Dáil Éireann díospóireacht -
Thursday, 27 Feb 1947

Vol. 104 No. 11

Fuel Supplies—Motion.

General Mulcahy

I move:—

That Dáil Eireann condemns the failure of the Government to make better provision for the supply of fuel for public utility services, and for general industrial and domestic purposes, which has resulted in dislocation of public services and of employment and caused extreme hardship to all sections of the community.

It is not necessary, in relation to the latter part of the motion, to do anything more than point to the stoppage of the railway services and the disemployment brought about in connection with these services alone, and to refer to the fact that there are numerous cases of very shocking hardship with which every Deputy must be in touch not only in the city but elsewhere which indicate the severity of the hardship caused through lack of fuel in the homes of quite a large number of people of various classes, and particularly among the poorer sections. I think that both in order to bring out the facts of the failure of the past, and, in the light of these facts, to see that proper preparation is made to deal with the very serious circumstances that seem to lie in front of us, it is necessary that we should speak on this matter to-day. If they are properly assessed, the House could not but condemn the Government's failure in the matter.

The Minister broadcast a statement on the situation the other night, and it is rather remarkable that, in dealing with the circumstances and the condition which has given rise to these circumstances, no attention, or very little attention, was paid to the fact that a strike of hauliers in the middle of the summer was responsible for the first serious dislocation of our turf supplies.

I do not want to discuss the merits of that strike except to say that it was brought about by the refusal of the individual hauliers to accept changed terms from those appointed by Fuel Importers, Limited, to superintend, as contractors, the general work of bringing turf from the country to the City of Dublin. Previously, the hauliers had been paid at the rate of 16/2 per ton. Some time in June last, it was proposed to reduce that price to 11/7. That reduction, together with the unsatisfactory conditions to which the hauliers were subjected as part of the conditions of their employment, drove them to strike. As part of the conditions of their employment, they had to draw their supplies of oil and petrol from the contractors to whom this work had been allotted by Fuel Importers, Limited. That condition forced many of them to drive 10, 20 or 25 miles unnecessarily to the place where the petrol and oil supplies were available. These hauliers had to meet the cost of the additional travelling, although it was absolutely unnecessary. It was a waste of petrol, on the one hand, and a waste of earning power on the part of the individual hauliers.

That strike lasted for several weeks during a critical part of the summer. It came at a time when the first cutting of turf was on the bogs and it was responsible for the fact that the first cutting was not taken from the bogs and put in a secure position in the dumps in the City of Dublin before the wet weather came. The Minister was asked during the period of the strike whether he had received representations from the individual hauliers that they would undertake, at terms which they indicated and which would be substantially cheaper than those of the contractors, to do the haulage work. The Minister declined to intervene. He said that it was a matter entirely for Fuel Importers, Limited, and he indicated that he had perfect confidence in the way in which they were doing that side of their business. We have repeatedly asked that there be an investigation into the cost to Fuel Importers, Limited, of the haulage of turf. The Minister was not very anxious to go into that question. That is one of the mysteries of the general situation. The Minister kept entirely away from any attempt to settle that strike or shorten its duration.

The turf provision for the year 1946 was interfered with in a number of ways. The first cutting was left on the bogs, as a result of that strike, until the wet weather came. When, in July, the strike was ended, the turf brought to the dumps in Dublin had been damaged by the weather and was not in a fit condition to be properly stacked. As a result, it suffered further deterioration there. The second cutting, when it had taken place, was not removed from the bogs at all. We started off in August knowing that the supply of turf was going to be seriously short from the main cuttings in the bogs. Earlier in the year, the additional subsidy given through Fuel Importers, Ltd., for the turf sold through Fuel Importers, reduced the price of turf in the city from 64/- to 54/-. There had been in 1945 and previous years a large number of private persons who cut their own turf or who, under licence, cut turf and brought it into the city and sold it to institutions or others. That turf was not subsidised. Before the price of turf was fixed at 54/-, these people were able to get 64/- for the turf they brought in in that way. With the granting of the additional subsidy through Fuel Importers, Ltd., to enable turf sold through Fuel Importers to be retailed at 54/-, those who did their own cutting and who brought their turf into the city without any subsidy were no longer able to sell it at 64/-. They had to sell at 54/-. The result was that a large number of them went out of turf production. They themselves and those to whom they sold the turf they cut, including a large number of institutions, were thrown as additional consumers on the limited supply of turf. As well as that, in the winter of 1945 a substantial iron ration of wood which had been bought by Fuel Importers, Ltd., and stored at Dún Laoghaire and Inchicore was released for use. A person who had a ration for turf was able to take part of the ration in turf and part in wood.

During the winter of 1945, the actual turf requirements were eased somewhat by reason of the fact that wood was available. That wood was disposed of during the winter of 1945 and nothing was done to replace it. There was no further felling or accumulation of wood by, or through, Fuel Importers, Ltd., to build up replacements of that iron ration. When we came to the summer and winter of 1946, the reduced turf supply had to meet, additionally, the demands of people who had been using wood, either in whole or part, during the winter of 1945, so that we had a very substantial reduction in the amount of turf available. We had substantial draws upon that turf by people who were not using turf during 1945. That was perfectly clear by July. It was more than clear by August.

I think that the Ministry were aware during August that there was a substantially increased demand for turf on the merchants distributing turf in the city from bell-men. Supplies that were bought and sold by the bell-men, as far as I can find out, had gone up by 50 or 60 per cent., indicating a substantial increase in the demand, to meet, no doubt, the requirements of those who had been buying other types of fuel or to meet the increased demand from those who were able to use more turf when they could purchase it at 54/- than they were able to use when they were charged 64/-. In spite of these facts, a reduced supply and an apparently increased consumption, nothing was done to introduce precautionary measures of any kind. The turf-stocking licences that were issued periodically to institutions to enable them to lay in stocks of turf, were issued in the beginning of September, 1946, as they were in the beginning of September, 1945, and there was a substantial draw on stocks during September until at length in October, the Department stepped in and put a stop to it. When they put a stop to the buying of turf by institutions, convents, hotels and large establishments of one kind or another, on stocking licences, they started to issue coal.

If an institution got a licence for 200 tons of turf and had taken in, say, 120 tons during September, it was prevented from taking in any more turf but it was given coal to the extent of half the quantity of turf it had not taken in. If it had taken in 120 tons of turf in respect of the original licence for 200 tons, it was allowed to take in 40 tons of coal and the idea was created among these institutions that the fuel situation was very much easier.

Mr. Lemass

Who created it?

General Mulcahy

The fact that they were able to get coal through the Department of Industry and Commerce when they never expected to see it until a much later period——

Mr. Lemass

The Deputy will not suggest that anybody told them the situation was easier?

General Mulcahy

If the Minister will listen to me, he will learn as much as I could get to know of this very mysterious situation. A certain amount of the position is overground but we shall come to some very mysterious ends of it that I want to be able to clear up and that I hope someone in this House or some pressure of opinion in this House will make the Government clear up, both in the interests of our understanding what has been happening in the past and what is likely to happen in the future. I said that institutions that never expected to see coal for a long time, judging by the statements of the Minister, got a supply of coal. Some time in October their stocking licences were stopped in respect of turf and they were given coal in respect to half the quantity of turf that was due to them. As I say, their minds were made rather easy. There was never a single suggestion that they should economise in the use of fuel of any particular kind.

Before we leave the question of turf, even in a year in which it was made clear that turf production was going to be on the small side in the country, the Ministry of Local Government was more concerned with getting after the people who were cutting turf and seeing that their valuations were raised in respect of the turf they cut and sold than it was in seeing that turf was cut. I received a letter dated 10th February, 1947, from a person in Kerry, who said:—

"Thanks very much for ——; also for your representations with regard to the road leading to my brother's bog. I think my brother is not so anxious now about its repair owing to the valuation of bogs."

The instinct of self-preservation on the part of our people in parts of the country against the depredations of the tax collector——

Mr. Allen

The local authority.

General Mulcahy

It is the Minister for Local Government who is pressing the local authorities in the matter.

Mr. Allen

Not a word about it.

General Mulcahy

Before we leave the question of turf, I just want to mention that. Then we come to the question of wood. I said that one of the reasons why there was an increased demand for turf in 1946 was that the iron ration of wood which had been used up the previous winter was being partly replaced by turf. No attempt was made during the current year to cut any wood to replenish the iron ration stocks that Fuel Importers, Limited, previously had. Instead of that, every possible difficulty was placed in the way of people who wanted to cut timber. We had the Department of Forestry telling me the other day that the natural thing was to refuse a licence to cut timber in the beginning. We are now told by the Minister in a statement the other night that most of the restrictions are off. They are taken off in February, 1947, but during 1946, in August, September and the following months when it was clear that there was going to be a fuel difficulty, no attempt was made to ease the situation for people who wanted to get turf. Timber was taken off the ration and it went into the black market.

The Minister indicated in his statement the other night that perhaps the price fixed for timber was too small and that he would consider the difficulties in the matter. We see in this morning's paper that the price of timber has been increased but there was the difficulty for people during the end of 1946 and up to date with regard to timber that the cost of timber was such that the only people who could risk buying and selling it again were people who could go down the country, buy it in bulk and dump a load of five or six tons to one person. There was no possibility of the ordinary fuel merchants in the City of Dublin buying timber and distributing it in the same way as it was distributed in 1945, that is to say, selling a quarter ton of timber with 1¾ tons of turf or half a ton of timber with 1½ tons of turf. All the timber for sale during the last six months went into the hands of people who could afford to buy five or six tons at a time. It went into big institutions and manufacturing concerns and it was taken away from the ordinary people. In so far as poor people were able to buy it at all, they have been buying it at 8½d. per stone or something like £7 per ton. I have heard of some who had to pay even as much as 1/- a stone for timber in the city. So much for the question of timber.

Next we come to the question of English coal. Coal had been brought into this country during the emergency by the Irish coal importers. During the last year a ration was agreed to by the British Ministry of Fuel and Power of, I think, 20,000 tons a week. The Minister has indicated that increased quantities of coal were brought from Great Britain into this country in the last few months. That is so. In the first ten months of 1945 the total amount of coal brought in here was 759,506 tons. In the year 1946, during that same ten months, the total was 1,084,950 tons. In fact, therefore, during the ten months, not only did we get an average weekly import of 20,000 tons but we got an additional import of 4,658 tons all over the whole year. We were able to get that because of the initiative and because of the energy and because of the seeking and because of the struggling of Irish coal importers, that is, the Irish coal merchants and their representatives, poking their way through Great Britain to see whether, by contact with persons of goodwill there, they could get more coal than they were actually promised on the quota and such was the successful nature of their efforts that they were able to get substantial increases to their coal imports during the year.

Coal imports, as far as the British were concerned, were of two kinds. There was a definite number of public utility societies designated by the Irish Government to which certain supplies were made available and the second type were exports which were freely available to be used in any way that was allocated, particularly for general industrial purposes. When the Irish coal merchants were able to get, through their own energies and activities, additional quantities of coal they reported this to the Government and they sold them to whatever class of institution, public utility society or industry that the Government dictated they were to be sold, and they were usually sold to public utility societies. At the end of last year the Government probably when it began to give coal to institutions to make up for their turf ration, withheld any additional supplies of coal from public utility societies and the result was that the public utility societies were prevented from building up any kind of a reserve stock and other persons who did not expect coal, as I have said before, were induced to realise that things were becoming easier and that they could afford to look forward to using coal.

We asked the Minister in November last what he was doing to get supplies of coal from the United States, on the one hand, or from any countries outside Great Britain, on the other, and the Minister replied on the 6th of November, 1946:

"Inquiries have been and are still being made as to the possibility of procuring coal from countries other than Great Britain but so far they have met with no success."

I said:

"Will the Minister say from what countries he has been particularly inquiring?

Mr. Lemass: The United States and certain countries on the Continent."

I submit that by the 6th November, 1946, the Minister for Industry and Commerce had made no inquiries in the United States or any application to any official people in the United States for a supply of coal. I spoke of the energy of the Irish coal merchants who, together, call themselves Irish Coal Importers, in relation to getting coal from Great Britain. They were no less anxious and they were no less active in trying to get coal from the United States.

It was not so easy in 1945 to develop any kind of a hope that the United States could provide us with coal, in view of shipping difficulties, but whatever difficulties there were, the difficulties here at home facing Irish coal importers trying to import United States coal were greater because they would not be supplied with dollars to buy that coal and they would not be assisted with shipping. However, they persisted, and by August, 1946, there was a fairly definite offer of 30,000 tons from an American coal company to Irish merchants here, with an offer that they would be able to get it sent here. As far as I remember that offer came through an English firm and the terms of it were such that shipment was offered in English shipping or, at any rate, it was hoped that English shipping would be able to bring the coal so that the supply of dollars required would not be as great as if the payment for the shipping had to be paid in dollars too. The position in regard to the cost of coal and the cost of freight and insurance at that time was that the coal cost about one half of what the freight would cost, and the estimated cost of bringing a ton of coal to the Port of Dublin would be something between £5 and £6. A representative of either that company or another United States company came here to Dublin to see what could be done to bring to a successful conclusion the aim of the Irish coal importers who were looking for an opportunity to get coal. Nobody connected with the Department of Industry and Commerce would see the representative of that company, and nothing transpired. There was no offer of assistance from our Government in any way during September, October, November and December, and then we come along to the beginning of the year. Due to the persistence of various Irishmen in the Irish coal business, certain quarters in America were stirred more and more and, by about December or the beginning of January, the Department were stirred sufficiently to suggest to Irish coal importers that they would recommend the Department of Finance to make dollars available if they really were able to get coal. They were never given any assistance by the Minister or the Department in spite of the fact that 30,000 tons were offered in August.

As a matter of fact, that 30,000 was increased to 50,000 and the offer was kept open to the end of September, to allow the Minister and the Department to make up their minds. The persistency of the efforts of the Irish coal importers here in Ireland brought about a situation here in January in which they were offered 17,000 tons of coal as quota for the January period, if they could get dollars. It appeared that another 17,000 tons would be made available in February. This created quite an interest and quite a hope among coal importers in the city; and quite a number of them, more than a dozen of them, made an application to the Minister for Finance for dollars so as to be able to buy American coal. It was only when a movement of that particular kind came, with a fairly substantial quota of coal on the horizon for Ireland from a country which had been sending tens of thousands of tons to Sweden, Portugal and other countries in Europe, that the Department of Industry and Commerce began to wake up, that any kind of interest or of Government hope was shown here to induce the Irish importers to go ahead with their work.

On the 5th February, the British issued their first notice that they were going to shut down coal exports to Ireland. Not until the 7th February, two days afterwards, did the Department of Industry and Commerce ask for a consultation with Irish coal importers, who were trying to get dollars to bring in American coal. Then an interesting situation of the most mysterious kind seemed to develop, as between our Government and the coal importers here and the coal people in America and the United States Government. The Irish coal importers came together and decided that, of the 17,000 tons being made available, 6,000 would be made available for Cork and something like 9,000 odd for Dublin.

It was then they were called together by the Government and Fuel Importers, Limited, were brought into it; and a Government decision was taken, apparently, that they would be helped to bring this American coal in. But whatever transpired, the American Government withdrew licences which had been actually issued for the export of this coal. The 6,000 tons that were to go to Cork will not go to Cork— at any rate, until we get the Minister's announcement, which requires some explanation, regarding the 34,000 tons. The 6,000 tons to Cork would not be let go and the 9,000 tons for Dublin would not be let go either, although a definite permit had been issued to a coal company in the United States to export it.

The Irish coal importers, who had chartered a vessel and sent it over and had the vessel there in an American port to take the coal, communicated with the persons from whom they had chartered it and tried to get out of their chartering of the vessel, as they could not get the coal. The company in the United States who were selling the coal thought that unreasonable, as they said the Irish Government was not doing anything to get the coal; and the people who owned the vessel would not release Irish coal importers from their contract to charter the vessel. In the end, official America, the American Government, through some of its channels, said: "Give them the licence for the 9,000 tons, as the vessel is here." We read in the Irish Times of the day before yesterday that a vessel called the Richard J. Hopkins is already loaded at Baltimore with 9,000 tons of coal for Dublin City. It is so loaded, not because the Government here asked for it, but in spite of that they waited day after day for some days in the beginning of February for the Irish Government to ask the American Government for this coal.

It was not asked for and, in the end, realising the initiative of the Irishmen who sent the vessel over there for the coal, realising the fact that the vessel was there, they said: "Let us give to that initiative, energy and enterprise the 9,000 tons they are looking for, in special circumstances." The Richard J. Hopkins, which the Irish Times tells us is loading in Baltimore, when it reaches the Port of Dublin, will be breaking through a boom stretched across the Dublin harbour in a most mysterious and a most absurd way by the Department of Industry and Commerce and the Department of Finance, against the operations of private enterprise and the initiative of men trying to help to improve the fuel situation here.

I challenge the Minister for Finance and the Minister for Industry and Commerce, in relation to the coal that is on the Richard J. Hopkins, that they have assisted in no way to get that boat here and that that boat will come here in spite of them, whatever they have been forced to do in the meantime. The men who sent the Hopkins to Baltimore and did all the preliminary work to try to fight for United States coal here have done this—they have broken down whatever queer barrier there is in the Department of Industry and Commerce and the Department of Finance against seeking or getting supplies of American coal for this country. If the situation is dark, even if it is black, there is one bright spot in it; and I feel that those who stand for individual energy, individual initiative, for persisting in trying to do their own Irish work in spite of the difficulties that an Irish Government may put against them, will give a glorious Irish welcome to the Richard J. Hopkins when it arrives in the Port of Dublin with its first cargo of American coal.

I would like the Minister to tell us, in relation to the 34,000 tons of American coal which he says the United States Government have advised us they are sending here and for which we thank them, what exactly has been arranged and what coal we can expect in that way.

We have been getting more British coal during the last 12 months than we were getting in the previous 12 months, and I have the firm conviction that more persistence in looking for coal and for a better quality coal from Great Britain would have got us more coal and of a better quality. Now that persistence of a particular kind has brought a certain amount of success in regard to American coal, will the Minister give some encouragement to that persistence and try to do better in the British market? The fact is that British coal has had to be accepted here that other countries were not prepared to accept. We may anticipate that, when we get an opportunity of comparing the quality of United States coal with the quality of British coal coming in here, it may help to bring about an improvement in the British quality.

I charge the Department in respect of this whole matter that all through they were persistent against us. I was reading more favourably than the Minister the signs of coal production in Great Britain in the end of last year, but the Minister was very dogmatic that we did not know what we were talking about. He was very dogmatic that we would not be able to get more coal from Great Britain. Yet, in spite of the fact that he was dogmatising like that, he did nothing to develop the production of wood fuel. In fact, its production was impeded. He did nothing to see that positively the United States Government set aside a quota for Ireland, but in every possible way that neglect or refusal to be interested or refusal to see representatives of United States companies could go, the Minister and the Department set their faces against the getting of United States coal in here.

In the early days of the Fianna Fáil Government, in a speech made by the Minister for Industry and Commerce on its first Budget, he said that he was going to make the turf industry the second biggest industry in this country. £500,000 was spent on it before ever the war began and with no great result because, as far as Civil Service offices at that time were concerned, less turf was being burned in them in 1936, 1937 and 1938 than in the early days of turf enthusiasm. But, as I say, £500,000 or more was spent on it. The Minister has shown himself to be a turf fanatic of a particular kind. The Minister for Finance has also shown himself to be a turf fanatic. I wonder how far that fanaticism is responsible for the fact that nothing was done last year with regard to wood, nothing was done with regard to United States coal and very little with regard to British coal. We were left entirely dependent on what the bogs sent us, wet or dry, in the shape of turf. The Minister for Industry and Commerce, on the one hand, and the Minister for Finance on the other, belong to a particular brand of turf fanaticism.

