Dáil Éireann díospóireacht -
Thursday, 22 Feb 1940

Vol. 78 No. 13

Supplementary Estimates, 1939-40. - Vote 61—Unemployment Insurance and Unemployment Assistance.

Minister for Industry and Commerce (Mr. MacEntee)

I move:—

Go ndeontar suim Bhreise ná raghaidh thar £231,240 chun íoctha an Mhuirir a thiocfaidh chun bheith iníoctha i rith na bliana dar críoch an 31adh lá de Mhárta, 1940, chun Tuarastail agus Costaisí i dtaobh Arachais Díomhaointis agus Malartán Fostaíochta (maraon le síntiúisí do Chiste an Díomhaointis) agus i dtaobh Conganta Dhíomhaointis (9 Edw. 7, c. 7; 10 agus 11 Geo. 5, c. 30; 11 Geo. 5, c. 1; 11 agus 12 Geo. 5, c. 15; 12 Geo. 5, c. 7; Uimh. 17 de 1923; Uimh. 26 agus Uimh. 59 de 1924; Uimh. 21 de 1926; Uimh. 33 de 1930; Uimh. 44 agus Uimh. 46 de 1933; Uimh. 38 de 1935; agus Uimh. 2 de 1938).

That a Supplementary sum not exceeding £231,240 be granted to defray the Charge which will come in course of payment during the year ending 31st March, 1940, for Salaries and Expenses in connection with Unemployment Insurance and Employment Exchanges (including Contributions to the Unemployment Fund) and Unemployment Assistance (9 Edw. 7, c. 7; 10 and 11 Geo. 5, c. 30; 11 Geo. 5, c. 1; 11 and 12 Geo. 5, c. 15; 12 Geo. 5, c. 7; No. 17 of 1923; Nos. 26 and 59 of 1924; No. 21 of 1926; No. 33 of 1930; Nos. 44 and 46 of 1933; No. 38 of 1935; and No. 2 of 1938).

The main provision here, as the House will see, is to meet the revised Estimate for Unemployment Assistance, for which an additional sum of £230,000 is required.

Mr. McGilligan

Does not that require something in the way of comment? The Estimate has gone up from £1,138,000 to £1,520,000. Why?

Mr. MacEntee

It is on account of the increased provision, due to one cause or another arising largely out of the European situation, which has to be made for unemployment assistance.

Mr. McGilligan

Is there more unemployment?

Mr. MacEntee

There is.

Mr. McGilligan

That is the end of all the grand plans.

Mr. MacEntee

I should not say so.

Mr. McGilligan

At any rate, we have reached the stage that, in this particular year, we want £200,000 extra. It is the end of the plans.

Mr. MacEntee

Not unless we are going to regard the world war as the end of everything.

Mr. McGilligan

Are we not getting our requirements? Are we not getting some of the emigrants back? Was not that demanded at one time?

Mr. Hickey

Are not those unemployed applicants deserving of more consideration even than you are asking for them? We have to face up to the position that the cost of living is going up.

An Ceann Comhairle

The Deputy cannot advocate an increase in the Estimate.

Mr. Hickey

I should like to see the Minister taking a very serious view of the matter.

Mr. Dillon

I wonder would the Minister for Industry and Commerce put this to his colleague, the Minister for Supplies: I know nearly 200 men who are out of a job because the raw materials of the industry that used to employ them are not available. I know a boot factory whose representatives went to the Government last April and said to them: "We want to get hides, to ensure that we will be able to carry on our industry in the event of there being any shortage as the result of a European crisis, and we can get them to suit us from South America now, but we cannot finance the purchase of them. Will you finance the purchase, and hold the hides against the money, and we will pay back the purchase price as we draw the hides"? They were told: "No; you must go down to the leather industry in Carrick-on-Suir and buy the hides from them." The leather industry in Carrick-on-Suir was importing the hides, or not even importing the hides, but importing the leather. Another firm in Ireland went to the leather firm in question, and, on condition that they took from this leather firm 50 per cent. of their requirements, the leather firm, if you please, issued a recommendation to the Minister for Industry and Commerce that he would license this second firm to import a similar quantity of hides from abroad. But the first firm, who had not got any licence from the Carrick-on-Suir firm to import leather, are now left with their doors closed and 200 men out of a job. Now, is that right? I do not think it is.

