Now that the Department of Supplies is about to come to an end, I think the best thing to do is to treat it with charity, because one should start very early in the morning and continue for quite a considerable part of the day to deal with its many failures, in particular the failure of the Minister to see that the control of certain essential article was properly carried out and rigorously adhered to. I refer to clothes, boots, shoes, and other articles, the prices of which even to-day are exorbitant. No matter how other Deputies who may be in that particular business may argue that there is not such a profit on clothes, I hold a different view. Certain business people with whom I have spoken frankly admitted that instead of trying to force the controlled price on the customers they are in a position where they can very well afford to sell many articles 10/-, 15/-, and in some cases a couple of pounds cheaper than the controlled price. That being so, I think it would be very unjust to the people of this country to start singing the praises of that Department which is about to disappear. I do not blame the officials, of course. They fulfilled their duties to the best of their ability under strained circumstances. Admittedly, the shortage of certain commodities brought about many of those difficulties, but a large number of those shortages were due to the lack of foresight of this and previous Governments; they were due to their failure to provide a sufficient merchant fleet to bring in essential commodities. I have heard it advocated that the present or some future Government should buy sufficient ships for that purpose. I say that they should be constructed in this country when things become normal and the necessary material is available. However, I am not going to deal with that because I do not think it comes under this Estimate.
I will revert to the turf situation, which concerns my county and the workers in my county to a great extent. When the Minister is replying, I should like him to explain how it is that a ton of turf in the City of Dublin is costing £5 3s. 9d. I have here before me a letter from the Mayo County Surveyor, Mr. Flanagan, B.E., in which he says:—
"So many inaccurate and misleading statements in connection with turf production have recently been made throughout the country that I have been asked by Mr. Kilroy, chairman of the county council, to set out the true position with regard to turf production and costs."
Nobody will doubt or question Mr. Flanagan's ability, and he sets out here facts which I am sure even the Minister will be rather surprised to hear. He goes on to tell the people of my county:—
"In 1941 we sold to Fuel Importers 88,927 tons of turf which was purchased from private producers or produced by direct labour and the actual ultimate cost per ton of this turf delivered on the roadside worked out at 18/1 per ton, which figures have been audited."
Later on in his letter—I will not read the whole of it as it would be too long —he gives this very startling information:
"In comparing the price paid to private producers it would be well to compare an area near our own. Messrs. Wallace Bros. of Ballinlough buy on behalf of Fuel Importers all the private turf produced in that area of County Roscommon adjoining Kilmovee, Crossard, Ballyhaunis, Cloonfad and on to Dunmore. They buy from the private producers on the condition that the private producers deliver their turf into the wagons at the nearest station and the producers have to wait for their money until their turf is weighed in Dublin, when they are paid £1 per ton for the weight ascertained in Dublin, and £1 a ton covers the loss on the road to Dublin together with the filling of the turf into the carts or lorries and unloading into the wagons, so that the price which they receive of £1 a ton is equivalent to no more than 17/-...."
I want the minister to explain to the House how it is that turf produced there and transported to Dublin at a cost of 17/- is sold to poor and rich alike here in Dublin at £5 3s. 9d. per ton. That is an explanation which I think it will take a very clever mathematician to give. I do not think we will get it from the Minister, if we get the true facts; at least I would be surprised if the House can get the proper explanation. How is it that this turf, produced by sweated labour, by workers who have to go out in the boiling sun to cut it, throw it out on a high bank and spread it, and then put it into carts and bring it to the station at a price which is only equivalent to 17/- per ton, is sold here in Dublin to working men, some of them perhaps on the dole or only earning a small wage, at £5 3s. 9d. per ton? The people who have been singing the praises of the Department of Supplies must not be aware of these facts. If they were aware of them, then they were not doing a service to the people whom they claim to represent. I consider it an injustice not only to the people of Dublin but to the people of my own county who are being not only asked but practically forced to cut this turf. They have no other alternative, because the Minister took good care that they could not emigrate to England, where they could get a decent wage. They have to work at producing this turf, which ultimately is sold here at £5 3s. 9d. a ton to other workers in the slums of Dublin. I think there is an explanation needed for that. These workers, according to Mr. Flanagan, only received in 1941-42 a wage of 30/-. In 1943 it was increased to 36/- and in 1944 it was further increased to 39/-. That is a very small wage when you take into account that they would have to work for three weeks before they could afford to buy a pair of working boots, if they could get them. If they got them, they would not last them a week working in the bog; they would fall off their feet.
The position is that we are entitled to assume that Fuel Importers, Ltd., made vast sums of money at the expense of the producers and consumers of this turf. If we got the figures in connection with this company I am sure they would be quite surprising and show what they had extracted from the sweated labour of young and old men and women in the bogs of Mayo, Roscommon and elsewhere. I read a certain statement made at the Mayo County Council during the last few months. I was very doubtful as to the authenticity or truth of this statement; but there can be no doubt whatever about it, as Mr. Flanagan now admits it, in black and white.
