Committee on Finance. - Vote 3—Department of the Taoiseach—(Resumed). – Dáil Éireann (11th Dáil) – Thursday, 18 Nov 1943

Committee on Finance. - Vote 3—Department of the Taoiseach—(Resumed).

Mr. Norton

The discussion of this Estimate has revolved around the present economic position in the country and the standard of life of the people. The fact that practically every Deputy who has spoken on the matter found it necessary to advert to the economic conditions of the country and what might be described as the financial plight of the people, is in itself an indication that the House and the country are genuinely concerned about the deterioration which has set in here and which is developing in the whole economic structure of the nation. I think it will not be questioned, I think it cannot be questioned, if one adverts to the reports of county medical officers of health, that there is an ever-widening stratum of poverty, that large numbers of persons are not able to get the barest necessaries of life, that tuberculosis is increasing and that malnutrition is on the up-grade.

These are factors which must beget the lively attention of an alert Legislature and an active-minded Government. But, I am sorry to say, I can discover no evidence that the Government realises the immensity of the task confronting it or of the grave dangers which beset the nation if these problems continue to be dealt with in the unsatisfactory manner which has been manifested during the past four years. In many parts of this country we have had a condition of endemic poverty. I am sorry to say that I think I discover an extension of the area of endemic poverty. I think that condition of affairs is due, on the one hand, to the low standard of wages of large sections of our people and, on the other hand, to the fact that the Government's inability, the Government's utter helplessness, to control prices has produced a deterioration in the standard of life of our people, intensifying malnutrition and ill-health in the country.

Very large numbers of our people are compelled to depend on such forms of relief as they can get through social services. I think the fact that the Government is forced into providing social services in the form of free food and free fuel for the people is in itself an indication that the whole economic organisation of the country is bad. The ideal condition to aim at is to give our people decent rates of wages, to give them decent conditions of employment and enable them to buy food, clothes and the necessaries of life in the same way as Deputies buy food and clothes and the necessaries of life. That is the ideal to aim at. That is the objective which we ought to set before our eyes, and, to the extent that we are forced to give able-bodied men, who are willing and anxious to work, vouchers for free food, cheap fuel, and so on, it is an indication of how far we are from attaining the objective that is so much desired.

In a normal condition of affairs, and with a healthy economic and agricultural organism, we ought to be able to provide our people with a decent standard of living, and thus avoid having to resort to those subterfuges which, undoubtedly, are designed merely to try to provide the poor of our country with some form of sustenance which would enable them to keep alive. I think that, if employment were provided at decent wages, there would be no necessity for this business of giving vouchers for food and fuel. I think that, as a result of giving these vouchers, the unemployment position grows worse from day to day, and I believe that that is due to the fact that we have no plan to deal with the situation. I doubt if we have even an objective in our minds; but certainly we have no plan to deal with the immediate problem as it exists. I hold that this whole problem can be solved by giving all our people full employment at a decent wage, which would enable them to maintain a decent standard of life. I believe that we have the resources within our own country to ensure that this could be done—to guarantee a wage which would enable them to discharge their domestic duties, and also to fulfil their responsibilities as citizens' of this State.

When one adverts to the extent to which the cost-of-living index figure has increased since the beginning of the war, it is easy, perhaps, to see what expense would be involved in any addition to that cost-of-living index figure. In August, 1939, the cost-of-living index figure was 73—being based upon nought—whereas to-day it is 184—an increase of about 111 points since 1939. To the extent to which we permit the cost of living to increase to that extent, while doing nothing to increase the wages or pensions of people, whose standard of life has been affected by that increase—while doing nothing to increase the standard of living of tens of thousands of our people who are forced to live on pittance rates—we are deliberately permitting the standard of life of such people to deteriorate.

Take, for instance, the case of old age pensioners. In 1939, they had a maximum pension of 10/- per week. If they were now getting 16/- a week, having regard to the purchasing power of money, they would not be getting any more in income to-day than they were getting in 1939 when the pension was at the rate of 10/- per week. The Government, however, still tolerates the condition of affairs in which these old age pensioners are compelled to subsist on a pension of 10/- a week, notwithstanding the fact that, even judged by the rigid standards set down by the Department, and ascertainable by reference to the cost-of-living index figure, it would take 16/- to-day to buy what 10/- would have bought in 1939. The Government have taken no steps whatever to repair the shrunken purchasing power of the pittance which we may pay to old age pensioners.

That is bad enough, but in regard to the recipients of unemployment assistance or unemployment insurance benefits, the position is even worse. Many of these people find themselves absolutely unable to subsist on their allowances. It might, at one time, have been pleaded that there was a prospect that such persons might get employment at a later date. Everybody knows now, however, that the prospect of full-time employment is narrowing, and that it is harder to get full-time employment in this country at the present time than it ever was before. As a result of this, the recipients of unemployment assistance or unemployment insurance benefits are worse off to-day than they have ever been in the history of this State since 1922. So far as the unfortunate people who have to depend on home assistance are concerned, I think their case was never worse than it is at the present moment. Of course, I know that we now have installed throughout the country a kind of marionettes, under the Department of the Minister for Local Government and Public Health, who are described as county managers. If I am right, I think that the object of certain statements that have been made by the Ministers concerned is to try to take away the atmosphere of unpopularity with which these county managers have been surrounded. Now, the position is that certain people, who had been allowed home assistance relief in the past, now find it harder and harder to get such relief, because any such applications must get the approbation of the county manager. That is the position, as I understand it, and the answer that is given is that the rates are not sufficient to enable the county managers to pay the money required, but the position is that the people concerned are not getting enough to enable them to keep body and soul together.

I had occasion, last week, to speak to a number of school children on a roadside in County Kildare. The children who were barefooted and ill-clad, were going along the road to school. I asked them whether they had worn boots or shoes this year, and they told me, no. They said that they had had no boots or shoes this year, because their parents could not afford to buy them. Now, as one with somewhat the same propensities as Deputy Larkin (Junior), I think I can say—and I think that members of all Parties in this House could also say—that the increase in the number of barefooted children in the villages, towns, and cities of this country would constitute a most appalling indictment of the inadequacies of our present system. Why should our children be compelled to go to school in the mornings, and return from school in the evenings, ill-fed, under-nourished, under-clad, and obviously undershod? Surely, the Government should be capable of remedying that state of affairs? How long more are our people to be left in the position that their children—young boys and girls—will have to be left ill-clad, hungry, and barefooted? How long more will they have to endure the hardships and privations that they have to endure to-day? Is there any indication that the Government has any plan to deal with a situation of that kind? It is no use to say to these people that times are difficult at the moment; that is a mockery of our Constitution. We have here in this country resources which are capable of development. We had an opportunity of meeting many of the trials and difficulties which, inevitably, beset a nation during a war situation, and we ought to tell these people now what are the prospects for the future development of the resources of our country. Are they to continue to be under-nourished and ill-clad? Are they to be allowed to continue to be the victims of tuberculosis as a result of having to live in slum conditions and in poverty, or are they to be the recipients of a few raggedy garments, as a result of charity, which possibly, may help them to survive the rigours of bitter winter weather?

The Taoiseach should and must give an answer to that question. If we are not in a position to remedy that situation, then we might be allowed to understand the position; but I refuse to believe that we are not in a position to relieve the poverty under which large numbers of our people have to suffer. I believe that you can get people to suffer for an ideal, and that you can get people to put up with bad conditions for a long time, so long as they know or believe that they are suffering for an ideal, but you have to convince these people that you are doing the best you can to remedy the terrible conditions under which they suffer. I am not convinced that the Government have been doing enough to remedy the situation, and I believe that, in regard to the mass destitution under which this country is suffering to-day, many of the difficulties which now beset us, are due to the want of foresight shown by the Government in the years 1938 and 1939. I believe that if this Government had taken proper measures, at that time, they might have imported to this country certain commodities which would have sustained our secondary industries for a much longer period, and that we might have used our now frozen external assets for the purpose of importing to this country commodities which are now in short supply.

Although we missed the tide on that occasion, although we failed to take advantage of the situation which was then present to us, and failed adequately to measure the extent of the dangers which menaced us, I still refuse to believe that we are utterly helpless to-day. We are exporting to Britain to-day much more than Britain is sending to us. We are sending to Britain very valuable foodstuffs which Britain could get otherwise only from the ends of the earth. Britain wants those foodstuffs and is very anxious to get them. The British have no intention whatever of neglecting any opportunity which presents itself of getting from this country as much agricultural produce as she can, the best quality of agricultural produce that we can export. Very essential foodstuffs are being sent to Britain which our own people are denied an opportunity— denied because they have not the wherewithal to purchase them—of consuming. We talk about the export of fat cattle and store cattle while thousands of people in the City of Dublin, in the towns and rural areas, do not see fresh meat from one end of the month to the other. Yet we continue a situation in which we are exporting these fat cattle to Britain and piling up there assets which, notwithstanding Deputy Dillon's enthusiasm for external assets, may not be very valuable to us when the war is over. If it is part of the deliberate policy of the Government to send our primary products to Britain while many of our own people are denied an opportunity of consuming them, I think the least that the Government is entitled to do is to look for its pound of flesh. If we are to give Britain our primary products, our agricultural and dairy produce, then at least we ought to say to the British: "We are giving you much more than you are giving us; the least you should do is to reciprocate by giving us more commodities which are in short supply here."

You know the people you have to deal with.

Mr. Norton

I asked earlier, and I think it is no harm to interpolate the question again, what are we going to do in the situation in which we find ourselves? Is there going to be a policy of drift, drift around the bay with no one to tell us where the port is? Are we to kick the football around the field with nobody knowing where the goalposts are? Is that the policy that is to be continued here? That is the policy which has been the classic feature of the Government's handling of the economic situation for the last few years. I believe, unless we are to turn the country into a vast workhouse, unless we are to still further impoverish the people, unless we are to see poverty and malnutrition increasing and tuberculosis developing to a greater and more alarming extent, some steps will have to be taken to relieve the present position.

We may be told, of course, that it is difficult in present circumstances to provide alternative employment. Perhaps it is, if we are to rely on the old orthodox methods of providing employment, but I do not think we can afford to do that. I think the situation to-day is so desperate and so serious that we have got to provide any type of employment which we can offer our people, even though that employment may not be of the same economic value as we would expect from such employment in the years before the war. I may be asked, of course, what are the alternative types of employment. Any type of employment at all is preferable to mass idleness. Any type of employment is preferable to sending tens of thousands of our people to Britain, not merely to work in British armament factories, but to join the British armed forces. We are permitting this, and we are at the same time parading our neutrality throughout the world. Approximately 55 out of every 100 of our people make a living by agriculture. I believe, and always have believed, that the land is the greatest source of our wealth and that an intensification of agricultural production, by the application of new and up-to-date methods, would provide a still greater volume of employment on the land. What is the position to-day? We are in the fifth year of the war; we have 12,000,000 acres of arable land, 3,000,000 acres of which, cultivated, probably would provide sufficient food for our people. Yet, in the fifth year of the war, we have not cultivated 3,000,000 out of the 12,000,000 acres; we still have not food for our people; and, before this year is over, and before the next potato harvest is in, I prophesy that there will be potato queues in the City of Dublin and in many other towns and cities throughout the country.

Could there be any greater indictment of the muddling, lazy, incompetent, inept policy of the Minister for Agriculture than is revealed by the fact that, with 12,000,000 acres of arable land, we still have not managed, in the fifth year of the war, to cultivate 3,000,000 acres? With the finest land in Europe, our people are still hungry and still in need of the products which can be obtained in abundance from Irish soil. There is a responsibility on the Government to find more employment on the land for our people, but that employment cannot be provided while we continue to pay agricultural workers the destitution rates of wages which are paid to them to-day. With prices as they are to-day, can anybody imagine an agricultural worker being able to feed himself, his wife and four, five, six or seven children on a wage of 36/- per week? Would anybody in this House like to try the task of living on a wage of 36/- a week?