Might I put it to the Minister for Industry and Commerce that he ought to make strict inquiries among those who are giving employment in this country as to the success that is attending the efforts of his colleague, the Minister for Supplies, to secure raw materials to keep those establishments open? Would it astonish the people in this House to know that there was an order for 500,000 pairs of army boots hawked around this country, and there was not a single factory in Ireland that would take it? That was two years' work, I suppose, for 500 men, and there was not a single factory in Ireland that would take it. I hawked around this country an order for 100,000 pairs of blankets—gradual delivery, and the factory to name its own price, within reason—and I could not get a single one of them to take it.

Mr. Hickey

Do I understand that the army boots were to be made in this country?

Mr. Dillon

The army boots were to be made here for the British Army— 500,000 pairs, to be delivered as they were ready, the price being pretty open, a price sufficient to give the manufacturer a fair profit.

Mr. MacEntee

And would supplies of material be guaranteed?

Mr. Dillon

No. That is the Minister for Supplies' job. Remember, the Minister for Supplies is continually swaggering up and down the Dáil telling us about the remarkable success which has attended the efforts of the Government to secure supplies for the industries of this country. The reason the unemployed are unemployed in this country is that we cannot get the stuff, and the Minister for Supplies is not getting the stuff, to employ the men. There is employment in every boot factory and every woollen mill in Ireland sufficient to keep every operative employed for the next two years, and neither of the orders can be accepted because the Minister for Supplies——

An Ceann Comhairle

Who is not the Minister responsible for this Estimate.

Mr. Dillon

Oh, no; but it is the reason why we have to provide £230,000 to keep those unfortunate men on the dole, instead of having them earning good wages and, at the same time, enriching the community instead of impoverishing the community. I think the efforts of the Minister for Supplies have been one of the greatest and most tragic jokes that we have ever had in this country.

An Ceann Comhairle

The Deputy should know that on Estimates discussion is confined to the Department for which the Minister introducing the Estimate is responsible.

Mr. Dillon

But the only means of keeping those men off the dole, where the vast majority of them have no desire to be, is to get them employment. I make no boast about the fact that I was able to offer employment which would keep them going for two years; anybody could do it, but it is no use. The buyers are there; the men are there; the factories are there, but the materials are not there. Certainly in regard to boots, that situation is in no small measure due to the fact that there was a fake factory established in this country by two gentlemen from Czecho-Slovakia, and 50 per cent. of what was being sold in this country as Irish upper leather was being imported from the relatives of the members of that company who were then resident in Czecho-Slovakia. I could not buy a side of leather outside the country; I had to go down, hat in hand, to Carrick-on-Suir and let the gentleman there buy his side of leather in Czecho-Slovakia and then charge me whatever price he liked behind the tariff that had been put on.

An Ceann Comhairle

Was the Minister for Industry and Commerce responsible?

Mr. Dillon

He was, surely. It was he who put on the tariff. Does the Minister deny that? Here I tell the House of a case where a firm with 200 men, who are at present on the street, were prepared to make provision against this emergency, and they would not be allowed, and of another case where a firm was obliged to go down and undertake to buy from the firm in Carrick-on-Suir before the Minister would give them a licence to import. I think the unemployed in this country have every reason to complain, and complain bitterly, that they are turned into "dolees" simply because the Minister for Industry and Commerce and the Minister for Supplies have made a mess of the job they were charged with.