On these grounds, I condemn the Government's failure to make any provision for improving the fuel situation when they knew how serious it was from the facts disclosed with regard to turf supplies, with regard to turf transport to Dublin during the summer, as well as from the facts disclosed from the consumption of turf in the early part of last autumn. Now, they are frantically calling on all kinds of voluntary effort—voluntary, which was impeded in every possible way up to this—to cut wood. I hope we shall hear that very vigorous efforts are being made to get all the coal we possibly can from the United States. In the case of wood, the people will now have to depend upon it for a substantial portion of their fuel. Therefore, if wood is going to be made available to the ordinary person, and to the poor person who buys it from a bellman or huckster, I hope the Minister will consider subsidising it in the same way that turf is being subsidised.

If we are not going to have as difficult a period in the winter of this year as we had last year, the Minister will also have to consider extending the subsidy for turf to persons cutting turf as private persons in the way that private persons were cutting it around Dublin and bringing it in substantial loads to institutions or to individual persons in the city. The fact that a subsidy is only given on turf bought through Fuel Importers, Limited, helped to cut down the supply of turf available this year, and I suggest will cut it down next year unless something is done to remedy it.

With regard to coal, there are a number of factors in the situation which are enshrouded in mystery. The mystery that it would be most profitable to have cleared up is the mystery that remains around the journey of the Richard J. Hopkins to the port of Dublin and what has happened to it. The Minister, happily, is able to tell us that the United States is now going to send us 34,000 tons of coal. Can any other consignments be expected from the United States during the year, and is there to be a monthly quota?

Mr. Costello

I wish to second the motion which has been moved by Deputy Mulcahy. There are so many counts in the indictment which this motion prefers against the Government that any one of them would be sufficient to bring about the downfall of the Government if proved on the facts. If these counts, or a substantial number of them, are established by the facts brought out in this debate, or by any other facts that we can extract from the Minister through his Government files, there will remain, if there is any decency—which there is not—in the Minister or the Government, nothing for them to do—as some act of reparation for the misery, despair and ruin which they have brought on large sections of the people of this country— but to resign forthwith from their Offices.

The Minister, in his broadcast the other night which, if the weather were not so cold and if the bones of the people were not so chilled to their marrow, would have further chilled the bones of the people to their marrow when he stated, quite calmly, that there was a complete exhaustion of dumped turf in the eastern area of the country, and that the present position could hardly be more serious. Whatever may be said about the responsibility of the Government for the serious position to which he was adverting at that time, whatever excuses can be made by reason of the unprecedented weather for the serious position to which the Minister was referring, and whatever excuses may be made by the Minister in reference to the coal situation arising out of what has been happening in England, there can be no doubt that the Minister did not even purport to give any excuse in his broadcast statement for this fact: that the complete exhaustion of dumped turf in the eastern area was due entirely and exclusively to the Government's failure to deal with the turf supplies that were available in this country since last August.

I propose, in the course of the remarks which I have to make, to bring to the attention of the House, and through it to the people, such facts as we have been able to get from our interpretation of the facts available to us, and from such facts as are available to everybody from their own experience Those facts alone will demonstrate the failure of the Government properly to foresee and to plan, if not for the entire emergency that has arisen in recent weeks, at least for a serious fuel shortage, to put it at its lowest. It will be seen from the facts that, so far back as last September, if the Government had been in the least degree competent or careful, it could have foreseen that a fuel shortage was bound to arise, irrespective of the weather and irrespective of the conditions arising from conditions in England and elsewhere. It could have foreseen there would be a fuel shortage.

We have throughout this tragic story, this history of ineptitude, this narrative of gambling by the Government at the people's expense, we have that history of Government ineptitude and Government incompetence through it all, and we have appearing the dead hand of the Government-controlled company, its alter ego Fuel Importers, Limited.

Deputy Mulcahy has given an outline of some of the facts. I do not propose to go into these facts in great detail, but I must travel over some of the ground he has travelled in order to make the position clear to the public. He has told the Minister, in reply to a disorderly interruption, that it is not possible for us to get the full facts. We challenge the Minister to produce here in the Dáil the files dealing with these matters since last August or September, to tell the people the history of those transactions connected with coal, American and British, to tell them the history of their dealings with wood and with turf and to disclose to them the operations of their politically-controlled Fuel Importers, Limited, and the manner in which public moneys have been spent by that particular alter ego of the Government.

I indict the Government for lack of foresight last June, July and August. I indict the Government for failure to interpret the facts, the reasonable and only interpretation of which was available to them as well as to everybody else, from September until 6th February when British coal exports to this country were stopped. Above all, I indict them for that, knowing these facts, or when the facts were available to them and when the proper deductions and conclusions ought to have been drawn from them, they did not draw those conclusions and deductions and take measures to meet the possible hardships and misery that would be caused as the result of what must have been apparent to any reasonable person viewing and interpreting those facts. Above all, I indict the Government for this, that from the 6th February, when the unprecedented weather descended on this country, when all the facts were known in their stark, naked reality, until the present moment not one single effective step has been taken by the Government or by Fuel Importers, Limited, to deal with the terrible hardships which all the people, and particularly the people in the City of Dublin, are undergoing at present and have undergone for the last three or four weeks.

During the entire of the Minister's broadcast last Monday evening there was not one single word or suggestion to meet the difficulties of the existing present. There is no plan coming from this Government which got into power on a plan. There is no plan coming from the Minister, who speaks so glibly at all times, and who spoke glibly again on the occasion of his broadcast of a long-term plan. That phrase falls trippingly from the lips of the Minister. He stated he was more interested in the long-term plan than in what had gone before and what was the immediate present. He passed lightly over the immediate present. He hardly touched, if he touched at all, upon the history of the operations of Fuel Importers, Limited, and of his own Department in connection with preparations for making available fuel supplies for the people for the winter. He did not say one word in that broadcast message of hope to the people who were suffering from the hardships brought upon them by the unprecedented weather. There is no single plan that I know of to meet the hardships of the existing present.

If the Ministry can take refuge, and if their alter ego, Fuel Importers, Limited, can take refuge from their incompetence in the weather and the British coal situation, there is no excuse for the fact that they have entirely failed to put forward any plan to alleviate the misery of the existing present. We had the long-term plan given over the radio, the long-term plan in which the Ministry and Fuel Importers, Limited, were conspicuous by their absence. I detected in the speech of the Minister over the radio a note of reprimand to the unfortunate public. “Get ready,” he said, “and get out and do a good job.” That is his remedy and that is his long-term plan. “Do the job yourselves; the Government have fallen down upon it and they cannot do it now and will not be able to do it.” The basis of the long-term plan is built on the active efforts of every individual in this country, and the only hope that the Government have to give, according to the Minister's broadcast, is that they will, through the Department of Agriculture, issue permits to fell trees, that the Minister's Department will, belatedly, increase the price of wood, and that that Department will do everything they possibly can, without indicating what they are going to do.

The whole burden of the long-term plan falls on the ordinary people of the country and that is the best the Minister can do. He will try to make more wood available, but it is the people themselves who have to get it, who have to create their own organisations and provide their own finances, according to the long-term plan. At present the people are not interested in the long-term plan, but in the plan for the present, and no such plan has been produced. I was interested this morning to see in the newspapers that Fuel Importers, Limited, had wakened up. As Deputy Mulcahy said, Fuel Importers, Limited, had got rid of the stocks of wood that they had accumulated in the early stages of the emergency. I forget whether Deputy Mulcahy drew the attention of the House to the fact, but I shall have occasion to do it later on in the observations I have to make, that Fuel Importers, Limited, had also got rid of the iron ration of coal they had accumulated during the war and had left themselves without stocks of wood or coal. This Government-controlled company, this Fianna Fáil company, as I would dub it, this company which were supposed to be importers, have never made any endeavour to import one single bag of coal from the United States of America. But Fuel Importers, Limited, woke up. They put expensive advertisements in the newspapers, which will be paid for at the expense of the unfortunate consumers of wood and turf or at the expense of the tax-payers ultimately, inviting people to tell them if they had timber, if they had methods of dealing with the felling and chopping up of trees. That is the long-term plan of Fuel Importers, Limited. That, I suppose, is the only plan they can produce to alleviate the frightful hardships that people of all sections in the City of Dublin are suffering at present.

There is no section of the community in this city, with the exception of the Minister's rich adherents, in a position, or has been for the last three weeks, to deal with the frightful hardships occasioned by the lack of fuel. Ordinary people were unable to buy fuel in the last few months. Most of them were unable to get it even if they had the money. For weeks past, before this weather came, it was almost impossible to get any fuel in the City of Dublin. Even if one had money it was impossible to get fuel long before the unprecedented weather came. That is the fault of the Government and their tragic failure, which ought to be condemned by the House in the strongest possible way.

I should like to deal entirely with the failure of the Government to deal with the present situation. They have done nothing and are doing nothing. They did nothing for three weeks of hardship and misery to deal with that situation. From 6th February, when the coal supplies from Great Britain stopped, when passenger trains were taken off when gas consumption was reduced almost to a minimum, when electricity consumers were asked to reduce their consumption to the lowest possible point, people could not get wood or turf in the City of Dublin, even if they were able to pay for it. We have not had one single word from the Minister or from the Government of any member of the Government Party as to what they were going to do. This House met the week before last. Deputies who represent the people had a right to expect that they would be told and, through them, that the people would be told in this Irish Parliament of what the Government plans were. But for nearly three weeks the Minister was silent and the Government was silent and it was only on Monday night belatedly, three weeks after this thing had become intensely serious, months after it had become extremely serious, the Minister gets on the air, just the day before Parliament meets, a few hours before Parliament meets. Instead of dealing with that problem in Parliament, discussing the matter in Parliament with the people's representatives, over the air he goes with his long-term plan—and it is no plan to meet the hardships of the present situation and no excuse for the fact that he and his adherents and the politically appointed Fuel Importers, Limited, were responsible, and solely responsible, for the hardships that have been suffered by the people in the last few weeks.

I propose to give a few facts in order that what I am saying may not be regarded as mere rhetoric, in order that the indictment of the crimes with which I charge this Government, and the Minister for Industry and Commerce in particular, may not be taken merely as a political effervescence of slush in the Opposition.

Mr. Lemass

A perfect expression.

Mr. Costello

I anticipated what the Minister was going to say but, by the time I sit down, the Minister will squirm under the facts that will be produced before him and, if he has the courage to produce the history of the fuel situation since last August, produce his files, tell the history of all that went on since that, even he, noted for his brass, noted for carrying off a situation with any particular degree of insolence, will not be able to hold up his head before the people of this country.

Now I will tell the facts. Last July and August there was a strike, as Deputy Mulcahy has stated. The Minister and his colleagues have been silent throughout the months about that strike. In the course of the various utterances that the Minister has given vent to on this situation, he has never said a word about the effect of that strike on the fuel situation. It did not suit him. It did not suit him because he allowed that strike to go on at a time when it ought to have been stopped. I say that one of the scandals in this situation is the method by which turf production and distribution are organised on a basis which leads to nothing less than racketeering and graft. A gentleman approached my house some time ago and he gave a perfect description of his occupation. He was endeavouring to sell me wood. He was explaining that he wanted to sell the wood quickly and wanted to get rid of it there and then and he gave his reason. He said: "I am in the turf racket"—a perfect description of the organisation set up by the Minister and Fuel Importers, Limited. It is known throughout the length and breadth of the country as the "turf racket". There is racketeering going on in every branch of it. There is political jobbery going on in every branch of it. That is the first charge that I prefer against the Government.

That is one of the reasons why we have an unsatisfactory fuel situation. It is not by any means the chief reason for the shortage but it is a reason why people are making vast fortunes on the turf racket. While that is going on, what of the organisation that the Minister has set up after five or six years' experience of a war situation, when we were told that we would have to make up our minds that we must rely upon our own resources for our fuel supplies for many years to come?—That organisation, formed on a racket and worked on a racket. The Irish coal merchants, for years, have had a tradition of efficiency and courtesy to the public of this country. How was their co-operation sought and, when they gave that co-operation, in spite of the fact that this political entity, Fuel Importers, Limited, was set up unnecessarily between them and their ordinary business, between them and the people with whom they do their business, their organisation was left aside? They gave their full co-operation. What have they got in return? They have to pay Fuel Importers, Limited, this Government-politically-controlled institution, before they get one single bit of fuel, whether it be wood, turf, coal, breeze, coke or anything else. It is not in accordance with ordinary commercial practice to pay before delivery. Cash on delivery is an unusual commercial transaction. But that is the way the Irish fuel merchants are treated.

Does the Minister think—I am sure he does—but do the public think, does any fair-minded person think, that it is going to lead to efficiency or proper co-operation when, after five years of this turf racket, we find that in the dumps, in the Phoenix Park, but particularly in the North Wall, no effort has been made to facilitate the cartage of turf from those dumps? The lorries are sinking down to their axles and beyond, as I am informed, in those dumps, even in the Phoenix Park, but particularly in the North Wall, and although we have been going on for five years, although we have the Minister's long-term policy—we can call it a Fianna Fáil plan—for a few years ahead, there is nothing said about any particular amelioration of the conditions under which the turf merchants have to work.

The Minister has not said anything about the way they have to deal, by his orders, or Fuel Importers, Limited, orders—I do not know which—in connection with their deliveries of fuel to bellmen, and other people who have to deliver fuel, on a basis which results in a loss to them of something like 10d. a ton. They have to supply those people at a loss.

Reorganisation is required. Bad organisation has been in existence, based upon a racket, for the last five years. We had a wet season last summer. We had a strike, about which the Minister is very silent. August and September and onwards, practically continuously, until Christmas, was wet. The strike, as I am informed, started the third week in June and ended the third week in August—two vital months in connection with turf production and turf distribution. The first cutting of turf ought to have been taken away from the bogs in June and July, but that strike was allowed to go on because it did not suit the racketeers to pay the additional price that the ordinary hauliers were asking, and for which they had gone on the strike to which Deputy Mulcahy has referred. It did not suit these people who are making huge profits out of their contracts. The Minister stood over them and that strike was beaten and it was allowed to go on for two months. The Minister forced that strike to go on and would not allow it to be stopped. Strike-breaking may be a useful thing —I do not know—but there is a fact in this situation leading inevitably to a shortage of turf; there is a fact for which the Ministry is responsible. That strike left upon the bogs an inestimable quantity of turf which has not been got out to the present day. It is estimated that something like 60,000 tons of turf were lost to the people of this country by reason of that strike having been allowed to go on. That should have been known to the Minister and he should have prepared his plans accordingly, knowing that 60,000 tons of turf had been lost. During that period, of course, the first cutting could not have been got out.

Mr. Lemass

How many thousand tons?

Mr. Costello

The Minister may answer later.

Mr. Lemass

Did the Deputy mention a figure? I did not hear him.

Mr. Costello

60,000 tons of turf.

Mr. Lemass

Were lost?

Mr. Costello

As a result of the strike. If I am wrong the Minister can contradict me.

Mr. Lemass

I will contradict that all right.

Mr. Costello

I have no doubt the Minister will contradict many a thing. The question is, will the people believe the Minister, having regard to his record? 60,000 tons of turf were lost. The Minister can have any figure he likes. Call it X tons. Turf was lost as a result of the strike. The fact should have been taken into account in connection with the Minister's plans. It was never taken into account and he never said a word about the strike during the whole of the period since that time.

But that was not the whole history of the strike. During that period turf-cutting could have been proceeding against the time when the wet weather came. That period of two vital months was lost to the production of turf and no account was taken of it in whatever plans were made by the Government against the winter months. The strike also caused a delay in getting out the turf. First, there was the hold-up in turf-cutting, and then there was the dumping of the turf in the Phoenix Park. It was dumped there in the rains of August and September and following months, with the result that the turf was not properly clamped on top in order adequately to protect it against the rain. In consequence, the rain coming down day after day, week after week and month after month, left that turf in a sodden condition.

We have as many jokes now in this country about wet turf as there used to be about Ford cars. We have heard of the man who was either boiling or frying his turf; we have heard of the man who had been in a collision and said he was nearly drowned because he had run into a lorry load of turf. The country is full of such jokes about turf. But it is no joking matter to the people who have to use it in its sodden condition, and that is all due to the Minister and to Fuel Importers, Limited.

That is not the whole story, by any manner of means. The Minister took no account of the strike or the consequences of the strike in the way I have indicated. He took no account of the wet weather. He went on in 1946 handing out permits to individuals or institutions or other concerns, whatever is the appropriate name, in precisely the same manner as he did in 1945. He handed out these permits to these institutions, but, before he handed them out, what plans were made for the suitable zoning of the country in order to see that an adequate supply of turf would be given to such places as Dublin or Cork or other big centres? We have turf coming from Donegal to all parts of the country. There has been no proper zoning or proper methods of distribution. Can the Minister explain that?

The permits were issued after the strike, after the wet weather. They were issued at a time when, in addition to all those matters I have spoken of, the Minister ought to have seen, if he were able to read the figures available to him, or the facts which ought to have been known to him, that there had been a greatly increased consumption of turf in Dublin and throughout the country. The Minister may try to controvert many of the facts I am giving him, and doubtless he will, but that cannot be controverted.

In the Budget proposals of last May arrangements were made to decrease the price of turf. The results were two-fold, but they led to the same inevitable conclusion — increased consumption. In the first place, the poor people who had not been able to buy it at the higher price bought more and, in the second place, it put out of the market those private producers to whom Deputy Mulcahy has referred. A number of private individuals co-operated to produce their own turf. They produced a surplus and they were able to sell it, as Deputy Mulcahy told the House, to consumers around the country. I do not know whether that trenched upon the privileges of Fuel Importers, Limited, or whether it was illegal or not. Possibly it was.

I understand the situation is that Irish merchants must buy from Fuel Importers, Limited, and private producers, unless they are doing it on a personal basis, must sell to the county councils or to Fuel Importers, Limited. Whether that was so or not, these people were doing no harm to the community and they were easing the situation as regards the consumption of turf; but they were put out of business for the reasons Deputy Mulcahy has given. What was the result? Let the Minister contradict this if he likes, but, if he does, he will do it at his peril. A very much greater number of people registered with the fuel merchants for turf and other fuel than had been registered the year before. That should have led the Minister to the inevitable conclusion that there would be increased consumption. Notwithstanding that stocking permits were issued to these institutions, somewhere at the beginning of September, on precisely the same basis as in 1945, the situation that was then rapidly developing, leading inevitably to increased consumption and decreased production and a less available supply of turf, must have been perfectly clear to anybody who had sufficient competence and knowledge of the facts. Those institutions that were dealt with in that particular way by the issuing of stocking permits were perfectly satisfied. They were institutions with sufficient money to enable them to get large quantities of turf in accordance with the particulars set out in their permits.

It must have been a matter of intense surprise, not to say astonishment, to those people when, a month afterwards, their permits were withdrawn and, instead of being able to purchase their full requirements of turf as set out in their permits, they were given a supply of coal instead—something that every person, with the exception of those political devotees of the Fianna Fáil Party who had to be draped in turf, wanted with all their hearts, a little bit of good Wigan coal. They got some coal, much to their astonishment, coal that ought to have been put into a reserve dump for the railways, the Electricity Supply Board, for gas companies all over the country and for public utility societies. That coal went down the cellars of hotels and other institutions.

Mr. Lemass

Where did the turf go?

Mr. D. Morrissey

The Minister ought to be able to tell us that.

Mr. Lemass

It went into the homes of the poor people of Dublin City.