Everybody knows that, during the past four years, the agricultural worker is becoming poorer and poorer. He fulfils an important function in our defence against poverty and famine and, although he is probably the most important worker in the whole country to-day—inasmuch as he is the guarantor against famine, his brain and energy insulate us against famine, when operating on our agricultural resources—we deliberately permit a condition of affairs to continue in which he is paid probably the lowest rate of wages paid to any whole-time employee in this country. Thirty-six shillings a week is the best that this Government can assure him. We have had eleven years of Fianna Fáil Government; we have had more than four years of war; we have seen the cost of living rise by approximately 64 per cent. since 1939. With all the Government's mock protestations on the manner in which it has revolutionised our agricultural economy, the test of the Government's success in that respect and the test of the prosperity which it has brought to the agricultural community is that the agricultural worker here to-day has to live on 36/- a week. That is the best our agricultural economy can give, that is the highest concept of life which this Government has chalked out for him.

I think there could not be a greater indictment of the poverty-stricken outlook of the Government on agriculture than is revealed by the low standard of wages paid to agricultural workers. The most daring thing of the whole lot is that the Minister for Agriculture apparently does not realise that these agricultural workers—who, from their wage standards, are really agricultural slaves—are entitled to anything more. Efforts made in this House to induce him to recognise that their wages are utterly inadequate have left the Minister as complacent and as unperturbed as if he were the Minister for Agriculture in the Garden of Eden. I do not believe agriculture can be made prosperous by paying such a low wage: I think prosperity can be brought to agriculture only by giving the farmer a fair price for his produce, by giving the agricultural worker a decent rate of wages and by putting into the hands of the agricultural community a purchasing power which will reflect itself in a demand for goods and services in the towns and cities. It is impossible to imagine that there can be a demand for goods and services in the towns and cities if the agricultural community is impoverished, as it is there that the main market is for the goods and services which the towns and cities produce and render.

The least the Government ought to do—and they cannot shed or shelve their responsibility any longer—is to give the agricultural workers a standard of living consonant with the fact that they are citizens and bearing in mind that a wage of 36/- a week is utterly incapable of enabling those people to enjoy a civilised standard of life to-day.

If anybody mentions here proposals for an extension of our afforestation schemes, he is immediately countered with a long dissertation on the difficulties which have to be overcome. It may be that there are difficulties—I am not blind to them—but they should not impede our determination to provide employment and I refuse to believe that our afforestation programme is not capable of much greater expansion than we see to-day. In afforestation we can provide employment for our people, we can provide, under a long-term policy, wealth for the nation. We can do that at a time when thousands of our people are idle and when others are crying out for the emigrant ship as the only relief from poverty. It seems nothing short of a scandal that we should not exploit to the fullest the afforestation potentialities of the country.

Certain difficulties have been experienced in continuing the housing programme, but they are not insurmountable difficulties, and a good deal of progress could still be made in housing if people would only cease sitting down in that easy-going way and pretending that, because there is an emergency, there must be an abandonment of the housing programme. Very valuable work could be done in the way of carrying out the necessary development for housing schemes by devising temporary alternative means of housing our people during the present crisis—measures which would lend themselves to adaptation afterwards when materials not now in abundance would probably be available.

Reference has been made by some other speakers to the necessity for drainage, and for the maintenance of the fertility of the soil. The soil of this country represents Ireland's greatest capital asset. Every opportunity that presents itself should be utilised to drain and improve land, and to maintain to the utmost of our capacity the fertility of the soil, so as to make the land capable of producing more when peace returns.

In respect of mineral development, there are possibilities not only of employing our people but of producing fuel for our people. In the Leinster coalfield, in the Carlow region, competent geologists have certified that there are millions of tons of coal. Every effort made to induce the State to step in and develop these coal deposits has been met with the reply that it is a matter for private enterprise and that the Department of Industry and Commerce will be glad to assist. That sort of drawingroom procedure may be quite all right in peace-time—if, indeed, it is right even then. It may be all right when boats are taking millions of tons of coal to this country but it is not all right when we are getting a mere fragment of our previous coal imports and when many of our industries are hit extremely hard because of the lack of coal as a means of production and generation of current. I believe that the Government should long ago have put State money into the exploitation of the Leinster coal-field. It may be difficult to produce the coal there and the coal so produced may not be up to normal peace-time standard in respect of cost, having regard to outside prices. But we cannot afford to waste time to-day on that kind of commercial embroidery. What we have to do is get the commodities we require. Price is a secondary consideration because the money we pay for the commodities is our own money and it is only a question of relating that to our needs.

Again, one notices a reluctance on the part of the Government to utilise the power it has to make our resources available for our people, not merely because we require the commodities concerned but because we must do something to provide employment at home for our people. We can do either of two things: we can say that, notwithstanding all our past declarations, notwithstanding the Arcadian picture we painted of the land of milk and honey which we proposed to create, we now recognise that life in Ireland must go hand in hand with a low standard of living for the mass of our people, that unemployment must be the lot of tens of thousands of our people, that malnutrition, hunger and preventive disease must be the lot of many of our citizens, or we can take another course —the course we are really unconsciously taking—and say to our people, "go wherever you can get a decent living; get out of this country." That is what tens of thousands of them are doing. The mass export of our people during the past few years to Britain is one of the most appalling indictments of our capacity to govern. The fact that we are now exporting, approximately, 50,000 of the finest of our manhood and womanhood to Britain is a declaration of governmental bankruptcy, from the standpoint of providing employment for our people. Every Deputy who represents a rural area, and even Deputies who represent town and city areas, get letters by every post appealing to them to get permits for unemployed men and women to go to Britain. By every post I get these letters. If the files of the Department of Industry and Commerce are examined, there will be seen the number of recommendations I have had to make to that Department on behalf of unfortunate people whose choice is the emigrant ship, with wages in England, or poverty and qucues at the labour exchange here.

I could not help feeling sad the other day when I got a letter from a woman whose husband had been unemployed. Her husband wanted to get a permit to go to Britain. I made representations, and in due course a permit was issued. I got a letter from that woman saying—"thanks so much for all you have done in this case. My husband went to England this morning." Fancy a condition of affairs being allowed to develop in which a woman thanks another person because her husband was deported through poverty. Does that provide any consolation to the Government? There was a man anxious to live here and work and provide for his wife and children, and because of our laziness, indifference, and incompetence he had to go to Britain to try to get a livelihood. Although that father was sundered from his children and that husband parted from his wife, that was considered preferable to the poverty and hardship which was the lot of the family at home.

Having regard to the fact that so many of our people go to Britain and get a livelihood there and are not paid in gold, I wonder that it does not occur to our Government to emulate the methods of the British and provide employment for our people here. In Britain there is no gold backing for the note issue. In fact, there is practically no metallic backing for the note issue. Britain is issuing millions and millions of pounds of State credit. What is the guarantee for that? It is neither gold nor silver. There is practically no metallic backing for the note issue there. Britain and the other belligerents—Germany, Russia and the United States—are satisfied that they can issue these credits to finance production on the basis of the recovery of the nation and on the basis of the character, ability and brains of their people. Britain is financing the most gigantic armaments programme she has ever known. She is doing that by issuing credits. The backing for the State credits consists of the bombing plane, the submarine, the aircraft carrier, the warship, and all these other implements of death and destruction. If Britain, once the citadel of orthodox methods of finance, has been driven by sheer force of events to recognise that she can issue credits guaranteed by the character, brains and industry of her people, why cannot we issue sufficient State credits to provide our people with employment here, so that they may not have to go to Britain to earn the wages they are denied here at present?

Deputy McGilligan and other speakers referred to the inflation in existence to-day. There is no doubt that there is inflation. The bank balances indicate clearly that there is inflation. Money is coming into this country, probably at the rate of £7,000,000 per year. A Central Bank Act was recently designed in which the function of the central bankers is to maintain the integrity of the currency. We have a situation in existence whereby anybody in Britain can gather 1,000,000 pound notes, go into the Currency Commission or the Central Bank, and say: "Here are 1,000,000 British pound notes; give me 1,000,000 Irish pound notes for them," and that person can get them.

Mr. MacEntee

Does the Deputy know any person who has done it?

Mr. Norton

The Minister will find out at the next banquet he attends——

Mr. MacEntee

Is the Deputy aware of any person who has done what he has just mentioned?

An Ceann Comhairle

Order.

Mr. Norton

The Chair has called the Minister to order, and he ought to respect that. That is what can happen. This is the scheme of getting the Irish £ note, with its brogue, looking the British £ note in the face. Everybody knows perfectly well that the importation of all that money from Britain is having, and will inevitably have, an inflationary tendency here. Those unfortunate people have been driven to Britain. The choice was Britain or the workhouse, Britain or the destitution rates of benefit which they could get at the employment exchanges or the home assistance offices. They have gone to Britain and they send back financial coupons to their relatives and the money which comes here in the form of remittances gives to the recipients of the coupons a lien on Irish food which the senders of the financial coupons do not have to produce. You cannot blame the recipients here or the senders in Britain. That is their only fortification between themselves and poverty.

What has the Government to say, the Government which permits the mass export of our people to another country, to perform work for that country, to create a type of wealth for that country and, because they produce wealth for that country and render service to that country, they get a lien, not on the produce of that country, but on the produce of this country? I suggest to the Taoiseach that that is a situation which must be examined. It is an unhealthy situation from the national point of view. We export tens of thousands of our people to create wealth in another country and we permit them then to participate in the purchase of wealth here which they do not help to produce. Unfortunately, these people have been driven to Britain by the Government's Micawber-like policy, waiting for something to happen. You cannot blame those unfortunate people, but you could remedy the situation if you provide those people with work at decent rates of wages at home. So long as you refuse to do that, either by negligence or incompetence, then so long will you permit an unhealthy condition of affairs to continue.

Some military prophets are now beginning to speculate as to when the war will end. It is extremely difficult to tell when it will end. The longer it continues, the longer will our people endure privations. But, maybe the end might come quicker than we anticipate. We obviously must have a plan for the post-war situation in the world, which will have its repercussions here. The Minister for Industry and Commerce, in some of his occasional thunderously optimistic outbursts, tells us of all the great plans the Government have, plans which will be implemented when the war is over. We are short of potatoes in the fifth year of the war, and if the Government could not plan to produce sufficient potatoes in Éire in the fifth year of the war, I begin to get sceptical about the plans for the period after the war. I think these are just flights of Governmental fancy. I see no evidence of any Government plans. It seems to me they put down a few striking objectives with no notion in the world as to how they can be implemented or financed.

The world will not stay quiet until we are ready, and what we have to realise, whether we like it or not, is that as a result of this war mechanical progress and scientific development have been so accelerated that we will see that mechanical development and scientific progress converted to peaceful methods, to peace-time production, on a scale which will leave us as the Babylonian state of Europe. There is no evidence of any post-war planing, nor is there evidence even of wartime development. We are stumbling from one difficulty to another; we are staggering from one experiment to another. We seem to be incapable of taking any direct line calculated to yield tangible and enduring results for our people. My fear is that in the post-war race we will be hopelessly beaten by every competitor, because there is no evidence that the Government realise the situation into which they will be precipitated when the war concludes. If we continue to do things in our present way, this country may well attain a certain grandeur, the grandeur of being the museum of Europe. To-day we are fumbling and tinkering with problems which demand the application of live, alert, full-blooded methods if they are to be successful.