When the Minister gets up to reply, I think he ought to tell us what his information is on the subject of supplies. I think he ought to tell us, and mind you, tell the country, that. But for the difficulties in regard to supplies, I think we could employ every unemployed man in this country, just as was done during the European War of 1914-18. If we could produce the boots and the woollen cloth and the blankets and the commodities of that kind that are wanted by the warring nations at the present time there would not be an unemployed man in this country, and the only thing preventing us from doing that is the failure to secure supplies. Remember that a great deal of that failure to secure supplies results from the destruction of the natural trade relations that existed here before the Robins-run-the-ditch were brought in from Czecho-Slovakia and East Europe to set up fake factories in this country.

An Ceann Comhairle

The Deputy is straying from the Estimate, which is for Unemployment Insurance and Unemployment Assistance.

Mr. Dillon

May I put it to you this way: I know firms from which, in my tin-pot way, I was getting supplies. Manufacturers in this country were, no doubt, getting supplies from them too. They were told they must not deal with Great Britain any longer, that they must get their supplies from Czecho-Slovakia or somewhere else. The result of that now is that they cannot get supplies from these persons to whom they were sent and the old sources of supply, which would have felt a certain moral obligation to give us at least a part of what we had been getting pre-war, told us: "Well, when we wanted your custom you took it away from us and handed it over to people you never dealt with before. Now these people have let you down and we cannot accept responsibility for keeping you supplied in your hour of need." That is as certain as that we are in this House and that is the responsibility of the Ministers of that Government. Those facts ought to be faced and those facts ought to be known. Eighty per cent. of the unemployed men and women in this country are unemployed to-day because we cannot get supplies. That is not all the fault of the Government because every country has difficulty in supply but a great part of the fault is due to the fact that that Government made us depend——

An Ceann Comhairle

The Deputy must confine himself to the Vote before the House and the Department of the Minister concerned.

Mr. Dillon

The Minister is responsible for industry and commerce. Industries are unable to employ the men inasmuch as they are unable to get the stuff, and they are unable to get the stuff because those who used to supply them and who would have been prepared to supply them, albeit on a rationed basis now, were discarded years ago for exotic supplies.

An Ceann Comhairle

Would the Deputy indicate which item of that Vote refers to exotic supplies?

Mr. Dillon

£220,000, required to protect from starvation these men who have been thrown into the street because their employers are unable to get supplies on which these men could exert their talent. I will give the Minister the name afterwards of a firm who closed their doors on 200 men because it is not getting material for those men to work on and they have rejected orders that would have kept the factory working full time for the next two years because it could not get material. I know that part of that—I am not saying all—but part of that dilemma is due to the fact that those people were forced to sever their business relations with firms with which they had been dealing for 100 years and transfer their custom to a fraudulent—fraudulent is not the correct word—but to a fake firm, a fake manufacturer, in this country who was in fact no more than an importer of manufactured Czecho-Slovakian goods.

Mr. McGilligan

What is this £220,000 based on—what number of people? It is probably based on a per head estimate of a certain number.

Mr. MacEntee

It is based on the rate at which unemployment assistance has been paid during the last period.

Mr. McGilligan

What does the £220,000 represent in extra people likely to be unemployed? £220,000 is an extra provision.

Mr. MacEntee

I will give the Deputy the position on the comparable dates last year. In fact, the unemployment assistance recipients have been up about between 3,000 and 4,000 during the past five or six months as compared with the corresponding months of last year.

Mr. McGilligan

So we would require £200,000 for every three or four thousand extra people that come on the rolls?

Mr. MacEntee

For a year.

Mr. McGilligan

Yor a year, but this is not for a year.

Mr. MacEntee

Of course, the Deputy must know that it has been paid out at that rate during the whole of the current year practically.

Mr. McGilligan

May I take the Minister's answer to be that it makes provision for only three to four thousand extra people?

Mr. MacEntee

Possibly, about that.

Mr. McGilligan

If that is so, I suggest it is not enough. Would the Minister answer another question? There is a deficiency in the Appropriations-in-Aid. The first item is a deficiency of £9,670 arising under the Unemployment Insurance Acts. How does that arise?

