that. Agriculturally and economically, the country is sick. It has been brought to that condition by the policy of the Minister and his colleagues.

We have huge expenditure. There is no indication that the upward trend of that expenditure is going to be stopped. The indications are that staffs will go on increasing—particularly in connection with the collection of taxes— and that expenditure will go on mounting. At the back of it all, what is there? What has the Government given the country in return for that increased expenditure? The destruction of our principal industry and a muddled economic policy.

Speaking of the plan, that plan has been brought before the House on many occasions. Now my objection to the Government, so far as that is concerned is, that beyond parading that plan for electoral purposes the plan has had no other existence. The plan was never a reality. They had no plan so far as this country was concerned. They had a belief at one time in the efficiency of tariffs to save the whole situation. They had an unbounded belief in the value of promises from an electoral point of view, but beyond that there was no plan whatsoever that the Government ever had. We have seen them year after year and month after month trying to remedy previous mistakes and committing new ones in the attempt to do so. That is what the Government call having a plan, and as a result of a policy of that kind, pursued over a number of years, we see the country brought to the position in which it is at the present moment—a country with emigration again rife. It does not require even the figures supplied by the Government themselves, or at least it ought not to, to convince the Ministry and this House as to what the facts are there. They need only go down to any portion of the West of Ireland. I speak of one county in the South-West of Ireland, and what I said 12 months ago is equally true to-day: that the emigration out of that county, and especially to Great Britain—some may come to Dublin and some may go to other big cities—but the emigration from that county at the present moment to Great Britain recalls to the minds of the people in that county the emigration to America of 35 years ago.

Mr. Lemass

Ten years ago.

Professor O'Sullivan

The Minister knows nothing about Kerry. I am speaking, if the Minister would listen, of the scenes that take place at the railway stations at the present moment in that county: the scenes of emigrants going to Great Britain recall to the people of Kerry the scenes that used to take place of the emigrants going to America 35 years ago.

Mr. Lemass

Ten years ago.

Professor O'Sullivan

I remember myself the scenes that used to take place 35 years ago.

They are leaving in larger numbers now than ever. I will give one quotation from one of the most respected men in Kerry, the Dean of the diocese, when he was interviewed in connection with the decline in the school averages. He points out what the facts are on the one hand, and the explanation of them on the other. The Right Reverend Monsignor David O'Leary, P.P., V.G., P.A., Tralee, referring to the decline, told me that "for many years the number of marriages had been decreasing, owing largely, "he believed, "to the depressed conditions of the farmers, who," he remarked, "do not seem to have the means of settling their children in married life. The tendency on the part of the young people to go to England in search of work must also have an effect in bringing about a smaller number of marriages at home. There is not," said Monsignor O'Leary, "sufficient work at home for the young men and women, but, apparently, there is plenty of work across the Channel; and I am glad to know from an authoritative source that the young people are carefully looked after there by the clergy and religious societies."

But the policy of this Government increased it and gave it, so to speak, an extra acceleration. The Government by its policy has driven the people out of the country during the last two years. The Minister may deny that. He can repeat here what he and his colleagues have repeated again and again with the cynicism that no Irish Minister ought to be responsible for, that the farmers were prosperous, that the farmers were better off than they ever were. Nothing of the kind. Everybody who knows the country knows perfectly well the truth of the statement made by my colleague, Deputy Dillon, when he spoke of the way the land of the country was deteriorating. You need only go through the country, you need only speak to the farmers to learn the truth of that. You need only speak to the shopkeepers in the country towns to know what the purchasing capacity of the farmers of the country is at the present moment. Of course that is the last thing that the Minister for Industry and Commerce would think of doing, or his colleague, the Minister for Finance. When it is pointed out that the cost of the things that the poor people actually need, of the commodities that they have to buy and consume, has been increased by at least 2/6 to the poor old age pensioner as compared with the period when we were in office, the answer we get from the Government is: "Look at the figures." But the poor old age pensioner cannot live on figures. The money that they are getting now buys less for them than it did then.

No, but when we had arrested it your policy took care to set it going again, and you are proud of it. As long as you have the farming industry in the position to which the Ministers have reduced it: as long as you have this emigration continuing in the way in which it is continuing and developing and increasing in the way in which the last year has shown it to increase: as long as you have that, I say it is necessary to help industries in the towns, but a large portion of the public money that is being spent in aiding these industries is, owing to the other policy of the Ministers, wasted. Not nearly as good a return can be got, from the point of view of manufacturers and from the point of view of industries in the towns, out of the public money that goes into the support of these industries, because of the policy of the Government which has brought about a decline in the population of this country and which has, in addition to that, gravely destroyed the purchasing power of the main bulk of the population of this country. That, Sir, affects not merely the farming community—the farmers and the farm labourers. It affects not merely the shopkeeper in the country town—and he knows perfectly well what the condition of the farmer is because very often, owing to the system of business that prevails in the country where a large amount of credit has to be given out and is given out by most shopkeepers, he knows remarkably well the condition of the farmer and the farm labourer. It affects not merely these, but in addition, owing to the particular policy by which the main source of the wealth of the country is frittered away, and where you have that emigration going on and stimulated by Government policy, the very industries for the upkeep of which we are paying such a large amount of money, for the upkeep of which the taxpayer, directly or indirectly, in a concealed or in an open fashion, is paying so much—these very industries themselves, and their future and their value to the country, are put in jeopardy by the general policy of the Government. I am convinced that a great deal of the money that, at the moment, this country is paying to build up industries is practically being thrown away uselessly because of the other side of the Government policy which has hit agriculture so heavily and the results of which you can now see all over the country. I am sure that many manufacturers themselves must be gradually beginning to awake to that particular danger. If not, I am afraid that, notwithstanding the State's support, they are to a large extent living in a fool's paradise. No amount of State support, necessary though it may be to set these industries on their feet, can compensale for the loss of the purchasing power of the community that has been caused by the policy of the present Government.

In the beginning of 1932, Sir, when the late Mr. Hogan and Deputy McGilligan went over to London, they did get a concession in the way of a certain preference for goods going from this country to England. That was only to be a foretaste of what could be got at the Ottawa Conference. The Fianna Fáil Party at the time were highly contemptuous of the preference that was given then. Well, in a short time, they certainly did away with that preference and turned it into a debit against us. Not a help, not a preference, but a penalty was what we got as a result of their policy, and we see the effect of the Ottawa Conference, and of the concessions that were there given to other Dominions, reflected in the trade of the other Dominions with Great Britain. Deputy Dillon made that quite clear and I do not intend to go into it now, but it is quite obvious, from the answer of the President the other day, that, apparently, even with that example before him, the present Government is content with the small increase in our trade with Great Britain that has followed from the conclusion of the Cattle Pacts. Apparently, the Government is content with that and has not yet made up its mind whether it is going to the Imperial Conference or not. Such things as the doubling of the trade of Canada during these few years, and the complete reversal of our position in comparison with New Zealand, matter nothing to the Government. The economic welfare of the country matters nothing. They do not know whether they are going to the Imperial Conference or not! They have not made up their minds! They might be able to get something out of it for the country if they went.

What actually is their position? We had to-day the extraordinary answer of the President that, apparently, he thinks that, when two States get into a dispute, then it is question of unconditional surrender for either one or the other. He was asked by Deputy MacDermot would he consent to consider any compromise: "No, because to think of any compromise on our part would mean unconditional surrender." Therefore, if this dispute is ever to be settled there must be unconditional surrender on the part of Great Britain. These are the only terms we learned to-day, on which a settlement is possible, I must say for the first time so clearly stated. No doubt we shall be accused of misunderstanding him, but for the first time it was clearly stated to-day that any compromise whatsoever would be regarded by the President as "an unconditional surrender." Why, he has surrendered already, completely surrendered already, unconditionally surrendered almost.

What is the use of the President or the Minister for Finance getting up this afternoon and speaking as if we were not paying the annuities? The very Coal-Cattle Pact, as has been repeatedly pointed out, is the method by which we agree to pay these annuities to Great Britain. The Coal-Cattle Pact has been of benefit to this country. It was, so to speak, the oxygen that kept the patient alive. In the year 1934-35, the Government had brought this country to the verge of collapse. So near to the verge of collapse had they brought the country that even they, themselves, recognised it and they made this Coal-Cattle Pact. It was a relief. They are now taking credit for the increase of trade, a couple of millions, as a result of that whereas the other Dominions which took part in the Ottawa Conference have increased their trade with Great Britain by tens of millions.

Our Government boasts around the country that things are not as bad as they were in 1934 or 1935. They are not, because the Government surrendering, actually giving in, to the British Government made this Coal-Cattle-Pact by which the British were able to collect not merely the land annuities but the other sums in dispute, and that with the connivance of our Government. They were quite willing to make that settlement. They were quite willing to make that surrender. So long as it was not a full agreement, they were ready to sacrifice the country. When they go boasting about the country now as to what they have achieved in the way of better prices for cattle, what does that mean? It means that they are in the position of people who, having deliberately set the house on fire, boast because at the eleventh hour they have called out the fire brigade. That is practically the policy of the Government. They have inflicted so much damage on the Irish people that any relief will be greeted by the unfortunate victims as something to be thankful for. Therefore, instead of greeting it with indignation, the people listened calmly to the slight relief that was given to them. When we see the revival of trade that is taking place in what is our principal market outside this country, what is practically the only market of any consequence outside this country, when we see also the improved value of that trade, we can only be indignant that the Government let slip month after month every opportunity of giving our people the benefit of the improvement in that market. They appeal to the economic blizzard to explain what this country has suffered in the last couple of years though undoubtedly, during the period that they have been in office, our trade diminished much more rapidly than that of any of the other countries affected by the economic blizzard. Our trade went down absolutely like a rocket while in other countries the depression was gradually stayed. That can only be attributed to the policy of the Government. Now that improvement has come in that market, we are not in a position to make the best of it. The people are being deprived of the advantage of that particular market and of the improved conditions obtaining in it.

One thing at all events the Government has demonstrated. It has demonstrated, quite clearly, by its policy from 1932 up to 1936, the futility of one of the main planks in its economic programme—self-sufficiency. It is not a long time since certain people were thanking God that the British market was gone, a thing that was no use, and that, so far as it was there at all, was harmful to this country. That has now passed. We have one of our Ministers, a protagonist of that policy of self-sufficiency, getting up here in this House and blowing that particular contention sky-high. "We could," he says, speaking in this House on, I think, the Agricultural Wages Bill, on the 12th November, as reported in column 371-2 of the Official Debates, "as Deputy Corry says, get a better price for all these things if we were to get rid of the export market entirely." However, that brilliant suggestion of his colleague he rejects and rejects on the following grounds. It used to be the policy of the Party that that was the ideal to aim at. He need not blame Deputy Corry because Deputy Corry happened to be some 12 or 18 months behind the agile-minded members on the Front Bench. The Minister turns down the suggestion on these grounds: "But," he says, "that would mean putting about 31.8 per cent. of the agricultural land out of production because 31.8 of our agricultural produce is exported." Self-sufficiency, therefore, from the Fianna Fáil point of view, would have the extraordinary result of putting one-third of our land out of cultivation.