There is another problem which we may have to face. At one time Fianna Fáil feared they might have to send to America to bring back the emigrants. That was in 1931. None of the emigrants came back; none of them was asked to come back. We may have an entirely different situation in the period following the conclusion of the war. The emigrants who have gone to Britain include 150,000 who are stated by British journals to be in the British Army. They may be demobilised. The 400,000 stated to be in British industries may be sent back here—we may not have to send for them. We may be told to collect them and they may come back here. What are we to do with them? Has any Deputy on the Government Benches an idea? Suppose we get 250,000 of our people sent back to this country in the year following the conclusion of the war, is there any plan or any proposal to absorb them into employment? Is there any idea of how the problem will be dealt with? I see no evidence of it.

These people have not been working in the vineyards; they have been pursuing halcyon methods of employment; they have not been in cloisters; but they have been in areas where there are armament factories, blitzed day and night. They have been in the armed forces, and they have been compelled to experience a condition of life in which many gained nothing but courage and grit and the ability to endure hard things and hard knocks. They will come back here and we cannot tell them about interesting rates, or the difficulty of getting money through the Central Bank. We cannot pass them off with that type of green or red tape, because they will be impatient of that type of thing. They will come back here, feeling they have been in a different world, as it were, and they will demand some of the fine things they were told this war is being fought for. I see no evidence that we will be able to give them anything.

I think the Government ought to ask itself: "Do we want them back?" If we want them back, and ask them back, then we must do something for them. I see no evidence that we are doing anything for them. If the Government cannot do anything, that means a further export of our people because these unfortunate emigrants will take their wives and children with them, and then the Celt will go quicker than he is going to-day. I, unfortunately, though normally an optimist, see no ray of sunshine in the bleak and sombre economic outlook that confronts the nation to-day. There is no gleam of hope whatever in the Government's policy. It is relying to-day on peace-time methods, with the appalling results which flow from these peace-time methods so far as our industrial, agricultural and social economy are concerned. We are relying not merely on peace-time methods, but on piecemeal methods which are worse still. We can carry on and allow the rot to extend and the deterioration to multiply, or we can make a stand and try to brace our people to meet the difficulties and the dangers which beset them to-day.

I put it to the Taoiseach that we are not helpless, that we have here certain resources and a natural aptitude on the part of our people, that no matter what happens we must try to counter whatever helplessness confronts us by providing as much employment for our people as we possibly can, and that employment must not be subject to the rigid economic criteria which we applied to it in the pre-war years. We may be told that, to attempt to put people into employment on schemes which do not produce a full economic return, is a wasteful type of employment. Maybe it is. I do not say it is wasteful. It may not give as full a return as we would desire, but it is the only alternative we have to the mass export of a larger number of our people.

I think it would not be unreasonable for us to say to-day, taking stock of the facts, that we live in a world in which a war on an unprecedented scale rages; that we live in times of danger and crisis, such as never confronted the nation before, and that posterity can well be asked to bear some of the burdens and some of the trials through which our people are passing to-day. Even if we create credits, even if we spend money in putting our people to work on schemes which would not normally be contemplated, and even if that means passing on to posterity the liability to make good in the piping times of peace the credits which we create now, I think we are entitled to ask posterity to do that. When this war ends it may be a long time before there is another war. Forces of production and of scientific discovery will be unloosed after this war which will make poverty and want an absurdity from the point of view of ability to produce. It is not unreasonable to say to posterity: We had in our circumstances to create credits to put our people into employment, we endeavoured in so far as lay in our power to redeem these credits, and in so far as we have passed on to you, posterity, the liability to make good these credits, well, that is a legacy which we have got to pass on to you because we had to protect our people in the greatest crisis that the world has ever known, and during the most devastating war in history.

I vouch for the accuracy of the figures. The Deputy may or may not accept the deductions I draw from them.

Mr. Cosgrave

I am doubting the interpretation you are putting on them.

Mr. Lemass

There has been an increase in the agricultural price index between 1939 and now of 76 per cent. The prices which farmers are getting for the produce of the land have increased on an average 76 per cent. In the main that increase in agricultural prices was decided upon here as deliberate policy, and with the approval of every Party in the Dáil. Is that not so? We had to increase the price of certain agricultural products in order to get within this country the production necessary to give us a sufficiency of them. We increased the price guaranteed to farmers for wheat from 30/- to 55/-. We increased the price paid for milk delivered to creameries. Why? Because, in 1939, there was not enough wheat to feed us and because, in order to get increased production of wheat by the method of inducement, a method which all Parties desired we should try, it was necessary to give the particular inducement of a higher price. We had to maintain butter production to make good the requirements of our people in fats as we were facing a deficiency due to the absence of margarine which is manufactured from imported products. In order to maintain the output of milk necessary to ensure a reasonable sufficiency of butter production we had to increase the price paid to the farmers. That has caused the cost of living to go up.

I am speaking from recollection. I am certain that speeches on the lines I have indicated were made by members of that Party. Am I right, Deputy O'Higgins?

There is a range of commodities which we left outside control, because the machinery available to us is limited in its operation, and, because, as a general policy which I announced here, we decided to confine the operation of that machinery to articles which were essential, or which could be regarded as reasonably necessary. In so far as these goods are essential, the restrictions on the margins allowed to traders have been designed to ensure not that these margins will be proportionately the same as they were before the war, but that there will in fact be no increase in the traders' income.

In some cases, of course, the fixation of national prices has involved alterations of the margin previously taken is one district as against another. In normal times, the trader in better in Cork got a profit of 3d. per lb., while the trader in butter in Dublin frequently got no profit at all. Competition in the sale of butter had produced that result in Dublin. It had not produced that result in Cork. At present, there is a flat rate margin of 2d. per lb., and the trader in Cork is in fact getting a lower profit than he was getting pre-war, while the trader in Dublin may be getting a higher profit; but the fixation of national uniform prices must have that result in conditions under which previously there were variations of prices from area to area. It is only where the re-reduction in the turnover of the trader has been of such a nature as to seriously impede his operations, or where there have been established higher operational costs, such as higher wages, higher cost of packing, higher cost of fuel, or higher cost of transport that any modification of traders' margins is allowed.

Behind the traders there are the manufacturers, and the fixation of manufacturers' prices is a different matter from the fixation of traders' prices. In the case of traders, one can prescribe maximum prices which must not be exceeded, and whether these traders are retailers or wholesalers. It is possible to control the machinery of distribution at all stages, but when you come to the final stage and deal with the manufacturer, the method of control must obviously be different. It is not possible to prescribe fixed prices except for a particular limited range of commodities, such as sugar, cement or flour, commodities of which there is only one variety and which are uniform in quality. In the case of other traders, the control must necessarily be retrospective. It must be designed to ensure that the margin of profit secured by them on their year's trading will not exceed a reasonable figure.

It is not necessary for me to tell many Deputies that the determination of a range of prices for manufacturers at levels which will secure that only a certain predetermined profit is secured at the end of the year, is not an easy matter, even in normal circumstances, where the probable output of a manufacturer can be accurately determined. It is particularly difficult in cases where the output is itself uncertain and where developments may occur during the year which will upset the manufacturer's calculations. It is, therefore, quite possible that particular manufacturers will, in the course of the year, realise profits in excess of those considered reasonable. In so far as these profits are not taken by taxation for the benefit of the Exchequer, the operation of our price control arrangements ensures that the consumers get the benefit of the excess in the ensuing year.

Deputy MacGilligan read yesterday the reports of the annual meetings of a number of companies. In so far as these reports were selected, they gave a false picture to the Dáil, because there are other companies in respect of which much more doleful tales were told by the directors to the shareholders at the annual meetings. It is, of course, impossible to decide whether a company is making reasonable or unreasonable profits by ascertaining the dividends which these profits allow it to pay on its subscribed capital. There is a well-known business in Dublin, which in normal times carried on an export trade. It started with a subscribed capital of £40,000, but it, year after year, ploughed back into the business the profits earned in those years, until to-day the value of its assets is probably not less than £1,000,000. If the company earned one or two per cent. on the capital actually at work in its business, it would represent a very big rate of dividend upon the subscribed nominal capital of the company. The reverse could also be true.

It is obvious that, in present circumstances, there must be some decrease in our standard of living. What do we mean by "standard of living"? Do we mean the amount of money we get every week, or the quantities of food, clothing and fuel that the money will enable us to buy? Surely the standard of living is to be determined in relation to real things, not in relation to currency. In so far as we have less food, less clothing, and less fuel than is sufficient to give us the pre-war standard of living, clearly there must be a diminution of standards in the present circumstances. I made that statement before and I was represented as having expressed the view that it was desirable that there should be a lowering of our standards of living, which would, obviously, be undesirable.

I am trying to bring Deputies face to face with facts from which we cannot escape. There is no way by which we can get more goods from abroad by giving more money to workers here. By putting more purchasing power into the hands of our people, it is not possible to increase by one pound the weight of the quantities we will import. Is not that so? Giving out more money would not enable us to increase the ration of tea, of sugar, of butter, or of any commodity which is in restricted supply and the distribution of which has to be controlled. Is not that true? It is quite clear that the expansion of the purchasing power available to the public, without a corresponding expansion in the supply of goods available, can only result in inflation of prices. It cannot have any other result.

The Government are trying to avoid the dangers which will develop for the poor people of the country, the low-paid workers, the people who work on their own account, the fisherman and the blacksmith, and all those people who cannot by any means get an increase in their income commensurate with the rise in the cost of living. To try to protect them from the consequences of inflation, we have made regulations which are designed to restrict increases in prices, profits and wages. Supposing we made a decree to-day prescribing that every worker would get, over and above the wages he got in 1939, a sum which has a direct relation with the increase in the cost-of-living index number and that every person in receipt of benefit under every social service would get a corresponding increase, would not the immediate result be a further inflation of the cost of living? If we tried to overtake that further inflation by another increase in wages, we would push the cost of living higher still.

Deputies should see that there is no escape from the hardships which the war must mean for us. We can minimise them, we can try to spread the burden more evenly, putting on the shoulders of those best able to bear it, the heaviest part. But we cannot escape the hardships altogether. These are facts which we cannot get over by talking about an ideal situation. All of us have our ideals. We know the conditions which we would like to produce, but in our day-to-day working we must deal with realities, and these are inescapable realities.

Mr. Dillon

Should we not try to prevent one person having four pairs of shoes and another person having none?

Mr. Lemass

That is the purpose of rationing. It is the obligation of the Government to apply rationing whenever the circumstances show that there is a possibility of inequitable distribution. We have done that. I admit that there is a possibility that the regulations made have been evaded from time to time. We try to make them as nearly perfect as possible, but we do not expect always to succeed.

Mr. Dillon

It is the imperfections of which we are complaining.

Amongst the suggestions which have been put forward here in the course of this debate is one that we should subsidise food prices, that we should try to prevent the rise in the prices of commodities by a policy of subsidisation. Some Deputies suggested that the cost of the subsidy should be met by taxation; some Deputies suggested that it should be met by borrowing. There are, however, practical difficulties in the subsidisation of many products, practical difficulties which Deputies are inclined to leave out of account. Take flour. We are subsidising flour to the extent of almost £2,000,000 a year, and we have very nearly reached the stage when we are making flour the cheapest feeding-stuff which the farmer can use for his stock. If we subsidise it more, I think the possibility of preventing a more extensive feeding of flour to farm stock would be almost negligible. That is a practical difficulty.

Mr. Dillon

Unless you ration flour.

Mr. Lemass

Unless we ration flour, and I think we should endeavour to avoid the rationing of flour as long as possible, because the needs of different classes of people very considerably.

Mr. Dillon

It is very complex.

Mr. Lemass

In the present year, it was decided to increase the cost of wheat by 5/- a barrel. It was decided to decrease the extraction of flour to 85 per cent., not for the reasons given by Deputy McGilligan yesterday, but for the sole purpose of ensuring that there will be a better use made of the available supplies. It will involve an increase in the cost of flour, an increase in cost which in part will be passed on to the consumers. I think it is desirable to do so, not because I want to increase the price of flour to the consumers, but because it is necessary, under present circumstances, in view of the prices for oats and barley, to do so if there is not to be greater wastage of flour by feeding it to farm animals.