Mr. Costello

It did not. If it did, I would not have seen what I saw on Ormond Quay recently—a dozen women and small children waiting outside an hotel where turf was going down the chute. As each bag was emptied, some of the turf fell out and these women and children dived for it. If turf had gone into the homes of the poor, would I have seen a spectacle of that kind? I say the coal went into the cellars of the hotels that were making money out of visitors who came here to feed themselves at our expense. That is where the coal went—into the hotels and institutions. That coal ought to have been kept as a reserve. Of course, that situation was not allowed to develop either, because in a very short space of time it became apparent that British coal supplies were drying up. But all the time there was this increased consumption of turf. The Minister may talk glibly if he likes, but he cannot deny that there was an increased consumption by all sections of the community as a result of the decrease in the price of turf, consequent upon the Budget proposals, an increased consumption during the summer and autumn months by people who, in the previous year, had got their supplies from private enterprise in the manner I have indicated.

They were eating into it, not the poor people. It was the people who had come upon the official supply of fuel, if I may so call it, and who had not been eating out of that particular hamper the year before, who got the turf and not the poor people of the City of Dublin. It was they who got the turf that was swapped for the coal the hotels got in order that they might make vast quantities of money out of the tourists at the expense of the ordinary consumer, the ordinary people.

I have very many more facts connected with this, but it would take me hours to go through them; I can only hit these in the broadest outline. There we have that situation mounting up—coal which ought to have been given to the railways, the gas companies and the Electricity Supply Board and to other institutions throughout the country being given to hotels and other institutions, and we are paying very dearly for it now. All that increased consumption inevitably meant that there would be lower stocks of fuel available for the public during the winter, no matter what the weather and no matter what the British position was. No steps were taken to meet that situation until apparently some time in the autumn the Government woke up to the position, and, I believe, withdrew these permits.

Now, they were also on another job. They decontrolled wood. I have emphasised, iterated and reiterated the increased consumption of turf brought about by the reduction in the price of turf, the decreased production brought about by the weather and the consequences of the strike the previous year. We had available in the City of Dublin, and, I am sure, elsewhere, a ration of wood. There was a controlled price and there was a ration of wood available for the ordinary consumer. Fuel merchants were enabled and entitled to buy their wood from fuel importers or elsewhere at a price which would enable them to sell the smallish quantities of the ration which was allowed to private consumers, domestic consumers. In 1946, off comes the control, except as regards price. Belatedly, the Minister cried "peccavi" over the air on Monday night about the margin, as he called it, between the buying and the selling price.

During 1945, there was another racket in wood throughout the length and breadth of the country. It was not possible to buy wood in the City of Dublin unless one was in a position to pay for an amount of something like six or seven tons at a time. Fuel merchants were not able to compete. They were not able to buy it except in six or seven ton lots, and I challenge the Minister to deny that.

Mr. Lemass

There was a ration of wood in 1945 and a dump from which fuel merchants could draw as much as they wanted.

Mr. Costello

I am talking about 1946 and contrasting it with 1945, if the Minister will listen. In 1945, there was a ration of wood for the domestic consumer, and there was a controlled price. The Irish fuel merchants were able at that time, by reason of the dump being available, to buy that wood and to sell it in small quantities at the controlled price. In 1946, that control was taken off. The controlled price stayed. The Irish fuel merchants were not able to buy wood in 1946 at a price which would enable them to pay their expenses, not to speak of making a profit, in any lesser consignment than a consignment of five, six or seven tons at a time and unless one wanted to buy wood in Dublin in a consignment of six or seven tons at £3 per ton, taking it in one consignment, one could not buy any wood in the City of Dublin in 1946.

Fuel Importers, Limited, this dead hand that appears all through this tragic history, had a dump of wood of something in the region of 100,000 tons. My figures are not vouched for, so that I do not know the actual amount, but they had a large quantity. Out it went, and they have not got a sliver of wood at present in their dumps, and have not had for the last 15 months.

Mr. Lemass

Does the Deputy disapprove of its being let out?

Mr. Costello

I certainly do.

Mr. Lemass

Why did the Deputy urge here in the Dáil that it should be let out?

Mr. Costello

Wait until I make my case and I will develop my point.

Mr. Lemass

Why did the Deputy and his colleagues urge that it should be let out? I will produce the quotations.

Mr. Costello

I entirely approve of its being let out, but the matter in respect of which I charge the Ministry and their political friends, Fuel Importers, Limited, with negligence and gross culpability, is this that, having let that dump out, they ought to have bought replacements of wood and they did not do so. That is my point. It is not that I am, as the Minister will try to misrepresent me as doing, objecting to Fuel Importers, Limited, selling that wood. I want to make it perfectly clear, so that no misrepresentation by that expert on misrepresentation opposite will be possible, that what I am objecting to is that Fuel Importers, Limited, or whoever should have had charge of this problem —the Government or Fuel Importers, Limited—ought to have purchased a stock of wood in replacement of that wood which was let out and ought not to have allowed the racketeering and blackmarketing in wood which went on during the past 12 months.

That is what I am charging the Government with. I am charging them also with taking off the ration of wood, with leaving wood uncontrolled as to buying price in the country, with leaving it in the hands of every racketeer throughout the country and leaving the position one in which only the rich man could buy anything in the nature of wood for the past 12 months. That, in itself, was a crime against the public, but it led to this further element which ought to have been foreseen by the Minister and the Government—increased demand by domestic consumers for turf. All the time, every action of the Government and every factor in the matter led to increased consumption and to the inevitable conclusion that there would be a shortage of wood, even if we had an Indian summer in the winter. That was not apparently foreseen, or seen, at various stages throughout the autumn and early winter of last year and no steps were taken by the Ministry to deal with it.

That is the story of turf and wood very shortly. It could be given in greater detail, and, if figures were available to us, could be vouched for in a way that would stagger the country and confound the Minister. At no stage were any steps taken to see that there was a dump of wood, a dump of coal, or even proper supplies of turf, available against the winter, whatever the conditions were. There was no wood and there was no turf taken in or controlled in such a way as to ensure that we would have adequate supplies in the winter. The public utility companies — Córas Iompair Éireann, the Electricity Supply Board, the gas companies and all these other industrial users of coal to whom Deputy Mulcahy has referred—were unable to make provision for themselves against the winter. They were living from hand to mouth, except Córas Iompair Éireann. They got their supplies but were unable to put aside anything for the winter. What did Córas Iompair Éireann do? I do not blame them as much as I blame the Minister. They put on extra passenger trains day after day and month after month right up to a few weeks ago. As Deputy Dan Morrissey reminds me, they ran excursion trains. They were running trains ad lib all through the summer and autumn. We thought we were to have a return to the old pre-war days. There were promises of luxury trains and express trains. We were told of the time the trains had made from Cork to Dublin. They went on consuming coal until nothing was left in the dumps for the winter. There were more and more trains and quicker trains and now we have no trains. Are we to say that the Minister was right in failing to see, through some of the organisations available to him, that some of that coal was saved against a possible fuel shortage in the winter? At this time, the coal situation in England was apparent to anybody who had his eyes open and was able to interpret the facts. It was evident to everybody that the best for which we could hope was maintenance of the then existing supplies which were coming here through the generosity of the British Government and the British fuel merchants.

British industry was changing from a war footing to a peace footing. New industries were being set up and old industries were trying to recreate themselves. All were demanding coal, coal, coal. A great experiment in socialisation of the coal mines was proceeding. Strikes were happening all over the place. Coal production in Britain was going down and down until the month of November, when there was a slight rise. These facts were available even to the reader of Irish newspapers. There were strikes in the British coal mines. There were appeals for additional men to work in those mines. Some of our unfortunate people went across to work underground in order to help the situation and assist their families because they could not get employment in this land of milk and honey under a Fianna Fáil Government. How could any person, looking at those facts and properly interpreting them, come to any other conclusion than that there should be a policy of caution and prudence rather than the spendthrift policy pursued by Córas Impair Éireann, with their excursion trains, express trains and facilities for tourists right up to Christmas of this year? From a position in which we had, apparently, plenty of coal, we pass to a position in which we have no coal. From a position in which we had plenty of trains, including luxury trains and express trains, we have come to a position in which we have no trains at all. All the time those facts were evident but not a single step was taken to meet the situation. Córas Iompair Éireann were not told to "go slow". Córas Iompair Éireann can be excused on the ground that they knew the Government were giving coal to hotels and other institutions. When they were themselves given a sufficient quantity of coal to provide the services to which I have referred, they may have come to the conclusion that the Government had a satisfactory arrangement with the British Government. There is an excuse for Córas Iompair Éireann but there can be no palliation of the action of the Government.

All this time, nothing was being done to contact the British Government and ascertain the real situation. At every stage, there were warning notes and danger signals. Did anybody from this country go over to consult the British Government about our position and try to safeguard it? We are told belatedly that the British have promised to do something for us when their own crisis is over. I saw where Mr. Dulanty has belatedly contacted somebody or other in England. What contact has there been for months past, not to mention years, with the British Government in connection with the coal situation? The Minister emphasised in his broadcast speech the other night that we were getting less than half our pre-war imports of coal and that we were getting an inferior quality of coal. Why should we be getting coal of a type that Portugal and Sweden refused?

Mr. Lemass

I should like to see evidence of their refusal.

Mr. Costello

The Minister can get it if he wants it. I assert that what I say is a fact—that we have got coal of a type that Portugal and Sweden refused and that the British coal merchants are secretly ashamed of the treatment meted out to this country. I have no doubt that, if this Government had a spark of courage, they would send one of their Ministers over to England to speak as a member of a Government of an independent State on an equality with a member of the British Government on this question. We are sending across beef of superior quality and we are getting in return inferior coal. Is that what the Coal-Cattle Pact was intended to do? We are giving the British people the best of our agricultural produce and there is no doubt that we would get more and better coal if this Government had the courage to face up to their responsibilities and send one of their number over to England to arrange one of those long-term plans so dear to the heart of the Minister and the Government in general.

Deputy Mulcahy told the House that, through the efforts of the Irish coal merchants, we were enabled to get increased quantities of coal. The Minister, in his broadcast speech, said our requirements of coal pre-war were 50,000 tons a week and that we were getting less than half that quantity throughout the greater portion of the period with which he was dealing. The fact is that we were getting 32,000 tons a week.

Mr. Lemass

We were getting 32,000 tons a week?

Mr. Costello

Yes.

Mr. Lemass

Last year?

Mr. Costello

At some stage, at all events. Will the Minister deny that?

Mr. Lemass

If the Deputy turns up my speech, he will find that I referred to that matter.

Mr. Costello

The Minister can answer my assertions. I say that our coal imports went up to something like 30,000 tons at some stage. If they did not, it is all the more shame for the Minister for having failed to see that we got what we were entitled to and what could be got for the asking. I saw in an evening paper early this month where the Solid Fuels Administration of Washington announced that the February allocation of coal for export to Europe and Africa was 2,307,000 tons. The report states: "It is expected that allocations will be about the same as for January. For February, the allocations from the United States to European countries, including countries which were neutral during the war were: Belgium, 213,500 tons". More than our requirements are going to Belgium. 213,500 tons are going to Belgium for a month and that is equal to, if it does not exceed, our pre-war requirements. America is giving to Belgium this month, when we have no coal at all, coal at the rate of 50,000 tons a week. The report goes on to say: "Denmark is getting 187,000 tons, Holland, 224,963 tons, Norway, 85,000 tons, France, 544,000 tons, Italy, 85,000 tons, Sweden, 161,500 tons, Finland, 59,500 tons and Switzerland, 42,500 tons."

The Minister announced over the radio during the week-end that "the Government were notified that the United States had decided to allocate 34,000 tons of coal for export to this country". That is announced by the Minister as if it were an act of charity on the part of the United States towards an afflicted country. It is nothing of the sort. It is a business proposition and I challenge the Minister to say that it is otherwise. The Minister expressed his gratitude for that offer. Of course, we are grateful to the United States for giving us this coal but it is to be presumed that the United States will be equally grateful for the dollars we give in return. I submit that that statement of the Minister over the radio was false and misleading inasmuch as it suggested that nothing had happened over the weeks and months previous in regard to American coal and that it was only when English coal supplies ceased within the last three weeks, and the United States heard we were suffering from a fuel famine, cold and starvation, the great United States over the week-end said: "We will give you 34,000 tons." The fact is that negotiations had been going on for years to get coal from America.

The statement that we were notified over the week-end appears to suggest that we heard of it then for the first time, as if it came out of the blue. The fact, as Deputy Mulcahy has pointed out, is that for years past Irish fuel merchants have been trying to get American coal and the Americans regarded our market as a desirable market. The Americans were interested, to use the current business phrase.

The American Government were helpful and the American Departments were helpful in the matter of export licences. There is no doubt but that Irish merchants for years past, up to even the Minister's broadcast, have been trying to make contracts with America and have been making them and getting firm offers for the export of American coal to this country. The Minister's statement over the radio, as I read it, suggests that the notification at the week-end that we were to get 34,000 tons of American coal came as a surprise. What were we doing when Belgium, Norway, Sweden, France, Italy and the other countries I have read out here were getting a comparatively big allocation of American coal from the United States of America? We are entitled to, and I do believe we get, a pretty substantial dollar allocation under the fiscal arrangements between the two countries. Is there any greater or more pressing need for the expenditure of that dollar allocation than on the import of coal to tide us over to the time when we shall be able to resume imports from Britain? There is no doubt that by the shilly-shallying of the Minister's Department, and by the refusal of the Department of Finance to give dollars, large quantities of coal were lost to this country. I am sure that American fuel merchants must have a very poor view of the business capacity, not to speak of the integrity——

Mr. Lemass

They will have a good laugh when they read the Deputy's speech.

Mr. Costello

Produce the Minister's files and see whether he can laugh or not. The country will not laugh; it will be more likely to cry at the tragic failure of the Minister to take advantage of his opportunities. I say if the Minister for Finance in the matter of allocation of dollars had adopted a benevolent attitude, export licences and export documents could have been obtained and Irish fuel merchants, either in bulk or in any way you like under an associated name, could have got, and in fact did obtain, firm offers for American coal. The reason that no coal was brought in months before December was the failure of the Minister's own Department to appreciate the importance of the matter and the refusal of the Department of Finance to give dollars.

Now the Minister can tell his side of the story if he likes, but will he answer this question? Will he agree, in the first place, that the American Government were benevolently inclined in the matter of sending coal to this country? If so, what prevented coal from coming here? We saw no sign of activity on the part of the other Governmentcontrolled company, Irish Shipping, Limited, in reference to shipments of coal from America. I am sure that the Minister will say that the ships were not available. Deputy Mulcahy has told us that when a cargo was got a ship was available. The cargoes were there; the ships were there. The only thing that prevented coal coming in was the failure of the Minister's Department to give the necessary backing to Irish fuel merchants. That is the tragic story of the American coal.

I have charged the Minister with a lack of foresight. Apparently, if one is to judge by the broadcast of the Minister, the stoppage of coal came as a complete surprise to him. If it did not come as a complete surprise to him, why was it that he was not able to study the situation in England available through published documents, showing the seriousness of the situation in England? I have before me a trade paper The Coal Merchant and Shipper of December 7th. That was a long time before the crisis arose. “Industrial fuel prospects for the winter” is the heading of a particular article in this journal which draws the attention of coal merchants to the serious situation existing then in England. The Minister did not see it, we must presume. If he did see it, it is another of the numerous pieces of evidence demonstrating his ineptitude—his carelessness at the worst and his gross incompetence at the best. I shall quote one small part of this article. The Minister for Fuel in England is quoted as follows:—

"After a full review of the prospects of fuel supplies for industry during the coming winter, I have come to the conclusion that certain action must now be taken if the risk of a serious interruption of industrial activity in the early part of the New Year is to be avoided. I consider that it is only right that industry as a whole should be made aware both of the general situation and the action which the Government considers necessary."

There is a warning to British industry which was unheeded by the Irish Minister for Industry and Commerce.

This article goes on:—

"From the point of view, however, of supplying industry this winter with the coal that it requires, the increases in consumption during the current year must give cause for anxiety, for, in spite of the improvement in output, we are to-day in a worse position than we were a year ago, since the gain in production has been more than offset by the increase in consumption. The situation is aggravated by the difficulties now being experienced in the transport of coal by rail owing to shortages both of locomotives and wagons. Further, the position this year is much more critical than in 1945, for the country started the present coal winter with distributed stocks at the low level of 10.8 million tons, as compared with 14,000,000 tons at the beginning of the coal winter last year. According to present prospects, there is a likelihood that total supplies of coal this winter may fall short of total requirements by something between 2,000,000 and 5,000,000 tons."

That warning was there in December, but nothing was done by the Minister. Córas Iompair Eireann continued to run all their trains, no stocks of coal being set aside, no stocks of wood being dumped by the Government or by Córas Iompair Eireann, no reduction in the ration, no warning to the public —nothing done. That warning was again given in the same journal on January 11th and on January 25th. Nothing was done at any time.

Therefore I say it is conclusively proved, even with the very few facts that I have been able to put before this House—facts which could be multiplied if time permitted and the opportunities were available to me as they are to the Minister—that in every stage of this problem during the last six or eight months the Minister's Department and the Government have been responsible for lack of foresight in failing to make the necessary plans, for failure to interpret the facts, ultimately for the serious dislocation in employment, industry and commerce, and for the frightful sufferings that all sections of the community have undergone in the last few weeks.

Parliamentary Secretary to the Taoiseach (Mr. Kissane)

There is an old saying that it is very easy to be wise after the event, and no doubt the members on the Front Bench of the main Opposition Party are very wise to-day. But I daresay that if they themselves were the rulers of this country before this crisis came upon us the situation would be far worse than it is now because, when this Government came into power, the first step they took was to make the people of this country turf-minded and, at every step they took, they met with nothing from the Opposition but derision and shouts of contempt. These people come along to us to-day and charge us with negligence and with not having foreseen future events.

Deputy Costello spoke for a long time on this motion and he charged the Minister for Industry and Commerce with misrepresentations. But where are the misrepresentations?

Mr. Costello

I anticipated that he would charge me with misrepresentations.

Mr. Kissane

But the Deputy charged the Minister with misrepresentations.

Mr. Costello

I anticipated that he would charge me.

Mr. Kissane

The Deputy in his statement was trying to point out the mismanagement of the Minister and his Department, trying to convince us that the Minister had mismanaged this whole business. He said there was turf being brought from Donegal to Dublin and so forth. In other words, that there was bad zonal distribution of turf. I do not think this is so. If the Deputy would make inquiries he would find out that no turf has come into Dublin from Donegal and no turf has come into Dublin from Kerry or from any of these far-off places.

Mr. D. Morrissey

It was in the newspapers yesterday.

Mr. Kissane

What appears in the newspapers is not always true.

Mr. Corry

The Irish Times!

Mr. Kissane

Now, as I was going to say, it was this Government that put the bogs of this country on the map. We set out with a long-sighted policy, much longer-sighted than the policy of the people opposite, and, in order to make the bogs of the country workable and accessible to the people we made sure, in the Vote each year for the carrying out of minor employment schemes, that the burden of the money would be spent on the development of the bogs and on making roads into these bogs.

Mr. Keating

It was a total failure.

Mr. Kissane

It was not a total failure; it has been a great success.

Mr. Keating

This is self-sufficiency, depriving the old age pensioners and widows and orphans of their rights. You ought to be ashamed of yourselves. Put your head in a bag.

Mr. Kissane

We have listened very patiently on this side of the House to the speakers who came before me and have not interrupted them. We have listened to the case they tried to make but I submit, a Leas-Cheann Comhairle, that they have made no case for this motion.

Mr. McGilligan

You were proving that the bogs are a success. Go on.

Mr. Corry

You have come back from the law courts. Three times in the last 12 months Deputy McGilligan came into this House.

An Leas-Cheann Comhairle

I would like to say that the Chair can hear only one Deputy at a time.