As I say, by their abject surrender on the Coal-Cattle Pact, by statements of that kind coming from the Minister for Agriculture, that Party has proved to this country to its cost, and to Great Britain too, the complete futility of that policy of complete self-sufficiency for which they stood and which they made their ideal. We occasionally hear about economic dictation from the other side. What Party has ever suffered and has ever tolerated economic dictation from the other side to the extent to which the Minister's Party has suffered it? They have allowed that economic policy to be dictated from the other side in a way their predecessors would not have thought of. What have they to offer to the country for that betrayal? What have they to offer to the country for the huge expenditure that mounts year after year, a muddled economy so far as the towns are concerned, and a depleted and ruined agriculture so far as the countryside is concerned?

I thought the attitude of the President, in that portion of his reply to Deputy MacDermot's question which I heard, was an extraordinary revelation. It was a revelation, on the one hand, of the carelessness, the callousness, of the Government so far as the sufferings of the ordinary people in the country are concerned, and a determination to sacrifice them, no matter how great the sacrifice, so long as he can claim, like the Bourbons, that he has been consistent.

I understand that the Government organ splashed across its pages the other day that one of the main trenches in the economic war had been captured, the major trench, as a result of the recent Coal-Cattle Pact. But we learned some years ago from the man who introduced the Vote on Account to-day that the war had been won! I must say he has adopted high military tactics. We have often noticed in communiques coming from the battle-front of places that have been recaptured that were never lost, of how trenches had been retaken that had never passed into the hands of the enemy. Now, a couple of years after the winning of the economic war, one of the principal trenches has been taken. The other trenches, the main ones unfortunately, are still intact.

I wonder do the Government know whether they are at peace or war? If there was any truth in the boast of the Minister for Finance a couple of years ago that the war was won and was over, I wonder what the people have been suffering for in the years that intervened between that statement and now? Certainly if we won the war, the Government have taken very good care to see that we have lost the peace because the peace has been as disastrous to us as the war has been.

We gather from this book of Estimates that expenditure is stabilised and we gathered from the President to-day that our economic relations with England also are stabilised, and the most that this country can hope for is a renewal year after year of the agreement by which we pay in the most objectionable form, as the President acknowledged, the land annuities to England. That is the most this country can hope for. That is the only thing one can read out of the President's answer to the first question this afternoon.

The people are to rejoice because an important industry, but by no means the most important industry in the country, has been saved from deteriorating still more by this belated effort on the part of the Government. I have no desire to diminish the satisfaction of the people in the horse-breeding industry in the advantage they have got. It is an important industry, but unfortunately it does not affect very much my native county, the county I have the honour to represent. It would have been much more beneficial, strange as it may seem to people here, to the people of that particular county if they had got the tax taken off, say, greyhounds, in which, before this particular fight for freedom— which we have won but in which we have really surrendered all along the line and in which we are still capturing the first trenches—they had a very remunerative trade. That remunerative trade in greyhounds was severely interfered with by the economic war.

Having brought the country to the verge of collapse, by the first Coal-Cattle Pact the Government stepped in and saved the country, kept it alive. But that is practically all they did. They had not restored this country to economic health. I cannot believe that members of the Fianna Fáil Party—however ignorant the Ministers may be of the fact—can be ignorant of the fact that the country is economically, at the present moment, in a very unhealthy condition and all the Government can do is to stabilise it at that, not to return it to health or anything like it.

No effort has been made to follow the examples of the other Dominions and make the most out of the British market. Where their trade has increased by tens of millions, our Government are satisfied if, in comparison not with 1931 or 1932, but in comparison with last year or the year before, they can show an increase of a couple of millions. That certainly is an extraordinary outlook for any Government to have.

I spoke of the effect that the Government policy was having on the population of the country. They are driving the people out. I am speaking now for my native county and I am saying what every responsible person in that county will tell the Minister about the increased emigration that has taken place in the last couple of years and the menace it is becoming to the countryside there. I drew attention to the statements of responsible people who gave their explanations in regard to the fall in population. Have the Ministers ever asked themselves what effect their taxation on the necessities of life must have, say, in the case of a poor, large family? Have they considered the effect in the case of a family of, say, the husband and wife and eight or ten children? Has the Minister calculated how the increased cost of flour must affect a large family of that kind?

You may have contempt for him, but I have not. You may have contempt for him, such as your leader has for the bishops, but I have not. I have no contempt for this man who merely gives the facts. If it comes to a question of whether I should take the view of clergymen as to the marriages that took place or the Minister's view, I will say at once that I am prepared to take theirs instead. I take it for granted that these people, when they are speaking about the affairs of their parishioners, about the existence, say, of Communism in their particular dioceses, know what they are talking about and are not doing it without a certain sense of responsibility. It was not one case that was referred to. You find it in various other parishes as well. If teachers complain that there is a declining average at present, I very much doubt, in fact I am absolutely certain from returns I have seen, that their position will be very much worse in the year 1941 than it is at the present time.

As I say, the policy of the Government is really what we do condemn in connection with this Vote. It is a huge Vote, and a Vote to be put at the service of a policy that is doing damage, not benefit, to the country. The President may get up, as he did to-day in reply to the first question on the Order Paper, and unfurl the banner of no surrender. He can afford to do it. The surrender has taken place already. As every Deputy knows, the annuities are being paid, and paid to the full. That surrender has taken place already. He might as well get the value of that particular surrender which he has made. He has made the surrender, but the country has not got the value for it that it ought to get. It has got nothing like the value that the other Dominions have got in the way of increase of trade with Great Britain. I wonder whether the Minister will have figures to show that their trade has had the decrease our trade has had for five years, and the scanty increase it has had for the last year or two?

Minister for Industry and Commerce (Mr. Lemass)

I did not intend to intervene in this debate so soon, but Deputy O'Sullivan's speech prompts me to do so. It was a moving speech. I notice that he moved most of his colleagues, including his leader, to vacate the House. I hope their going is some indication that they have still some glimmering sense of their duties and responsibilities as members of this House. It is, of course, the normal function of an Opposition Party to criticise the policy of the Government in office, and to dispute its claims as to the beneficial effects of that policy on the economic conditions and the political conditions of the country. But the Party opposite cannot be regarded as normal in that regard. Their position is not normal. They have got themselves into a situation in which their only hope of electoral victory is a national disaster of some kind, whether it is an economic disaster or a financial disaster, or a political disaster. If I were to come here this afternoon and announce that a large number of additional people had been put into employment, or that there had been a substantial improvement in agricultural conditions, or that some change in economic circumstances beneficial to our people was going to take place, there would be gloom and depression amongst the members of the Fine Gael Party. But, if I had to admit that unemployment was getting worse, or that emigration was growing, or that agricultural prices were falling, they would whoop with joy. I am sure there must be amongst them some member who is occasionally appalled by the position in which they now find themselves. It is not merely the case, however, that they are continuously hoping and praying for a disimprovement in the conditions of this country, but that they are on occasion deliberately striving to produce that disimprovement.

The speeches which we had this afternoon were a case in point. The speech of Deputy Dillon could only have been calculated to do as much damage as possible to the economic interests of this State. He told the farmers that they were going to lose money by growing wheat, that they were going to lose money by growing beet, although the national interests undoubtedly demand, in present circumstances, an increased production of both these crops. He told us that the appearance of prosperity which is to be found in certain directions, is only indicative of coming bankruptcy, and that circumstances generally were such that anybody would be a fool who invested his money in Irish industrial enterprise, or in the production of agricultural crops, or who would in any way endeavour to utilise his energies for the benefit of this country. Deputy Dillon was not merely speaking in that strain in the belief that he might convince people that he was telling the truth. He spoke in that strain with the intention of producing here economic conditions which he believes will be beneficial for his Party, and these are economic conditions detrimental to the interests of the Irish people. That Party opposite have no chance, and they know they have no chance, unless economic conditions can be made worse. That is why, on the one hand, they are continually asserting that they are getting worse and, on the other hand, endeavouring to make their words true. Of course, they have failed. They cannot do it. They cannot possibly talk away the accumulation of facts which show that there is a steady and rapidly improving expansion in production in industrial, agricultural and commercial activities of all kinds.

It is very difficult to know precisely where one should start in order to get Deputies opposite to possess a clear picture of our economic position. Let me at the start say that the circumstances now existing in this country could not be described as prosperity. I have never said it. deputy O'Sullivan alleged I had described the circumstances of the farmers as prosperous. I never said anything of the kind; nobody could say it. But I do say that this country is in every way better this year than last year; that it was better last year than the year before, and better in any of these years than it was in 1931. Occasionally we get credit from certain parties on the ground that we undertook more vigorously the same type of development which our predecessors had been attempting in a more leisurely manner. We are told that we accelerated the rate of industrial development and speeded up the change-over in economic activity here which was, in any event, going to take place. Those who speak in that way have an entire misconception of the way cumstances that this Government had to deal with in 1931.

It is essential that Deputies should remember that in 1931 this country was in a very serious decline. Not merely was that decline noticeable in agriculture, but it was noticeable in every form of economic activity. In industry the gross value of production was decreasing, the number of persons employed was decreasing, and the amount paid in wages was decreasing. In agriculture the number of persons employed was decreasing, and the gross value and volume of agricultural production were also diminishing. In every sphere of employment there was a diminution in the number of persons engaged. I will give later facts and figures to substantiate every one of these statements I am making, so that Deputies will realise that when this Government tackled the task in 1932, it had not merely to improve on the work of its predecessors, but to arrest the rot that their policy had caused. It took a very considerable part of the energy of every member of the Government, and of every Department of State, to secure that the decline, which had started some years before, would be arrested, before we could hope to produce an improvement—an improvement which has been secured to a very substantial degree.