That does not seem to add up.

Mr. Lemass

Well, it is near enough. One cannot be absolutely accurate in such matters.

Mr. Dillon

But there would seem to be a mistake of about 66 per cent. in the estimate the Minister has just given us.

Mr. Larkin (Junior)

Could we not arrange for the redistribution of wealth?

Mr. Lemass

Yes, of course we could arrange for the redistribution of whatever wealth is available, and, in effect, the policy of this Government has been directed towards bringing about a proper redistribution of our national income. We have tried, by means of income-tax, corporation profits taxes, and by other means, to reduce the incomes of those in the higher social strata; to stabilise, within reasonable limits, the incomes of those in the intermediate strata and to provide more for those in the lowest strata. Our object was to endeavour to use the money taken from those at the top to help, through the social services, those who were at the bottom. How that process can best be carried on is a matter of speculation. It may be that by pushing that process too far, you may make the problem more difficult, instead of minimising it. However, we decided to proceed on those lines to the best of our ability, and, at the same time, to try to control the inflationary tendency which results from every war, and which, if not checked by methods of price control and wage control, tends to get out of control. That is the policy that we have pursued, and which has been misrepresented on every occasion, but I think that everybody who understands the realities of the situation which this country has to face will agree that some such policy will have to be worked out if we are to avoid the dangers which our weak state of industrial and general economic development might easily bring upon us.

Let me refer to one other general matter before I turn to deal with a number of specific points to which I shall have to refer. One of the factors which tends to inflate prices here is the fact that wherever there is an exportable surplus of agricultural produce, the export price regulates the internal price, generally speaking. We are exporting still certain agricultural products of which we have a surplus or at any rate, of which we have a quantity that is not being purchased by our own people, and to the extent that we are exporting them, the price we get abroad determines the price at home. We could depress prices at home by creating an artificial surplus through the stoppage of exports. Deputy Norton spoke about making some arrangements with the British with regard to these exports. It is true that when he was brought up against the reality of the situation, he sheered off from that suggestion. Does he think that it has not been conveyed to the British Government that as we are exporting a large quantity of produce to them they should send us certain goods in return? The next step beyond expressing such a wish is the decision that we will not export any of this produce unless we get the coal, the iron or the petrol that we desire. Is Deputy Norton prepared to face that situation? There is no use in trying to bluff in this matter. You cannot bluff when the other fellow knows the value of your hand. If we decided at the present moment to adopt such a policy, we must be prepared to go through with it and face all the economic dislocation it would cause in this country. I submit that nobody would recommend the application of a drastic policy of that kind in our circumstances. It is true that we could lower the prices which the farmer gets for his produce by a stoppage of exports. We could reduce the price at home but, so long as we allow exports to continue, it is obvious that the export price will determine the price our consumers will have to pay for these products here. There is no clear-cut solution for that problem.

Deputy Norton spoke about emigration and the possibility of providing employment at home for those who have to emigrate. Why not cut out general terms and come down to specific cases? Take motor mechanics, for instance. There is widespread unemployment amongst motor mechanics and there is no possibility at present of providing employment for them owing to the number of motor vehicles that have had to be taken off the roads as a result of the petrol shortage. You cannot provide employment for a motor mechanic through afforestation or any of those other schemes of which the Deputy talks so glibly. Does he suggest that there is anything we can do to provide a motor mechanic with employment which will ensure for him the same standard of living here at home as his experience and skill secured for him before the emergency? What applies to motor mechanics applies to a number of other classes of skilled and semi-skilled workers. We can promote various schemes in the country to provide employment but they must, in the main, be of a type in which unskilled labour is employed. It is our view that we are not entitled to withhold a chance of securing employment elsewhere from individuals in this country who are unemployed and for whom there is no immediate hope of employment here, merely because of a sentimental objection to emigration.

Mr. Norton

Is it only a sentimental objection?

Mr. Lemass

No. I am trying to get away from sentimentality. I am trying to deal with the realities of the situation, and the realities of the situation are that there is a number of workers in this country, mainly skilled and semi-skilled workers, who cannot find employment here. There is nothing we could do which would secure employment for them.

Dr. O'Higgins

You were merely asked questions.

Mr. Lemass

Mr. Larkin

Does this Irish Shipping, Limited, underwrite anything in British offices?

Mr. Lemass

No. There is one other matter before I conclude. I have been speaking somewhat longer than I intended, so I will only refer to it briefly. A statement was made by Deputy McGilligan yesterday evening concerning transactions in the stocks of the Great Southern Railways. I do not wish to refer to it at any length, because I realise the futility of arguing with people of a certain mentality, who refuse to accept a clear and obvious explanation of a particular phenomenon and insist on giving some devious and sinister meaning to it. Deputy McGilligan's story, told briefly, was as follows: The chairman of the company made a speech at the annual meeting in March last, and gave a gloomy picture of the company's affairs. The immediate result was a fall in the value of the company's stocks. The value of the stocks remained static during the summer until, according to Deputy McGilligan, certain people, inspired with certain information, started to purchase and the shares rose until the debenture stock, which was quoted at 55 in March, reached 71 on the 20th of October. These are Deputy McGilligan's words, as reported in the Irish Independent:“Before there was any mention of a reorganisation scheme.” Most of the Deputy's fantasies are easily destroyed by the compulsory injection of a few facts, so let us get the facts in this case. The speech made by the chairman of the Great Southern Railways on the 3rd of March last contained the following statement: “There must, therefore, be a reconstruction of the capital of the company and what was ultimately agreed to be the value of the stock-holders' interests should rank equally with and carry whatever guarantees were given to those subscribing new capital. He had indicated that a post-war programme was being considered, that this war might go on for years and, as the reorganisation of the capital of the company could not be postponed indefinitely, it was the intention to proceed now to formulate proposals with a view to stabilising the capital position.”

So much for Deputy McGilligan's contention that there had been no mention of a reorganisation scheme until the company's circular was published on the 25th of October. Nor is it true that the immediate reaction to the chairman's speech was a drop in the value of the stocks. So far as I have been able to ascertain, the debenture stocks, which had averaged 55 for the week ending March 2nd, were 55½ on March 5th, 56 on March the 12th, and remained at 56 until the end of the month, but after that, there had been a fall in the value of the stocks and during the period from the end of March to the end of June there was a very slight tendency downwards. Surely the most obvious explanation of that fact is, first, the revelation from the company's accounts that the earnings of the railway undertaking in the previous year had been insufficient to pay the debenture interest, and that the company had to pass the dividend on the guaranteed preference stocks upon which, in the previous year, three years' arrears had been paid. The payment of interest on the debenture stock would not have been possible out of railway earnings. It became possible only because of the profits accruing to the company from the road transport undertaking.

The next step in the development of this matter was a statement by myself of Government policy made prior to the general election. In the course of that statement, I said:

"The vast reorganisation of the company's equipment which was contemplated would take years to complete. It was the Government's view, however, that the reorganisation of the company's capital and administration should not be delayed until after the war merely because the re-equipment of the system could not be begun before it ended. The framing of the necessary legislation had begun. If the present Government was re-elected, it was expected that the general frame-work of the measure would be completed at an early date and the drafting of the necessary Bill put in hands."

Another rise in the value of the company's stocks began in July. There was a steady improvement in the value of these stocks from July to October. The price of the debenture stock at the beginning of July was £56; at the end of July it was £59; at the end of August £60; and at the end of September £67½. All the other shares of the company moved in sympathy. Why? Deputy McGilligan purported to give an answer to that question. He said it was because some people had got previous intimation of the nature of the reconstruction proposals which the company had in mind and were speculating upon the prospect. Surely, there is another explanation—a far more obvious explanation.

It never missed a dividend. The debenture stock is charged on all assets of the company. They cannot be segregated. It is true that the profits from the railway were not sufficient to earn a dividend, and that it was in connection with the railway that the debenture stock was originally floated. The expectation that the debenture interest would be secure and that some of the accumulated arrears of interest upon the guaranteed preference stock would be forthcoming, resulted in that steady improvement in the value of the shares. I submit that that is a more obvious explanation than any other explanation which has been given, especially when coupled with the fact to which I referred yesterday, that the volume of transactions on the stock exchange during that period was in no sense abnormal, and that the total value of the shares involved in all these transactions represented a very insignificant part of the total capital of the company.

If the Deputy looks up the figures he will see they were not.

Mr. Dillon

Is it not remarkable that, in the presence of a most gloomy and pessimistic prognostication by the chairman, some sort of buying went on that raised the price of these shares steeply over the whole period, and the judgment of those who bought was amply vindicated by the restriction proposals that were produced, and persons who bought those shares at 53 sold them on the Dublin Stock Exchange at 85? If all these transactions were perfectly above board and were nothing but the transactions of persons who simply used their own private judgment in assessing the future value of these securities, why is it that the bulk of them are transactions in which the name of the purchaser is concealed under the anonymity of a bank trustee?

We all know that when the Marconi scandal broke in England before the last war, and when the Stavisky scandal almost shook the French Government to its foundations, the reason why public confidence was so profoundly shaken by these things was that the governments in those days, in the initial stages of the scandal, protested that there was nothing to be uneasy about; that everything was above board; that there was nothing to worry about; that they had full possession of the facts and they were not going to take any action because they were quite clear there was no trouble afoot.

I would not be a bit surprised if Mr. Asquith in his day, and M. Daladier, or whoever was Premier in France when the Stavisky scandal manifested itself, spoke in perfect good faith. But, when the truth was unearthed, and it became manifest to the community that either of two things happened, that the head of the Government had conspired with the criminals to deceive the public, or that the head of the Government had been culpably negligent not to make inquiries in order to bring the miscreants to justice, there was an upheaval which affected, not only the governments, but all democratic institutions, and it was alleged that in as much as Parliament had not been active enough, all the Parliament must have been corrupt, that everyone was "got at". When we look back on the days of Marconi and Stavisky, I am afraid we are constrained to confess that very probably the greater part of the British House of Commons of the time, and of the Deputies in France, had been "got at", and not only was the Government of the day squared, but the Opposition was squared, and we all know it was a very small minority which eventually got the Marconi scandal opened up in England, while, in the Stavisky scandal, anyone who was prepared to give evidence was assassinated on the streets of Paris and was never allowed to open his mouth.

I do not want to allege, and I do not believe it is true, that the Prime Minister of this State has covered up, or would cover up, any improper transaction with regard to this business; but I say quite deliberately that, unless this business is cleared up fully and openly, it will leave an extremely bad taste in the mouths of our people, and a great many people will be left with suspicions in their minds, and I want to say most deliberately that in my considered judgement those suspicions are well founded. It is all very well for the Minister for Industry and Commerce to say: "If you have any proofs of what you are saying, produce them." I cannot produce the proofs, because I have not got them but I am as sure as it is possible to be sure of anything that is incapable of demonstrable proof that transactions in the shares of the railway company, prior to the publication of the reconstruction proposals, were inspired by hints or rumours that came either from the company or from the Minister's Department; I am convinced that persons speculated in those shares who had contacts either with the company or with the Minister's Department, and who should not have used the information they got for that purpose, and I am convinced that unless it is made perfectly clear in this particular case that conduct of that kind will not be tolerated in this State, we will be permitting an evil to develop in our midst which some day may destroy the institutions of the State.

I agree with the Minister that there is not the slightest use in making vague general allegations unless you propose a remedy. I will propose a remedy. Let one of two courses be pursued. Let a select committee of the House be set up with authority to send for the transfer books of the company and for the board of directors of the Irish banks to reveal to that select committee who were the anonymous persons purchasing these shares under the protection of a bank trusteeship, and with powers to send for these persons to ascertain from them the motives that induced them to speculate in these shares at the time that they did. That is one course. If the Minister thinks that a select committee of this House would be an unsuitable body to conduct an inquiry of that kind, then I ask him to induce the Government to set up a commission consisting of a High Court judge assisted by two assessors to carry out the same investigation. I am convinced that if we do not do that we shall have allowed something evil to go unchecked in this community which will have the gravest possible repercussions upon our national life.