Mr. McGilligan

Tell us more about the success of the bogs.

Mr. Kissane

The Minister for Industry and Commerce and the Minister for Finance are being charged by Deputy Mulcahy with being turf fanatics. It is a good job that we were all turf fanatics on this side of the House because, if we were not, there would be a much greater scarcity of fuel in the country to-day, and were it not that we pushed that fanaticism to the utmost, despite bitter opposition from the gentlemen opposite, the story that we would have in the country to-day would be a sad one indeed.

Mr. Keating

You have learned a lesson.

Mr. Kissane

Deputy Mulcahy also mentioned the question and, of course, so did Deputy Costello, of getting coal from America and he mentioned that a ship was to bring 9,000 tons of coal into Dublin. Nine thousand tons! No doubt there would be great jubilation over that 9,000 tons of coal that would be brought into the Port of Dublin. My goodness, 9,000 tons of coal would not last this country one day; it would not last half a day——

Mr. D. Morrissey

The 34,000 tons would not last very long at that rate.

Mr. Kissane

——and could anybody say that that was a sensible contribution to the debate. We are also advised to send Ministers over to England to negotiate with the people across the water for the importation of greater supplies of coal. Does not everybody know, does not every sensible man in this country know, that the people over there have not enough for themselves?

Mr. Keating

Did not you advise us to burn everything British but coal.

Mr. Kissane

We did not. What we advised the people of the country here to do was to put their own houses in order first. We wanted to make sure that the maximum supplies of native fuel would be made available to the people first and, well and good, if we got supplies of coal after that it would be all right. Everybody knows that we cannot depend on outside supplies of fuel any more and that we must rely on our own resources. I submit——

Mr. Keating

Self-sufficiency is codology.

An Leas-Cheann Comhairle

If Deputy Keating would like to speak after the Parliamentary Secretary he will be called upon. He must not interrupt; he must let the Parliamentary Secretary proceed.

Mr. Keating

I will let him speak, but let him speak the truth.

Mr. Kissane

Who is to be the judge as to who is speaking the truth. I submit that I am as good a judge of the truth as anybody over there, and that I am trying to point out to the House and to the country what the real facts of the case are. The Government has been indicated by Deputy Mulcahy and Deputy Costello for not having wakened up to the realities of the present crisis in time. No doubt there must have been great information available to the Opposition Deputies themselves about the crisis that was to overtake this country and, if that information was available to them in the autumn of last year or any time before now, why did they not make it available to the people? They say now we should have known then and should have made provision for this and that, but why did they not advise us then, if they knew?

Mr. Coogan

But the Government had the information, from fuel importers.

Mr. Kissane

That we were going to have the worst winter that has ever been known in recent times?

Mr. Coogan

They could have imported coal.

Mr. Kissane

We were supposed to be prophets. Does not every sensible and honest man know that the present situation is entirely due to the bad weather conditions that obtain now and were present in the autumn of last year?

Mr. McGilligan

We were entitled to expect good weather at Christmas? Is that the case being made?

Mr. Kissane

We were entitled to expect the ordinary wintry weather.

Mr. McGilligan

The ordinary bad weather.

An Leas-Cheann Comhairle

The Chair expects order from the Deputies. Will Deputies allow the Parliamentary Secretary to make his speech without interruption?

Mr. Corry

They cannot resist it.

An Leas-Cheann Comhairle

Will Deputy Corry keep quite?

Mr. Keating

He is too big for that.

Mr. McGilligan

He is constitutionally out of order.

Mr. Kissane

Seeing that Deputies do not want to listen to the case being made against this motion, which has been put down in indictment of the Government, I do not see what useful purpose can be served by my continuing to speak.

Mr. Coogan

Carry on.

Mr. Kissane

We have heard the Government condemned for certain political things they have done, for certain economic measures they thought it wise to take from time to time, but this is the first time we have been condemned for bad weather or for circumstances over which we could have had no control. Everybody knows that the absence of coal at the present time is a circumstance over which we have no control.

Mr. McGilligan

Entirely that?

Mr. Kissane

Yes.

Mr. McGilligan

We know the case now.

Mr. Kissane

But we have control over our own native resources and because we knew we had control over them we advised people to develop them in time. We thought it wise to spend money in doing that, in spite of the opposition put up by the gentlemen opposite. There is no case for this motion and it should be defeated. It is without justification and I am sure that people will understand that it is just another move to try to utilise the difficulties of the times for political propaganda, but I am sure that instead it will turn out to be a boomerang.

Mr. Cogan

The House will sympathise with the attempt by Deputy Kissane to introduce some heat and lightness into this debate. His effort reminds me of the woman last week who tried to dry the turf by putting it in a pot over a log fire, but it boiled over and put out the fire. Deputy Kissane says it is easy to be wise after the event, but in dealing with the situation which has now arisen it would have been very easy to be wise before the event. When the weather was excessively bad last year, when the harvest was threatened with complete destruction, a widespread national effort was made to save it. From a dozen people at that time, I heard the remark that the next big national struggle would be to secure sufficient fuel for the winter. That was said by dozens of people throughout the country, but it does not seem to have occurred to the illustrious Minister for Industry and Commerce and his advisers. Now, the Parliamentary Secretary says it is easy to be wise after the event. A month ago, during the debate on the high cost of living, I ventured to suggest that one thing at least should be done to reduce the cost of living, that is, to make available, particularly to the poor people, a better supply of household fuel. That was a month ago. I complained at that time that there was a Government Order prohibiting the felling of good hardwood timber suitable for firewood. Notwithstanding the fact that I raised that matter on a number of occasions here, no attempt was made to amend that Order until this present week. We are told it is easy to be wise after the event. The Government has been foolish before, during and after the event. We are asked by the Parliamentary Secretary to take off our hats in admiration to the Government which made the people of Ireland turf-minded. We are asked to admire the Government that put the bogs on the map. The Government has brought the bogs to the City of Dublin. They have not made the people turf-minded but have made them hate the very name of turf, by their incompetence in dealing with its production, storage and distribution.

Then the Parliamentary Secretary says the Government could not foresee the bad weather this winter. No, they had not got the School of Cosmic Physics in operation in time. If that scheme were operating they would have been able to forecast the weather months and years ahead. He said we have control of our native resources. What control has the Government over our native resources? What success have they achieved in controlling them? How much turf have they been able to bring to the City of Dublin in the past year, or how much coal? This attempt on the part of the Parliamentary Secretary to turn a very serious debate on a very grave situation into a kind of joke cannot reflect any credit upon the Government Party.

The situation which has developed could easily have been foreseen last autumn. The weather from August onwards was excessively wet. That long period of wet weather had a very serious effect on the production and saving of turf. Everybody in the country knew that except the Government. A wise and prudent Government would have realised as early as last September there would be a big deficit in our national resources of fuel for domestic and industrial use. What steps did the Government take to make good that deficit? A year before, they had depleted or exhausted the reserves of firewood which had been stored as an iron ration in the city. Surely the first duty of the Government, realising that turf production had fallen to a very serious extent, was to find some means of making good the deficit? The natural ways and means to make it good were by importing coal from abroad if possible, by stimulating and encouraging the production of coal at home, by obtaining wherever possible additional supplies of fuel oil which might help to reduce consumption of coal and, lastly, by piling up a supply of firewood. None of these steps was taken. Nor was any step taken to reduce, wherever possible, the consumption of fuel, so as to accumulate supplies to carry the nation over the winter period. As has been pointed out, we had an increase in rail services and an increase in the consumption of electricity.

We had an increase all round in the various fuels and substitutes for fuel. It is always easy for a Minister to claim that there were no opportunities of importing additional coal. He can always concoct a number of imaginary circumstances which prevented coal from being imported from the United States and other places, just as he can concoct excuses for not having imported flour from the United States when it was offered here. But no possible excuse can be concocted for the failure of the Government to stimulate and encourage production in our own coal mines. That should have been the first thought that would occur to the Minister for Industry and Commerce when he found that, owing to weather conditions, turf production could not be kept up to the level of other years. The production in our coal mines has not been as great as it should have been, mainly because the managements of the various mines have been unable to get sufficient workers. The workers were induced to leave the mines and go into the National Army, and to go abroad at a time when the mines were in great need of additional men. We know that nothing was done over the past five or six years to provide better inducements for men to work in the mines. No attempt was made by the Government to provide living accommodation, convenient to the pits, for the workers. All those things were neglected. We just lived in hope that the troubles and tribulations which had come upon other countries would not come upon us, that by some freak of good fortune we would be spared from the troubles which other nations were experiencing. Even if we did have a stroke of good fortune, that would be claimed as being due to the wisdom and foresight of the Government, while all the time they were just blundering along and not looking ahead.

Why was there not, immediately after the harvest, a big drive to fell, cut up and accumulate a supply of firewood? That was the obvious and easy thing to do to meet such a situation as has arisen. Surely, there should have been accumulated in the neighbourhood of this city large dumps of firewood which could be used if the situation so demanded it. Nothing practical was done, and no amount of abuse of the Opposition Parties, and no amount of brazenness on the part of the Minister, can excuse his Government for complete failure to foresee and provide for the nation in this grave and serious emergency. The Government have fallen down completely on their job. They have revealed to the nation that we have an inept and stupid Government, a worthless Government. It has been said by some of the Deputies that some of our Ministers should go abroad to negotiate for additional supplies. I think it would be a good thing if not some of them, but all of them, went abroad and stayed abroad.

While the Parliamentary Secretary and other members of the Government seek to claim credit for having made the people of Ireland turf-minded, we have had the Minister for Local Government during the past year trying as hard as it was possible for him to intimidate bog owners from engaging in turf production by piling burdens on them in the form of additional taxation because of their efforts in turf production. That is the kind of help and assistance which our turf producers have got from our turf-minded Government.

It is time that the people took serious stock of the situation that has arisen. There is no hope that the Government will do so. The people themselves can do a great deal if they are not intimidated and obstructed by the Government. All Orders and restrictions on the felling of timber should be temporarily removed. That should have been done at least six weeks ago so that an opportunity for an all-out effort to cut and procure timber would have been provided.

The amount of timber cut and procured would not have been sufficient having regard to the weather conditions which prevailed, and it would have been impossible for the people, even with the worst intentions in the world, to have made any serious inroads on the supplies of commercial timber, or to have made any serious inroads on the policy of the Minister for Defence with regard to preserving hedgerow timber along the roads. The Order prohibiting farmers from cutting hardwood trees on their lands adjoining public roads, laneways or car roads is typical of the stupidity and folly of the Government, and perhaps even more so of the laziness of our Ministers in refusing to give serious consideration to problems of this kind. Some brass hat in the Army probably suggested that timber along the public roads might be useful for blocking roads or hiding the movement of convoys in wartime. It is not likely to be useful in the next war. In any case, it does not matter very much what happens in the next war if our people are allowed to perish for the want of sufficient fuel to heat their homes and cook their food. I believe that there is enough goodwill, enough intelligence and enough of co-operation amongst the plain people of the country to cope with and solve the problems that face us if only given the encouragement and assistance which they have the right to demand and if they are not obstructed by an incompetent and inept Government.

Mr. P. Burke (County Dublin)

When listening to the speeches of the Opposition I was reminded of the hurler on the ditch. I listened very carefully to Deputy Mulcahy, Deputy Costello and Deputy Cogan to hear if any of them would make any practical suggestion to meet the unprecedented situation which we are up against. All that I heard amounted to this—do nothing practical, criticise everything and everybody, never make any suggestion which would be worth while. This is not a time for playing high-power politics. We are faced with a position in which some of the public representatives on the other side of the House who are so very well versed in a lot of things should give a lead by putting forward some practical ideas to try to help the people. I heard one Deputy referring to what he saw in the City of Dublin not so very long ago. I do not know that that Deputy has done anything to try to establish some local organisation in his constituency to relieve the suffering amongst the people. I would appeal to the people not to be led astray by impracticable motions which are utterly useless at the present time. I ask the people to co-operate amongst themselves and to form local committees to help one another, irrespective of creed, class or politics.

We have been treated to another piece of propaganda about getting coal into the country. After nearly two years of peace, the British are trying to get coal for themselves when they are faced with a winter the like of which has not been experienced for over 100 years. The Government here are being blamed for not being weather experts and knowing that such a winter was to come. They were blamed even for the results of the last harvest, which was one of the worst we had in 50 years. They are blamed for all the unprecedented things that have occurred. We have been treated to a lot of eyewash about what should have been done, with not one practical suggestion as to what should be done now.

Deputy Costello, in his very emphatic style, stated that he had a lot of indictments to make against the Government. He spoke of misery, despair and ruin. If this side of the House had adopted some of the suggestions of Deputy Costello and his colleagues, there would have been misery, despair and ruin in this country. The wheat which we were so very anxious to save during the last harvest would not have been grown if we had adopted the advice of Deputy Costello and his colleagues. It is very hard, I am sure, for those on the Opposition benches to refrain from playing high-power politics. No matter how they try to misrepresent us to people outside and how they try to misrepresent this Party, I say that only for the wisdom, foresight, intelligence and ability of the Ministers and of the Fianna Fáil Party as a whole in trying to make this country self-sustaining so far as possible we would be up against very bad conditions indeed.

An Ceann Comhairle

The Deputy might direct himself to the question of fuel.

Mr. P. Burke

I will do that.

Mr. D. Morrissey

We have had the weather and wheat and a whole lot of other things spoken of.

Mr. P. Burke

Of course the Ceann Comhairle allowed other speakers to go a long way and when I got a lead I thought I might follow it.

An Ceann Comhairle

I do not think the Ceann Comhairle let anybody go outside the fuel question.

Mr. D. Morrissey

He is trying to get away from fuel and I do not blame him.

Mr. P. Burke

The Government have also been blamed by the Opposition for the turf position in Dublin. Surely they do not think that the Minister can wave a magic wand at the clerk of the weather and ask him to stop the rain and dry the turf. A number of the indictments made by Deputy Costello were typical of the hurler on the ditch. He said nothing about what should be done to meet the unprecedented position. He never even once referred to that. Neither did Deputy Mulcahy or Deputy Cogan. Surely responsible public representatives of their standing should have some suggestions to offer. Various councils and other bodies are trying to organise local committees to meet the present situation. Yet we are told by Deputy Costello that nothing can be done, that everything is lost and that the ship is sinking. He seems to be delighted that the ship is sinking. That is the attitude which has been adopted. At this time of national emergency every public representative on each side of the House should be only too delighted to help. Instead of that we are treated to the same old eye-wash. Another Deputy told us that dollars could not be got to buy coal in the United States. I do not propose to deal with that. I will leave it to the Minister to deal with.

Deputies who make charges like that are as well aware of the facts as I am. Deputy Costello went so far as to say that the whole of the turf business was a racket. He went even further and asked the Minister to be a strike breaker. The man who made that suggestion is the very first person who would attack the Minister if he did anything like that. It is up to every public representative to help the Minister in this emergency. British Ministers, faced with a similar crisis, have appealed to everyone, irrespective of Party politics, to help by voluntary and organised effort to deal with the situation.

Undoubtedly it is an opportune time for the Opposition to try to score politically but that will not go down with the people of the country. No honest person would say that anyone could foresee this position. We are treated to the most slanderous abuse. The Minister is told he should have had foreknowledge, that he should have been a prophet, that he should have done a thousand and one things which it would not have been practicable for him to do. We must all be sensible and must try to help one another in this emergency and try to relieve the suffering especially amongst the poor and the aged. That can be done only by voluntary effort. No matter what the Minister may do through his Department, it is up to us to help and to co-operate with him in every way, irrespective of creed, class or politics. There is no use in using political eye-wash or in adopting the attitude of the Opposition, that of hurler on the ditch.

Mr. D. Morrissey

We can have only admiration for the simple childlike faith of the Deputy who has just spoken. Like the other member who spoke from the Fianna Fáil benches, the Parliamentary Secretary, Deputy Kissane, he blamed the present situation entirely on the abnormal weather. They are not going to get away with that. The abnormal weather was not responsible for the present situation. The present situation has been aggravated by the weather but the responsibility and the reasons for the present fuel situation go back very much farther. Listening to some of the Fianna Fáil Deputies, one would imagine that we have a climate similar to that of Egypt and that it is something phenomenal that we should get snow and bad weather in the month of February. I am not exactly Methuselah but I can remember very few months of February in my lifetime in which there was not little or much snow and I venture to say that, on an average, there have been heavier and longer periods of snow and hard weather in the month of February than in any other month. How could the Minister have the foresight—asks Deputy Burke—even to imagine that there would be frost and snow in Ireland in the month of February? I would be accused of trying to make a pun if I were to say that that sort of nonsense will not cut much ice but, in any case, it will not answer. The Minister for Industry and Commerce made a statement in this House a week ago. For the first time, he told us about the position regarding fuel and mentioned all the causes that occurred to him, except one. The main cause of the present fuel situation in the City of Dublin he did not once mention. He was hoping, I suppose, as he had every reason to hope in view of what had happened in respect of many other matters over the years, that public memories were very short. I say here quite flatly that the present situation, wherein tens of thousands of people are without a fire to-night, was created last July and August.

Mr. Lemass

Does the Deputy know that of his own knowledge? He is in the business.

Mr. Morrissey

I know of my own knowledge that the present fuel situation, as far as turf is concerned, in this city, was started and was brought about by what happened last July and August.

Mr. Lemass

The hauliers' strike?

Mr. Morrissey

The hauliers' strike.

Mr. Lemass

The Deputy knows that?

Mr. Morrissey

I know that, certainly, and I am inviting the Minister to challenge what I say, and he has the right to reply. I say that at least 60,000 tons of turf that would have been in the Park at the end of August last were in the bogs, and most of it is still in the bogs. I go further and say that, as a result of that strike, not only did we lose a minimum of 60,000 tons of turf but that the clamps of turf which had been brought to the Park before the strike commenced were left in such condition, exposed to all the rain of July, August and September, that they were soaked right through to the very ground.

Deputy Burke talks about Deputy Costello inviting the Minister to act as a strike breaker. That was not an ordinary strike. That was not an ordinary industrial dispute. One would want to know how the haulage of turf and the engagement of lorries is arranged or managed to understand it. One would want to be aware of the fact that people who were fairly close to the Fianna Fáil Party and who were in it, are the people who are getting the contracts and that they are sub-letting, and were sub-letting, at such a figure that the owners of the lorries could not afford to pay the wages to the lorry drivers and the lorry holders. But, whatever sort of dispute it was, any Government that sits down for two months at the most critical period of the year and allows an absolute essential such as fuel to be endangered and to bring us to the position that we are in to-day, particularly in the city, but outside it as well, has failed in its fundamental duty absolutely and abjectly.

Deputy Kissane, Deputy Burke, the Minister, I am sure, and everybody else who speaks on the Fianna Fáil side will tell us that they have spent the last 15 years trying to make the people turf-minded. To what effect? How far have they succeeded? To the effect that we now have neither enough turf, coal nor wood. The Deputy said that they were opposed, that they were misrepresented from this side of the House in an organised way. I do not admit that is true but, even if it were true, if the Government, with an absolute majority for a continuous period of 15 years, are not able to organise the fuel resources of this country so as to give us enough fuel in any weather, then they have failed lamentably. Either they have failed, or else we cannot get enough fuel from our own resources. I do not believe that we cannot get enough fuel. I believe it is all due to the bungling and the inefficiency and the muddling of the Government.