There are people leaving this country for Great Britain. Deputy O'Sullivan was correct in that one statement, but, undoubtedly, he endeavoured to convey the impression that this emigration began last year, or the year before, and was in some way associated with the policy of this Government. The first fact that Deputies must grasp is that over the inter-censal period, 1926 and 1936, emigration from this country was less than in any similar period since the Famine, and such emigration as did take place during that inter-censal period took place mainly in the first half. When Deputy O'Sullivan talked about emigration to Great Britain he could, of course, speak with greater freedom. No one knows precisely what the emigration to Great Britain is. It is not possible to measure accurately the number leaving this country for Great Britain, whereas the numbers leaving for the United States or anywhere overseas can be known exactly. We can only estimate from the returns of population, and the returns in respect of births and deaths, what the gross emigration is, by deducting from the gross figure of the known numbers going to other countries to arrive at an estimated figure of those going to Great Britain. Deputy O'Sullivan spoke of the large number of emigrants who were going to Great Britain, but he baulked at the question I put to him: "How many Saorstát-born citizens were in Great Britain in 1931?" That was the last year for which his Government was responsible. According to the British statistics, Saorstát-born citizens in Great Britain in 1931 numbered 356,000, and that figure should have suggested to the Deputy that there was substantial emigration to that country long before this Government came into office, before the economic war started, and before the conditions to which he attributes that emigration would be admitted by him to have existed. During the eight years 1924 to 1931 the total number of emigrants who left this country by sea was 164,000. The actual number of emigrants who went over the land frontier was substantial. The average number that left was 20,500 per year, including the last year that the Cumann na nGaedheal Government was in office, when they alleged emigration had been arrested. Taking the total number of emigrants in the four years 1932, 1933, 1934, 1935, 20,000, was less than the average year when Cumann na nGaedheal was in office.

In any one year on the average there were more emigrants by sea from this country while Cumann na nGaedheal was in office than in all the years together up to 1935 with which Fianna Fáil is concerned. I will admit at once that these figures relate only to emigrants who left by sea, and that members left for Great Britain by the land frontier, but, according to an estimate that the Minister for Local Government prepared from the information available, the total emigration by land and sea to Great Britain, and to everywhere else from the middle of 1935 to the middle of 1936, was 23,700, quite a substantial figure, but it has to be compared with the figures for the period during which those who are attributing that emigration to the effects of Fianna Fáil policy, were in office. There was no Fianna Fáil policy and no economic war from 1923 to 1927, yet the estimated emigration by land and sea was in 1923-4, 26,000; in 1924-5, 39,000; in 1926-7, 36,000; in 1927-8, 28,000.

So far as this country is concerned emigration otherwise than to Great Britain no longer exists. There are emigrants coming and going but the net movement of population, otherwise than to Great Britain, has been inward in 1932, 1933, 1934 and 1935. I will admit that the existence of emigration is evidence of economic difficulties here, and the fact that some 20,000 people went out over a period of 12 months—they were mostly females—is an indication that there is yet a lot of work to be done here, before we can be satisfied of the soundness of our economic position. I contend that the fact that emigration is much less now than ever since 1851, is some indication of the progress we have made in improving economic conditions. In any event that is true of the total emigration during the whole of the inter-censal period when the figure was 5.7, the lowest recorded since the earliest period at which statistics are available. There is, of course, in consequence of that emigration last year a resumption of the decline in our population. The population of this country declined continuously over a long period until 1930. From 1931 to 1935 the total population increased. In 1936 there was a slight set back because the total number of emigrants exceeded the natural increase, which is the excess of births over deaths. It has been suggested that the decline in population, which since 1936 was shown to have occurred during the ten years from 1926 to 1936, occurred entirely towards the end of that period, whereas the reverse was the case. There was from 1926 to 1930 a sharp fall in population. From 1930 there was a rise in population up to 1935 when the fall declined again. There has been, however, a continuous increase in the male population, and Deputies who have been relating the population figures and our employment position have carefully ignored that fact. For the first time since 1841 the Census of 1936 recorded an increase in our male population of 11,918.

We had Deputy O'Sullivan, however, speaking here to-day not merely about emigration and its effect on population, and economic conditions and their reaction upon the number of marriages, but also about what he called the drift to the towns, and that is a subject upon which Deputy McGilligan occasionally lets himself loose. Before I go on to that, however, I want to put Deputy O'Sullivan right upon the position as to the number of marriages. He told us that there were fewer marriages than ever before recorded in this country, and he quoted some clergyman who had written a letter to the paper as proof of that contention. I contend, and I have the statistics here before me, that the rate of marriages recorded in 1935 was the highest recorded since 1925. There were 4.83 per 1,000 of the population. In no year since 1925, the earliest year for which figures are given here, was there a higher marriage rate recorded. That increase in the number of marriages which occurred in 1935 occurred not merely in the towns, but also in a number of countries. There were certain counties where the marriage rate was lower—Mayo was one—but in the province of Munster the marriage rate in the year 1935 was 4.46. The annual average for 1925 to 1927 was 4.41, so that the tendency in Munster would appear to be upwards, as it is upwards over the country as a whole. The census of population also revealed that while there had been a decline in the number of people in rural areas —even though that was the smallest decline ever recorded at a census taken here—there had been a substantial increase in the population of towns and cities. Deputy McGilligan, in his haste to furnish some explanation of that figure which would tend to the discredit of the Government, said that the increase was entirely due to the fact that the population was being driven, by the Government's economic policy, off the land and into the towns. The greater part of the increase in the town population was a natural increase; it was not due to any drift of population from the country areas into the towns. The total increase in the town population in the Saorstát in the inter-censal period was 91,000, of which 47,000 was a natural increase; a net migration inwards accounted for 34,364.

Mr. Anthony

That will be good news for the Dublin Corporation.

Mr. Lemass

I hope the Dublin Corporation will take note of some of the facts that were published in the preliminary volume of the census, because they have, apparently, based a policy for the city upon a considerable exaggeration of the facts. In Dublin City and County the increased population was, as I said, 81,346, of which only 34,364 were migrants. Of those migrants, 12,450 were males. The average annual migration of males from the country into Dublin was 1,250, which is a much smaller figure than certain persons associated with the Dublin Corporation had apparently thought.

Deputy O'Sullivan said —I must relate my speech to what Deputy O'Sullivan said for the purpose of relating it to something—that we had done so much damage to this country by our policy that it was almost incapable now of recovering. Deputy Dillon went further, and said that it does not matter when the election is held, that even if Fine Gael got in to-morrow, it could not repair the damage, and that no matter how emphatically the people may desire change of Government, even a change of Government can do them no good now. That was Deputy Dillon's argument. It is, however, noticeable that he and Deputy O'Sullivan kept as far away as possible from any tendency to come down to hard facts, and on the one or two occasions on which I interjected remarks asking for definite information, they shied off at once to a new subject. I do not know on what basis we are to determine the extent of the damage alleged to have been done by the Fianna Fáil Government here. The number of unemployed, the output of industry, the number of persons engaged in agriculture, or some other fact, must be capable of being produced if there is any truth in the assertions made by Deputies opposite. Both Deputy O'Sullivan and Deputy Dillon, however, spoke about the difficulty of taking advantage of the existing prosperity in Great Britain, and they urged a change of policy, so that our farmers and other people here could get full advantage of the prosperity they alleged existed in Great Britain. If we study the British conditions, then, we will get some information as to what conditions Deputy O'Sullivan and Deputy Dillon will admit constitute prosperity, because they talked of the prosperity of Great Britain.

Let us consider the prosperity of Great Britain in relation to unemployment. I have given these figures before, and I am going to give them again, and I hope to have the opportunity, between now and the date of the election, of stating these figures on many occasions. In relation to population, there are fewer people unemployed in this country than in Great Britain—substantially fewer. The most recent figure for the number of registered unemployed in Great Britain is 1,689,223. The population of that country, at the census of 1936, was 45,805,000, and the unemployed, expressed as a percentage of the population of that country, was 3.69. 3.69 per cent. of the population of Great Britain were registered as unemployed at the employment exchanges. In Northern Ireland, the number of registered unemployed was 77,139, and the population in 1936 was 1,293,000. The unemployed expressed as a percentage of the population was 5.97.

You get them in month by month, and the calculation could be made month by month. I know it can.

Mr. Lemass

Mr. Belton

Did that increase in wages account for an increased production of £13,000,000?

Mr. Lemass

That is not Deputy McGilligan's argument, and I want to deal with Deputy McGilligan's argument. Let me get the Deputy's argument right. Bearing in mind that this argument was advanced by a man who was for eight or nine years Minister for Industry and Commerce, and responsible for the direction of industrial activities in this country, is it any wonder that there was that decline in output and in wages paid during the period I mentioned? Deputy McGilligan drew attention to the fact that, though there had been this increase in the gross value of the output, the increase in the net output was only £2,500,000. He said:

Sir, I am not going to be prevented discussing events in this country from 1931 and the reasons for them. I simply say that in so far as emigration from this country is concerned, the net migration outwards in the year ended June, 1931, was reduced to 9,201, and that in June, 1932, there was a net migration inwards of 3,000. That was the end of the migration situation in respect to the years 1931 and 1932. I am dealing with misrepresentations on the part of the Ministry about which I want to be clear and concise. The figures that have been given by the Minister for Local Government and Public Health as regards the trend of population since 1931 deserve to be recorded. They are given in respect of the year 1931 to 1935 in the report of the Dáil Debates of the 4th November, 1936. Subsequently, he informed us, on the 11th of November, 1936, that the population of the Saorstát in the middle of 1936 was 2,965,000. It was already reported that the census of April, 1936, indicated that the population then was 2,965,854. Therefore, instead of its being nonsense, as the Minister for Industry and Commerce suggests, to say that the rise of population that began in 1932 was arrested or driven downwards, it is entirely a fact and it is a fact that is expressed in the figures quoted by the Minister for Local Government and Public Health in the statistics he has already given. That is a very serious thing for the country. It is a serious thing for a country in which so much capital is being invested at the present moment and in which a large number of new industries are being set up, new industries that have to depend for their market on the number of people in the country and on their purchasing power.

The attempt of the Minister for Industry and Commerce to challenge and minimise the importance of the statement that the population is falling by suggesting that the decrease was mainly among women shows the extent to which Ministers are prepared to go in order to gloss over or obscure serious economic facts affecting this country. Not only is that the position, but as already explained in the discussions that have taken place, there is an exodus from the rural parts of the country. Whether that exodus arose out of circumstances existing ten years ago or out of circumstances existing five years ago, is not a matter with which we are concerned when we are discussing the remedies that have to be applied to the situation so that agriculture should get a chance and so that the farmers and the agricultural community in general should get a chance to develop the real source of capital and of wealth production in this country. When we take into consideration the falling population at the present time brought about by the economic war, and the drift to the towns, we have to consider also the position that is shown in connection with the schools in the country. The figures already published by the Minister for Local Government and Public Health show that there are 11 counties in which, for every 100 children that are going to school now, there will be only 95 attending in the year 1941. There are 17 counties in which, for every 100 children going to school at the present time, there will be only 94 attending in 1941. We have to consider also that the schools in the rural parts are going to suffer infinitely more than schools in the urban districts.