As regards turf in the city of Dublin, I had the pleasure of being in the Pænix Park on a few occasions last November and I saw there how the turf is being stacked and filled. The conclusion I came to was that the stackers and fillers knew nothing about turf. There were long ricks of turf there extending for about one-eighth of a mile. They were so many yards wide at the bottom and then went up to a certain height. They were built in such a way that the water, instead of running off the turf, went into the rick of turf. It could not run off, because there was not sufficient of a slope. Furthermore, the rick was too wide at the bottom. When they went to fill their carts and lorries, instead of starting at the end at which the least rain had got in, they started where the rain was constantly pouring into the centre of the rick. They started in the middle, so that the whole of it came down. Then they backed their lorries into it, until half of it was turned into mud. In my opinion the men supervising that work had not the foggiest idea of how to deal with turf.
I agree with Deputy Blowick, who suggested that at the beginning of the emergency sheds should have been erected to cover the turf in Dublin and that covers should have been provided for the turf conveyed to Dublin, whether by wagon or by lorry. If, as we are told and as I hope will be the case, turf production is going to be one of our main industries and that even when normal conditions return we will not allow in the same quantity of coal here, that turf will be used where it can be used, then we must improve on our present methods. First, we must make provision for keeping the turf dry. Secondly, we must see that the turf will be produced at a price within the reach of the ordinary man so that he can purchase it as near to the price of coal as possible and, at the same time, we must treat the producer fairly as well as the consumer. That can be done by eliminating a certain number of the overseers and gangers and semi-engineers who, in my opinion, are eating up a vast amount of this money voted for turf out of the Central Fund. Extravagant is the word for it. Furthermore, if the onus or responsibility for conveying of turf to Dublin and to the railway station were placed upon the shoulders of the lorry drivers, those drivers could act as gangers and see that the turf was up to a certain quality and type. Any man in Mayo or Roscommon, or in any county in Connaught, knows the difference between good turf and bad turf, even if he never stood in a bog, from the experience of using turf on the hearth or in a grate or stove; and if the responsibility were on those drivers' shoulders, the stuff which is sometimes put over on the people of Dublin would never be transported by lorry or train to the city, but would be left on the bog. If it were made clear to the drivers that the rate depended on the quality of the turf they allowed to be conveyed to its destination, whether it be the city or the railway station, there would be an improvement in the position.
I would ask the Minister to reply to some questions regarding the County Kildare camps. What are the conditions obtaining in those camps? What are the wages? What type of hygiene is there? What kind of bedding are the men asked to sleep in? How often are the sheets and pillow cases changed? How often are they examined for cleanliness? What type of food is there and how is it served? I would like to know from the Minister, here and now, if it is true that the food given to the men working in those camps is not of the standard that it should be, that the bedding is not what it should be, that the bedclothes are not changed as regularly each week as they should be? On every occasion when a new person takes over a bed, are the sheets changed and the bedclothes examined? Is there proper medical supervision? Is there proper hygiene? Is the food properly cooked and supervised and properly served to these workers?
From information—how true it is I do not know, but I cannot imagine any young man coming to me and telling falsehoods for no reason whatsoever— available to me from many Mayo workers who had to leave those camps sick, tired, weary and unfed, and in a certain state which I do not desire to mention in this House, it seems that the position must be very bad and, if that is so, the sooner the camps are abolished the better. Is it that these camps are run by the State and workers can come along and tell us that they were not fit for human habitation, that a loaf of bread was presented to them in the morning with tea that was comparable only to bog water? Their belief was that the tea which should have been used for them was sold and not given to the workers. How true that is I do not know, but I am asking the Minister for information. These camps are not kept up to the standard to which they should be kept, if the workers are presented with chunks of bread with some butter between them. They are expected to work for the day and then they are given half-boiled potatoes and half-boiled cabbage, with very little bacon. How do you expect workers to live on that? Has the Minister ever cut turf himself or does he know the energy that has to be applied to the work? Does he know that it is a strenuous job, a man's job? We had to endure an Order prohibiting these young men from emigrating. They were sent up to Kildare, but they came back again and some said they would prefer to sing on the roadside and beg, rather than stay under the conditions existing in the camps. I would like that to be contradicted now, or else it should be admitted that these are the facts and that, in the very near future, a remedy will be applied—a remedy for which there should be no necessity, as the conditions should never have existed.