I do not propose to refer to the matter further. I want to make it quite clear that I have made concrete suggestions which I believe to be reasonable, either of which, if adopted, will dispose of the public concern in regard to this business. I have no doubt that if it does appear that persons who had confidential information used it for personal profit, the Minister will be anxious to see that they are brought to account. I am equally certain that if there is no substance in these allegations all Parties in this House will be glad to have reassured the public that such transactions will not be permitted at any time, and that any allegation that such transactions had taken place has been proved by a full inquiry which commanded the confidence of every reasonable man in the State, to have been unfounded.

The Minister for Supplies in a long and effective speech dealt with his administration of the Department of Supplies. We have been living in a world which has been at war for more than four years. Everybody knows that the difficulties of the Minister for Supplies are very great. I have never heard any section of the community complain very bitterly about a shortage of supplies. On the contrary, I think, and I am sure the Minister will agree with me, that the fortitude of our people in accepting inconveniences of one kind or another from shortages of supply, has been quite admirable. Who would have imagined four years ago that in the province of Connaught little or no protest would be raised when the people's ration of tea was reduced to three-quarters of an ounce per week? I am standing behind the counter every day that I am not here, and I can assure the House that during all that time, apart from the lamentations of a few old women, I have never heard a single person complain that the shortage of supplies was due to the fault of the Government. It is not the scarcity of supplies, which is unavoidable, that the people are concerned with, but rather the inequality of distribution.

Deputies cannot escape the fact that there are children going to the primary schools in Dublin at the present time who are barefooted and virtually in rags. I am not saying that all the children attending the primary schools in Dublin are going to them in that condition. I do not think that anybody from the Taoiseach down to the crossing sweeper wants to see children going to school barefooted and in rags. Every citizen in this State is prepared to collaborate in any effort requisite to ensure that these children will be given shoes and clothes. I know charitable institutions that are doing their best to get shoes to give free to children who are barefooted. I know that the children's parents are anxious to get shoes for them. The reason why they cannot get the shoes is because there are not any shoes there to give them. Deputy Larkin, Senior, may be inclined to jeer at me when I say that I directed the attention of the Government to the imminence of this development 18 months ago. The whole burden of our complaint against the Minister for Supplies is not that there is a shortage of boots——

Mr. Larkin

I told him that four years ago.

Mr. Dillon

The burden of our complaint against the Minister for Supplies must not be that shoes are in short supply. That is not his fault. The burden of our complaint is that he did not take steps earlier to ensure that the short supply would be equitably distributed between all the people, so that you would not leave shoes uncontrolled at a time when supplies were dwindling. By doing so, you enabled people who had money to buy four or five pairs of shoes and put them aside, while those who had no money were only able to buy shoes as each individual pair got worn out. The result is that there is now a considerable section of the community with four or five pairs of shoes under their dressing tables that they have never put their feet into, while at the same time you have barefooted children going to the primary schools in Dublin.

I agree that it is wrong for any citizen of this State to hoard goods which are in short supply. But suppose there is the question of an impending shortage of a certain commodity raised here in the Dáil, and that the Minister responsible says there is not any shortage of it, and takes no special measures because there is not any shortage, and suppose an individual citizen thinks that the Minister is wrong, is it any crime for him to back his judgment against the Minister's? I do not think it is. He is entitled to go out and buy four or five pairs of shoes and say to himself that he thinks his judgment is better than the Minister's. What I complain of is that the Minister failed to take the necessary measures while there were still enough, but his attitude then was that there was no need to do anything. The result of that attitude adopted by him 18 months ago is that to-day there are some people who have four or five pairs of shoes, while at the same time you have children attending the primary schools who are barefooted.

The Taoiseach, I am sure, will remember that it was on his Estimate last year I said to him that there was an acute shortage of leather for boots. The Taoiseach replied to me at the time that he had heard nothing about it. I said to him that if he had not heard about it that he ought to have heard, and that I believed the shortage was due to the scarcity of tanning materials. I asked him if he could get the Emergency Research Bureau to set on foot an inquiry to procure substitute tanning materials. His reply was that he had got in touch with the responsible Minister and was assured that there was no acute shortage. Is that not so?

Mr. Lemass

There never has been, fortunately, a shortage due to tanning materials. Arrangements for a supply of tanning materials have been adequate up to the present. There were periodic shortages due to the non-delivery of hides. In a modern boot factory wire and tacks are essential to production. Without them production cannot go on. We formerly got supplies from Great Britian. When we could not get them there we had to go to the United States for them. There was a hiatus during which there were irregularities in the supply of wire. Hides then began to get scarce, but there was no real shortage of them. There may have been temporary difficulties in regard to delivery.

Mr. Dillon

I am not trying to be offensive to the Minister, but there is a difference between the approach of the bureaucrat and that of the ordinary person to this problem of the handling of these commodities. As a merchant who sells boots and shoes I can tell by the attitude of manufacturers and wholesalers if there is going to be a shortage in 18 months. I can judge when they begin to cut orders, when travellers stop coming in, or when men who were very glad to get orders in the past now make it a compliment to supply. When supplies begin to tighten that is the time to take control. If you wait until the consumer is short it means that not only will the manufacturer's stock be exhausted but also the wholesaler's and retailer's stocks. I was trying to get the Government to control supplies of shoes while there were still supplies with the wholesalers and retailers. I was buying all the shoes I could get for my customers, because I felt that I had a duty to them.

When I had large stocks of boots and shoes I begged the Minister to step in to control stocks while they could be replaced. If my customers were to ask for boots and shoes I could not refuse them because they could go elsewhere. I was anxious then that the Minister would come in. No one would have complained if the Minister said that there were ample supplies in one district and that some of them should be moved to Dublin or Cork where people were barefooted. Although I believed the Minister was culpable in this matter I felt that if he came to the House and said that he had to look after the supply of boots, that may be he had slipped a bit and now had come to the regrettable conclusion that he had made an error of judgment, he would find sympathy on all sides. I have no doubt whatever that if I were Minister for Supplies over a period I would make blunders. I have not the slightest doubt that if Deputy Larkin were Minister for Supplies he, too, would make serious blunders. What is irritating is that when you take such action you are treated as a public mischief-maker, instead of being met with the reply that they were glad of your help, or that they had made mistakes which they were anxious to rectify.

The Minister was impatient with regard to the utility shirt. That was one of the greatest scandals that occurred here. Notwithstanding the fact that I came to this House with a figure which showed that the shirt cost the manufacturer 6/-, that it was made out of cloth specially allocated by the Minister, he was charging the wholesaler 9/- and the retailer 10/-. That is my recollection. The Minister, instead of saying: "I will have that matter looked into and put right," declared that it never happened. The Minister knows in his heart and soul that it did happen. The scandal of the thing forced him to take some action, although in this House he told me that nothing would induce him to do anything for at least six months, because he would not get the annual report of the shirt manufacturer until then, and would not intervene to inquire what prices were charged. He said he would wait to see what profits were made during the financial year and if these appeared to be excessive he would take action. How do you expect Deputies to make constructive suggestions when they are met in that spirit?

This war must have taught the most block-headed supporter of the Fianna Fáil Party in Ireland that self-sufficiency is the merest "cod". Every factory in this country depends for its existence on imported raw material and machinery. There is not a single factory operating in this country at present which could carry on if it had not got a store of imported material, or if it had not access to certain types of raw material, whether machinery, lubricating oil or the actual stuff the factory processes within its walls. So long as we intend to have any industrial production here at all, these things must be brought in from abroad. We cannot bring them in from abroad, if we do not pay for them.

Will any Deputy tell me how we are to pay for these things, if we have not got an agricultural surplus to export, and, if we have an agricultural surplus to export, where can we export it, if not to Great Britain? Did we not try, from 1932 to 1936, to find alternative markets under the strongest possible pressure of circumstances which could induce us to do so? It was the despairing need of the Government of the day to find some place other than Great Britain to which to sell our goods, and yet, under the punitive tariffs of the economic war, the Government of that day preferred to send our goods to Great Britain and pay these punitive tariffs, rather than to let the stuff rot on the quays because there was nowhere else to sell it. We have nowhere else to sell it, and, if we do not sell it, every section of the community must pay.

Mr. Dillon

I have made the case that to live we must export. I invite Deputies to examine the implications of that, to make up their minds upon it and do what is best for this country. I have no doubt what I think ought to be done. The trouble is that I think most other Deputies are in grave doubt. In the name of God, if they are responsible public men, let them clear their minds and, if they do them what they believe to be right, no one can expect them to do more.

Dr. O'Higgins

I have listened to this debate for the greater part of a day and a half and, on the whole, I think that, in spite of the fact that it covered a very great field, it was in the main of a definitely helpful character. It was a discussion that showed a serious attempt by Deputies to face up to very serious times ahead from the point of view of our position in this country and also from the point of view as to what best we could do to help others in sorer circumstances than ours.

The Minister for Supplies, reflecting the mood of the House, appeared to me to make his statement in a more reasonable and less brassy, less aggressive manner than that which he generally displays in his statements from those benches. It may be that the process of learning by mistakes is beginning to seep in and educate that particular Minister, because there are few of the major bungles that have been made by that Department—and there have been many—of which the Minister was not warned well in advance. He refused to listen to anyone or to take any advice. Every Deputy was wrong. Everyone was wrong but the Minister for Supplies. To an extent, he adopted that particular attitude at the tail-end of his speech this evening.

Deputy McGilligan last evening raised a matter of very serious consequences to a democratic institution such as this, in a State managed as we are. He raised that particular matter in a very, very inoffensive manner and he made it very clear that he was making no charges, that he came here to Parliament to inform Parliament and the Taoiseach of a suspicion and a rumour that were very prevalent. The Minister's response to that was to turn round and rasp back at the Deputy that the Deputy came here to inject venom into the debate. The only venom that has appeared in this debate is what appeared at the tail-end of the Minister's speech.

The Minister invited anybody who had information with regard to that particular leakage about Great Southern Railways shares to come along and lay the information at his feet, and then he might or might not take action. I would invite Parliament and every Deputy in this Assembly, conscious of the necessity for universal respect for the people's Parliament, to consider whether or not the Minister's course was a wise one. It was saying to any of us: "Prove the case, and, if you prove the case to me, then I will take action." The Minister must know as well as anyone else the impossibility of proving such a case, of putting the onus of proof on any individual Deputy.

Constitutional usage in democracies elsewhere lays this down as a rule— and a rule seldom, if ever, departed from—that if a rumour or suspicion gains currency that there is anything corrupt in the administration of any public service or any Government Department, the fullest, the freest and the most searching inquiry will be made, not in order to prove the charges, but in order to maintain the good name of Parliament and Government. It was in that spirit that the Deputy came forward last evening. If anything was to increase the suspicion and give greater speed to the rumours, it was the attitude of the Minister in clamping down discussion and shirking inquiry. Every Deputy who referred to the matter, from these or other benches, stated that he had no suspicion against the Minister or against the Ministry, but that the coincidence or coincidences were too remarkable to bear any normal explanation. The shares of the company slumped at a period because of a speech by the head of that company as gloomy and as depressing as any speech could be, and immediately there was a rise that could be regarded as a jump, and that rise was attributed by many to be based on knowledge that subsequently proved correct.