So far as the population is concerned, it is obvious that the people at the present time are vanishing out of the rural districts and are crowding into the towns. Then we come to the question of the forces that are driving the rural population out of the country. Here, again, is a sphere in which everything possible is done, particularly by the Minister for Agriculture and the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Finance, to minimise and obscure what is happening to the agricultural industry in this country. The Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Finance had the audacity to address the business community of the City of Cork in January last.

Mr. MacEntee

There was nothing very audacious about that, considering that he is a representative of the city.

General Mulcahy

It was very audacious on the part of any person to stand before representatives of commerce and of industry in Cork City and to tell them: "I have been amazed to find how little difference that complete revolutionary change in the whole of our economic life has made." It was particularly audacious to tell them that if he graphed all the exports and imports of commodities as far as this country is concerned, he could not point out the spot on the graph which indicated when the economic war began in this country. An attempt has been made to pretend to the people of this country that what happened agriculture since 1931 is a continuance of the conditions that began to operate in the world in 1929. There was a time when Ministers could not see that there was a world economic depression from 1929 to 1931. Now Ministers do see it. Not only are they able to see it now, but they endeavour to persuade the country that we are still in the throes of a world economic depression and that that is what is impoverishing farmers at the present time.

I want to point out that when a Special Committee of the League of Nations examined the matter and reported in May, 1931, they indicated there were two countries in the whole world that had fairly escaped the worst part of the economic depression. They explained that Ireland was one of these and Denmark was the other and that the reason why these two countries had escaped the worst of the economic depression in these years was that they were agricultural countries, that their agricultural economy was based on the production of live stock and live-stock products, and while the prices of these things fell, the prices of feeding had fallen at the same time. When the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Finance starts to graph his figures and conveniently cannot see where the economic war began here, he ought to make some kind of attempt to compare the figures we have and the statistics that are shown for this country and the rest of the world. We find that in Great Britain they began to get over the effect of the economic depression of 1929 and 1931 at the end of the year 1931. We find that in Denmark, and in the case of the other members of the British Commonwealth of Nations, they began to get over the effect of the world economic depression in 1931 and 1932.

The position as regards ourselves and the world generally may, perhaps, be best illustrated by considering what happened immediately before the end of 1931 in Great Britain and Northern Ireland and what happened here. As regards the exports of Great Britain in 1930-31, if we compare them with the exports for the year 1929 and see what was the cumulative fall for these two years below the 1929 figure, we find that it was £497,322,000. If we take their exports for the years 1932 to 1936 and see how they were related to the year 1931, we find there was a net increase in their exports cumulatively, over the 1931 standard, of £41,879,000. That shows that whereas Great Britain lost in exports in the two years ended 1931, £497,322,000 below the 1929 standard, by the end of 1936 she had begun to go up again and had increased her exports cumulatively by £41,879,000.

Our position was very different. By the end of the year 1931 the cumulative fall in our exports for the two years 1930-31 below the 1929 level was £13,135,000. Did we improve our export position in the following five years over the 1931 position? Unfortunately, we did not. In the years 1932-1936, instead of improving our position we fell below the 1931 figure by a total of £74,937,000. While the world, as indicated by the export trade of Great Britain, began to improve, we were still sinking and we sank infinitely lower after the world had begun to improve than we had before that. Our cumulative losses for the two years before 1931 were £13,135,000. Our cumulative losses for the next five years were £74,937,000.

Let us turn to Australia. The exports began to improve there immediately after December, 1931. In Canada the fall was practically slacked off in 1932 and the position began to improve in 1933. In New Zealand the fall ceased at the end of 1931 and they began to go up after 1933. In South Africa, if we exclude gold, they began to go up immediately after 1932. In the Irish Free State we were still going down in the year 1933 and we are hardly above that level yet. In Denmark, the country with which we were compared, instead of going down after 1932, the export trade rose quickly.

While other countries were beginning to recover their position, we were going steadily and definitely down. Why were we going down? Because of the policy pursued by the Ministry. The pretence is still being kept up that the increased cereal growing in this country is going to make good the losses of the farmers by the destruction of the live stock and live-stock product industry.

We have paintings in Ministerial statements and in the Ministerial Press that things are better in this country than in any other country, that the position of the farmer is steadily improving and that there is a very great increase in industrial employment in the towns. What is the position of the farmer? If we take the fall in cereal imports and say that for every pound fall in cereals imported the farmers had increased cereal production in this country to that amount, nevertheless we find that the farmer has lost enormous amounts of money every year since the policy of the Fianna Fáil Government interfered with the farming industry.

Let us take the year 1932. If the farmer had an income from increased cereal production to the full value of the fall of the imports of cereals in that year, nevertheless, on the net export trade he would have lost £7,362,000. That would be the position in the year ended December, 1932. The position was worse in 1933, because he would have lost £8,859,000. His position would even be worse in 1934, because he would have lost £10,007,000. In 1935, he would have lost £7,023,000, and in the year 1936 he would have lost £5,354,000. Assuming that the fall in cereals imported had been made up in production here that brought in cash, the farmers interested in that particular transaction in these five years would have lost £38,590,000.

The pretence is that the farmers were never securer than to-day. The Minister for Industry and Commerce went further when he made the statement that there was more agricultural employment in this country to-day than there was in the year 1931. That is not a fact. The Minister circulated figures which show that in the year 1931 the total number of males employed in agriculture was 562,573. He answered a question only the other day in which he said that the total number of males employed in agriculture in June, 1936, was 560,371. I asked if he agreed to deal with these matters by the ordinary rules of arithmetic and he said he did. If he agrees to that, then there was a fall of 2,202 males employed in agriculture in 1936 as against 1931, in spite of the great cereal-growing policy which is being pursued and which cost an enormous amount of money to the purchasers of flour, bread, vegetables and sugar, and an additional cost in paying enormous bounties for the export of agricultural produce.

The Minister for Finance used quite a regular string of phrases about national honour and integrity and all that kind of thing. What can we say of the attitude of a Ministry which will make statements contrary to the facts published by themselves? We have, first, the statement of the Minister for Industry and Commerce, in an interjection, that there was more employment in agriculture to-day than ever before. Then we had his definite intervention in the debate in which he quoted certain figures, but they were not the figures which he gave previously in reply to questions here. The net position in the country as a whole, as given by him in reply to questions already, is that there are 2,202 less males employed in agriculture. As against that, we have an increase of 223,673 acres of wheat; an increase of 14,363 acres of barley; and an increase of 56,479 acres of beet. We have a fall in oats of 63,890, in potatoes of 11,879, and in turnips of 32,000. Nevertheless, we have a very much advertised and a very much subsidised so-called tillage policy going on, and the total result is that there are less males employed in agriculture to-day.

The Minister claims that there is an enormous increase in the male population of the country. They have been driven away, apparently, from agriculture to such an extent that even the cultural side of our life is going to be injured. There was a certain amount of indignation a year or so ago when statements were made that emigration from this country was bringing about the depopulation of some rural areas. I think some people interested in the G.A.A. at that time were rather indignant that such a statement should be made and contradicted it. However, we had the president of the Connaught Council of the G.A.A. complaining at a convention held at Galway on 28th February last that the athletic movement in the county cannot be kept up in certain places because of the young men leaving. The Minister explained that there was an increase of 23,000 persons in the last five years in the industries covered by his census of production. Half that was an increase of women and the position that the towns find themselves in is that men are pressing in from rural districts into the towns and are taking from the natural town worker the employment that should be his. A very grave situation has been created in places like Dublin and other cities and towns by reason of the fact that persons are being driven off the land and are coming to the cities and towns looking for work.

The industrial side of our life here is also being injured by the money that is taken away from agriculture. I have indicated that the farmers would have lost, on the balancing of the increased cereal production against their loss on the export of live stock products, a sum of £38,000,000. That is not only taken away from our people as capital but could be laid at the foundations of Irish industry. It is also taken out of daily circulation and the result is that our industries are being hit at present by the fall in the purchasing power of our people. For the last three years we have been bringing to the notice of the Government and the Dáil that in certain articles, such as boots and shoes, clothing, soap, candles, sugar, confectionery, furniture and hosiery, there has been a substantial fall in purchasing by the people. The Minister for Industry and Commerce vigorously denies these things annually. Even to-day, in response to an interruption, he reiterated the statement that there were more boots being purchased now than in 1931. I want to bring him back to the 16th May, 1935, when, as reported in column 1110 of the Official Reports, the question was first brought before him on the general resolution in connection with the Budget. At that time I claimed that there had been a fall in the value of boots and shoes purchased between the years 1931 and 1933 of £256,000. The Minister declared: "There are more boots and shoes being bought at the present time than four years ago by at least 500,000 pairs." He said a lot more than that on the subject, but that was his statement. On the 28th April, 1936, a year afterwards, on his own estimate, the subject was returned to with additional information bearing on the 1934 position. I said: "The Minister has never realised that a Government cannot undermine the main earning industry in this country and not undermine the capacity of the people to buy clothing, boots and shoes and hosiery" and the Minister for Industry and Commerce said: "They are buying more than ever they bought."

He reiterated again to-day that people are buying more shoes than they ever bought, but he issued the Trade and Shipping Statistics for the year 1935 at the end of last year, which reached us some time in December or January, and that volume brings out the value of the consumption of boots and shoes made up from imports and native production from the year 1931 to the year 1935, and brings out also the number of thousand dozen pairs of boots and shoes consumed in the country during these years. Here we have a Minister who in May, 1935, stated that more boots and shoes were being bought at that time than were bought four years before, by at least 500,000 pairs, which would be about 41,000 dozen, and who says a year afterwards that people were buying more than they ever bought. His Department produces information which shows that in 1932 we consumed 47,000 dozen less pairs of boots and shoes than in 1931. In 1933 our consumption was below the 1931 figure by 16,000 pairs, in 1934 by 19,000 pairs, and in 1935 by 14,000 pairs, notwithstanding the fact that in one of these years 120,000 dozen pairs of shoes were brought to this country, the value being 17/4 per dozen pair. In spite of the fact that 120,000 dozen pairs of that type of boot or shoe were consumed every year, we have been shown to be using less boots and shoes. When I argued this matter before, I argued on the amount of money spent, and the Minister for Finance was very excited that it should be argued on the number of boots and shoes. The Minister has now lost his excitement.

Mr. MacEntee

The Deputy's speech is not very exciting.