They have been in office for 15 long, weary years, with unlimited money at their disposal, with unlimited labour at their disposal, with surplus labour crying out for work and not able to get it. Will the Minister answer that? Was the Minister trying to make the people turf-minded? Were the Government trying to do it? Were they trying to get the maximum amount of turf cut and saved when, every time a county council increased the wages of the turf cutters and workers and savers by a shilling a week, the Minister for Local Government refused to sanction it? Were they encouraging the cutting and saving of turf when the only people who knew how to cut and save turf were, through economic necessity, driven off the bogs and out of the country? Are there not Deputies listening to me who, as members of county councils, voted increases of wages to the men engaged in cutting and saving turf and the Minister's colleagues refused to sanction it? Were not these men engaged in work of absolute national importance? That was the Minister's cry, the Taoiseach's cry, yet the people who worked were rewarded by being offered the lowest rate of wages paid in this State.

We wonder why we have not enough turf. I would like to hear the Minister dealing with these points. I want to hear him dealing with the strike that lost us at least 60,000 tons of turf out of the Park. I want the Minister to give the history of how the contracts for the haulage of that turf were placed, with whom they were placed, and the conditions under which they were placed. This is no time for play-acting.

Mr. Lemass

Hear, hear!

Mr. D. Morrissey

The Minister says "hear, hear". It is no time for the Minister's glib bluffing, either. The Minister has very glibly bluffed his way for the past 15 years over a great many subjects and the people are paying very severely for his bluff now. We are told by some of the men behind the Minister of the wisdom of the Government. Where has that wisdom brought us? We have not a fire in the country, we are reduced to two ounces of butter per week and we have 70,000 unemployed. If that is the sort of wisdom that flows from 15 years' experience, I do not think much of it. We have been asked what would have happened if we had not a Fianna Fáil Government. Would anybody think, even in his wildest dreams, that any Government returned here could land us in the mess we are in to-day?

I know something about turf; I am aware of conditions from the bog up. I saved turf and drew it out of the bog when it was not fashionable to do so. I sold turf and brought it many miles by rail and canal when there was plenty of Wigan coal selling in this country, even 100 miles from Dublin, at 2/3 a cwt. I am no recent convert to turf, and that is well known. I suppose I am wasting my time saying that, because no matter what I say I shall be misrepresented. I know there could be enough turf cut and saved and stored in this country to meet our needs. The turf in the Park, notwithstanding the present weather, should not be in its present condition. Deputies know that when turf is ricked or clamped properly, no matter what weather we get, not more than 6 inches on the outside row will be wet.

What are the people getting to-day? I will give my own experience. I am entitled, in common with every Dublin citizen, to a ton of turf for the months of February and March. I found, in common with a lot of other people I am sure, that as regards the one and a half tons that I got for December and January I was not able to spread it out and, in the middle of January, or perhaps earlier, I ordered my February supply. It was delivered about the first or second week in February. You know the ordinary sacks which the turf merchants in Dublin use—I want to indicate the quality of the turf. My ton of turf was delivered in 18 sacks. I sold turf by the ton and by the wagon, by the two stones, the half cwt. or the cwt. I sold all grades of turf, turf cut in North Tipperary, briquettes that I brought down from Kildare, and turf I brought from West Clare, this side of Kilkee, and I think I know something about it. I ask Deputies who have a knowledge of turf to visualise the sort of turf I got when 18 sacks made up the ton.

When one talks about timber, it is hard to keep one's patience. This matter was raised here a few years ago and for once—it rarely happens—I found myself in agreement with the Taoiseach when he said that the timber was being reserved as an iron ration. Where is the iron ration to-day? It is not there.

Recently we passed a National Drainage Act. The Chair may think I am travelling from the subject under discussion, but I am not. The drainage of this country will cost millions of pounds. Damage to the extent of hundreds of thousands of pounds is caused every year by flooding, by rivers overflowing their banks. Deputies who live in rural areas will agree that one of the main causes of rivers overflowing is the number of trees, the dead timber lying across them. There is as much timber rotting in our rivers and drains as would provide fuel for Dublin for the next three weeks.

Deputy Corry smiles, but nobody knows better than Deputy Corry that what I am saying is true. There is as much scrub timber, which is not only not useful but is useless for any purpose other than firing, and the removal of which would improve the land, the hedges and the fences from which it was cut, as would give everybody in this country enough firing to carry them over this weather if it lasted for another month. There is any amount of dead, decayed timber, utterly useless for anything but firing, but people will not be allowed to cut it.

Is it facing up to the situation even now to have Fuel Importers, Limited, the Turf Development Board, or whoever it is, inserting advertisements in the newspapers seeking people to sell them timber, to cut timber, to split timber? The timber is there; the men are there; and the transport is there. Why is the timber not cut and brought in? The Army is standing to, changing guard, and there are hundreds of lorries, if they have not all been sold, with plenty of petrol available. Just imagine what 100 Army lorries with 1,000 or 2,000 Army men could do in three days within a radius of 24 miles of this city. But no; it will not be done. The Army will not be released for this work and Army lorries will not be released for this work, but if somebody wants to go to Cork to-morrow evening, and no train is running, there will be an Army lorry to take him there, if necessary.

Deputy Burke talked about denouncing the Government. There is no necessity whatever to denounce the Government. The present situation is the greatest denunciation that could be poured on them. I have not got a whole lot of experience of this city, although I have been coming into it and going out of it for the past 25 years, and have probably spent half of the past 25 years here. I do not claim to know the city as well or as intimately as the Minister should, and, I believe, does know it, but I saw a sight last Saturday week in a certain street through which I was passing.

I saw two long queues of people, one at each end of the street on opposite sides, and when I walked up to find out what it was about, I discovered that the queues were queues to two retail fuel merchants. I found that some of these unfortunate people had been standing there for nearly two hours, and what were they getting when they reached the shop on that bitter Saturday afternoon, with the bitterest east wind we got during the whole period blowing? One stone of wet turf. Do Deputies realise what one stone of wet turf is, to carry these people over from Saturday afternoon until the following Monday morning, when they would queue up again?

There were sights to be seen in this city within the past fortnight that would equal some of the worst sights seen in some of the countries on the Continent where conditions are supposed to be appalling. Photographs have been taken and published in the newspapers, and if they did not have the address "Dublin" underneath, one would imagine that they were taken in some of the worst parts of Germany, and then Deputy Burke is surprised that we should even dare to put down a motion, should dare to criticise the Government or should dare even to call attention to this matter. Deputy Burke may feel that he has a duty, and I admire him for it, up to a point, of course, to support the Minister and the Government, but the people in Opposition have a duty also.

Let me mention another matter which has helped to make the people turf-minded. To their credit be it said, hundreds, if not thousands, of the citizens of this city spent their leisure hours and their holidays in cutting and saving turf on the Dublin mountains. Some of them, I should venture to say, had never seen a bog until they went up to cut turf with some neighbour who probably came up from the country some years ago and who knew something about it. They spent their afternoons, their half-days, their Sundays and their holidays cutting and saving that turf for themselves, and, if they had any surplus, for sale.

What was the Government's first step? It is a long way up there and it is not so easy to cycle up. These men had very limited time and they banded together to get lorries to take them up. They got the lorries and, as soon as they got them, the police got after the lorries, and those men, who were doing useful work not only for themselves but for the nation, found themselves on many occasions forced to throw their bicycles out of the lorries and to jump out themselves to run across the bogs to escape from the police. That, I believe, was subsequently dropped by the Department, but these are just a few of the ways in which people were helped to become turf-minded and to produce turf. Nobody need tell me that this was a bad year, but there are still thousands of tons of turf on the Dublin mountains, and nobody can tell me that, bad as the weather was up to three or four weeks ago, with sufficient transport and sufficient labour, a lot of that turf could not have been saved and brought in. We are bringing it from much farther away and they have no roof over it in these distant places any more than they have on the Dublin mountains.

I do not know sufficient about this coal business to say anything about it and, therefore, I intend to say nothing about it, except this. I know nothing at all about either the British or the American coal situation beyond what I have read in the papers. The only thing which apparently the Government here has in common with the British Government is the excuse put forward by Mr. Shinwell on the other side, the weather. I should like to know from the Minister the amount of coal produced in each of the last three years from the Slieveardagh collieries. I should like to know what was the output of coal and what was the tonnage of coal disposed of from the Slieveardagh collieries during the last complete year for which he has figures. I should like to know from him if there are any definite reasons why it should not have been greater and, if so, what these reasons are.

I want to sum up this situation. We are not going to get turf produced and saved, and we are not going to attract to the cutting and saving of turf the men who know how to cut and save it, by offering them the lowest rate of wages paid in this country. We are not going to get turf transported to this city by giving contracts in the way they have been given up to the present. We are not going to have transport available by making a complete monopoly, so far as possible, and by having private lorries, which could be used in a crisis, tied up. Surely, in the course of 15 years, we ought to have devised some better scheme of distribution of dumps in Dublin than having them confined practically to the Park. It may be all the more economical to dump the turf all in one place but I am not so sure, when it comes to a question of distribution, particularly in an emergency such as this, that that method is quite economical. I challenge the Minister to tell the House why even now, within a week, tens of thousands of tons of timber could not be brought to this city and why supplies could not be sent to every other city and town. I do not believe that even he can explain why we have not an iron ration of timber suitable for firing in this city and every other city and town. The timber is rotting in the hedges, in the rivers and in the woods. Why is not that timber cut into suitable lengths and stacked? Timber does not disimprove by being cut into lengths and stacked; it improves. Deputies on the other side know that, even if the Government does not know it. There is no reason in the world why that should not be done without inflicting any damage on the scenery. It would, in fact, help to remove a great many eye-sores. To find ourselves with, comparatively speaking, unlimited supplies of firewood, with 70,000 persons lining up at the labour exchanges and no firing for the people shows that there is something radically wrong. The Minister will not have an easy task in trying to brush aside the difficulties which have led to the present situation.

Mr. Corry

It is the privilege of those in opposition, firstly, to oppose any work being done, and, secondly, to criticise the work when it is done. That is the position of the Opposition to-day. When it was decided to make this country as self-supporting as possible in respect of fuel, we had Deputies on the opposite benches raising an outcry against it and endeavouring by every means in their power to prevent it. I happened to look to-day, in the Library, at some of the statements which were made at that time. I admit that the majority of those who made these statements have gone before a jury of their fellow-countrymen and have disappeared from this House. They were members of the Fine Gael Party and I suppose they are supporters of it still. We were told then that, instead of keeping the promises we were supposed to have given to provide big farms for people down in Meath, we were endeavouring to drive the unemployed to the bogs. They went to the bogs and turf was produced. Steps were taken, as the Parliamentary Secretary stated, to prepare a long-term policy which would provide turf as a fuel for the people of the country.

Having regard to all the commotion about this motion, I expected that some definite charges would be made by Deputy Costello in his opening statement. He spoke about rackets and other things but he was completely indefinite. He reminded me of the threshing scene at which the boys would gather around one of the party to share in the liquid refreshment but when the fellow in charge of the bottle would have finished there would not be a drop left. A similar position arose in the case of Deputy Costello's statement. There was not the shadow of a definite charge left. He told us that one of the reasons why turf was scarce was that the coal merchants have to pay for it when they get it. Will anybody tell me that the coal merchants have not made sufficient money to do that? I never heard of a coal merchant or a turf merchant going around looking for money. Then, he told us that they were working at a loss of 10/-, odd, a ton. Every man is working at a loss nowadays. He then dealt with the large increase in the number of people who registered for turf. There, certainly, was a large increase but who can blame the people?

They look to their representatives for advice and we know the advice dished out by Deputy Dockrell, for instance. The war was not over a month when he had a question down as to whether the dumps were to be distributed in view of the coal that was coming in. The Opposition cannot blow hot and cold. They cannot be shouting for the dissolution of the dumps and, at the same time, be complaining of the lack of turf. According to Deputy Dockrell, thousands of tons of coal were to come across from John Bull. He wanted to get rid of the dumps and, at the same time, we have this wailing because there is not plenty of turf.

Then, we heard all the yarns about the coal that could be got from America. The Opposition have given up talking about what John Bull was going to send them. They are now talking about what America will send them. I expected better from the Front Bench of the Opposition than the wild stuff which one would expect to get from Deputy Dillon. That Deputy told us a short time ago that 60,000 tons of sugar were waiting for a buyer in France. That was some time before the sugar strike but, when somebody went over, there was not even a cwt. of sugar to be picked up. That is the kind of stuff we get. There is no doubt the situation is serious. Nobody could have foreseen the condition of affairs which prevailed in this country from the 1st July last, with hardly a break. We found it practically impossible to save the harvest. That was also the season for turf production and the laying in of supplies generally, and we had day after day and week after week a regular downpour. Then we came to the time for the pulling of beet and its preparation for the factory. We had a very similar condition of affairs prevailing up to the time when frost and snow arrived some weeks ago. What is the use of talk such as we heard here to-night when we are confronted with conditions of that kind? The only way to provide against that situation is to have a 12 months' supply on hands, and I submit that there never was in this country an opportunity of getting a 12 months' supply on hands.

The Minister may have made mistakes but the man who does not make mistakes will never make anything. Nevertheless, there is not a citizen in this State to-day who will not say that that Minister exceeded all his hopes and expectations during the past seven years. The Minister may have made mistakes in not compelling city authorities to make a greater contribution towards this problem. We heard a lot about Dublin here to-night, and I hear a fair share about Cork, but we know that the county councils were more or less compelled to cut turf during the past seven years. They were compelled to finance that work out of the ratepayers' pockets in order that the cities would not want or go short. There are plenty of idlers in every city, the boys who are drawing the dole. If there is all that turf about which Deputy Morrissey told us on the Dublin mountains, I suggest that a few of the boys from the city might go out and do a little bit of work there. It would help to strengthen their bones. There is too much spoon-feeding in the city, to my mind, and too much anxiety to make the countryman produce for the city. I can see no justification for it in any of the statements I have heard here, and I hold no brief for anybody in this country.

We hear a lot of talk about timber supplies. I say that thousands of tons of timber, that would be required in this country for building purposes, have been cut up for fuel during the past seven years. That is unfortunately, I think, one of the difficulties of the Minister in connection with the provision of firewood, that one has to consider the other uses for which timber will be required. That is, undoubtedly, a problem in itself. I admit that Deputy Morrissey was largely right in his references to turf cutters' wages. We have the very curious position in this country that those who produce essential supplies are the worst-paid. There is too much money for the drone, too much for the get-rich-quick artist. So far as timber is concerned, the Minister need not expect to get any standing timber in this country at 7/6, 10/- or even £1 per ton. The man who would sell it at that price would be an idiot; it is as well to be quite straight and frank about that. I refer to the price of 7/6 per ton for the tree and 50/- or £3 per ton when it is sawn.

There are undoubtedly snags in the situation. These snags have to be met but we are not going to meet them by the kind of criticism I heard here this evening from Deputies whom one would expect to have some sense of responsibility. Neither Deputy Mulcahy nor Deputy Costello has any. Deputy Costello talked here as if he were charging a jury and his charge to the jury in this case was all political froth, and a bad class of political froth at that. I can assure the Deputy that if he poured out froth of that kind in a rural town, he would be laughed out of any fair or at any crossroads at which he might appear. We cannot burk the fact that these difficulties arise and will arise frequently. Many people are themselves to blame for thinking too soon that the trouble was over and for not taking the advice given them by the Taoiseach and the Minister for Supplies previously here when they warned us that we were not yet out of the wood. My personal view is that we will have a shortage of essential supplies in this country for some years to come and the sooner we get down to that situation, the better. If the people are to get bread, the wheat for that bread will have to be produced here and paid for. Similarly, the people producing either turf or wood will have to be paid and paid at rates which will enable them to maintain their families at least in as good a condition as the family of the fellow with the pen behind his ear who is making a living out of their sweat.

The mistake made in regard to this crisis was that you all thought you were out of the wood. You are not out of the wood yet, and I predict that in 1949 you will find a state of affairs in this country as bad as it is to-day. You will find turf and fuel generally as scarce here in 1949 as they are to-day unless steps are taken now to ensure sufficient supplies. Let the gentlemen in the city, the city fathers as they call themselves, shake themselves up a bit and instead of groaning and moaning and waiting for the country boy to cut turf, dry it and almost put it on the doorstep for them, let them organise a body of workers from the city to do this work.

Let the plutocrats in the city, the get-rich-quick artists, pay some contribution from the rates of the city to subsidise the production of turf just as the county ratepayers have had to do for the past seven years. The country people have been paying too long out of the rates for the production of turf, but the country people are getting wise. They are not going to pay 4d. and 5d. in the £ in rates towards the production of turf for the city while the corporation pay nothing at all. Neither are they going to stand for all this nonsense about turf areas and non-turf areas, a system under which we find that a rural town, although it may be 16 miles farther away from a bog than a city, is said to be within the turf area while the city is not. That kind of game might be carried on for a time but it cannot be carried on indefinitely. This system under which the people of the country pay 38/- a ton in order that the people of the city may get cheap turf must come to an end.

An Ceann Comhairle

What about the motion?

Mr. Corry

That is portion of the motion, a Chinn Comhairle, with all respect.

An Ceann Comhairle

I fail to see it.

Mr. Corry

The way to get what you require is very simple—pay for it, and do not wait for the other fellow to pay for you. That is what the fellows in the cities have been doing. Let them take off their coats and do a bit of work at last. Let the city fathers, who make their money ten times more easily than the unfortunate people who have to pay for the production of this turf, pay a little towards it and they will not then have to pay so much in income-tax, supertax and excess profits tax. I think no case has been made here. There is nothing to answer.

Mr. Fagan

It is very, very hard on the people in the cities and towns. I had an example of it to-day when visiting an old lady. I went into this old lady's house and the poor woman, though she had plenty of furniture, was shivering with the cold. I told her that I had brought about a cwt. of blocks in the back of the car. She said she had got some turf yesterday. I looked at the turf. It was in a scandalous condition. You could squeeze the water out of it. This woman got the turf yesterday, and if any Deputy cares to examine it there is a specimen of it on the lawn outside. The Government are to blame because they allow it to be sold in that condition to the people. It is a shame and a disgrace; it is bad management. The whole thing was badly managed. The whole secret is that the Government did not pay the people who are feeding the cities with turf and everything else too.

Deputy Corry made a fine statement for them. We in Westmeath County Council produced turf last year and put it on rail at a price of from 32/- to 34/- a ton. Where is the margin? The labouring men of Westmeath sweated to produce turf for the people of the cities, at 32/- per ton left on rail and canal banks. But they are unwilling to continue. Deputy Corry mentioned that the Government had the excuse of the wet weather. If the Government had been wise they would have made provision for bad weather. I warned everybody that we would have a scarcity of fuel in the city. Since July last there was not a sod of turf saved. The Government should have got at the timber and made it worth while to bring it up to the city.

I got 5/- a ton for standing timber for firewood. The man who bought it and cut it lost £100 on the transaction, and that is there in figures to be examined by anybody. The whole secret is that the Government want the people in the country—the farmer—to grow for nothing, the labouring man to harvest for nothing—and let other people get all the good out of it. The petrol strike lasted for three weeks or a month because of a paltry penny or two and now the Government is suffering because that fortnight or three weeks was the time that the turf should have been brought up to Dublin. But the lorries were without petrol. Every farmer knows the sun shines only on a few days in the year and it was born and bred into us to make use of any day when the sun shines. That is where you people made the mistake. The sun was shining during that fortnight or three weeks of the strike.

Another point which Deputy Corry raised was that the lazy people on the whole would not go out and cut turf. Well, I tried to get people in the City of Dublin who had friends and relations in the country to be allowed to cut turf but they were not allowed to do so because they had their own sons to get that turf for the people of the city. Deputy Corry says the lazy people were unemployed but they were not allowed to do it. It would be the very same with the wheat, the beet and everything else. The farmers have fed you for the last two or three years, and the labouring man has helped you through the emergency, but their eyes are open now and they will not continue to do so. No one made money out of this war except the people in the cities and towns and these people with a margin of profit from 32/- a ton this year and 30/- a ton the year before. The Westmeath County Council landed the turf on the railways and the canal banks for that money.