The statement of Deputy McGilligan was to the effect that there was very general rumour that certain speculators, with advance knowledge of the company, plus the Government scheme, were in a position to jump in with big money, to buy shares from unfortunate people who had held those shares through the worst of times, and to reap a substantial profit as a result of the transaction. That is the rumour. That is the suspicion. Most of us, if not all of us, heard the tales, possibly false, possibly exaggerated, that are going around the city, as to the fortunes that were made. In such circumstances, if there is no fire behind the smoke, is it not the right thing, the, proper thing, and the democratic thing to have a full and searching inquiry, and to clear the name of the Departments concerned, and to prove, once and for all, to malicious gossipers, that they should be more cautious about gossiping in future?

I do not claim to know anything about these transactions but I do speak as a Deputy who heard that rumour around Dublin. What truth there is in it I do not know but I do know the amount of damage done to the State itself in letting such rumours go when, if the Minister is right, an investigation will clear it up very speedily.

Now, as far as this debate has touched on questions of the post-war position of this country, economically and in other respects, I think the Deputy who laid himself out most seriously to project his mind into painting a picture of the post-war position, as far as our trade is concerned, was Deputy Roddy. He warned us that, after this war, as after most wars, we must expect to be prepared for a slump in trade, and that the best way to equip ourselves to meet that position would be to try to anticipated in what direction, and for what type of goods, there would be a big demand and, possibly, an attractive price, since supply could not possibly meet the demand. The Deputy instanced certain classes of stocks, and urged people who could go in for that class of goods to lay them in. In my opinion, that was a very thoughtful speech, and it was in very distinct contrast to the speech that was made by the Deputy Leader of the Farmer's Party, whose only suggestion to meet the post-war situation, it seemed to me, was to give more and more subsidies to the farmers of this country. Now, in the course of Deputy Cogan's speech, he pointed out that 60 per cent. of the people of this country were living out of agriculture and that, approximately, 40 per cent. were engaged in other industries. That would seem to indicate that 60 per cent. of our people, according to his speech, could only be carried on by a policy of giving more and more subsidies to them.

There is no good in pretending that we shall not be at a distinct disadvantage when that particular time comes. We may have to tide over a period by an extension of subsidies, but the subsidy system is not a solution. A subsidy is merely a stopgap, and the only way business can be done is by cultivating the friendliest relations possible under existing circumstances, so that at least our voice will be listened to. We have a case and we have an argument. We have the argument that was very frequently, and very successfully, advanced by the former Minister for Agriculture, the late Mr. Patrick Hogan. Time and again when other people tried to get inside the Irish farmer on that market his argument was this: "We belong to the community known as the Commonwealth. These people are outsiders. The first right must go to those who are members." That is an argument that cannot be turned down. That is an argument that finally secured us imperial preference as against other members of the Commonwealth. When they put in over there for a larger share of that market, his argument was that we had been buying so much per annum from Great Britain, that exports and imports in the main should balance, that other members of the Commonwealth were buying elsewhere and that the highest percentage of all our purchases were in that market. I do not agree for one moment with the Minister for Supplies when he stands up here and says that we have no bargaining power and that we have nothing left to bargain with. Surely our very purchases even during the war, the value of our imports even during the war, the value of our imports in normal years, are a bargaining power. It is a despairing kind of attitude for the Government to adopt the line, before the struggle commences, that we have nothing to fight with, that we have no bargaining power, that we are merely begging, as it were, to get what we are demanding.

This debate to a great extent revolved round the cost of living. The Minister for Supplies made a reasonable attempt to explain many causes contributing to the increased cost of living. I do not think he was, as it were, talking to a brief. He was defending the present situation and endeavouring to make it appear that nobody else could improve on that situation. I do not think the House was very impressed by the Minister. We have the situation here that we are mainly an agricultural country, where the bulk of our food is produced at home, where the volume and the value of overseas supplies have shrunk and shrunk so that there is little or nothing now coming in. Nevertheless, we have had our cost of living increased by 111 points. See the situation over in Britain, a country with an immense population, a country either in peace or war unable to feed itself, a country that must buy the bulk of the necessary articles of food from across water and pay the cost of them, with insurance and transport, and yet the cost of living goes up by only 64 points. Now, surely, nobody is going to give a certificate of efficiency in control of prices over here presented with that picture.

The very first step in the early days of the war, or one of the first steps, taken by the Minister was to peg down wages. His case for pegging down wages was: "If I do not peg wages down the cost of living will soar. Give me that authority to peg down wages and I shall control the cost of living." By the weight of the vote behind him in this House, he put through his Order No. 83 and he got absolute control of wages. That control was ruthlessly exercised since, but the price of commodities went up and up and up, so that lower wages go up one point as against every 20-point rise in the cost of living. Are we to congratulate the Minister in face of that situation on the successful carrying out of the control of prices? What we have in this country at the moment is fixation of prices, but there is a very great difference between fixing prices and controlling prices. If we take the cost of living as going up 111 points and take wages as going up 15 per cent., what does that mean in terms of supplies? What does that mean in terms of goods? It means, in fact, that the wage earner has to go without 85 per cent. of the goods which he bought prewar, whether these were food, clothing, or little articles that might be regarded as not entirely necessary. The statement made here by Deputy McGilligan last night gives part of the answer. If the profits of companies supplying goods to the public, particularly a company supplying fuel, are to go up by leaps and bounds, while the amount that can be purchased in the poorest home is to go down by a very substantial amount, surely we have not, in fact, an effective control of prices. We have the kind of control that would affect people retrospectively. We have a kind of attempt to meet a situation after a situation becomes really desperate.

Let us take the different things that we can say are effectively controlled at the moment. From the first day of the war the Minister had control of petrol, and we reached the point when not a vehicle in the country had sufficient fuel to move. The Minister then began to exercise his powers more effectively, but after the harm was done. We had in turn a bread famine, a potato famine and a butter famine, in this city; and as soon as we had a famine or a partial famine this Minister stepped in to exercise control. We have subsisted for some years on whole-meal bread—100 per cent. wheaten flour—and the Minister told us that we could not possibly give the people bread with a lower percentage. We remember the time when the bread famine was here in Dublin, that the Minister scoffed at the people in queues and told us that there was plenty of bread but that they all wanted fresh bread. Two months afterwards, in a political speech, he himself pointed to the tragedy of that short-term famine in Dublin, and he justified the steps he was taking on the grounds that such a famine would never occur again.

What I am putting to the Minister is that, whether it was boots or flour, petrol or butter or potatoes, 12 months, 18 months or two years before the shortage occurred, Deputies in different parts of this House urged and begged the Department and the Government, and, in particular, the head of the Government, to take timely steps so that distress and partial famine would not occur. I remember, on an occasion two years ago, appealing to the Taoiseach, who is directly opposite, that what occurred with regard to bread and butter should not be allowed to occur with regard to potatoes; and the Taoiseach agreed, and nothing was done. Twelve months later we had a partial potato famine here in the city. As I said, the Minister, in his statement here this evening, gave some evidence of a more reasonable frame of mind with regard to the House than he generally shows. He gave certain evidence that, at least, he was beginning to realise that every Deputy, when he stands up here and is not entirely in agreement with him, is not standing up in order to embarrass the Government, in order to criticise for the purely political effect. The Deputies who do not see eye to eye with the Government, and criticise the steps the Government is taking, are criticising in order to have speedier or more effective steps taken, and they are doing that in the interests of the nation as a whole. Whereas it is his responsibility to administer, it is our responsibility to voice the views and criticisms of the people outside.

I hope that the Minister will extend very generally the rationing system in this country. There is no good in rationing a commodity such as potatoes, or shoes, or tea, after the wealthy have bought up all that is there. What happened with regard to tea was that, for 12 months, there was intensive and extensive buying of chests of tea by those who could write cheques with ease. The Minister contradicted that in a previous debate in this House. I do not know on what official records he based his contradiction, but I would say that there are few Deputies, either in this Party or any other Party, who do not know, amongst their own friends or social contacts, that there are, in the average home of the better-class person, stores of tea that will not be exhausted if this war lasts another four years. That was going on, and when all that greed—if you like to call it such—was satisfied, when all the cheques had been exchanged for chests of tea, then we had rationing of tea on the basis of half an ounce per person per week; and the wealthy got the half-ounce plus the chest, and the poor got the half-ounce.

We had a discussion here on shoes and boots. The Minister explained that, with the advance of the Japanese, cutting off rubber from this country, and the consequential loss of so many million pairs of rubber boots per annum to the community here, there must be a shortage of boots and that he can do nothing about it. The rubber countries fell into the hands of the Japanese some 18 months ago. Surely, the head of a great State Department such as Supplies could have and should have foreseen 18 months ago that, with rubber gone, with 3,000,000 pairs per annum of rubber boots of different types being bought and used in this country, there would be a shortage of footwear and that that shortage could be anticipated to this extent by rigid rationing of what footwear, what boots and shoes, were then in the country; so that, as far as he could see to it, everybody would get an equal share of whatever was there. The man in the street could see as well as the Minister should have seen that, with the cutting off of rubber, there would be a shortage of footwear. The man in the street with money, and the woman in the street with money, at least said to himself or herself: "If the State does not look after its family, I will look after mine"; and they bought more pairs of boots and shoes in one year than normally they would buy in five.

As soon as we reach a situation where children have got to pad it to school in frost and slush barefooted, the Minister says: "That is too bad, but there are no shoes for them. The Japs invaded the rubber countries 18 months ago. I am sorry that there are no shoes for them, but I am taking steps now, that will take some time, to have the situation in the future dealt with as adequately and completely and efficiently as I can do it." Is that facing up to the responsibility of that Department to the public? Is the Taoiseach satisfied that the work of a Department controlling supplies is adequately, efficiently, fairly and justly being carried out, by waiting to ration tea until all the tea we can give is half an ounce per person per week; by waiting to ration footwear until we have to admit that, in city and country, helpless, delicate, weakly children are facing the winter with naked feet, and that still more time will be required to ensure that the future will be better than the present. Recalling the debates that took place here and the advice that was given regarding the bread problem, is the Taoiseach satisfied with the present position? We have had two years of a harmful, wasteful and extravagant kind of bread.

The Minister was warned, time and again, that it would be wasteful, that if all wheat and pollard were, by order, cut off from the stocks on the land, nevertheless, those stocks would be fed—if necessary, even with flour— and that, in the end, there would be more wastage by his 100 per cent. flour than there would be by a lower percentage. He dealt with that in his usual brassy manner. Nobody knew anything about Irish rural life but the Minister for Supplies. He was being told for two years what was going on, that the bread was not good for the body, that it was distasteful and wasteful. Now, he comes along and says that in the interests of economy— not for any reason of health or for any reason advanced by Deputy McGilligan—he has decided to give an 85 per cent. flour to the public.

I hope and pray that his economy will work. I congratulate him on taking that step even now, but is it fair to the public that a Government will go along, learning only by bungles, disasters and hardships instead of examining a matter properly and taking sufficiently broad advice before a decision is arrived at? May I say to the Taoiseach that this little country belongs to all of us? The men and women and boys and girls who go around the country are our relatives and friends and our kith and kin, just as they are yours. When we Opposition Deputies—Fine Gael, Labour, Farmers and Independents— come in here to give advice or to advance criticism, we do not do so to sabotage our country. We do not come in to injure the people outside. We come in to give advice when we believe the advice is sound, when our experience, our contacts or our knowledge convince us that the course being taken is the wrong course, the wasteful course, the extravagant course, the bad course for the people as a whole. Some attention should be given to that advice. Some consciousness should be shown by the Government of the fact that we are part owners and share responsibility for the welfare of this little country. They should not wait, as they have done so far, until something approaching agony and famine arises before they take proper and effective steps.

