I want to thank the House and the Chair for permitting me to continue the discussion on the shortcomings of the Parliamentary Secretary. I do not believe that if the motion to refer this Vote back goes to a vote, it will be carried. I think the object of moving it was to provide us with an opportunity of commenting on the activities of the Parliamentary Secretary and his office, his lack of capacity and his lack of vision. It is for that purpose that I avail of it. To continue my, I hope, helpful criticism of this episode in Collinstown, I want to assure the Parliamentary Secretary again that those who are interested in this new form of transport are particularly anxious that no hitch should occur either in the opening up of the work or in the continuity of it. But you cannot, in existing circumstances, get established the relations that should exist between Government Departments and those who speak in a representative capacity for the workers employed in carrying out this work. You cannot get it because of the mentality of the Department, which is peculiarly affecting Deputies in this House, particularly the Deputy who last spoke and who said that, of course, this rotational system was almost perfect. When I referred on Friday to this lack of perfection on the part of the Parliamentary Secretary, he laughingly agreed to it. The system of employing labour in the Board of Works is unsatisfactory, uneconomic and, if I might adopt the phrase of my friend in the front bench, Deputy Davin, unChristian. At least we ought to give to the humblest amongst us, the same treatment that we would expect to be given to ourselves and if the men in office abuse their privileges and powers then I think they fail to come up to the standard set up by the eminent Deputy, Deputy Davin.
In Collinstown we have a peculiar set of circumstances. Reflections on the political honesty of certain Parties have been cast backwards and forward during this discussion. Malversation of funds has not been referred to but actually there must have been malversation of funds if moneys were given in the country because of political opinions and political affiliations. That charge has been made and it should be substantiated or withdrawn. That is a crude form of criticism, but when it is made and stated, it should be probed to the bottom and, if there is one iota of proof for it, then the person responsible should be removed from public life. In North County Dublin I definitely make the charge of political interference in the employment of these men. I stated here, in correcting the speaker who was discussing it in the first place, Deputy McGowan, that the men had been employed three weeks before Christmas, 1936. I want to repeat that. The wages paid to them were 30/- per week for work which the Parliamentary Secretary and his officers had agreed to pay the recognised rate of wages—recognised and adjusted as between the employers in that particular area and the representatives of the workers.
What was the rate of wages agreed to? There can be no argument about it. The rate was agreed to and was reaffirmed. Since Christmas, 1936, there has been a prolonged struggle for a readjustment of the relations between employers and workers in the City and County of Dublin. The rate was 30/-, but after representations being made to the Board of Works, and after two meetings with the commissioners—the chairman of which is a personal friend of mine—at which everything was gone into, sympathetically on our side, because those representing the workers, skilled and unskilled, were enthusiastic about this work, the matter was discussed and settled. I want it to go on the records of the House that the Corporation of Dublin agreed to associate itself with the work, and to charge itself with an expenditure of £150,000—not £250,000 —towards completing the scheme. Why did the commissioners, the three groups and the Corporation of Dublin accept the statement of myself and those who represented the organised workers in the corporation? Men like Deputy Kelly, who has given the service of a lifetime to Dublin, his fellow loyal political fanatic, Deputy Doyle, the Whip of the Fine Gael Party, and the Lord Mayor of Dublin, who is not here with his chain, agreed unanimously to co-operate in every way in demanding a measure of justice, because of the breaking of a gentleman's agreement. The 30/- was made £2 2s.
The Board of Works told me on two occasions that they were paying the rate of wages agreed to and recognised in County Dublin by the county council. I told the Secretary of the Department that he was wrong. I say now that he is wrong, that the board have never paid that rate, but have simply taken advantage of conditions for which their Party was responsible. I take it that they believed they were morally right then, and that they were prepared to face the issue of exacting these terms from persons outside this territory. Whatever the aftermath, we have all to share it. The whole burden was not cast on the farmers, who were not hungry, but on the hungry men on the roads of County Dublin. They were to get £2 2s 0d. if they worked the whole week, but labourers in Dublin County Council employment get £2 7s. 0d. a week, a fortnight's holidays, and they get regular work, and boots and clothing in some cases. These other men have to come ten or 20 miles, and have to walk if they do not get a "lift," and, without any break to make tea, or place to boil it, and then walk home again. If that is the treatment you are going to give ordinary people, it is about time you woke up. I hold in my hand the minutes of an agreement that was entered into after a dispute. It was made with the Parliamentary Secretary and with the Minister for Industry and Commerce, who gave it his unwearying attention night and day over a period of five months. I want to give him that credit. In that document the Board of Works agreed to accept the agreement as the governing issue in the relations of the workers with his Department. What do we find? Since 1896 there has been a gentleman's agreement—it is not in writing—under which, whatever wages were arrived at, or whatever adjustments were made in wages between employers and workers in the City of Dublin, the Board of Works would also recognise. That was reaffirmed in the 1907 dispute. In 1913 it was again reaffirmed, by which Board of Works employees were not to be called out, and that, whatever wages were arrived at, at the end of a dispute the board would pay, and pay retrospectively. In 1937, we were waited on and met the commissioners to provide them with information concerning employment in the Civil Service, about which there were complaints at that period. A contract was drawn up, and we were asked if we could get any more men. We told them that we could not until the question of wages was adjusted. Discussions took place, and the strike was brought to an end. Rates of wages were set down for these areas.
