We are going to adjourn over Christmas. I remember somewhat distant days on which, when there was a motion of this kind for the adjournment, those who are now on the Government Benches used to protest and say that, with the problems facing the country, it was wrong that the House should adjourn. I cannot take up that line. I should not be honest in taking it up, considering the conduct of the Government and the way they have conducted the business of the House since the election. They have not brought forward any measure of great importance tending to promote the welfare of the people since the general election. So far as important Government business is concerned, that is, business affecting the daily lives of the people, the House might as well not have sat. That is the Government contribution, so far as the welfare of this State is concerned, since they were elected last July. Not merely that, but though there was again and again opportunity to discuss many things in which the country is interested, many problems that do vitally affect the people, the Government deliberately prevented this House from discussing them. Therefore, I cannot take up what used to be the time-honoured pretence of an objection to the motion that the House should adjourn for longer than a week or two.
I do not think that anybody who has the welfare of the State at heart, anybody who is interested in the wellbeing of the people, can look forward with any great pleasure to the coming Christmas. Our export trade is still in the same muddle, is still in the same most unsatisfactory state into which the Government deliberately plunged it some five years ago. Ministers may now pretend that they were not responsible, but surely the memories of Deputies are not so short that they cannot recollect when they boasted here and elsewhere of the fact that in this particular war they had fired the first shot? The President made it clear that, so far as the effect of that war was concerned, it was only going to hurry on the policy he had at heart. How could he then regard the chaos into which he was plunging the economic life of the country as anything else except a blessing, something, in his own words in College Green, that was calculated to bring to an earlier fruition the ideals he had for this country?
That was the situation then. The situation has not improved essentially since then. Everywhere we look, what is the picture? Agriculture is depressed, not a single branch of it in a sound condition. The cattle trade, one of our main sources of revenue, has been almost destroyed—deliberately at one period the Government set out to destroy it. They set out with that as their policy. Look at the dairying industry and see the muddle it is in. Is there a single person in town or country who understands what the policy of the Government is so far as the dairying industry is concerned? As regards the pig industry, all I can say about that is that the muddle there is almost equal to what it is in the dairying industry. Poultry and eggs show a lamentable decline. I do not think even the Minister for Industry and Commerce with his new breed of hens could save that industry now. All the important branches of agriculture are in as bad a condition as they could be.
Any slight improvement recently means simply that you have given to a man who was actually, in the full sense of the word, starving, a little assistance, a little food to keep alive. That is all there is of so-called improvement. The condition of our main branches of industry still remain essentially unhealthy, unsound, such that the nation cannot long stand. Where are we as regards that great tillage policy that was to be the compensation for the wilful destruction of all these things—one of the reasons that made us hail the economic war as a blessing in disguise, that great instrument that was to bring about in 18 months the results that the President suggested otherwise would require 17 years? You have had that policy in force for 18 months, and more than 18 months, and are we any nearer that policy of economic salvation which was then preached than we were when this trouble was started? Every day the country has to bear, not merely the present strain, but the strain of the losses of the last three or four years. People think that because there might be a slight improvement in certain branches that it means a general improvement. It does not, because that is only the bringing up of people from an exceedingly low condition to one that would have been slightly less low had not the weight of the past losses to be borne by them.
As regards your wheat policy, is the Minister for Agriculture satisfied with the experience of the past 12 months? There was a decline easy to understand in the acreage under wheat, and obviously there was a decline in the quality. Is that to be the substitute for the destruction of the wealth of this country that the Government deliberately engaged in? Will the Minister for Agriculture treat these hard facts of the economic situation of our farmers with the same light-heartedness as the President always treats cogent arguments? Will he simply ignore them? I fancy the stronger they are the more he will ignore them. The cost of living is going up, not because there is a demand for our goods from outside, and, therefore, a bigger market for them. If that happened, there would be ample compensation for the rise in the cost of living, but we have no such compensation. The cost of living is going up and keeping pace, not with an increase of our wealth, not with an increase of our trade, but with the decrease of our wealth and the continued destruction of our trade.
Elsewhere, in industry, what have you but chaos? Factories are started every day without any plan or system. Does anybody pretend that there is a plan or could be a plan? Factories fairly recently established are already working part time. That is called an industrial policy! No wonder the Minister for Industry and Commerce sometimes casts an eye on another Department—Agriculture. I know that an industrialist did express the view that it was a pity the Government did not appoint Deputy Lemass as Minister for Agriculture. He justified that view by saying that as the Government were deliberately setting out to destroy agriculture, it did not matter whom they appointed Minister. At least, if Deputy Lemass had been appointed Minister for Agriculture, only agriculture would have been destroyed and industry would have had some chance.
We have a position in which our principal industry—still our basic industry—is in a deplorable condition and is deliberately kept in that condition; we have the cost of living increasing without any corresponding increase in our national wealth, and we have chaos in our industrial system as a result of the complete lack of plan or system on the part of the Minister responsible. The Minister for Industry and Commerce is beginning to acknowledge that. He is beginning to say things that it would have been treason for us—a "sabotaging of our industrial policy"—to say some time ago. That was the charge made a couple of years ago when these things were pointed out from these benches but they become as holy writ when spoken from the opposite side by the Minister for Industry and Commerce. In addition, there is industrial unrest. Can any Deputy tell me what strikes have been on, what strikes are on and what strikes will be on in the City of Dublin as a result of the intolerable situation mainly brought about by Government policy? It has been pointed out on every side, except the Fianna Fáil side, that you are looking for industrial unrest when you increase the cost of living and do not, at the same time, increase wages. We have a ruined agriculture, chaotic industry, industrial unrest, and emigration. It is all very well for a Minister to go down to his constituency and bemoan the flight of the people from the land. It is all very well for the Minister for Agriculture to suggest, as a method of keeping them on the land, the provision of light reading. That is not a serious way to treat a serious problem any more than was the suggestion as to the light beer we were to get from Clare. The President has good reason to laugh. We have not seen the light beer. Very few of us have had an opportunity of drinking it in the large quantities the President recommended.