Mr. Larkin

I want to bring the House back to the realities of the situation. I think that that was the note struck by the Minister in his raging outburst this afternoon. He rushed at his problem like a bull at a gate. I suggest that we bring him back to the realities of the situation and examine his credentials and the manner in which he has discharged his duty to those who elected him and so the Government of which he is one of the most active members. Firstly, I think that the man is overloaded with work. Secondly, I think he has got obsessions—political obsessions. Thirdly, I think he is the kind of person who would sooner continue doing wrong than be corrected. What are the facts in connection with his mismanagement as national housekeeper? I do not think that anyone has ever dared to explain the mistakes—open and deliberate mistakes—that have been made at the expense of the community. He deliberately went out of his way, as Deputy O'Higgins said— he said it in a very kindly tone; I was surprised he was so gentle in his manner towards the Minister for Supplies—to disregard suggestions made by members of the House.

The Minister for Supplies came in to-night in chastened mood, though he used rather rash terms. After making so many mistakes, he wants assistance and advice, and if anybody—even a humble Deputy like myself—has a suggestion to make, he is prepared to consider it. That is after he has put us in a dilemma from which there is no escape. According to his own state ment to-night, we have virtually no supply of clothing and what we have is sold to us at a prohibitive price. He has lost control of textiles. As regards shoes, he quoted figures so absurd that nobody dared to deal with them afterwards. What about that feature of our economics? In our climatic conditions, what has he done in that field of activation? The Minister, Deputy O'Higgins and I were talking to some students one night. On that night, he also referred to boots. Deputies may remember the song during the last war, "Boots, boots, boots, marching up and down again... marching to destruction". I believe that our friend is going to march to political destruction because of boots. We have heard from all sides of the House that those who require boots have not got the material means to buy them. Those who have the money have taken more than their share in the way of boots and shoes. Let Deputies throw back their minds to 1939. The Minister was then in charge of another Department which had also to do with supplies. He advised everybody who had money to lay in stores of goods and food.

His argument was this, and this is the logical situation, that people who possessed money and who had power to buy should put away goods in reserve and that would help to clear the warehouses. When all the stuff would be gone and the warehouses emptied, there would be a fresh inflow of goods. One particular trade union leader commended that to his members. The position was that all the available stuff, manufactured or otherwise, was put in store by those who had the money. There was the case of the old lady who died in Bray. She was 90 years of age, and she had no less than 156 lbs. of tea stored away. I suppose if she lived for another 90 years she could not have consumed the quantity of food she had stored away. She was in her dotage and she spent money everywhere, piling stores up in her house. When the police visited the place they found it packed with food and clothing, clothing that she never could have worn. All she got eventually was a box.

We are a marvellously patriotic people in Dublin. The people who have money live here only because they have to. Most of them are here in order to make more wealth at the expense of those who are gullible enough to be exploited by them. If you go to the Ballsbridge district and enter any of the houses there you will find, as Deputy O'Higgins stated with very truth, that there is at least a year's reserve of food and clothing, and possibly more than a year's reserve. At the other end of the city, in Crumlin, you will see poor children going to the national school in their bare feet. Just imagine what it was like during the last two or three days, when the weather was anything but warm. Those children had to set out for school with empty, or partially empty stomachs, and that is due to the action of the Minister for Supplies, the Minister for Local Government and those other Ministers of the Government who support the present policy. If death comes to any of those unfortunate children, the responsibility will lie at the doors of those Ministers; on their consciences must it lie. Those poor children have been denied their share of the national wealth.

The facts are there, and no ambiguous statement from a Minister can explain them away. The facts are there that human beings, born to the likeness of God, have been denied their ordinary rights by this Government. I say that these poor children have been denied food and clothing. I can point to the fact that 28 batteries of boilers, capable of cooking food for hungry children, were paid for by the people of Dublin. When we asked for an opportunity to use them—to use our own property—we were told, in effect, by the Minister that if we gave a hot meal to a hungry child, the child was in danger of losing its immortal soul. What do you think of that, in the 20th century, coming from a supposedly intelligent human being? Last year, when the canning trade was going fairly well, in one day 500 oxtails, that could be used for human consumption, were allowed to rot and were taken to the refuse dump. The oxtail is capable of making the finest kind of food that could be put into the stomach of any child or adult. The extails were only a small portion of the amount of food destroyed. That matter was drawn to the attention of the Government, and the Minister responsible, but nothing was done.

At the present time we are killing 2,000 oxen in this city in a week. Each beast has a tail and each tail is worth, in the retail market, at least 2/6 or 3/-. But they cannot find a market for the tails. The Minister for Agriculture says that the stuff cannot be sold and they will not give a permit to allow that material to be shipped out of the country. You could sell in Holyhead all the oxtails we can provide. Last week in the Dublin abattoir 71 oxtails were dumped as refuse. For two years I have been mentioning this matter to certain people, including the city manager and the Minister for Local Government. The Taoiseach was visited by a group of women, who referred, among other things, to this matter, but nothing was done. Why not give the hungry child a bowl of oxtail soup? That soup is sold in London at 2/6 a dish, and a plate of pure oxtail soup, or clear soup as it is called, costs two dollars in New York. Oxtail plus vegetable soup would make a feed almost for the gods, yet the oxtails are allowed to rot rather than be given to hungry children in the schools in Dublin.

We are not allowed to use the boilers for which we paid £11,000. But the Minister for Local Government sees to it that his family are well fed. They are well fed, and good luck to them. I recommend him to look after his own first but, having done so, surely he should give some consideration to the children of the poor. He must remember that all children are entitled to some measure of consideration and respect from this responsible, Christian Government. If even one hungry child is going to a Government school, the members of this Government are responsible for that crime against humanity.

What about the destruction of food in this emergency? What answer have they to that? We see tons of good food taken to the refuse dump. There are Deputies here who know I am speaking the truth. Every beast killed in the Dublin abattoir carries 3 to 4 cwts. of bone matter. In any week you have hundreds of good bone matter available. If that were taken and boiled, look at the valuable material you would have. We have gentlemen here talking about the lack of common fats, and the butchers get abused because they have not common fats. There was a time when people used to ask: "Why is Ireland not getting Home Rule?" The answer was: "Look at the House of Lords." I say, look at those gentlemen to-day who neglect to do their duty. You have 6,000 cwts. of bone matter allowed to lie rotting in the abattoir until the bones have to be taken away because it might be a danger from the point of view of public health. They are taken to a refinery in order to make manure. From each cow or old or young bull there is a certain amount of bone matter taken, and even after these bones are cleaned there is a certain amount of meat. No matter how you clean them, there is a certain amount of valuable meat left on the bones. You have in those bones the finest fats but, as I have said, we will not be allowed to use the boilers to render them down. They are left to rot, and when carried away the rats clean the meat off them. They are then made into manure. For two years that has been going on under the nose of the Minister, not only in Dublin but in Roscrea and, to some extent, in Waterford. We have all this waste of food because there is no co-ordination in the activations of our different groups of citizens.

The Minister for Industry and Commerce asked us why do we not give the Government ideas and suggest remedies. For five years, publicly, privately and politically, I have been calling upon the Government, through the different Ministers, to set up an economic council and get together men and women with a knowledge of these matters to work on it. What is the answer? The door is slammed in your face, and you are told that the Government is going to do all the planning. Now they find themselves utterly unable to do it when the crisis has come upon us. They are getting rejected by all men. Even members of their own organisation object to their lack of vision. One of the units that carried on a campaign of calumny to secure the return of the Minister for Local Government came to me and apologised, and said that I had proved myself to be correct. I challenge the Government that if they do not alter their conduct towards the ordinary common citizen, that before long they will have something to learn in the same way as the Government that preceded them.

Take the question of bread. It is the one thing that should have been rationed at the very start. After all, tea is something of a luxury in Ireland. It is a necessity in other places. Tea has been rationed, but how is that rationing being carried out? In any part of Dublin, if you want to be an enemy of the State and of your race, you can buy all the tea you want at from 10/- to 25/- a lb. People who want to keep within the ordinary law can get it at 4/- a lb. People who came down on excursions from Belfast were able to take away tea in cwts., as well as clothes, boots and watches. Dundalk was an open town on Sundays, supplying everybody over the Border with everything they needed. Those people had plenty of money. The dieticians have now advised the Government not to insist on the 100 per cent. extraction of flour. We had certain people on platforms who outwardly appeared to think well of the 100 per cent. extraction, but behind the people's backs they were ready to sell them and their country for a price. It has now been proved that certain people fed flour that was needed for human consumption to live stock. The remedy proposed for that is to reduce the flour extraction to 85 per cent., in the hope that those people will examine their consciences and will not feed the staff of life to animals. The idea to reduce the flour extraction seems to be sound on the face of it, but will it be carried out? Personally, I do not see that there is much hope in regulating people who would use food intended for human consumption in that way, and who would do so in defiance of the law and of the observance of all ethical principles. Death, I think, is the only hope for such people.

Deputy O'Higgins pointed out that tea, clothing and boots and other commodities are now rationed. In my opinion bread should be the first thing to be rationed. Steps should be taken to see that the new quality flour will be distributed under a system that will be fair, honest and Christian-like. As soon as the quality of the bread is changed, every person should be assured of getting their share of it.

Deputy Blayney from Donegal, a county that produces men who have shown their willingness to work under all kinds of adverse conditions the world over, made a statement last year which was published in the Press to the effect that there were no qucues for potatoes in Dublin. At that time you had women almost pulling down the doors of the shops in an effort to get potatoes. I hope the Deputy will now insist on a rationing system for potatoes. I ask Deputies not to mind what our pleasant, courteous Minister for Agriculture tells them. He is a kindly gentlemanly person. If one approaches him he will whisper a lot of sweet nothings in your ear, but that is all you get. We want things done in a businesslike way, and I suggest that 200,000 tons of potatoes should be made available for the cities. Ration them so that everybody will be able to get their share. Fix a decent price so that the farmer will grow them, and do not have the position that we had this year when people in the County Dublin were getting 126/- per ton for them. I sold potatoes at one time to workers at 5d. per stone and made a profit on them. They were grown in Tipperary. I referred the other night to what are called scab potatoes grown near Carlingford. They are the best potatoes that a man ever ate. I have seen them sold to the alcohol factories at £2 a ton. Potatoes are a good wholesome food for human consumption, but prohibitive prices are being charged for them. I want to see a decent price fixed so that the farmer and the man who works with him will get an adequate return for their labour. The most important thing in my opinion is to ration both bread and potatoes. I appeal to the Taoiseach to take a personal interest in this food problem.

As regards the meat industry, the people in the canning industry are just ordinary business men. I ask that they should not be allowed to waste any of the food they handle. The Minister for Local Government will not give us permission to use our own plant for the purpose of boiling soup to give to the children during school hours. Why not release the oxtails and ox heads and other portions of the offal so that we may be able to get a price for them in Liverpool or Holyhead? A question was raised the other night by some Deputy about the killing of young breeding cattle. It was said that from 16 to 20 per cent. of the cattle that are being killed under present arrangements are in-calf, and that from 7 to 10 per cent. of the ewes that are being killed are in-young. That is a matter that requires more attention than it is getting. The facts cannot be denied. What is happening may be due to carelessness or lack of knowledge, but it is true. I believe it is most essential that we should set about establishing large reserves of young stock, because I do not believe that this war is going to last as long as some people think.

I think there will be an end to this world war before the end of next year. That does not give time to build up stocks. We should turn our minds in that direction as it may be impossible to get the materials for our industries. Incidentally I want to challenge some statements made by the Minister for Supplies about the shipping question. It was suggested to him privately as well as publicly in 1939 that he ought to take over shipping. I told him that there were ships available then that could be purchased from £12 to £20 a ton. That suggestion was made in an ordinary conversation. The Minister did not adopt it that year or the next year. When it was decided to make purchases vessels were bought that were not to be bought for scrap. I believe that one ship cost £300,000. Ships were also taken over that belonged to another company. That arrangement can be decided at the end of the war. We may then be asked what was done with the earnings of the vessels while under our control. That can be answered here or in some court. In taking over these ships the right thing was to have them nationally insured. Never mind the insurance racketeers. This country should insure its own ships. On voyages between Vigo, Lisbon and Dublin with the saving effected on insurance a new ship could be bought. It would be the same with western ocean-going ships. When we ask about its personnel we are told that the members of the Shipping Board are working for nothing. During the last war people were told that there were dollar-a-day men in America, great business men, controlling industries. When the matter was investigated afterwards, after 1,000,000 men had lost their lives, it was found that millions of dollars had been made by certain people. One firm which was owned by a brother-in-law of the late President Wilson had, it was said, made 21,000,000 dollars although they never built a ship.