If the Government had been wise they would have raised the price of timber months ago when they saw that the winter was bad. Since the price of timber was raised two days ago there is a great deal more of it being cut. Now one will get £3 a ton for it at the side of the road. Before it would not pay to cut it down. It is the curse of the country. It is the same with the drapers and everybody else. They have too big a margin. I do not want to be hard on anybody. We will be without bread and without sugar if the Government does not wake up soon. In the County of Westmeath I daresay there are not five farmers who have put a plough——

An Ceann Comhairle

We cannot have a debate on tillage.

Mr. Fagan

It is a serious thing that a plough has not been put in the ground in Westmeath. The Government are definitely to blame. It is the same way with everything else, muddling and everything, and I say again that the farmers, the ratepayers and the labouring men—the men who have fed you during the emergency— will not continue unless the Government makes it worth their while.

Mr. Colley

Speaking as a City Deputy, the cause of the desperate emergency in fuel into which the city has been plunged in the last few weeks, if one is to believe Deputy Fagan, is that the farmers want to hold the city people up to ransom. We all know that some bog areas in the country have made tremendous money in the last few years—money that they never made previously. I know myself that I was able to get turf delivered to my house at £2 a ton in 1934, and if a private bog holder was able to do that at that time I do not see how he could say he is not being paid to-day.

When the turf scheme was introduced, the members of the Opposition did everything possible to prevent its development. They succeeded in preventing the wholesale co-operation we would have got throughout the country if they had taken the opposite line. They told us it was putting us back 200 or 300 years, that it was misspent money if we used it on the bogs. Bad as we are to-day, where would we be at all if that scheme had not been pushed through? Seven years ago we would have been in the position we are in to-day, and worse, and it is only now we would have been beginning to get any turf, if it were not that the Government had the foresight then, in spite of the opposition, to take the preparatory steps to provide it.

Now we are told that that same Government had no foresight in the last few months and is to be censured for that. Does not everyone know that the whole thing is due to the appalling bad weather of this year? Do we not know that in spite of the weather, only for the appalling conditions of the roads in the last few weeks, the supplies, even though wet—and I do not see how they could have been prevented from being wet in the months that went before—would have been kept coming in sufficiently to keep us going.

We have had some very long speeches and verbose statements from the Opposition this evening. Deputy Costello seemed to let himself go to-day with pontifical statements, but did not give us a scrap of evidence to back him up. He persisted in gross exaggeration and hypocritical cant. He said he was going to startle the country with his facts and, though he spoke for nearly an hour, he did not produce a solitary fact beyond what Deputy Mulcahy had told us. He repeated the same things. The only new thing he did mention that I caught was the fact that, yesterday or to-day, on one of the streets of Dublin, he saw a woman and child standing around to get the scraps of turf where supplies were being put down a chute. He used that to show that the Government were all wrong. I am a city man, born and reared, with my family in Dublin for generations; and I know that, unfortunately, that is nothing new and in the days when there was plenty of coal, even under the Fine Gael Government, that sight was all too common. Yet these are the people on whom Deputy Fagan wants to force the price up.

Mr. Fagan

Raise the margin from 32/- to £3.

Mr. Colley

I did not interrupt.

Mr. Coburn

It was Deputy Corry who suggested that.

Mr. Colley

We were told by Deputy Costello that timber was quite available in 1945 but there was none in 1946. Why was that? Because it would be tempting profiteering in it also and, because the price would not be raised, we were left without it. Maybe, just as was put from these benches in the prices debate as well as from the opposite benches, the fact of doing without it and going through what we have gone through will show those people that we cannot be held up to ransom so easily. After our experience of the last few weeks, we would be prepared to put up with a lot more rather than give way. I am not denying for a moment that the position in Dublin is tremendously bad. We have got our supplies, but the stuff is bad. I do not see that there is anything further which could have been done or that this position would have arisen but for the abnormal weather. Supposing that, even a month ago, when it started, we had timber felled and the turf cut and dried on the bog and the whole organisation necessary ready for it, could we have got it into the city over the roads? We could not. There is no use in trying to make political capital, as it has pleased God to send us this weather, but that is what the Opposition are trying to do.

We had the word "racket" thrown round to-day. We are told that Fuel Importers, Ltd., was a racket. As far as I can see, there is not an honest man in the country outside of the members of the opposite benches, from the way that word was used here. Deputy Mulcahy said the Government were to blame for not settling the hauliers' strike last summer. Presumably the only way we could interpret that is that the Government should have insisted on whatever demands were being made being met. In connection with that, I would quote here what his colleague Deputy O'Higgins said here on the 9th May, 1946, as reported in column 2557 of the Official Debates, in dealing with turf hauliers. He said:—

"The most fabulous and fantastic fortunes ever dreamed of in this country were made in the turf transport racket and are being made at present in that racket of dragging turf up from the country to the city."

Yet Deputy Mulcahy goes on to-day and the only implication in what he said is that more should have been given to those people to settle the strike. It is time they tried to decide on some sort of a view about something and not have these different notions thrown over here, as it is very hard to know what the Deputies on the opposite benches mean.

In the whole debate so far we have not had a concrete suggestion as to what could be done in the present circumstances. We have had a whole lot of people putting themselves up as prophets after the event. Anybody could be like that. Anybody could see now when it has happened, but that one could tell even four weeks ago that we were going to have these four weeks of this weather is something not a member of the opposite benches believes. One must think, working on the same lines, that the British Government for all their efforts to restore their trade—the great efforts that they have been making—were also very lax in that they did not foresee the weather which has upset them and which has caused us a good deal of trouble. I think the Deputies on the Opposition Benches, instead of taking the line that they have taken, ought, for the sake of the people, give the House the benefit of any suggestions which they have to make and which may prove helpful for the people, instead of trying to make political capital out of this situation.

Mr. Flanagan

A fortnight ago Deputy Byrne raised this very important question and pointed out the seriousness of the fuel situation in Dublin. It is serious not only in Dublin but throughout the country. On that occasion the Minister said that all he could do was to make a request for prayers for fine weather. Prayers for fine weather are all right, and I do not blame the Government for the bad weather. The Government has no responsibility for the weather but it has for the present fuel famine, because the members of it were the men who shouted from every platform in the country, "burn everything British except coal." I am very glad that the Minister for Industry and Commerce to-day can eat the words he used in 1932 and 1933. If they had British coal to-day they would appreciate it very much.

I come from perhaps the best turfproducing area in the country. It supplies most of the needs of Dublin City. Deputy Colley has thrown out the challenge that no practical suggestions have been made by the members of the Opposition as to how the present situation can be satisfactorily dealt with. The Minister made a very gloomy statement over the radio during the week in the course of which he referred to the national pool. I am sure that the next issue of Dublin Opinion will have a reference to the national pool, because as far as I can see all or nearly all the turf coming to Dublin from the country looks as if it came out of some pool. I want to say to the Minister that if he wants his request complied with during the coming year he will have to cater properly for the turf producers. The bog workers are labouring under the worst possible conditions. They are employed by the local authorities. They are on the bog from early in the morning until late at night producing turf for the miserable, mean wage of 42/- per week.

In many cases they have to work for a month before they get a fortnight's pay. Such conditions should not be allowed to exist, and the Minister, his Department and the Government should hang their heads in shame. In many cases where bogs were taken over compulsorily, and rightly so during the emergency, the owners have not been paid for their turbary by the local authority. When they made requests for payment they were told that they would not be paid until the local authority, or, in other words, the county manager was satisfied. That is no way to treat the owners of bogs. Take the position in my own constituency. We have a turf camp at Edenderry. Any time that a citizen walks through that town he can see the bog workers, good, hardy, strong men, going from huckster to huckster and from grocer to grocer carrying a loaf under their arms, and taking it back to the turf camp. That is a clear admission of the starvation conditions that prevail in the camps. An empty sack cannot stand, and neither can a hungry man work. Hunger and bad conditions exist to a very great extent in the turf camps in my constituency. Numerous complaints as to the conditions have been made. Those making them have been victimised by the people in authority, and have been removed immediately from the turf camps. They are looked upon as disturbers because they are anxious to improve the conditions from which the fuel workers are suffering. I ask the Department to make inquiries from any respectable citizen in Edenderry. If so, it will be found that night after night numbers of bog workers leave the camps, which are supposed to have full and plenty. They go into the town to see if they can get food to carry back to the camp. If those men were not able to work in the past, owing to the conditions prevailing in the camp, how are they going to endure the bread rationing during the coming season? If they go into the town of Edenderry now they will not be able to secure a loaf. When there was no bread rationing they were hungry, but what is the position going to be during the coming year?

The Minister cannot say that he has no responsibility. I say it is the responsibility of the Government. I have been a trade unionist all my life. I am prepared to advocate among the people on whom all depends, the turf producers—the vast majority of them are employed by the local authorities— that if they have any sense they will throw aside their patriotic views and their nationalism because all these have been long thrown aside by the people opposite who stand for grab all and get all. I say that if the workers have any sense they will strike and will not drive a slean in the bogs until they are granted decent wages and better working conditions than they have been able to secure in the past. Those men do not deserve the treatment they have received.

I can say, from my experience of turf production in Laoighis and Offaly, that not only have the local authorities done their very best under very trying conditions, but that they are not to blame for the conditions laid down by the Government, because they have to observe them. The Minister or the Government cannot expect men to have their hearts and souls in a turf production drive while labouring under these horrid conditions. I hope the men compelled to labour on the bogs for 42/- a week will this time have proper leadership, and that they will throw aside their patriotism, their national spirit and outlook because all that has been killed by the present Government. I hope they will fight for themselves, for better wages and better conditions.

If the Minister were to pay an unexpected visit to the turf camp at Edenderry some night he would find the workers leaving the bog. He would find that on a wet night many of them have to go out in wet clothes and in wet shirts. They have no fires at which to change their clothes.

Many of them have been taken to local hospitals suffering from pneumonia while a few have died. Many of the patients in sanatoria throughout the country were bog workers a few years ago, and worked under the conditions I have mentioned. Despite many requests that have been made to improve the conditions in the turf camps in the Midlands nothing has been done except to make appeals to them to arouse their national spirit, to cut turf and to slave not for themselves but for the love of country. We do not see the Government doing a lot for the love of the country or the present Ministers working for the love of the country. They are working for the love of themselves and their friends and cliques and for Fuel Importers, Limited, whoever they may be, because they are the only section of the people, so far as I can see, who are making anything out of the present turf situation. The turf and fuel situation is a complete racket. So much of a racket is it that at Cuffe Street in this city yesterday 2/- was charged for a bag of turf and 10d. for a stone of turf. If that is what the poor of Dublin have to endure, it speaks very badly for the Administration.

Mr. Coburn

Deputy Corry says he will make them pay more.

Mr. Flanagan

It is a very good thing for this House that there is only one in it like Deputy Corry. It is a very good thing for the country that diehards like him are almost weeded out. If the Government want to have a state of affairs existing this time 12 months in which we will not be met with the present obstacles, here are the practical suggestions that Deputy Colley wants adopted: give a bounty of so much per ton to the private turf cutter and that would be an encouragement for him to cut turf; pay decent wages to the men and improve working conditions in the bogs; feed the workers in Edenderry, Clonsast and the other turf camps. Pay them decent wages and do not have them begging bread in the streets of Edenderry.

Mr. Lemass

That is a damned lie and everyone knows it is.

Mr. Flanagan

I live amongst these workers and I know the conditions under which they work.

Mr. Lemass

The Deputy is telling lies and he is doing that merely for the purpose of creating trouble.

Dr. O'Higgins

Is the Minister entitled to describe the remarks of the Deputy as a damaned lie?

Mr. Lemass

He is lying here for the purpose of making trouble in the turf camps. He will not succeed and I want his motives exposed.

Dr. O'Higgins

The Minister in a blunt statement referred to the Deputy's remarks as being a damned lie.

Mr. Lemass

Yes, a damned lie.

Dr. O'Higgins

I call on the Chair to have that remark withdrawn.

An Leas-Cheann Comhairle

It is not necessary, because a person may say something which he thinks is perfectly true and it may be referred to as a lie. If anyone refers to what another person states as a lie, he does not call him a liar.

Dr. O'Higgins

It is in order then to refer to it as a damned lie?

An Leas-Cheann Comhairle

It is a matter of opinion. The Chair is not in a position to judge objectively between them.

Dr. O'Higgins

May I ask for a direction? When the Minister is speaking in this debate, is any and every Deputy entitled to interject that his statements are damned lies?

An Leas-Cheann Comhairle

The Chair can only rule on matters as they present themselves to the Chair at the moment. The Chair cannot make any ruling in advance.

Dr. O'Higgins

Am I not entitled to my opinion that the Chair is ruled by precedent established and that we are establishing a precedent now which we are entitled to follow?

Mr. Flanagan

I demand that the Minister should withdraw that, in view of the fact that I live amongst these men, who are my colleagues and friends. I would be very sorry to utter an untruth in regard to this matter. I have been referred to as a liar by the Minister.

An Leas-Cheann Comhairle

No. It is a difference of opinion which the Chair is not in a position to deal with or judge upon. I will ask the Deputy to proceed.

Mr. Blowick

On a point of order. Will the Chair hold that the Minister's remark was Parliamentary?

An Leas-Cheann Comhairle

Perfectly.

Mr. Blowick

That is sufficient.

An Leas-Cheann Comhairle

If he believed what he said to be true.

Mr. Blowick

I am not disputing the truth of either the Minister's statement or Deputy Flanagan's. I am asking whether the Minister's remark was un-Parliamentary or not and whether it should be allowed to pass by the Chair. The matter is in your hands.

An Leas-Cheann Comhairle

There have been various decisions on that. I do not think it necessary to refer to them. A man may make such a statement objectively and still think he was telling the truth. Let Deputy Flanagan proceed.

Mr. Byrne

I must protest. Various Deputies have objected to the words "damned lie" being used in reference to Deputy Flanagan and I think, in the interest of the good conduct of the House for the future, that the Minister should graciously withdraw the words. He has had an assurance from Deputy Flanagan that he is telling the truth, that he meets these men. When a Deputy gives that assurance to a Minister, or a Minister gives an assurance to a Deputy, the person concerned graciously withdraws. Deputy Flanagan is standing alone in this House and is doing good work and it is only right that members of other Parties should come to his rescue and ask for protection for him. I submit to the Minister that he should withdraw the words.

An Leas-Cheann Comhairle

The personal honour of each Deputy is in the custody of the Chair and the Chair will not allow any Deputy who states what he believes to be true to be dubbed a liar. The Minister referred in no way to the personal character of Deputy Flanagan. Deputy Flanagan made a certain statement which the Minister stated was a damned lie. It is a matter of objective judgment on the facts. So far as the Chair can judge, what Deputy Flanagan believed to be an absolutely true statement, the Minister regarded as a damned lie. It is a matter of the facts on which the Chair is not able to decide. But if anybody reflects on the character or truthfulness or trustworthiness or credibility of any particular Deputy, the Chair will protect that Deputy. But no reference, no charge, no asmuchán, as we say in Irish, has been thrown on Deputy Flanagan by the Minister.

Dr. O'Higgins

May I remind the Chair that the Deputy stated what he claimed to have seen? That was his assertion, that he witnessed——

Mr. Lemass

That he saw workers from the camp begging for bread in the streets of Edenderry.

Dr. O'Higgins

He claimed to have seen that. He was entitled to make the remarks he made. The Minister's stating that that was a damned lie in the circumstances was equivalent to calling the Deputy a liar.

An Leas-Cheann Comhairle

The Chair has given a very definite ruling on the matter. I do not want the proceedings to be delayed any further.

Mr. D. Morrissey

May I ask, am I to take it that the expression "damned lie" is from now on a Parliamentary expression?

An Leas-Cheann Comhairle

So long as it is purely objective.

Dr. O'Higgins

So long as it refers to a Deputy who claims to have seen what he states.

Mr. Byrne

When a Deputy gives an assurance that he had direct knowledge of the matter he was speaking about and that he believed he was speaking the truth, Ministers on previous occasions accepted the Deputy's statement. I think the Minister should withdraw the statement, because Deputy Flanagan represents a large number of people and if it is allowed to go out that he can be accused of telling damned lies it will apply to every other Deputy at a later date and the Chair ought not to allow it. I would appeal to the Minister to accept the Deputy's word.

Mr. Lemass

I will not accept his word.

Mr. Byrne

That has been the procedure.

Mr. Flanagan

On some future occasion when you are in the Chair can I call some Deputy of the Government Party a damned liar?

An Leas-Cheann Comhairle

The Deputy has raised a point to which I have not referred. I am talking about objective facts not reflecting on the personal character of any person in the House. I want to make that very clear. The Deputy will proceed with his speech and carry on his arguments without reference to personal character.

Dr. O'Higgins

One can refer to his statement as being a damned lie without calling him a damned liar.

Mr. Flanagan

If the Minister called me a "damned liar", I am entitled to call him a damned liar, and that is what he is.

An Leas-Cheann Comhairle

This is too serious a matter.

Mr. Flanagan

I realise how serious it is.

Mr. Keating

The Chair is asked to put it right.

An Leas-Cheann Comhairle

As I have said, the character of every Deputy in this House is in the custody of the Chair. I would not allow the personal character of any Deputy to be aspersed while I would be here. No aspersion was made on the Deputy's personal character. Reference was made to certain objective facts and there ensued a dispute as to the truth or otherwise of those objective facts, on which the Chair cannot judge. I am not called upon to give a judgement as to the truth or falsehood of what the Deputy says to be true and which the Minister characterised as being damned lies. I am not called upon to judge between them. The Deputy may be making statements which may not be true but which he may believe to be perfectly true. Will the Deputy carry on his arguments?

Mr. Keating

The Minister is a privileged man. I remember a few years ago when a certain Deputy interrupted in this House when the Taoiseach was speaking and said that what the Taoiseach said was an untruth. What happened? The Deputy was put out of the House.

An Leas-Cheann Comhairle

At the moment, the Chair is ruling on matters which have come under its immediate notice, not on matters of a retrospective and indefinite kind.

Mr. Keating

What is sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander.

Captain Giles

What about the duck?

Mr. Flanagan

I am a Deputy who has the confidence of thousands of people in my constituency, and I am damned if I will stand in this House and hear the Minister for Industry and commerce calling me a damned liar.

An Leas-Cheann Comhairle

The Minister did not call you a damned liar.

Mr. Flanagan

He did, with all due respect to you.

An Leas-Cheann Comhairle

It is a different thing altogether. I have ruled.

Mr. Flanagan

I think your hearing must be failing you. The Minister definitely used those words and I repeat those words.

Mr. Keating

The Chair is not ruling; it is fooling.

An Leas-Cheann Comhairle

If the Deputy does not wish to carry on as requested by the Chair, he can sit down.

Mr. Flanagan

In view of the fact that the Chair has asked me to sit down or to carry on on such conditions, I will be compelled to withdraw from the debate, but I am not going without telling him something. It seems to me it is lowering the dignity of this House very much. On the last occasion that this question arose with the Chair, I made a statement here to the Taoiseach and I happened to remark that I did not believe the Taoiseach and immediately the Chair made me apologise, on the grounds that saying I did not believe the Taoiseach was as much as to say that he was a liar. I had to leave the House two years ago.

An Leas-Cheann Comhairle

We are not discussing precedents at the moment. The Chair has given a certain ruling.

Mr. Flanagan

I accept the Chair's ruling and I ask the grocers and the business people of Edenderry to judge which of us, the Minister for Industry and Commerce or myself, is the liar.

An Leas-Cheann Comhairle

You can go down to Edenderry but while you are here you will obey the Chair.