In our judgment, we did something that had never been done before. We made three zones for the city and county. Dublin and Dun Laoghaire was one, and there was also zone B and zone C. Collinstown being in B area, the rate of wages is 1/5 an hour. In Dun Laoghaire they pay skilled men 1/5 without any hesitation. Public bodies agreed to that rate in the city, including Grangegorman Mental Home, the corporation, the gas company, and the Electricity Supply Board. All others pay according to the terms made in the agreement. But the Board of Works is above and beyond all such equity. They pay the rate to the City of Dublin labourers, but in Dun Laoghaire the labourers appear to be considered a different type of manhood. In Swords and Collinstown the labourers are still considered as being on the agricultural rate. I submitted months ago that any fair employer or any architectural or constructional engineer would agree that the work there is engineering constructional work. The Government Department charged with the carrying out of it would not agree. The Parliamentary Secretary's Department says that it is only agricultural work. Fancy getting ready such a site for great buildings to meet the needs of a big form of transportation and to have the type of mind that calls that ordinary agricultural work. A man who is a good agriculturist should be able to do anything. A good farmer ought to be the best educated man in the community, not only ought he know everything about life, he ought to have vision and he ought to be able to lift his mind out of the drains and look up to the light. But he is far from that. We are not perfect in the city. Let us take the city man. I do submit to you that no man would dare go and intrude upon that site at Collinstown and dare to suggest that he had the knowledge to lay down the levels or get that site ready for the construction of the building it was necessary to put upon the site. I made a point and, I think, the Parliamentary Secretary is going to give me this information, or I am going to get it—who is responsible for putting up the building that was put up—a steel erection—and then taken down almost immediately and put on another site? Why did they have to bring foreign experts over when we have got engineers, graduates of our own universities? Why is the work not done in a right and workmanlike manner?
Deputy McGowan made a threat that this particular job is going to meet with difficulty. The job is black to all skilled workers in this country, national unions or international unions. To all organised workers this job is black, and no decent union man can go and work on it. That blackness will not be wiped out until there is an adjustment. The gentlemen who are working there at the present time have been drawn from all parts. Some are small farmers who are generally the backbone of this country, and I hope they will always remain the backbone of this country. They have been induced by some influence, whether political or otherwise I do not know, to go in there. They are working there under those conditions, taking two guineas a week for a job that ought to be paid £2 7s. Our wages in that area are not £2 7s., and no man who has got any character in the City of Dublin or county will work for those wages. For the county man the rate ought to be at least 54/-. As long as I have any breath, the Corporation of Dublin are not going to put any money into it and are not going to take any share in it. But to-morrow the Corporation, unanimously, I think, will agree, if the job is only made a decent and a clean job, to take their proportion and take a pride in that particular aerodrome. Of course, people will ask how are these things going to be adjusted. They have been adjusted with private employers even after a long struggle. But with the Board of Works there is no approach. They will not listen to any representation. You will get courteous treatment. You will get an official to take you upstairs; you see the secretary and the commissioners. Deputy McGovern over there said they always get courtesy. We also get courtesy, but we were able to compel them to recognise our claim in regard to skilled workers. Under his own name, the Parliamentary Secretary has agreed to try and divide the sheep from the goats, that he is going to recognise the skilled workers at Collinstown Aerodrome site, but the labourers are still going to be the step-children of this nation. But the labourers are going to see that they are not going to be the step-children of this nation any longer. When we were discussing these things a rather peculiar thing arose. The Parliamentary Secretary's secretary, one of the ablest men I have met in the Civil Service, suggested that we were wrong, for this reason, that our own organisation had accepted a lower rate of wages in the county than even offered by the Board of Works. It is true. I do not know whether I influenced the Parliamentary Secretary, but he went on the stool of repentance between Friday night and Sunday morning and, to everybody's surprise, this most ridiculed organ of publicity, a good deal of which is deserved, our national radio—Radio Eireann— blazoned all over this country, Great Britain and all the Dominions across the seas that the Parliamentary Secretary had gone on the stool of repentance and had given those working on the Rhynana Aerodrome an increase of 3/- a week. That was to his credit. I hope that he is still in the repentant mood and that he is going to treat these people in a more generous manner. But I do not see how you can get fairness in the laws that govern relations of men in this country when you have an official of the Labour Party who objects to these cruel wages being paid to these unfortunate men, creatures of circumstance, and rightly brings the attention of the public to this unrighteous act of the Parliamentary Secretary. There is an ordinary phrase: "Physician, heal thyself." The man who was discussing the matter in debate himself as an employer was paying less in the North County, but the Leader of the Labour Party and his union belongs to an organisation that officially accepted 9d. an hour.