General Mulcahy

No, not very exciting, but these are the vital and terrible things that this country is faced with to-day, and as a result of the Minister's policy and that of his colleagues has brought our people to this position, that they are not able to provide themselves with the necessaries of life to the same extent that they were before they began to apply their policy. In each of the years 1932, 1933 and 1934 we spent £368,000, £328,000 and £385,000 less on boots and shoes because we were not able to buy as much; yet the Minister carried on for two years arguing that the people were never better shod. The Minister suggested to-day, in spite of the figures he gave us, and he boasted somewhere recently in the country, that in 1936, at any rate, we were supposed to have used more boots and shoes than ever before. Next year when the figures are produced we will find that his statement was just as mendacious this year as the other statement on boots that I have read out.

We turn next to clothing. In 1932 our people spent on hosiery £223,000 less than they spent the year before; in 1933 they spent £238,000 less; in 1934 £146,000 less, and in 1935 £26,000 less. On other kinds of clothing other than hosiery as compared with 1931 we spent in 1932 £923,000 less; in 1933, £1,154,000 less; in 1934,£887,000 less, and in 1935, £594,000 less. We get this indication, that whereas in 1935 there was a falling off in the fall in consumption, it was because the price of boots and shoes had gone up again. There was a natural fall in the price of boots and shoes throughout the world for some years but the average price in 1935 was higher than it was in 1934, 1933 or 1932. What we complain of is that the roots of the economic well-being of this country are being destroyed; that the people are living to-day under conditions of very grave hardship, and that there is not a single aspect of our economic life or of our people's life that is not being merrily misrepresented by statements that are reiterated, month after month and year after year, by Ministers who have information before them that would show that what they are saying is absolutely and utterly untrue, and absolutely regardless of the position in which they are leaving the people. We had the President speaking here to-day saying that he could come to no agreement with Great Britain on any of the things in dispute; that compromise on his part meant surrender. The position we are left in is that as long as there is a small majority of a dictatorial and tyrannical kind in the Fianna Fáil Party, and as long as the back-benchers are cowed behind it, this country, until it next gets an opportunity of speaking, is going to go through the losses, the miseries and the hopelessness that large sections of our people are experiencing at the present time. It is nearly time that some of the back-benchers in Fianna Fáil, seeing the conditions to which the farming community has been reduced, seeing the fall in agricultural employment, seeing the condition to which education is going to be reduced as a result of the fall in attendance at rural schools, seeing the crippling taxation that is falling upon the people, even upon the old age pensioners who have to pay a new and surreptitiously imposed income tax of 4/10 in the £; seeing our people reduced to the position that they are not able to buy the necessaries of life to the same extent as in the past; it is nearly time that some of them would wake up and say that whatever their sins of political commission or omission were in the past, they were not going to destroy this country entirely or leave it in a most hopeless condition.

Mr. Corry

Deputy Mulcahy in his closing sentences talked about a narrow and a small majority. The Deputy should be the last man in this House to open his lips about majorities because he did queer things to a minority when he had a majority. As for Fianna Fáil back-benchers, to which he referred, there have been many changes on the benches occupied by Deputy Mulcahy during the last three or four years, as individuals who were absorbed into his mixed-up Party disappeared as soon as they could gather their skirts together and left in disgust when they found the kind of team they were with. We need only look at the benches opposite to see that the Centre Party which was swallowed up as well as its leader——

Now to get down to business. Deputy Dillon, although we repeatedly advised him to leave farming to farmers, stuck his head into it again to-night. He told us all about the price of oats and barley. But there was something which Deputy Dillon did not tell us, and that was that during the last two or three years of the Cumann na nGaedheal régime, from 1928 onwards, it was absolutely impossible for farmers to sell their oats or barley in this country.

General Mulcahy

They are growing less oats now.

Mr. Corry

The condition of the farmers in the grain growing areas of my constituency was such that the Cumann na nGaedheal Deputy for that constituency, Deputy Carey, came forward at a meeting of the local urban council with a resolution appealing to the Minister for Lands not to collect any more annuities because the people could not pay them. That was in 1929, and that was the condition of affairs into which that bench over there brought the farmers of my constituency. When we hear talk over there about prices, we wonder whether they ever cast their minds back. When I hear Deputy Dillon talking about the price of pigs and pig products, I wonder whether he ever casts his mind back to these little figures. They are rather interesting. In the year 1930 we were paid £5,717,000 for our exports to Great Britain in bacon, hams, fresh pork and other pig meat, and live pigs. In the following year, 1931—there was no tariff; there was no economic war; there was no trouble at all; the two hands of friendship were out—we got £2,432,000 for pigs and pig products exported to Britain. That is a difference of £3,000,000 in one year.

General Mulcahy

And then you went to Ottawa.

Mr. Corry

Whilst you got £2,432,000 from Great Britain in the year 1931 for pigs and pig products exported to her, you paid the Chinese £1,600,000 for becon to feed the Irish people. What is the position to-day? In 1936, for bacon, hams, etc., exported you got £2,513,000 and in addition to that you have a market here at home that was worth £1,670,000 in 1932; you have that market here at home which was supplied by Chinese bacon imported to feed the Irish people. We feed them with Irish people. We feed position of the pig market that we are told has been ruined, has been robbed, has been plundered by the present Government. The Irish farmer got very close on £2,000,000 more for his pigs last year than he got during the last year in which Cumann na nGaedheal misrepresented this country.

What interests had he here? What interest had he in going over to spend 12 months in England fattening pigs and in coming back and trying the game here again? Facts are stubborn things. We had Deputy Dillon on sugar beet. It is a very nice subject for him. I do not want to go into figures in regard to the sugar beet industry, but I ask any Deputy who is interested to get the British figures and to study them. I think he will find there a complete answer. Let him study the figure at which they are producing beet in England, the figure which they are paying labour for producing beet, what they are paid for the beet and what is their average tonnage per acre.

Of course, the Deputy had to have a crack at wheat. It would not do at all if Deputy Dillon did not have a crack at wheat. I think I have Deputy Belton with me in this. Again, facts are stubborn things, and the fact in regard to wheat is that the farmers have increased their acreage each year, and when the returns are published this year it will be found that they have further increased it, despite the bad season.

Mr. Belton

How many of them have increased their manured acreage?

Mr. Corry

Look it up.

Mr. Belton

You look it up.

Mr. Corry

Mr. Corry

That is the bother. There is nobody a Christian here except Deputy Billy Sunday. As I have said, housing was absolutely ignored by Deputy Mulcahy during all those years and the acres of ground purchased in 1913 lay there until 1933 before they were built on. Luckily, the present Government came in and by reason of the Housing Acts passed by the Minister for Local Government, which are responsible for a lot of this present expenditure, we found ourselves in the position last year of voting £500,000 for agricultural labourers' cottages in Cork alone. In the South Cork Board of Health area alone there are now close on 2,000 houses to be built under the scheme for non-municipal towns and these proposals would be absolutely impossible to carry out were it not for the fact that the present Minister for Local Government takes a very different viewpoint from the viewpoint of Deputy Mulcahy. Then you had the position of the small farmer. He never had a hope of building a new house. He had not enough money for it and he could not afford it. Now at least he will get a free grant of £40 towards repairing his present house, and, if he wants to build a new house, he will get a decent grant. The conditions of the people are absolutely changed and one need only cast one's mind back to the condition of affairs when we took over and compare it with the condition of affairs at present, even with the economic war since 1933.

There is the difference in prices, for instance, as between 1929 and 1931. This country sold more agricultural produce to England in 1931 than it did in 1929, but it got £13,000,000 less for that produce. Any Deputy who wishes to study those figures will find them in the Library. Remember that £13,000,000 is two and a half times the land annuities and the other payments which Britain is claiming. It is more than was paid in tariffs and everything else in the three years of the economic war.

I admit that about three months before the general election in 1932 the ex-President of the Executive Council woke up to the position; he went over and made an appeal there to the British people. He said that the Irish people could not pay and he asked for a moratorium on £250,000 or £500,000. He was refused and told to go back and pay up the annuities. What is the use of the Deputies opposite talking about the condition of the country, about the poverty of the country and about the position of the small farmers of the country? One would think they had a very fair opportunity and a very decent chance of knowing the minds of the small farmers of the country. I met Deputy McMenamin in County Galway during the by-election. He spoke about the position of the small farmers there and, though he is a very fluent Deputy here, he did not impress the small farmers of Galway very much. They did not seem to think they were ruined. Deputy Dillon was in Galway, too. All I can say is that in the coming general election I hope he will be spared from whatever district he is standing for and get an opportunity of rambling down to Cork. His presence in the constituency would be worth 5,000 votes to the Fianna Fáil Party. All I needed during the Galway election to clear up any question at any meeting in any parish in the county was to produce the official report of Deputy Dillon's speeches in the Dáil. I took the reports down with me. How did his speeches in these official debates react on the farmers there? Well, the farmers of Galway were not anxious to see their beet factories closed down, or to see wheat-growing knocked on the head by Deputy Dillon. Galway was not the only place where the effect of Deputy Dillon's speeches was tested on the electors. It might be said that the Galway farmers are only smallholders. He went to the County Wexford afterwards, and Deputies know what happened there.

Mr. Cooney

That was worse than Galway.

Mr. Corry

Deputies opposite had it proved to them what the effect on the farming community of the speeches of Deputy Dillon was. The result showed what the farming community in this country think of the situation. Deputies opposite will not challenge a division on a Vote of this kind. Why? Because they have made such a disgraceful showing in the Division Lobby for the past six months that no notice is taken of what they do now. We are supposed to have a very bare majority here, a very small majority. Still, when you read the division here, the majority is anything from 25 to 50.

An Leas-Cheann Comhairle

What has that to do with the Estimates?

Mr. Corry

I am anxious to show that Deputies opposite are now so convinced of the foolishness of their arguments that they will not ask us to have a division on these Estimates. I think, too, that I have absolutely convinced Deputies of the foolishness of the statements made here, particularly the statements made by Deputy Dillon who, indeed, is never tired of making foolish statements. The Deputy seems to think that he knows everything about all classes under the sun. The Deputy by his action here proves the old saying that a little knowledge is a dangerous thing. He comes in here as a kind of jack-of-all-trades and master-of-none. But he will finish up the same as the rest. I only hope that he will spare a little time to go down to my constituency during the general election. I wonder if Deputy O'Neill could coax him down. I hope what I have said will so convince Deputies opposite that they will not waste any more time on this debate.