Captain Giles

Many of us want to speak and this is going on too long.

An Leas-Cheann Comhairle

Deputy Flanagan, please.

Mr. Flanagan

In view of the fact that this has arisen, I may say that I know the conditions under which these men are labouring. I have visited Edenderry on numerous occasions and Portarlington is only seven miles from me. I am quite familiar with the conditions under which they are working. I say without fear of contradiction that the Minister responsible for such conditions should be ashamed of himself and should be the last man to make an appeal for an improvement in the fuel situation while he is at the same time asking men to labour on the bogs under such conditions. I only hope and trust that these men who are being asked to carry the slean and to stand between the shafts of the bog-barrow during the coming year will realise that they have an obligation to their own families to see that they will be able to earn sufficient to keep the life's blood flowing in their veins. I make this appeal from this House to the labouring men and bog workers throughout the country to leave this country the way it is unless the Government is prepared to do something to improve the workers' conditions.

Despite the fact that the Minister does not believe the case that I have outlined about the turf camps, I challenge the Minister to come down to my constituency, to visit the turf camps and to question the unfortunate workers about the conditions they are compelled to endure. I am surprised that the Leas-Cheann Comhairle has not received some of these complaints from the very large majority of West Corkmen who are labouring under those conditions in the bogs of Edenderry and Clonsast. If the Minister wants to improve the fuel situation during the coming year, he must improve those conditions; he must give a bounty to the private producer to encourage increased production; he must take steps to see that the thousands and thousands of trees throughout the country are cut down and made available for firewood because they are good for nothing else. I read during the week that in County Dublin one of the landlord type, one of the old imperialist type, had offered to open his wood to supply timber for the poor of this city. The next day, the Minister, in reply to Deputy Dr. O'Higgins, said he would not allow the Army to fell the timber in the Phoenix Park. We see the generosity of the landlords that were routed out of this country; their hearts are bleeding for the poor of this city, while the Government, that was elected on the votes of the people, through bribery and false promises, refuse to release the timber that would fill the empty grates and warm the kitchens of the many hundreds that are freezing in this city and throughout the country to-day.

If restrictions were lifted on the transport of turf by country people to friends and relatives in the city, more turf would be brought into the city and it would not in any way interfere with the turf supplies in the national pool. As a matter of fact, supplies in the national pool would last longer if, in the case of 50 per cent. or 75 per cent. of the people of the City of Dublin, their friends or relatives in the country could take a perch or two of turf, cut it and have it brought to Dublin for them. But the Minister for Industry and Commerce, in order to make Fuel Importers, Limited, fatter and richer, in order to pile up the funds, while the producer and the consumer grow thinner and poorer, continues to enforce these restrictions. He does that because it suits himself, his friends and his colleagues. Why not permit turf to come in in unlimited quantities to the city? It would provide a market for turf; it would mean cash for the producer and fires for the people of Dublin. There should be none of this rot, nonsense and codology of preventing turf from being brought to the city and then coming here with promises, crying crocodile tears for the conditions prevailing in the city, due to his incompetence, due to bad administration of the Department of Industry and Commerce, due to the fact that they are so anxious to see that everything possible will be done by way of piling up huge profits for Fuel Importers, Limited, while poor unfortunate people in the City of Dublin are compelled to suffer and endure the cold.

Is it any wonder that we see people dropping dead with the cold in the streets, a case of which in my constituency was instanced in last night's Herald? It is no wonder. These are conditions which should not exist in any country. I would even go so far as to say that this matter is more important than the harvest. The Army were released for harvest work. Why not release it for this all-important work? Why not get the Army into the woods throughout the country? There is as much timber in Brittas wood in Clonaslee, of firewood quality, according to the Forestry Department, as would keep a large portion of this city going for a considerable time, and it is estimated that it would keep the town of Mountmellick going for 250 years, and still there is not a branch cut from any tree.

The Department, all knotted up in red tape, is responsible for the appalling conditions that exist, not alone in Dublin, but in every provincial town. Those conditions will continue to exist until the practical suggestions I have put forward are put into effect. My suggestions are that we should have no restrictions on the entry of turf into Dublin, that we should open the woods, get the Army going, release the civil servants who want to be released, and let them out with axes and cross-cuts to do their part. They are good men; most of them come from the country; they have the knowledge and experience, and the work will be only play to them. If the Government are genuinely interested in the fuel situation they will adopt those suggestions and the rotten codology that has prevailed in the past, with permits for this and that, permits to shift a lorry of turf here or there, will be wiped out.

If a person living in Dublin, or any other town or city, has a friend prepared to send him turf, let that turf be allowed in here. There will thereby be more in the national pool, because the people who get the turf from their friends will not draw from the pool and in that way there will be more turf available.

The most essential thing of all is an improvement in the conditions under which the turf producers are compelled to labour. I have had complaints on numerous occasions. I think I heard the late Councillor James Larkin—God rest his soul—when he was a member of this House, referring to the manner in which turf was clamped in the city. I think he was referring to the North Wall. It was clamped in such a manner that it was wide open to the sea breezes, which contain moisture. The clamping of county council turf could also be improved.

Deputy Colley, Deputy Butler and other city Deputies have complained of the wet turf. I sympathise with the Dublin people; I am sorry for those who have to use that turf. Its condition is due to bad management in clamping in the country. It requires experienced people to clamp turf. You must thatch turf to protect it from the wintry weather. The prevailing winds come mostly from the south. In the Midlands the turf was clamped from east to west, but the county councils gave instructions that turf should be clamped from north to south. I do not know whether the Minister has experience in this business. I have, because I cut turf time and again; I have wheeled turf and probably will do it again, and I am sure that is more than the Minister ever did.

I say without fear of contradiction that for a great deal of wet turf in the cities, the local authorities are responsible. There was bad management after the turf was cut. I have seen hundreds of horse loads of turf dumped back into the bog-holes, despite the fact that the taxpayer must pay for all that.

An Leas-Cheann Comhairle

So far the Deputy has been dealing with the production of turf. This motion deals with the supply of turf once it is produced.

Mr. Flanagan

It cannot be supplied until it is produced.

An Leas-Cheann Comhairle

I am aware of that. They are different operations and involve different implications. The motion deals specifically with the supply of turf to the populations in the towns and other places; it does not deal with the production of turf.

Mr. Flanagan

I appeal to the Government to see that the men responsible for the production of turf will get better treatment in the coming year. The manner in which the unfortunate turf producers have been treated is both shameful and disrespectful.

Mr. M. O'Sullivan

My association with the domestic fuel supply position does not date merely from this debate. As a matter of fact, at the first meeting of the Dáil following the Summer Recess I put a question to the Minister, asking him if, from the information then at his disposal, he was satisfied the domestic ration would be obtain able throughout the winter and the spring. His reply was that, with the information then available, he hoped that would be so. Again, on the 22nd of last month, I put a question with reference to the fuel supply position, indicating that because of the protracted bad weather during the autumn months the position was developing to a serious stage. The Minister's reply was to the effect that consumption had increased by 50 per cent. over last year and that weather conditions had very seriously militated against the quality of the turf then in the dumps. He went on to say:—

"I am hopeful nothing in the nature of a serious shortage will develop, but it will be appreciated that, in the circumstances I have explained, anything in the line of forecasts must of necessity be largely conjectural."

Whatever else we may blame the Government for, I do not think we would be on right ground in blaming them for the severity of the weather. That being so, I feel the House might well endeavour, in such a serious debate as this, to ascertain the factors that have led to the rather chaotic conditions which have obtained during the past two weeks, particularly in the City of Dublin, and find out from the Minister how the immediate position can be dealt with, more especially in respect of what he described in his radio message as the long-term plan which, I take it, will cover the domestic fuel position and the industrial position as well.

There is one aspect of this matter that has intrigued me and I have not yet got a satisfactory explanation, although I endeavoured on various occasions to find one. The position is this. The Department, some six weeks ago, intimated to Fuel Importers, Limited, and through them to the distributors, that they were to allocate to the suppliers drawings on the basis of the previous year's ration. Now, this year the ration has been reduced to half a ton per month, and it was on the basis of one ton per month last year. That raises a number of questions. Are we to assume that the Departmental regulations have been strictly adhered to; that is, that Fuel Importers, Limited, allocated supplies to the merchants in accordance with the instructions from the Minister? Presumably, if that were so, these drawings were debited against the amount in the dumps. It is also logical to assume that there was turf to meet these drawings. If that be so, if the merchants had a supply of turf on the basis of a ton per month for each consumer, and if they were delivering that ton each month, on the basis of last year's delivery, and if the distributors carried out their instructions, how comes it that thousands of city people have been short of turf for the past two or three weeks? Who has fallen down on the job? Would it be Fuel Importers, Limited, or the distributors? I do not know whether the Minister has sought an explanation of that, but until it is explained, we are not in a position to say where the fault lies.

If we take the case of the distributors, presumably they got their allocations from Fuel Importers, Limited, and, while we may allow for a certain disorganisation in transport, will the merchants explain why it is they have not given to their registered customers the amounts the Department allowed them to give? My own suggestion for what it is worth is that this whole situation has arisen from a rather loose and ineffective system of rationing, devised at a time when it was expected to operate in normal conditions, and that there has been injected into it now a set of abnormal conditions which has completely dislocated the original intentions. The rationing of turf as a vital commodity apparently was not taken as seriously as the rationing of other commodities, for instance, bread. Bread rationing is definitely troublesome from quite a number of aspects, and it must be presumed that the objection to a comprehensive system of turf rationing, when turf rationing was initiated, was due to the fact that, since the turf would have to be sold in small quantities, there would have been a good deal of complication and trouble.

That brings us to the kernel of the serious position in the City of Dublin. When rationing was introduced, it apparently applied only to those people who were in a position to buy a ton, a half ton or a quarter ton of turf, while, outside that range, there were thousands of people who were not in a position to register with the ordinary retailer and were dependent on other agencies. Is it these agencies which have fallen down? We must assume that the turf was in the dumps since apparently a check was kept on them and the Department regarded it as all right to issue the allocations to which I have referred. On whose shoulders lies the fault? I suggest that the Minister should address himself to that aspect because there is somebody seriously at fault in the City of Dublin, or we would not have the widespread complaints we have had during the past week or two.

I think there is justifiable cause for complaint in that, seeing that the bad weather was likely to be protracted— again the Government must not be blamed for the weather, but there were reasonable indications and signs that, having set in on a rather severe basis, it was likely to continue so—at a certain stage of what might be termed the crisis, there was no evidence of a realisation of how serious the position was and no evidence of any widespread organisation to meet it on the lines on which an effort is being made to meet it at present. In that respect, may I say that the minds of the people would have been greatly eased, and, in fact, real value would have flown from the effort, if the action now initiated by Fuel Importers, Limited, had been taken ten or 14 days ago?

There is the other aspect of the position, an aspect which I regard as the more serious aspect, that by reason of the protracted nature of the severe weather, there was a very real fear that, once the supplies at the dumps became exhausted, there was not means of replenishment. It must have been a very real fear, so far as the Minister is concerned, and therefore again those concerned should have been prompted to think of other means of meeting a state of emergency of that character. The Minister undoubtedly had made efforts so far as coal is concerned, but I suggest that the position might have been greatly eased here if there had been energetic efforts by those responsible in the direction of securing an adequate supply of firewood. It is evident from what we now know that a very large supply of wood not suitable for commercial purposes was available and that sufficient transport could possibly, in certain circumstances, have been made available, but unfortunately a very serious lapse of time, due to the harsh weather conditions, elapsed before these steps were taken.

There is one rather bright spot in this grim picture and it is only right that it should be recorded. May I say that it is extremely fortunate that it is so and whoever is responsible deserves, in all the circumstances, to be commended? I refer to the fact that those responsible for the supply of fuel to the depots catering for board of assistance beneficiaries have maintained that supply and that the turf has been of good quality. It is a mercy in the circumstances that that is so and, as I say, in view of all the circumstances, those responsible for that arrangement should be commended.

I should like to draw the notice of the Minister to one local matter which concerns me and other public representatives in the city. In order to ensure, some two years ago, that housing schemes in outlying districts would have supplies of turf of which they otherwise might be deprived, in that bellmen and others would not visit these areas because of the distances involved, the corporation initiated a system of fuel depots. These depôts were not run by the corporation, but were leased to private individuals, who charged the normal prices. I understand—and I am anxious that the Minister or his officials will have the point looked into as speedily as possible—that the supplies to these depots have been cut down in relation to the drawings in 1946, without any regard to the fact that, in the intervening period, over 12 months, there have been pretty big additions in these areas. In the case of Cabra alone, some 200 houses have been added and, apparently, in the arrangement for the depots, no regard has been had by anybody to the requirements of these people. That, at least, is the information I have, and I should like the Minister to look into it. It seems inequitable, and if the main supplies are available, I suggest that the allocations to these depôts be made on the basis that the number of customers has increased very considerably since 1946.

Minister for Industry and Commerce (Mr. Lemass)

The country is passing through a fuel crisis. I have no intention of saying anything which might appear to minimise the magnitude of that crisis. It is quite easy for anyone to appreciate the real hardship which results from a scarcity of domestic fuel. I think, however, that in such a crisis the country might have expected to have received from the Fine Gael Party a better contribution than this motion, this cynical effort to turn the sufferings of the people to their Party advantage. If they had asked for time here to discuss this national difficulty on a constructive basis for the purpose of pooling ideas and suggestions as to how the hardships caused by the crisis might be minimised, they would gladly have been facilitated.

But their reaction to this development was not a desire to help but a desire to find fault, to apportion blame, to secure for themselves out of the position the maximum Party advantage. The Government is accused of lacking foresight. It needed no very great foresight in any of the past few years to know we were going to have fuel difficulties and that these fuel difficulties would continue even when the war ended. Because we knew there would be fuel difficulties and that the best possible means of meeting those difficulties was to maximise the production of fuel within the country, year after year the Taoiseach and other Minister spoke on the radio and at meetings and appealed to the people through the Press and otherwise to help in every possible manner the production of turf, so that we should get the highest possible output. In not one of those years did the Fine Gael Party, as such, back that campaign. It is easy to talk of foresight and then discuss only events that have passed. When there was work to be done, when these difficulties could have been minimised by action and when they could have helped that action, they sat silent. They contented themselves here in the Dáil with finding fault and grumbling about details of organisation.

We are not going to be finished with fuel difficulties this month or this year. We shall still have the problem next winter and the winter after that. If we are to minimise this problem, it will be by reason of the productive work done this year. If we are to get that productive work done, there must be goodwill behind it. To ensure that goodwill, all Parties and all sections must be prepared to support it. I do not know what Deputies mean by "foresight." If they mean foreseeing events likely to occur, then I can say we foresaw the probable developments in relation to fuel as clearly as anybody else. If they mean taking reasonable precautions against possible adverse developments, then I say those precautions were taken.

We can consider this fuel position under various headings. The first is coal. Before dealing with the general issue of coal supplies, may I dispose of this matter of American coal? I do not want to raise or discuss now the question whether coal imported last year from America would have increased the total supplies of coal to this country. In so far as the British Government had coal difficulties and were allocating coal to us on a basis which was decided by them, the fortuitous advent of coal from another source would, probably, have been regarded by them as a reason for effecting a corresponding reduction in the supplies coming here from their stocks.

Mr. D. Morrissey

Did they say that?

Mr. Lemass

I have no reason for assuming that. I do not want to discuss that issue. However, I think that the Deputy can apply his commonsense to the question, the same as I did. We had offers of American coal last year, as we had offers of American flour, as was revealed in a discussion here some days ago. We could not avail of one or the other without export licences from the American Government. Until last Saturday, we had no information from the American Government that they were prepared to give export licences to shippers sending coal to this country. However, many American coal traders were contacting coal traders here and making offers to supply coal if export licences could be obtained. I understand that the American Government has been allocating coal to Europe in accordance with the recommendations of an organisation called the European Coal Organisation. We are not members of that organisation. We have always regarded—I think it is internationally so regarded—the coal trade between this country and Great Britain as being in a special category. We have good reason to know that, if we had been members of the European Coal Organisation, the total quantity of coal we should have obtained would have been less.

The American authorities a fortnight ago intimated that they would not then be prepared to allocate coal for export to this country except with the concurrence of the European Coal Organisation. Inquiries seemed to indicate that the concurrence of the European Coal Organisation would not be forthcoming. It was for that reason that the decision conveyed by the American Minister on Saturday last, to allocate 34,000 tons of coal for export to this country in February, represented a change in policy and, I feel sure, a change which was consequent upon the abnormal situation which had developed here, as well as on the representations which had been made by us, and on our behalf, to the American coal allocating authority.

There was a situation in January which may have caused some misunderstanding. There are in the United States two authorities concerned with the exportation of coal— the authority which allocates coal as between one country and another and the authority which issues licences to individual American traders to export coal in accordance with those allocations. It appears that, in the month of January, the licence-issuing authority did, in fact, issue licences to three traders in America to export coal to this country. Information to that effect reached us through the trade and, on inquiry, the American official authorities intimated that the licences had not been authorised by the allocating authority. We were, however, informed that, as licences had been issued, even in error, they would be honoured if the coal was shipped in the month of January. In fact, the traders arranging to ship the coal were unable to ship it in the month of January. The ship sent by Dublin traders, to which Deputy Mulcahy referred, arrived at Baltimore after the licence to export had expired, but because of representations made, the American authorities allowed the boat to fill.

General Mulcahy

Not on representations made by the Government.

Mr. Lemass

On representations made by the Government. The licences to which the American Minister referred were for the month of February. There is no possibility of exporting coal from the United States in the month of February. The firms concerned will not be able to line up the coal at the ports of shipment until some date in March and arrangements are being made to have shipping available when the coal is at the ports.

I was however informed this morning by the United States Minister that as a special concession the licences issued in respect of February would hold valid for March. I repeat, however, that until Saturday last the United States authorities had not agreed to issue licences for the export of coal to this country and that the 34,000 tons covered by their message represents a special allocation, consequent on the abnormal circumstances now prevailing, and does not necessarily imply that American coal will be available in future. Possibly there may be coal available during the month of March also. I am not saying whether there will or not, but it is clear that it is the policy of the United States to send coal to Europe only in accordance with the European Coal Committee allocations.

Dollars were never refused to any coal merchant for the purchase of coal for which export licences were issued. Deputy Mulcahy said that we took the business of importing American coal out of the hands of enterprising coal merchants and gave it to Fuel Importers, Limited. It was the coal merchants themselves who suggested that Fuel Importers, Limited, should be used as the importing organisation. When there was a question of getting a cargo of coal and there were 18 firms applying for dollars for the same cargo, everybody recognised that it would be folly to have a number of Irish firms competing against one another for the same cargo and that if we were to take full advantage of any export possibilities there were, the most efficient method would be to centralise purchasing in one body. It was the merchants who came to my Department to suggest that Fuel Importers, Limited, should be the sole importers of coal from the United States.

General Mulcahy

Did Fuel Importers, Limited, get it?

Mr. Lemass

It has not come yet.

Mr. Costello

Is the Minister making any point as to the financing of these operations by the persons who will eventually get the coal?

Mr. Lemass

Fuel Importers, Limited, will be the importers of the coal. They will appoint the persons in America to buy that coal. They will pay these persons and arrange to ship the coal. It is the only organisation in this country that will be used for that particular purpose. Is that clear?

General Mulcahy

It is blunt.

Mr. Flanagan

And they will get the "swag" out of it.