Mr. MacEntee

The deficiency there is due to the fact that the contribution income for the fund for 1939-40 is estimated at £1,200,000—I hope I am speaking of the item the Deputy refers to.

Mr. McGilligan

Item I—£9,670.

Mr. MacEntee

It is found that it will not be that.

Mr. McGilligan

That means that there are not as many people as before paying into the fund?

Mr. MacEntee

That is so.

Mr. McGilligan

That is, not so many people employed. It must mean that.

Mr. MacEntee

A question was put to me yesterday—I think it was a written question by Deputy Mulcahy— which asked me on a basis of the number of employment stamps sold to estimate what the amount of employment would be in industries covered by the Unemployment Insurance Acts. That did show that in respect of this particular category of employees there would be 1,000 less continuously employed during the 12 months. On the other hand, according to calculations based upon the number of national health insurance stamps sold, there would be an increase in employment of 1,000 over the 12 months.

Mr. McGilligan

That is not the same thing.

Mr. MacEntee

The Deputy knows that there is a number of employees who are not covered by the Unemployment Insurance Acts.

Mr. McGilligan

May I take it that the total number of people employed in insurable occupations is less?

Mr. MacEntee

Yes.

Mr. McGilligan

By how many?

Mr. MacEntee

According to the answer I gave Deputy Mulcahy yesterday, 1,000 on the average.

Mr. McGilligan

By 1,000?

Mr. Cosgrave

Surely the Minister's figure of 4,000 is not correct. Presumably these people get £1 a week on an average?

Mr. MacEntee

I think the Deputy misunderstands. The Deputy has to remember that we are dealing with unemployment assistance, and these people are not in benefit under the Unemployment Insurance Acts.

Mr. Cosgrave

I am dealing with the Minister's estimate of the number of people that have to be met in order to spend this £220,000. He said between 3,000 and 4,000 persons. I am taking an average of £1 a week for these 3,000 or 4,000 persons and giving the Minister the benefit of the 4,000. For 26 weeks that would be £104,000. He wants £220,000.

Mr. MacEntee

Take that as being an average perhaps over a longer period.

Mr. Cosgrave

The Minister said five or six months. I am giving him the six months. I am giving him the 4,000—his full figure in both cases. I am taking £1 a week on an average. They are certainly not given £2 a week.

Mr. MacEntee

The Deputy has to remember that we have got to make provision for contingencies.

Mr. McGilligan

That was never mentioned before.

Mr. Cosgrave

I suggest it is 8,000 for six months.

Mr. McGilligan

It is certainly a great deal nearer six than three. Surely it only requires a simple calculation. What is the average amount paid?

Mr. Cosgrave

£1 a week.

Mr. McGilligan

Not even £1 a week. Surely the average of unemployment assistance is not £1.

Mr. MacEntee

I cannot give the Deputy that figure at the moment.

Mr. McGilligan

Can we not get the average payment?

Mr. MacEntee

I cannot give the Deputy the figure now.

Mr. Cosgrave

Then I will give it to the Minister. It is probably 10,000 persons more, and it is less than £1 a week they are getting, and it is only a simple calculation to multiply 10,000 by 26 and you have 260,000. It does not require any great examination of papers to make that out.

Mr. McGilligan

It would appear to be something near 10,000.

Mr. MacEntee

On the average it is nothing near 10,000.

Mr. Hickey

Would the demand arise out of the fact that you are not providing so much money for relief schemes this year and that for that reason you have to provide for a bigger number of unemployed?

Mr. MacEntee

That is a contributory cause.

Mr. Hickey

I think it is the real cause.

Mr. McGilligan

Is it not possible to get an estimate of the number of people for whom provision is being made?

Mr. MacEntee

Omitting October, the average increase over 11 months in the live register as compared with last year is 4,768. The total number of men on the live register, or engaged on employment schemes is up by 4,775 as compared with last year.