Mr. Belton

This Vote on Account gives us an opportunity for a general survey of the national policy and its working over the year. This Vote is asking for a sum of £10,000,000 odd or roughly one-third of the total Estimate for the coming year. I think a general survey of the whole position would be more profitable at this stage than the detailed puny arguments to which we have been listening. There is one outstanding point that in the last two or three years has entered pretty largely into the debate on the Vote on Account. It is not so much with the material side of this point that I am concerned as with the policy that is behind it. I now refer to the Coal-Cattle Pact which is becoming a hardy annual. It was extraordinary that the Minister for Finance or the Minister for Industry and Commerce or any other Minister or Deputy on the Government Benches did not deal with this matter.

Mr. MacEntee

It is not extraordinary, because there is a Bill before the House, down for Second Reading to-day, Item No. 5, Imposition of Duties (Confirmation of Orders) Bill, under which the Coal-Cattle Pact can be adequately discussed.

Mr. Belton

Mr. Belton

A matter was mentioned here by Deputy Corry to indicate that the general policy of the Government had improved agricultural conditions, and he instanced the pig feeding, the admixture of corn, and the price that was obtainable for it. The market for agricultural produce in this country is the live stock, and what the Deputy kept away from was the very important fact that a year ago cattle licences were worth about 30/-, whereas to-day cattle export licences are worth nothing. Why are they worth nothing to-day? They are worth nothing for the simple reason that farmers have got out of stall-feeding, that they have been driven out of it by the Government policy. I am sorry Deputy Allen is not here. I was speaking, two days ago, to a large cattle dealer who went around practically all the farms in Wexford looking for stallfeds last week and the beginning of this week, and he could not get them. A further proof that we have not cattle to export now can be gleaned from the fact that committees of agriculture, which distribute these licences, have told the Minister to have the licences abolished as they are not worth the 1/6 apiece that the committees of agriculture have to give for them—that they can be bought for 2d. and 3d. each. That shows that in the domain of agriculture the Government policy has not succeeded as it anticipated or as it boasts it has succeeded.

Then we were told about the profit of wheat-growing. Well, I have said here on many occasions that the profits made by wheat-growing are profits made by robbing the land of its fertility, and I have not heard any member from the Government side take up that point and argue it in this House. I challenge any of them to take it up now and argue it. Most wheat-growing in this country at the present time is wheat crop after wheat crop after wheat crop, with a diminishing return every time, and robbing the land of its latent fertility that has been built up in the soil through years, and perhaps generations, of good husbandry. That fertility is now being robbed as truly and deliberately as if an armed man went into a bank and robbed the bank of its money. The Minister probably knows—the Minister for Lands would know—of one of his colleagues on that bench, or very near it, who grew wheat for four or five years on the same farm and then handed it over to the Land Commission when it had been robbed in that fashion; and now it is divided and given to poor unfortunates to pay the annuity on it— and if they do not pay the annuity, the local authority will have to pay. Will the Minister contradict that? He is a colleague who is a very likely candidate, a selected candidate, of his Party for the next election in a southern constituency.

We heard a lot of talk from the Minister for Industry and Commerce about the development of industries here. I am one of those who always believed in protection for industry, who always believed in protecting our young industries here; but I know enough of economics to know that in an agricultural country like this, in order to start industry and start it on a sound basis, you can only do so out of the sound profits of agriculture. Here we have a Government that started five years ago, simultaneously, an economic war with England, robbing agriculture of about £5,000,000 a year and impoverishing it to that extent, depressing the price of agricultural produce in the home market by a similar amount, and at the same time starting a vigorous drive in the direction of industrialisation in this country and asking agriculture to pay, during that period of depression together with the world depression, the price for the industrialisation of this country. I was opposed to that then, not because I was opposed to protection, but because I was a supporter of protection and wanted to give protection a fair chance, which it has not got. We hear the boasting coming from the Government Benches—we heard it to-day—of the progress of industrialisation. It is time that we in this country came down to tin-tacks and got some little moral courage. It is time for us to pull the wool off our eyes and tell this House and tell the country what industrialisation in this country really means. It means that we are handing this country over to a gang of international Jews.

Mr. T. Kelly

Rubbish.

Mr. Belton

Will the Deputy get up and deny it?

I was going to criticise the policy of the Department of External Affairs.

Mr. MacEntee

In relation to Spain?

Mr. Belton

Mr. Roddy

The Minister when introducing this——

Mr. Belton

If anybody else said it, it would be all right.

An Leas-Cheann Comhairle

The Deputy will withdraw that remark.

Mr. Belton

He will not. He will leave the House. I will leave the House when I am officially asked to leave it.

An Leas-Cheann Comhairle

Mr. Belton

I am leaving.

Deputy Belton then withdrew from the Chamber.

Mr. Roddy

The Minister to-day, when introducing this Vote on Account, asked me if I were prepared to say that an expenditure of £1,743,146 for the Land Commission was too high. According to the Land Commission returns and according to all the information which the Land Commission have made available as to their activities during the last two or three years, it would appear that the Land Commission are distributing on an average less than 100,000 acres of land per year and, that being so, I do say in reply to the Minister that an expenditure of £1,743,146 is, in my opinion, too high. The largest single item in that Estimate is an item for improvement of estates amounting to £780,750. Assuming for the moment that the Land Commission are distributing on an average 100,000 acres of land per year, that means that for every single acre of land purchased and distributed by the Land Commission they are spending £7 for the purpose of improvement. Going back over the whole history of the Land Commission for a period of 20 years, the Minister will find, if he cares to look up the figures, or if he gets the officials of the Land Commission to look up the figures, that the average expenditure in respect of improvements per acre on land never exceeded £2. I asked exSenator Connolly when Minister for Lands, and I have asked the present Minister for Lands if they were satisfied that this huge expenditure on improvement alone was justified, but neither of them answered or attempted to answer my question. It does appear to me that that expenditure is extravagant and, until I get a satisfactory answer from the Minister for Lands, I am prepared to hold to my opinion that the expenditure is extravagant.

The Minister went on to deal with the general question of land distribution, and he finished up by making this most extraordinary statement—that the land question in this country would be settled in the course of the next five years. The Minister for Finance may understand a good deal about high spending or extravagant spending if you like, and judging by the Vote on Account we are considering to-day, there is no question but that he does understand a great deal about the extravagant expenditure of money, but he does not understand the first thing about the land problem or he would not make such an absurd and ridiculous statement.

There is no one in this country who believes for one moment that the land question is going to be settled in five years. So far as it is possible to obtain information from available returns, there are still over 1,000,000 acres of land to be dealt with and, even at the present rate of distribution, it would take five years to distribute all that land. Even apart from this question of land distribution altogether, there is the other question of the vesting and disposing of land already distributed and dealt with under all the Land Acts and, even at the bare minimum, it would take 25 or 30 years to dispose of the land problem. I do not imagine there is a Deputy in the House, no matter how young, who will ever live to see the end of the land problem, because by virtue of the very policy pursued by the present Government they are creating a new land problem, and that new land problem will be much more apparent in the course of the next few years than it is to-day. So much for the Minister's challenge.

To-day we are asked to give the Minister £10,000,000, portion of £29,262,269, which he requires for the Public Services of the State during the coming financial year. To the £29,000,000 must be added the Supplementary Estimates which will be introduced during the course of the coming year, so that it is quite safe to assume that the expenditure on Supply Services by the end of the next financial year will amount approximately to £30,000,000, and to that may be added £4,000,000 for the Central Fund, making the total expenditure between £34,000,000 and £35,000,000. The highest annual expenditure we have had hitherto in this State was for the financial year 1923-4, when expenditure amounted to £38,000,000, but that £38,000,000 included the cost of the civil war. Now under a Fianna Fáil Government that promised to reduce taxation by at least £2,000,000—and on that subject no one was more eloquent than the Minister for Finance—we are drifting towards, and probably in the course of the next few years will have succeeded in reaching, an expenditure that was not reached during the civil war period. At this stage it is interesting to go back over the annual expenditure since the Free State was established. I am sure that members of the Fianna Fáil Party, and of the Government, will not relish the comparison. Nevertheless, it is exceedingly interesting, and it shows how far the Minister and the members of the Government have departed from the fulfilment of the promises they made to the taxpayers. In 1922-23 the total expenditure was £29,000,000; in 1923-24, £38,000,000; in 1924-25, £27,000,000; in 1925-26, £26,000,000; in 1926-27, £27,000,000; in 1927-28, £26,000,000; in 1928-29, and in 1930-31, £25,000,000; in 1931-32, £26,000,000; in 1932-33, £28,000,000; in 1933-34, £31,000,000; in 1934-35, £31,000,000; in 1935-36, £31,000,000 and in 1936-37, according to my estimate, the expenditure will be about £33,000,000. I suppose the Minister recalls the days when he was sitting here on the Opposition Benches, and how eloquently he pleaded for a reduction of taxation; how at that time he pointed out that the country could not possibly endure taxation higher than £20,000,000. In fact, if my recollection serves me right, on one occasion he stated that he was satisfied that the whole 32 Counties could be easily and satisfactorily run on £20,000,000. I am speaking entirely from recollection.

Mr. MacEntee

I think the Deputy should refresh his recollection.

Mr. Roddy

At any rate, the Minister made a statement of that kind in the Dáil. To-day what do we find? The Government that was to reduce taxation by £2,000,000 has consistently increased it since it assumed the responsibility of Government, with the result that in the coming financial year we are faced with a total expenditure amounting to the enormous sum of £35,000,000, or almost war-time expenditure. What do we find on looking over the Votes? While the majority of the Estimates have been increased, one item in almost every case is increased very substantially, that under the heading of "wages, salaries and allowances." The biggest increases are probably taking place in the Department of Industry and Commerce, where there is a total net increase in expenditure of £12,000, and a net increase in salaries and wages of over £15,000. In the Department of Lands the total increase is £132,325 and the increase in wages and salaries represents £32,475. In the Revenue Commissioners' Department there is a total increase of £52,042 in wages, salaries and allowances. We can all remember members of the Fianna Fáil Party telling the electors that after an exhaustive examination of all the Votes included in the Estimates for the year 1931-32, they had deliberately come to the conclusion that it was quite possible to reduce expenditure on the administration of every single Department. What do we find now? Starting at pages 4 and 5 of the Book of Estimates, and continuing to the last page, in every one of the Votes standing out prominently above all the other items is that of "wages, salaries and allowances," showing an increase in practically every case, meaning inevitably increased staffs. I agree that so long as the so-called economic war lasts it is necessary for the Government to bolster up their policy with all sorts of artificial aids, with tariffs in some form, subsidies and bounties, but every one of these artificial expedients means increased staffs, so that in the course of another few years it is quite possible that the number of civil servants in the country may very well represent 35 per cent. of the population, assuming that emigration to Great Britain continues at the same rate.