Those who have taken over the Irish ships we are told are working for nothing. Does anybody in this House believe that? I know some of these men personally. One of them would not know how to go up a gangway. We have two civil servants, very eminent people. One of them seems to be everything in our economic life. He is here, there and everywhere. I do not know how he finds time for all his duties. I undertake that if I brought him before any maritime commission he would not know the keelson of a ship from the truck. These are the men who have been put in charge of the fleet which is said to be worth £2,000,000. One of them is fully capable of discharging his duty. He has full knowledge of the work and is a very able man. Another gentleman has no connection with the life of this country. Another is a non-citizen and has connections with a dockyard, with coal and with turf. Wherever you look you find him moving. I suggest that there must be other men with ability in the Fianna Fáil Party. I had a conversation with the Minister some years ago concerning the machinations of a business group in connection with an industry at Carbury at County Kildare. The Government put about £96,000 into a concern. The chairman of the board was an eminent financial genius. A man who was supposed to be a Norwegian went there every day. He had a picture of Hitler on the wall. He was getting £10,000 a year. Money was being thrown into that bog. When the Minister was told about it of course no notice was taken as it was said Larkin was not interested in the country. The Government got whatever remained out of that venture where the very best turf was being sold.

The Minister definitely mentioned the Dublin Gas Company.

Mr. Fitzgerald-Kenney

I think it is clearly within the recollection of the House that he referred to both companies.

An Ceann Comhairle

I accept the Deputy's assurance.

Mr. Larkin

It was merely an analogy I was endeavouring to draw— that as there was suspicion in the case of the railway, there might be suspicion in relation to the drop in the value of the Gas Company shares and then the quick rise. That was the only reason I was arguing on that line.

It is a matter connected with supplies because he is producing food.

An Ceann Comhairle

We are not debating the Vote for the Minister for Supplies.

Mr. Larkin

The Minister invited all these matters. He was so eaten up with his feeling of magnanimity in connection with the services he had given to the country that he wanted to tell all about his activities and all the wonderful things he had done—without him the country would be sunk 20 fathoms under the sea. If he is allowed to continue, I am afraid it will be sunk. I just want to say one word about our reserve values that are being driven out. We are told about the men working on farms and how we love them. We love them so much that we give them 35/- a week for a 56-hour week in all kinds of climatic conditions. If they want a pair of boots they must pay £3 for them. A man with a wife and three children, which is the average, gets 35/- a week, out of which he has to buy a pair of boots every six months for which he has to pay £3. I wonder how he can do it. That man could get a job in England, where the lowest wage is about 1/5 per hour for a 60 hour week and where he might get 1/11 per hour. There are 400,000 or 500,000 of our people working over there, sending home money through the Post Office at the rate of £80,000 or £100,000 per week. With that paper money, food or clothing can be bought. There is no real value, because the only real value in life is labour as applied to the raw products of the earth. You can produce wealth by no other means. You have either to work, to beg or to steal. These are the only three ways of living. These men and women are liquidating their liabilities with a piece of paper. They are not giving service here. They are creating wealth, whether by way of materials for the destruction of life or in the way of food, clothing and shelter, in another portion of these islands.

Then we have the audacity of the Minister who says that the Government do not agree with inflation, that they are trying to keep down this accursed spiral of the rising cost of living. It is admitted that there is inflation to the extent of something like £16,000,000. I have not the time to go into the question of money values and my young friend who is an authority on the new monetary system is not willing to take a hand. There is more humbug talked about money and its uses than about any other subject in the world and there is less known about it than any other subject. We have now brought it down to this point, that with every piece of paper with a certain gentleman's name on it you can get £1 worth of goods in Dublin or in any part of the Twenty-Six Counties. If I take a piece of paper with the Taoiseach's name on it over to London they will say: "What is this?" If I tender an Irish note in a shop in London I will be asked "What is this?" If I tender an Irish two-shilling piece in London for a fare on a bus, I will be told: "That is Irish; we will not have anything to do with it." Yet our currency is backed by sterling. It has the same financial backing as the British currency. We have gold behind our currency and we have got more than that. But the £1 note given to us is only worth 11/2 in real value and is going down in value every day. We do not tell people who are working over there to buy clothes or watches and not to bring that paper money over here, as it is putting more weight on our shoulders. If they would do that it would be all right. There is a certain group of people whom you never see carrying that paper money over here. They may go up to Belfast but they bring back watches or razor blades. When they go over to London, Scotland or Wales they bring back real value. I suggest that we should send some intelligent person over to tell our people to bring back the goods and not to mind the paper.

I do wish, in all earnestness, that the Taoiseach who, everybody knows, has a deep love for children—and I think the same can be said of the members of the Front Bench—would take up as a special task this matter of the material welfare of our children in the big cities this coming winter. Give them a little warmth, a little clothing and a little comfort. Ration bread and, above all, give us our own property to use so that we can buy soup and give these young children a hot meal during school hours.

Minister for Local Government and Public Health (Mr. MacEntee)

Those who have listened to Deputy James Larkin (Senior) for the last hour will agree that he is a very difficult man to please and a very difficult man to follow in the wide range of his imagination, and the mighty spate of his oratory. I do not propose to traverse the whole wide world from China to Peru, which he has opened here in the course of his speech. I had intended primarily to devote myself to the narrow issue which the Chair suggested should be taken as the subject matter of this debate — the present cost of living and its effect upon the position of those who are existing on low wages or low incomes, or who are mainly dependent upon the social service payments. I say, Sir, I had intended to devote myself entirely to that specific issue, but I doubt whether any citizen of this State, reading this morning's newspapers, would for a moment have believed that that was the subject which had been suggested from the Chair. On the contrary, those of them who took the trouble to read the speech of Deputy McGilligan would have assumed that the subject matter which we were discussing was an even graver issue — and God knows, the plight of our people in their present circumstances is grave and sorrowful enough — because the impression which was conveyed there, and deliberately conveyed, by Deputy McGilligan was that there was widespread corruption in this State, and that he had entered the House to expose it, and that that was the main thing with which we had been concerned.

A number of Deputies heard Deputy McGilligan last night, I think, for the first time. All I can say is that his speech was characteristic. Those of us who are old in the House know that his methods are slick and slimy. He does not often appear in debate. He has not spoken here, I think, twice since this House reassembled after the last general election. He came into this House at about half-past five in the evening, after the law courts had closed. I believe the Deputy enjoys a lucrative practice there. He remained in this House until twenty minutes past eight and then intervened in this debate, not, Sir, for the purpose of addressing himself to the subject which you had suggested to the House, but to deal with quite another matter. The time at which Deputy McGilligan rose to speak is significant because he always chooses that hour of the evening, the hour when he can speak and cannot be replied to. It is characteristic of the Deputy's methods. It reminds me of a little creature of the sea which I read of when I read natural history, a little animal, the hermit crab. It is hard-cased in front but, if I may say so, is somewhat tender behind and it goes through life preoccupied with the weakness of its rear. That is Deputy McGilligan's preoccupation when he speaks in this House. So much for the time of his intervention.

It is not necessary for me to remind the House of the subject to which he addressed himself. As I said, those of us who heard him and those of us who read the morning papers know what the subject was. Two of his allegations have been dealt with and completely exploded by the Minister for Supplies and Industry and Commerce in his speech this evening, so exploded that Deputy O'Higgins, I understand, disclaimed any idea of impugning the Government in regard to this matter of the Great Southern Railways. Those Deputies who heard the Minister for Supplies addressing himself to the question of the insurance business which had been built up by the Irish Shipping Company, a shipping company which is the property of the Irish people, all shares in which are held by the Minister for Finance, can have no doubt whatever as to the propriety of the course which was pursued in suggesting that Irish citizens importing these goods for the use of Irish people, in Irish ships, should support the national shipping company in the insurance enterprise which it was building up.

But, Sir, in order to create this atmosphere, the Deputy has referred to the rumours which are going around. Deputy McGilligan is the most fruitful source of these insinuations and allegations. He is the one who broadcasts them most openly under the protection and privileges of this House. And, Sir, in order, as I say, even to make more dark that suspicion which he has endeavoured to create, he referred to a matter of the Roscommon County Council insurances. What that has to do with the present cost of living and its effect upon the circumstances and conditions of those of our people who have to live upon low incomes or who are mainly dependent for their subsistence upon social service payments, it is not my place to say.

Mr. MacEntee

I do not know whether Deputy Hughes is speaking for the Leader of the Opposition; I am not going to question his position in the House; but it is quite obvious that Parliamentary business cannot be conducted, in, my submission, if agreements and arrangements that are made in order to ensure that there would be an orderly discussion of public issues cannot be made effective by the Chair. That is what would bring this House as a deliberative Assembly into disrepute.

Mr. Davin

Who is talking now?

Mr. MacEntee

However, Sir, I was referring to the fact that it was Deputy McGilligan who opened up this matter of the Roscommon County Council insurances, and he opened it up in such a way as to suggest that someone, in relation to these insurances, had been guilty of unworthy and improper conduct, and had been guilty of that conduct at the instance of the Minister for Local Government and Public Health, or some of his officers. Now, Sir, that is a grave and serious imputation to make—a grave and serious innuendo to convey. The Deputy, of course, as usual, tried to wash his hands of the matter by saying that people outside are saying this or saying that, but how many people spoke to Deputy McGilligan about this question of the Roscommon County Council insurances? How many people spoke in public in the hearing of Deputy McGilligan on this matter? He is a man who professes to be concerned about the public honour of this State, of its Ministers, and of those who are charged with the administration of its public concerns. If he were such a man, and if he really wanted this matter to be investigated, one would have thought that he would have intimated, to the Minister whose conduct he proposed to impugn, that he proposed to raise this issue in the House and would expect the Minister concerned to deal with it: and he would surely have taken the opportunity of intervening in this debate at such a stage of the debate as would at least have given an opportunity to those upon whom he wished to reflect to reply to him at the earliest possible moment. However, as I said at the beginning of my speech, he took care to choose his time well so that his insinuations would appear in this morning's newspapers uncontradicted and that the seed of suspicion should have been sown by this man who professes to be animated only by concern for the public honour and professes to desire to do nothing more than safeguard the democratic system of government which exists in this country.

We know, of course, that that is not the fact so far as Deputy McGilligan is concerned. We have known him now since 1927 — over 16 years — and the record of those 16 years goes to show that that is not what Deputy McGilligan seeks in public life: that all he is concerned to do is to vilify those who have ousted him in the public esteem and public confidence— to blacken and tarnish their honour, and to slander his political opponents, under the protection of this House.

I want to get on to deal with the queries which Deputy McGilligan founded upon that communication and the comments which he made upon it. He is reported in the Irish Independent as going on to say:—

"In other words, somebody was interested that payment of brokerage in connection with the insurance of one county must go through a certain named firm and a certain named individual."

Mr. MacEntee

No, he did not shake me, but he was trying to shake the foundations upon which this State rests, the foundation of public confidence in the probity of its Government and its administrators. That is the game which Deputy Davin plays on occasions, too. Deputy Dillon is the last man — since this matter was opened in this House — who ought to reflect upon the probity of a public man.

Mr. Dillon

What does that mean?