Mr. McGilligan

Are these two sets of figures to be added or subtracted.

Mr. MacEntee

There may be a certain amount of fluctuation and variations between one year and the other. As Deputy Hickey has pointed out there are fewer men on employment schemes and naturally fewer men fall within the terms of the Employment Schemes Vote. The figure which I have given shows the total number of men who were on the live register. Add that to the number who are engaged on unemployment schemes and you get the net number who are not in normal employment. There is, as I have said, an increase of 4,755. Of that number, possibly I think about 3,000 would represent the average net increase in unemployment as compared with last year. About 1,400 may represent the decrease in the number engaged on employment schemes. It is very difficult to segregate one from the other.

Mr. McGilligan

Is an unmarried man, without any dependants in the way of a father or a mother, provided for under the unemployment assistance schemes?

Mr. MacEntee

Yes.

Mr. McGilligan

At what rate?

Mr. MacEntee

In some cases 6/-; in others 8/6 and 10/6. It is 10/6 in the county boroughs, and that would represent a very large number of these men.

Mr. Cosgrave

I think, then, my figure of 10,000 is probably correct. I see no reason why it should be wrong.

Mr. McGilligan

What is the average payment made?

Mr. MacEntee

I have not got that figure before me.

Mr. McGilligan

When the Minister decided to bring in an Estimate of £220,000, he must have based that figure on the extra number of people for whom it was necessary to provide.

Mr. MacEntee

I have not got the average payment made.

Mr. McGilligan

There must be in the background of the Estimate a figure that somebody put up. Somebody must have said: "There is the number that will have to be provided for beyond what we considered when the Book of Estimates was printed." Tell me what the number is. Somebody must have put before the Minister a simple figure.

Mr. MacEntee

The number, as the Deputy is well aware, varies according to a considerable number of factors. We can take what has been the trend for past months, continue the graph out, and find out what is going to meet requirements on that basis.

Mr. McGilligan

Why £220,000 instead of £120,000?

Mr. MacEntee

Because I am advised, on the basis of the figures on the live register as compared with last year, that that is the amount which will be required.

Mr. McGilligan

You will not require £220,000 for 3,000 men.

Mr. MacEntee

I have told the Deputy that the average increase in the live register has been 4,768, not all of whom fall for unemployment assistance. There is no use proceeding to make a calculation on the basis that they are all single men.

Mr. McGilligan

Not at all.

Mr. MacEntee

A large number are married men with families, unfortunately.

Mr. McGilligan

There are a large number of unmarried men getting less than 10/-.

Mr. MacEntee

In many cases a large number would be married men in receipt of 23/6 per week.

Mr. McGilligan

What was the average payment?

Mr. MacEntee

I cannot give you the average at the moment.

Mr. Cosgrave

I can give you the average. 15/- was the average.

Mr. McGilligan

That would raise the figure beyond 10,000.

Mr. Cosgrave

That means over 10,000.

Mr. McGilligan

I do not know why anybody should have any reluctance to admit that.

Mr. MacEntee

There is a minimum rate of 8/- in some towns and of 10/6 in the cities.

Mr. Corish

It is very hard to get the average payment with any degree of accuracy.

Mr. Hickey

I would be inclined to think that the increase is due to the fact that you are not giving as much for relief schemes this year as last year.

Mr. McGilligan

Why all this apprehension about giving the figure? All that is required is an objective statement of fact as to how many people are being provided for. Surely that is possible.

Mr. MacEntee

That figure is given week after week in the newspapers.

Mr. McGilligan

It must be so well known to you that you do not contemplate stating it here.

Mr. MacEntee

I have no objection to stating it here.

Mr. McGilligan

What is it?

Mr. MacEntee

The average number on the live register in December was 110,366. There are 1,000 less in insurable occupations, but 1,000 more in occupations covered by National Health Insurance. One figure cancels the other.

Vote put and agreed to.