The Minister boasts that the Government had fulfilled every one of its election promises. I think the Minister for Lands when recently in Kilkenny was more specific than the Minister for Finance, as he said that they had fulfilled 100 per cent. of their election promises. That was certainly interesting. Apparently the Minister for Finance, and also the Minister for Lands when speaking in Kilkenny, forgot the £2,000,000 reduction of taxation that was promised to the electors. He also forgot that we have an unemployment problem; that unemployment instead of diminishing seemed to be increasing, and that we have not yet stopped emigration. We had to-day an extraordinary transformation, when the Minister for Finance justified an increase of £10,000,000 in expenditure on the Public Services in this State, while the Minister for Industry and Commerce defended emigration from this State, notwithstanding the election promises of 1931-32. I was going to remind the Minister of a statement he made on one occasion, when he said that not only would emigration stop, but that in order to carry out the big industrial policy they proposed to embark upon they would have to bring back all the exiles to work in our factories. We were also promised that the annuities would be withheld. I sometimes wonder if they have been withheld. The President stated that the annuities were being taken from us in a form which inflicts more hardship on our people than if they were paid directly. I mention another promise that was made, and that was a reduction in the staffs of the various departments of the Civil Service, yet, to-day these staffs are increasing at an alarming rate, and before the economic policy, especially the industrial policy of the Fianna Fáil Government is fully implemented, God knows what the figures for the staffs of these departments will reach. Reference was made to the Coal-Cattle Pact, which now appears to be changed to the sugar-horse pact. I thought that the Minister for Finance, when he was introducing this Vote on Account, would have made some reference to it. There is no question whatever about it that the latest pact has caused a tremendous amount of disappointment in the country. Undoubtedly, the people of this country were given the impression, rightly or wrongly—and especially prior to the interview between President de Valera and Mr. Malcolm MacDonald—that the pact on this occasion would be much more satisfactory, and would certainly mean a very substantial decrease in the duties imposed by the British Government. However, apparently it is quite evident now that the British have definitely made up their minds to get the withheld moneys from this country and that unless some abnormal situation arises there is not likely to be a satisfactory settlement of what has hitherto been called the Coal-Cattle Pact. Surely the Minister realises that this so-called economic war cannot go on indefinitely, and that a stage must come, and come very soon, when a settlement will have to be made. Probably, when that stage does arise, the circumstances may not be quite so favourable towards a satisfactory settlement of that problem as they are at the moment. If the members of the Government were really alive to the condition of affairs in the country —and the picture painted to-day by Deputy Dillon, Deputy Professor O'Sullivan and Deputy Mulcahy has not been in the slightest degree exaggerated—they would certainly make a determined effort to put a speedy end to this conflict which is not reflecting any credit on them.

Mr. M. O'Reilly

I notice that Deputies on the opposite benches very often, in fact nearly always, suggest by their speeches that somehow or another we got into power by waving a magic wand or by deceiving the people. They go a little bit further and say that we did it on two occasions, and will do it on the third occasion. I myself believe that the people had very good reasons for making a change. One of the main reasons why the agricultural population were so determined to make a change was that about the year 1931, before the first election that we won here, the farmers of this country discovered that their produce had dropped to the tune of about £13,000,000. That, of course, began to make them think very seriously. They went back then to the 1923 Land Act, which was ushered in with great sounding of trumpets. It was necessary, and it was a good Act. The Act was right enough, but the operations were carried out in an extremely bad way. Of course that might be one of the reasons why it is costing a bit more to improve land to-day than in Deputy Roddy's time.

Mr. O'Leary

It must be all bog land you are buying now.

Mr. O'Reilly

The real fact of the situation was that Great Britain discovered she had not a whole and complete grip of it, and there was what some people called a secret agreement. There was an agreement of some description, and from the existence of an agreement I take it that there was something taken from us. England got the land annuities anyway.

Mr. O'Leary

She is getting them now too.

Mr. O'Reilly

Mr. O'Reilly

An Ceann Comhairle

I must ask Deputy Keating to withdraw for persisting in interrupting.

Mr. Keating

With the greatest of pleasure, Sir. I am tired listening to nonsense.

Mr. Keating withdrew.

Mr. O'Reilly

The position is that a great part of the statements made on the opposite benches will be recognised by the public as mere political propaganda without any foundation whatever, and if they take my advice they will state all the facts when they make these statements. I do not deny that there is very great hardship among farmers in the country. I know it well and I know that the hardship amongst the larger types of farmers is very extreme. I know also that that hardship was coming on them since 1921, and that from 1927 on their hardships became extreme. The fall in the price of cattle in 1921 and the continuous drop from that on left many of these farmers in a hopeless plight, and that is another reason why in a county like Meath the majority of those farmers voted for us instead of for the other side. They saw some hope of things at least being put in order. The other side never held out the slightest hope of that, but quite a number of those farmers to-day have hopes that their position will be put in order. The other side gave no thought to that at all.

I am not going to delay the House much longer. All I want to say in conclusion is that no matter what may be said from the opposite benches, the people in general in this country are satisfied that we adopted the right policy and the proof of that is evident to anybody who goes the roads or passes through the cities or towns. A degree of reconstruction has taken place in this country which affords positive proof that we, as a Government, are honest in our endeavours to rebuild and reorganise our country.

Mr. MacDermot

I should like to say a very few words about the condition of the agricultural community in a purely objective spirit. I have no motive for trying to strain the case against the Government. I think it is on the whole desirable in the public interest that the Government should remain in office for another term. They have learned a good deal since they have been in office, but it would be an exaggeration to maintain that their political education is complete, and, as for the Fianna Fáil Party outside this House, its political education, judging from the proceedings at Fianna Fáil Ard Fheis, has hardly begun. If a further reason is necessary, I would say that a settlement, political and economic, with Great Britain that will establish friendly relations on a permanent basis between the two countries is something which we must all intensely desire, and I believe that such a settlement, to be lasting, had better be made by the Fianna Fáil Party. Consequently, I not only believe but I hope that they will be returned to power again after the next general election; and the few words that I am saying this evening are not said with any desire to make an artificial case against them. I am speaking as objectively as I know how to speak. The main attention in this debate has been devoted to the subject of whether the country has improved or deteriorated under the rule of Fianna Fáil. That is a very interesting and important question, but it is not the question with which I propose to deal. There seems to me to be a simpler and less controversial question that we can ask ourselves, and it is, perhaps, even more worth while asking. That question is: Is the condition in the agricultural community satisfactory, and, if it is not satisfactory, can we see an easy and obvious way to make a great improvement in it? The first part of that question has just been answered by Deputy O'Reilly, himself a member of the Fianna Fáil Party. He admits that the condition of the agricultural community is not satisfactory. The Minister for Industry and Commerce has admitted that they are not prosperous. To say these things is to indulge in under-statements. In my opinion, the condition of the agricultural community was most unsatisfactory before the present Government came into office, and, whether it is worse now or not—and I think it is worse—it still remains most unsatisfactory. In these days, when trade unions in industry are getting stronger, when measures are being passed about the conditions of employment for the benefit of working men in industry, the trend is towards establishing a sharp distinction between those engaged in agriculture and those engaged in other pursuits. As I see it, unless there is some change in the general direction of our policy, those engaged in agriculture are going to sink, and sink while watching helplessly the improved conditions of those who are engaged in other branches of industry.

As I have said, the unsatisfactory condition of the farming community has been admitted by Fianna Fáil spokesmen themselves. Deputy O'Reilly tells us that we ought to be consoled, or rather more than consoled, for the tariffs that are put upon our farm produce by Great Britain when we consider the tariffs that we have put on British industrial products. Now I say, quite frankly, that if I had a choice between having no tariffs at all on either side, and having all the existing tariffs maintained by both sides, I would choose the former. Of the two I think that that policy would be the least damaging to the country. But, in point of fact, we are not called upon to make any choice. The suggestion implied in Deputy O'Reilly's speech was that the British Government were adopting a threatening attitude towards this country, and that to him and to his colleagues it was apparent that at any time when we put into force an industrial policy containing tariffs on British goods, we were likely to be faced with a crushing British tariff on our agricultural produce.

There is absolutely no evidence to support that view. Every British Dominion has put tariffs on British industrial products. Nevertheless, we have heard figures quoted to-day to show how the Dominions have succeeded in doubling their exports to Great Britain during the period when our exports to Great Britain have been halved. It would have been perfectly possible to have proceeded with the industrial policy of the Minister for Industry and Commerce without taking the action which, in fact, caused the imposition of British tariffs upon our agricultural produce. Nay, more, the hope of the success of the policy of the Minister for Industry and Commerce would have been immensely increased if the buying power of the community had not been damaged by the policy of the Government which caused those tariffs to be put upon our agricultural goods.

What is the evidence of the distress amongst the agricultural community? In the first place, the evidence of one's own sight. When I go to my own constituency, and especially every time I go to the poorer parts of my constituency, I feel that their condition is not only unsatisfactory, but a disgrace to civilisation. I am not pretending that that poverty is a new thing. I believe that it is deeper than it was five years ago. That may be a matter for controversy, but that the poverty is there is admitted on all sides. When the Government tell us that the injury done to the agricultural community by the imposition of the British tariffs has been compensated for by the benefits they have given in the reduction of annuities, for example, and by increased social services, I reply that that is not enough. These things were needed by the agricultural community in any event, if there had never been any tariffs on our exports to Great Britain. Irish agriculture is, and has been, the Cinderella of this community, and it is no answer, on the part of the Government, to say that they have not made matters worse. It is their duty to make matters better. That duty they have not accomplished.

What about this matter of emigration? The Minister for Industry and Commerce said that from the 1st of April, 1935, to the 31st of March, 1936, the emigration from this country to Great Britain, including emigration via Northern Ireland, was 23,000. There were figures published in this morning's papers showing that for the calendar year 1936 the total net emigration from this country to Great Britain by sea, and not including the emigration via Northern Ireland, was 29,000. To this must be added the very considerable emigration by way of Northern Ireland into Great Britain. The Minister for Industry and Commerce suggests that these emigrants are nearly all girls going into domestic service in Great Britain. I invite him to go down to the North Wall or to Dun Laoghaire, use his own eyesight, and look at the number of young people leaving by the boats any Friday evening. He will see a stream of vigorous young men going abroad, coming entirely from the agricultural community, and, particularly, from the agricultural community in the West of Ireland. If the Minister does so, it will be impossible for him to suggest that there is not a formidable stream of emigration from this country to Great Britain.