I am told that the type of leather which manufacturers are putting into the making of boots and shoes is inferior and that the good quality stuff is sold for repairs, as more profit can be made when it is sold in that way in small quantities than when it is sold in large quantities for manufacturing purposes. The ordinary retailer sells it for half soles and in two lb. and one lb. lots and there is more profit in that way. I have had the experience that the leather going into the soleing and repairing of boots is far better than that which goes into the construction and bending of them, so presumably there must be something in the statement. If that is true, the manufacturers must be adopting that policy for the sake of profit, to make more money at the expense of the people. It is up to the Minister to prevent that immediately.
The type of shoe purchased to-day in a country town is scarcely worth carrying home. A workingman's boot cannot be bought under £3 10s. to-day. A workingman will not go into a shop to pay 50/- or £2 for a pair of boots that will only last a week. Instead, he will go to a nearby cobbler with the old gift of making by hand, and buy a pair for £3 10/-, which may last him a year or a year and a half, depending on the type of work he is doing. How does the Minister expect a young man to do that on the wages I have quoted here—39/- or 30/—as it was up to about a year ago?
Then there is the exorbitant price of clothes—underwear, shirts, overalls, trousers and jackets. All these things cost far too much, considering the average income. Unless there is a change—and an immediate change—the seeds of revolution are gradually being sown by the present administration, as people are finding it very hard to make ends meet.
There is a decline in the amount of money coming from abroad, particularly from England, on account of the high income-tax in that country, and the workers there cannot send as much as they used to send in the earlier days of the war. Although a large amount of money was coming in here, the cost of living was increased so much in excess of pre-war days that the extra income was not sufficient to meet it. Persons with small families find to-day that there is little coming in and that prices are far in excess of what they should be. In many instances the controlled price is not observed. I listened to Deputy Dillon, I think, on this point, and he seemed to shed crocodile tears at the thought of merchants being taken to court in rural Ireland and sent to jail and fined. I say that such people are mean frauds and that they deserve to be punished, irrespective of who they are. If such a merchant is committing fraud to-day, he will be a fraud for the rest of his life. Not only is he a fraud in breaking the law but he is breaking the Commandments of God by deliberately charging more than the just price to which he is entitled. He has been allowed a considerable profit by the Department of Supplies, sometimes a profit in excess of what he should have, yet he is not satisfied with that and tries to extract from poor, humble people far more than what they can afford to pay. They know that they must get these things and there is no alternative then but to pay for them.
The people in rural Ireland are reluctant to expose those frauds, those racketeers, those black-marketeers. They are people who were brought up in the tradition not to inform; they are people who were brought up in the tradition not to spill the beans, and they have not got out of that tradition. Consequently, it is only in very rare cases they are prepared to expose a fraud or a black-marketeer. When the offenders are brought to court, very often the fine is so small that they simply laugh at it. They will tell you quite plainly across the counter: "The fine is nothing; we can make that up in a few hours." If they are fined £5, £10, £20 or £100 it means nothing to them. Nothing less than jail is good enough for some of those offenders. Anyone who charges above the controlled price should be sent to jail. I would not shed crocodile tears or worry about these people. Jail is the best place for them and it is fitting punishment. More severe punishment should be given to some of those who are carrying on racketeering in the larger towns and cities.
I do not throw bouquets at the Department of Supplies in view of what the people have suffered during the past four or five years, and more particularly since commodities became scarce. I am aware of the difficulties the ordinary citizens had to undergo trying to get commodities from these cute folk. I admit that in business circles in this country there are many very decent people who are prepared to abide by the law. There are times when they can make a mistake and accidentally charge a ½d. or a ¼d. over and above the controlled price. It is easy to understand that such mistakes can be made, more especially when the Department issues numerous Orders and counter-Orders. On the other hand, there are certain articles in regard to which deliberate efforts are made to reap big profits. For the mere sake of profit, some people will do a lot. There are some people full of the idea of building up vast sums and they carried out that policy while the going was good, at the expense of the poor, humble people. I would not shed crocodile tears over anyone who was punished for acting in such a manner, and if I were on the bench it would be woe betide them.
I want the Minister to state (1) How is it that turf produced at 17/- a ton in County Mayo and County Roscommon is sold here at £5 3s. 9d. a ton, and will he take into consideration the small wages paid to the turf producers; (2) if it is true that camps in Kildare and Leix and Offaly are not as they should be, that the workers are not getting a fair crack of the whip and that their hygiene and general cleanliness are not as they should be; (3) if there is any medical supervision in these camps or any doctor permanently stationed there; (4) how is the food cooked and served and what type of supervision is there; (5) what is the position as regards boots at the present moment, and is there any hope of a better quality and a better supply at reduced prices? We demand a better quality of boots and a larger supply and a reduction in price because the people in rural Ireland cannot afford to pay the prices which they have to pay for boots in order to do the work that needs to be done to keep the wheels spinning.