What are the tests one is to apply? What about wages? We passed a Bill here a few months ago providing for wages boards to be set up in order to improve the wages of agricultural labourers. How far has that measure got? What activities have taken place under that Act? What are the hopes under present conditions of appreciably raising the wages of agricultural labourers? These wages are an absolute disgrace, and every Deputy here knows they are an absolute disgrace. No matter what the figures may be as to the revenue flowing into the Exchequer, no matter what the figures as to the consumption of necessaries, and luxuries in the cities may be, it is impossible to take a rosy view of the general economic conditions of the country so long as we find the agricultural community in the state in which it is. So long as you find the people as poor as they are in the country districts, and the agricultural labourers as miserably paid as they are, you cannot but feel that the prosperity of other industries or of other parts of the country is resting upon an insecure foundation.

The Fianna Fáil Party answers that there cannot be very much wrong with the country districts because the people in those districts continue to vote for that Party. They say that they would not do that if they were really suffering as much as I suggest they are suffering. I do not find that argument convincing. The truth of the matter is that the more distressed people get in the country districts, the less independent they feel; the more they are forced to hold out their hands for Government relief in some form and the more they feel obliged to join Fianna Fáil clubs. Since Fianna Fáil came into power there has been a stream of people joining Fianna Fáil clubs for no other reason than that they believed that that was the best method for securing such pecuniary advantages from the State as were to be obtained. I am prepared frankly to confess that there is a second reason—that is, that the personal popularity and prestige of President de Valera are very great and that a large number of people vote for him out of a sort of romantic affection, a sort of feeling that he is a great man who will lead them to security and prosperity some time or another in the future. The Party on this side were ten years in office, and if there was nothing else to make them unpopular—I am not saying that there was nothing else to make them unpopular—that, in itself, was enough to create considerable unpopularity for them. I shall not pretend that, up to the present, the Front Bench of the Government Party is not more personally popular than the Front Bench of the Opposition Party, but I think the Government would be very unwise to reckon on that state of things continuing for ever. The time will come when the people will get sick of their personalities, too, and the time will come when the people will feel that membership of the Fianna Fáil clubs has not, after all, brought them that security and happiness which every human being has a right to expect. When that time does come, there may be a landslide that will sweep the Government out of office. Even on the lowest grounds, the Government would be well advised to take into consideration the state of the agricultural community.

I am not going to pretend that the Government are not amenable to higher motives than those. I am sure they are sincere in the onslaught they have been conducting on poverty since they came into power. I am sure that every individual in this House is eager to see that attack on poverty maintained. There are two ways of doing it. One way is to redistribute wealth, to some extent, by taxation and to improve the social services—to devote money on an increasing scale to social services, as the Minister for Finance has boasted to us to-day that he is doing. Along with that, you have got also—and it is even more important— to husband and increase the general wealth of the community. If one has to choose between the two things, I think the second is more important, even to the very poor, than the first. In connection with the first part of that policy, the Minister for Finance would be well advised to pay serious attention to what Deputy Dillon and others have been saying about the cost of the things that the poor people in the country have to buy. I hope very much—I suppose the observation is not strictly relevant to this Vote but it is relevant to what has been said in this debate—that, when the Budget comes, we shall, in existing circumstances, see a substantial reduction in indirect taxation even if it involves an increase of the income tax to 5/-. I personally believe that every citizen of the State should be conscious of taxation, that every citizen should realise that money cannot be spent without being raised from somewhere. I should like every citizen to be conscious of taxation, but I do feel that, in existing circumstances, the agricultural community is being called upon to contribute far more than it is fair it should be called upon to contribute.

We had to-day what seemed to me to be a deplorable reply from the President of the Executive Council to a question of mine—that any sort of compromise with a view to the removal of the tariff on cattle would be, in his view, an unconditional surrender. That is a new and extraordinary definition of the word "compromise." A compromise when entered into by President de Valera becomes an "unconditional surrender." Presumably, a compromise which would have to be simultaneously entered into by the British Government would be, for them, an overwhelming victory. Why it should be an overwhelming victory as applied to the British Government and an unconditional surrender as applied to our Government, neither I nor anybody else can explain. What right have the Government to be so stiff-necked and so vain in a matter where the sufferings of the poor are concerned? Heaven knows they have been prepared to compromise their principles in many other matters.

We had one such matter within the last few days when we were told that they were taking steps to raise the salaries of Government Ministers. I agree that the present salaries of Government Ministers are not sufficient, but there was a time when it was a matter of the highest principle with the Fianna Fáil Party that the salaries of Government Ministers should not exceed £1,000 a year. They have not thought it beneath their dignity to compromise on a matter affecting their own pockets. Why should it be beneath their dignity to compromise on a matter concerning, much more importantly, the pockets of the poor? Even if I am the only person in this House to do it, I shall vote against any increase of salaries for the Ministers of the Government so long as they continue in the attitude that they are prepared to make no concession——

An Ceann Comhairle

It may be rather invidious for me to intervene but I would point out that the Deputy may be prejudicing the investigations of the commission which is to be set up to inquire into this matter. I put that view-point to him for his consideration.

Mr. MacDermot

In any case, my point is sufficiently plain. If concessions of principle can be made by Ministers, they should be made in matters in which enormous benefit can be achieved for the agricultural community. It is, as I said, indisputable—it is even admitted—that the condition of the agricultural community is unsatisfactory. Can it be denied that no single measure can be thought of that would do more for the agricultural community than the removal of the tariff on cattle? Everybody knows that that would be a measure of enormous value. After all the theorising of the Fianna Fáil Party, after all their attempts since they came into office to change the face of Irish agriculture, the cattle trade to-day plays as big a part in our agricultural economy as ever it did. In our exports to Great Britain, the proportion of cattle to other agricultural exports is actually higher than it was before the present Government came into office. Everybody knows that the crying need of the agricultural community at present is to have the British tariff on cattle taken off. I suggest that that operation is perfectly practicable without anything that could be reasonably described as an "unconditional surrender."

There has been no attempt at compromise. I put a question some months ago and I put another question to-day in order to elicit whether there had been even an attempt to compromise and there has not. That is plain. I say that, as long as that is so, Ministers are false to their duty to the country.

Mr. McGilligan

After listening to Deputy MacDermot speak, if I could get the same vein of Olympian detachment to everything in this country that he professes to have, no matter how much from time to time I may be annoyed and disappointed with the arguments coming from the benches opposite, I have this feeling that if they have helped to create the mess they are floundering in, at any rate they cannot go to the boatside at Dun Laoghaire and leave this country when the going gets too bad as Deputy MacDermot can. Deputy MacDermot wants to see the political education of President de Valera and of the Fianna Fáil Government continued. The Deputy in this House in the year 1933 committed himself to this observation: "I know of no man since Cromwell who has done more harm to this country than Mr. de Valera," and that is the man that he wants educated. Well, our forefathers would not have liked to see the Lord Protector Cromwell living here for years in order to have him educated. They would have something with boiling oil in it for him. Will Deputy MacDermot put himself in the position of one of our farmers whose income, according to the Minister for Agriculture, has dropped from £93 in 1926 to £51 in 1934, and think whether he would like to live on that reduced income of £51 just to have President de Valera educated. If Deputy MacDermot had his roots fixed in this country and was really concerned about emigration, would he like to think of the old tendency there was in regard to emigration being reversed as it had been, with thousands of our people being forced out of this country even, as was explained to day, through the medium of the labour exchanges to get President de Valera educated?

Deputy MacDermot was very eloquent this evening on the woes of the agricultural community. Nobody could be too eloquent on that subject. I propose to quote again—I quoted it here before—from the pamphlet sent around by the St. Vincent de Paul Society to most people in this city, in the month of November of last year, dealing with the situation in this city. They say in it that

"The provision of new houses in the suburbs for large families who are living on unemployment assistance or home assistance provides a problem which might have been foreseen."

They point out that these poor people formerly lived in a single room

"... with just a few pieces of furniture, at rents of from 3/6 to 7/6 a week according to the accommodation provided. Now they find themselves outside the city, with comfortable houses but practically no furniture, and an increased rent to pay out of the same income they received in the slum dwelling. To this additional rent has to be added train or 'bus fares for the families when the children go to school or the parents have to go to the city."

And finally they wind up by saying that there is a

"... reduction in the amount of food purchased so that the increased rent may be paid."

Must we have those people condemned to live in such circumstances so that the President and his Ministers can get educated? Deputy MacDermot will approve, in a mood of detachment, of all that is going on in the country to have that education carried on for another five years.

Mr. T. Kelly

The quotation that the Deputy has given will be dealt with on the Estimate when it comes before the House, and the statements made therein will be refuted.

Mr. McGilligan

Here is another sentence from it:

"There are numerous families which in the past were enabled to maintain themselves in frugal comfort on small incomes, but which under present economic conditions find it impossible to live except on a level which amounts practically to starvation."

Should we continue to have those people who previously had a meagre livelihood brought to, and kept at, the border-line that means practically starvation for them so that the President and his Ministers can get a proper education, and so that Deputy MacDermot, detached and aloof, can see whether they are getting educated or not. Finally, the St. Vincent de Paul Society say: "In years gone by it was comparatively easy to collect quantities of unwanted clothes for the poor; nowadays it is almost impossible to get anything approaching the amount required."

That is the situation that should be allowed to continue until certain people here get educated!

Mr. T. Kelly

The remarks made there relating to the new houses which the Corporation are providing will be questioned when the Estimates come forward.

Mr. McGilligan

Nobody has said a word about the new houses.

Mr. T. Kelly

That is what is alluded to there.

Mr. McGilligan

What is said is this, that if the people in the new houses have to pay an increased rent and have the same old income, therefore they have less available to pay for food. Does the Deputy think that sort of situation ought to be allowed to continue so that five years more will roll on to see what the effects of the educative process will be on those people? Deputy O'Reilly talked about the Party's promises. I remember when it was only necessary to produce the old plan and it was a case of every back bencher in the Government Party becoming petrified. I do not know that they are so eloquent about the plan now. There is talk of 100 per cent fulfilment of promises in face of that. There has been a lot of education at the expense of the unfortunate natives of this country whom Deputy MacDermot has no right to speak for. The Deputy is very anxious to have a new Budget situation this year in which indirect taxation will be lowered and income tax raised. I think that if anything is to be done in the way of increasing taxation, it certainly ought not to be in indirect taxation. The necessities of the poor ought not again to be touched. The price of the education already given to the people opposite in the last five years has been worked through hardships on the people in the way of taxes on their bread, butter, sugar, tea and coal. There are people to whom that means nothing. It may mean nothing to Deputy MacDermot, but there are people to whom it means something.

Dáil Éireann díospóireacht - Thursday, 4 Mar 1937

Dáil Éireann díospóireacht -
Thursday, 4 Mar 1937