Mr. Lemass

They will make no profit. They are a non-profit making organisation. Let me now turn to the general coal situation. If Deputies want to make any point out of the fact that I did not foresee that in the month of February there would be a complete stoppage of coal imports from Britain, I make them a present of it. I did not foresee it, but let me say this, that I and my officers were in almost daily touch with the British Ministry of Fuel and Power. We discussed our fuel problems and the variations in the coal shipments, over the telephone and by personal contact often many times a day. It was on the basis of the information that came to me in consequence of these contacts that I felt satisfied that even though there might be a temporary falling off in the total quantity of coal supplies arriving, we did not have to fear a complete stoppage.

It is quite obvious to anybody who is familiar with the facts that there would not have been a complete stoppage if it were not for the abnormal weather conditions which produced a transport crisis in Great Britain. The coal crisis in England is really a transport crisis. They are producing more coal in England now than they did last year. Even for the past few weeks they have produced more coal than in the corresponding weeks last year. The problem that arose was entirely due to transport difficulties, accentuated by exhaustion of reserve stocks. I did not foresee a complete stoppage, but that does not mean that no precautions had been taken against a situation in which adequate coal supplies might not be forthcoming. Deputy Mulcahy referred to the fact that for some weeks towards the end of last year coal imports rose above the average. Everybody knows that we were getting 20,000 tons a week. For a period towards the end of the year we got more than that, but the whole of that additional quantity of coal was reserved for the purpose of securing the position of the public utilities. If Deputy Mulcahy thinks that the public utilities built up no reserves, how have they kept working since the stoppage of imports? How have the electricity undertaking, the gas companies and the railways kept working if no coal has come in since the 6th February and there were no reserves?

General Mulcahy

The extra supplies were taken from the merchants for the public utilities.

Mr. Lemass

They were not taken from the merchants, and if the Deputy knew the first thing about this business he would know that that could not be done. The public utility supplies come by direct allocation. Merchants' coal is ordinarily kept apart from the public utility supplies unless we direct them from the merchants to the public utilities.

General Mulcahy

And they were so directed.

Mr. Lemass

They were not, and whoever supplied the Deputy with that information is misleading the Deputy. At that time it was obvious from the weather conditions that we were going to be tight on turf supplies and I deliberately decided that some quantity of the additional coal reaching merchants should be swapped for turf which had been given to hospitals, convents and institutions of that kind, in order to increase the amount of turf available for the domestic ration. I considered that good business. Deputy Mulcahy says — or was it Deputy Costello?—that this was a method of providing the hotels with coal so that the hotels could keep the tourists warm. The hospitals, institutions, hotels, schools and convents—these were bodies which had reserve stocks of turf and with them a deal was made to swap coal for turf so that additional stocks of turf could be accumulated. That was when we foresaw that adverse weather conditions would create a very narrow margin of safety in respect of turf stocks.

If Deputies think that by any action taken in the past, we could have avoided the fuel difficulty, when coal imports ceased owing to the abnormal weather conditions in England, will they tell us, seeing that since 1940 we have been working on 40 per cent. of our normal requirements, where we were to get coal to build up reserves? Will somebody suggest to me where we could have obtained coal during the past five years from which reserve stocks could be accumulated? Do Deputies remember that in 1944, when the invasion of France was imminent and every British ship was commandeered, we had a coal crisis in that year too and that whatever limited stocks had been accumulated as a reserve against adverse eventualities were exhausted? We had to fall back on our wood fuel reserves to supply the needs of industrial undertakings so that these industries could continue and give employment at a time when there was no coal coming in. Their memories are very short if they say that this current situation is one which could have been provided against by accumulating stocks in past years. We have been living on a hand-to-mouth basis in regard to fuel for the past five years.

Mr. D. Morrissey

And running excursions.

Mr. Lemass

The Deputy says that last year the railways were allowed to expand their services and even to run excursions. There were not very many excursions run.

There was a situation in which not merely were coal imports being maintained on the average level of previous years but were expanding, and I had no reason to believe, and nobody suggested that there was reason to believe, that the expansion would not continue. The coal used by Córas Iompair Éireann was allocated to Córas Iompair Éireann by the British Government. The quantity of coal they got was decided by the British Government and so long as the British Government was prepared to give them coal that permitted of an expansion of their services I saw no reason why I should direct them to refuse to take the coal, because, remember, it is the British Government who decides to whom coal exported to this country will be directed as between the utilities and the merchants. We cannot take that coal and direct it as we will. There are commercial interests in England who are concerned in maintaining contacts with coal merchants here, and other large users of coal here, and who are in a position to ensure that the interests of their customers here are safeguarded. We have on occasions commandeered the coal stocks of merchants for the benefit of public utilities to meet a crisis, but normally it is not practicable to do that.

In the year 1940, there became available a quantity of coal in Great Britain. It is worth while mentioning now a historic fact, even though it is a bit laughable, that we could not get the public utilities to buy that coal because they regarded it as not being of good quality. So Fuel Importers, Limited, was set up to buy that coal, and they built up a reserve. They continued to build up that reserve until the suppliers of the coal in Great Britain learned that it was going into reserve and not being allocated to the merchants who were their customers and then the supply stopped: but that reserve through the war kept the vital industries of this country going. On many occasions it prevented a complete shut-down of the Electricity Supply Board Steam Station: a complete shutdown of almost every gas undertaking in the country: it kept the cement industry, the steel industry and the sugar industry going at times when these industries could not get fuel. It kept the railways of the country going at a time when the railways' supplies were exhausted. There is still some of that reserve left. It is being used now in this crisis. Does that seem as if we were extravagant in the disposal of reserves? I refer to Fuel Importers, Limited. Is there any depth of meanness of which the members of the Party opposite cannot be guilty? The directors of this "politically controlled organisation", as Deputy Costello described it, are men who have acted without remuneration: they were not appointed by me: they were elected by the coal merchants in whose case Deputy Mulcahy was so eloquent, and —in addition to the coal merchants—by the representatives of the big coal using public utilities, the gas companies, the Electricity Supply Board, and the railways. But who was the manager of that undertaking? Is it not a bit humiliating for me to be jeered at by Deputy Costello on the ground that it was a politically controlled organisation because of the person who was appointed manager? But I think it represents a degree of meanness to give the impression now that the manager of that undertaking was a political henchman of Fianna Fáil. All you who were associated with the Blueshirt movement will remember who he was. I will say nothing now—the man is dead.

Mr. Keating

There would be no Blueshirts only for you.

Mr. Lemass

He was a member of the headquarters staff of that organisation. The Government has always been anxious to hold the scales evenly among all sections of the people. We did it; we are not ashamed of it, and we took the criticism of our own supporters because of that appointment. We created a situation in which, for a long time, a supporter of Fianna Fáil could not get employment with Fuel Importers, Limited, and it is a hard thing at the end of it all to be accused by Deputy Costello of having an organisation controlled by people of our own political interests.

Mr. Morrissey

It is a comfort to know that there was at least one job that was not given to a Fianna Fáil supporter.

Mr. Lemass

We are told that any coal got in Great Britain was got by the enterprise of the coal merchants.

That is not true. Not a ton of coal came into this country that was not allocated by the British Government. The coal merchants could do nothing. The only importer who was not a merchant who succeeded in getting coal from Great Britain which was not allocated by the British Government was unable to get it out of Great Britain and he would not have got it out only special representations were made on the political level to secure its release.

Now, what is the future coal situation? I cannot speak with any confidence, because I do not claim to be a prophet. I have never claimed to be a prophet. I know I will be blamed later for not being a prophet. We have, I think, a special position in Great Britain so far as coal is concerned. We have, as you know, in existence a Trade Agreement with Great Britain which not merely presupposes that we are going to obtain all our coal sup plies from there but actually obliges us to maintain a duty of 3/- a ton on coal imported from any other country, and if there is no understanding made in the near future to suspend the operation of that section of that Trade Agreement, the American coal, to which reference was made here, will be imported subject to the payment of that duty, because we could not suspend that duty, which we are obliged to maintain by the provisions of a treaty without the consent of the other party. I refer to that fact merely to emphasise the special relations which exist between this country and Great Britain so far as coal is concerned, and it is to Great Britain that we must look to have our coal requirements met.

General Mulcahy

How many other sections of the 1938 agreement exist?

Mr. Lemass

The agreement is in existence: a number of the sections are temporarily inoperative but I am certain that, so far as Great Britain is concerned, they wish to keep it.

General Mulcahy

I think they would agree to suspend that section about the 3/-.

Mr. Lemass

I think they would be willing to have the duty suspended temporarily. I do not know that we have any good reason for complaint concerning the manner in which we have been treated by Great Britain during the war years. They kept us going during the war. We know that they had immense difficulties, not merely production difficulties, but also internal transport and shipping difficulties, which they might have pleaded as a justification for stopping, or reducing more drastically than they did, coal supplies to this country. I fully realise that they would not have taken the very serious step of stopping all supplies of fuel to us if they had not reached a serious position of real crisis so far as their own internal position was concerned. The fact that over 2,000,000 people were unemployed there as a result of the difficult fuel crisis is in itself an indication of its gravity. We have naturally been in contact with them as to the possibility of having deliveries resumed at an early date. I mentioned during the course of my broadcast statement that they had, in consequence of representations, agreed to make available a cargo of 500 tons of coke for the Dublin Gas Company. That cargo has not yet arrived. It is, I understand, available at a British east coast port and it will not arrive until next week. In the meantime, the output of the gas company is being maintained by the diversion to it of anthracite coal which was intended for another purpose.

Yesterday the British informed us that they were releasing a supply of 5,000 tons of coal to Córas Iompair Éireann to meet the immediate requirements of the undertaking. For this we are naturally very grateful. We hope that the British coal difficulties will rapidly pass and that it will soon be possible for them to restore deliveries to this country at least to last year's level. Knowing the extent of their difficulties and the problems which those difficulties have created for the British Government, we should, I think, express our thanks to them for the decision to release these quantities now. They will help temporarily to minimise some of the problems which the stoppage of coal deliveries meant for us.

I want now to deal with turf. We had a great deal of talk to-day about the hauliers' strike and its effect upon fuel deliveries in Dublin. In fact, we were told that all this fuel scarcity in Dublin was due solely to the hauliers' strike.

Mr. D. Morrissey

Mainly.

Mr. Lemass

Due mainly, according to Deputy Morrissey; due solely, according to Deputy Mulcahy. We were told that 60,000 tons had been lost by the hauliers' strike. Not one ton was lost. The total quantity of turf available to Dublin was not reduced by one ton in consequence of the hauliers' strike.

Mr. D. Morrissey

The Minister is not a prophet—he is a magician.

Mr. Flanagan

It is a lie, anyway.

Mr. Lemass

On the contrary, as events turned out, it was something of a blessing in disguise that that strike took place. These hauliers were engaged exclusively on the movement into Dublin of the turf from the turf camps. Because of the strike, the full delivery was not effected, but that turf was saved and stacked at the camps. In fact, I say it was a blessing in disguise, as if it had come in earlier, it probably would have been distributed by now, whereas now it is here and, in fact, the only turf that arrived in Dublin in the past month was some of this saved turf from the camps, left behind because of the hauliers' strike.

Mr. D. Morrissey

So the mistake made was that the Minister brought too much into Dublin?

Mr. Lemass

No.

Dr. O'Higgins

He should have left more in the camp.

Mr. Lemass

Let me put it on record that the hauliers' strike did not reduce the supply of turf to Dublin by a ton. On the contrary, by reason of that strike there is available right now at some turf camps a supply of saved turf which is being brought in and will continue to be brought in as the weather improves the facilities for transport.

Mr. D. Morrissey

Then let us hope there will be another strike this year.

Dr. O'Higgins

Turf in the camp does not light a good Dublin fire.

Mr. Lemass

However, let me deal with the more serious issues concerning this situation. We have never produced enough turf. Deputies may criticise the arrangements made for turf production last year as much as they like. The first fact I want them to understand is that we never in any year produced enough. It is true that in the first year or two we produced far more turf than was actually disposed of on the ration, but in the last three years we did not produce even enough to supply the ration and it was the reserve accumulated in the earlier two years which maintained the supply in the whole of the non-turf area up to date. That turf was produced by a stupendous expenditure of energy and organising skill, mainly directed by the late Hugo Flinn. He worked himself day and night, travelling the country to get the county council organisations switched over from the normal task of road maintenance and repair to the job of turf production. There were called into existence these turf camps in Kildare, where over 200,000 tons will be produced this year. All these great achievements of organisation represented what one would have thought was the maximum effort possible; and yet we did not produce enough.

If we are going to get next winter a more secure supply, much less a larger supply, we will have to do better than we have done any year up to the present. Every year up to now we have carried over some reserve stock from the previous year. This year there will be no reserve. Every year up to now we were able to keep the ration going upon the previous year's production to the end of June. This year the new harvest will be going into consumption as soon as it is ready. If, therefore, we are to maintain the turf ration in the non-turf area throughout the country next winter and spring, or increase that ration, which we would like to do, then we have to get from the country council organisations and Bord na Móna and particularly from private producers and the organisations of private coal merchants and private industrialists a greater production of turf than ever before. Is it too much to ask that the Party opposite will give their encouragement to a campaign for that production?

Let me say this to Deputy Flanagan: the workers in the turf camps are well fed and well paid, and he and anyone he likes along with him can try to create all the trouble they will, but they will not succeed. I know an effort to create strike trouble in the turf camps is going to be made this year. Deputy Flanagan gave notice of it here to-day. We will meet that if it comes. All I can say at the moment is that the turf camp workers have been a happy and contented crowd of men. They have come back year after year to the camps. More workers want to get into the camps than the camps can accommodate. No one is compelled to go there: no one is conscripted to work in the turf bogs, but every year there are applications for positions in these camps in excess of the number that can be accommodated. Deputy Flanagan can assure his friends and others who are trying to make trouble that they will have their hands full to succeed in doing so.

Mr. Flanagan

Pay the workers and there will be no trouble.

Mr. Lemass

So far as the production of turf for areas outside the non-turf area is concerned, I want to emphasise that the responsibility for that rests upon the fuel merchants. I will admit that, at the beginning of this emergency when it was obvious that normal coal supplies would not be available and that we had to adapt ourselves to the task of producing an enormous quantity of turf to keep up a domestic ration in the eastern cities and counties, I had some doubts as to the wisdom of establishing State organisations for that purpose. I thought that, if State organisations were given that task, private initiative would die out and private fuel merchants would sit back and wait for the State to do the work for them. That is what has happened, to a large extent. All the merchants who normally traded in coal and who are only reluctantly trading in turf are not concerned to exert themselves to look after the interests of their customers. They are distributing the turf made available to them by the State organisations. The State organisations cannot do enough. We will have to leave to them the responsibility for maintaining the ration in the non-turf area, but throughout the rest of the country it should be clear that private enterprise and private initiative has got to provide the fuel needs of the people. Of course, quite a large number of people in that area arrange to produce their own turf or have it produced for them and do not ordinarily deal with fuel merchants at all. In fact, it is probably true that, in a number of homes throughout the country, there are supplies not merely ample for the needs of those homes but in excess of the reasonable quantity that they might require. I have been hoping that there will be some movement on the part of individuals holding quantities of turf in their haggards in excess of their requirements to make them available to meet either the needs of other local people in adjacent towns who are short of fuel or, through Fuel Importers, Limited, to supplement the ration in the non-turf areas.

Mr. D. Morrissey

Is the Minister giving permission to them to use private lorries for the transport of that turf?

Mr. Lemass

Private lorries are used for the transport of turf.

Mr. D. Morrissey

I received a letter from a constituent of mine within the last week, a man whom I know personally. He has been distributing turf for a number of years and has been refused by the Minister's Department, point blank, a supply of petrol to distribute that turf which he has at present.

Mr. Lemass

That is an individual case. Ordinarily, persons engaged in the business of turf haulage distribution have their petrol requirements met on the basis of a log sheet. A difficulty always arises when the log sheet is questioned by the officers of the Department, and a number of them have to be questioned. When a man gets an allocation of petrol for turf haulage he has got to show that he has hauled turf on that petrol. He gets the petrol replaced only to the extent that he, in fact, used it on the haulage of turf. A number of disputes upon that point arise naturally enough, but any individual case can be examined.

Another complaint in regard to a number of private individuals producing turf in the Dublin mountains is that whereas in previous years they sold it they could not sell it this year because we reduced the price. There has been a general complaint by Deputies opposite at the decision of the Government last year to reduce the price of turf. In fact, some of the Deputies said that was one of the reasons for the turf scarcity. It is not true that these private producers in the Dublin mountains were not assisted by the Government. It is true that the scheme was started mainly to encourage people to produce turf for their own households. There was no red tape prohibition upon their disposal of that turf to their friends, but it certainly was not intended that they should establish themselves as fuel merchants. The turf bogs were compulsorily acquired. They were divided into suitable lots, and were mainly intended to meet the requirements of individual households. Nominal rents were charged, roads were built into the bogs and other constructional work carried out to assist the productive effort of those people.

The State, in every way possible, assisted the development of that form of production. We are prepared to assist it again this year. If there were restrictions upon the use of lorries to carry people up the mountains they were originally because of the acute petrol shortage and of the reluctance of the Government to see petrol, which was made available for the transportation of essential goods, not being used on a more profitable purpose than to provide personal transport up the mountains. Last year, however, facilities were given to lorry owners to carry passengers up the mountains. Lorries had to be used because there are no buses capable of making the climb, but only where certain requirements were met, requirements which were intended to ensure that only lorries which were safe to use for that purpose would be used. Any lorries that were used upon that work irregularly last year were denied facilities because it was regarded as unsafe to allow people to travel in them.

I am surprised that Deputy Mulcahy should object to the advance permit system under which hospitals, nursing homes, schools and other institutions were allowed to buy their season's requirements of turf early in the year. I would have thought that he would have regarded it as a wise precaution to ensure that institutions of that kind had their turf supplies secured for them. If, however, he is trying to blame the advance permit system for the present difficulties in Dublin and elsewhere he will be relieved to know that the total amount of turf purchased under that system was 5,000 tons.

I want to deal mainly with the present situation. I am glad that Deputy Martin O'Sullivan drew attention to one very important aspect of the present situation. We have had a lot of talk here about the poor of Dublin. So far as the Government could ensure it, the poor of Dublin have been safeguarded in regard to their turf supplies and will continue to be safeguarded in regard to their turf supplies. All those who come under one or other of the voucher schemes— and they are the very poor of the city —those who are unemployed, those who are assisted by the home assistance authority, those who have a total family income of less than £3 5s. 0d. a week—get regular supplies of good turf at a nominal price or free. All the turf required to maintain supplies to the depots for these people is secure and will not be diverted to any other purpose.

There is, however, a real problem in Dublin. Deputies have talked about the situation as if it were a static one, as if it was the same last week as the week before, and the same last month as the month before. Between the blizzards there was a spell of ten or 12 dry days. They were cold days, but they were dry. In that period I thought that we were out of this crisis. The turf in the Park was drying out and the movement of turf to Dublin from the country areas was resumed. I thought that we were safe, but then there came two blizzards that were more severe than the earlier ones. That changed the position fundamentally. It not merely delayed the drying of the turf in the Park but it delayed the movement of turf from the country to Dublin. It definitely damaged the dumped turf and impaired the prospect of getting adequate supplies from the country until, at any rate, a much later date.

This problem of supplies to Dublin, and to the non-turf areas, must be considered under three heads. The first is transport; the second, quality, and the third, total supply. So far as the total supply is concerned, there is enough turf available here to meet the ration to the end of March. There would. therefore, have been no insuperable difficulty in meeting the requirements of householders but for the weather conditions, and the weather conditions have destroyed a lot of that turf or have made it unfit for immediate use.

The weather conditions have also disorganised distribution arrangements. So far as distribution is concerned, if we had 1,000,000 tons of turf in the Park there were days on which fuel could not be distributed. Fuel distribution in Dublin is not merely a matter of putting a ton or half a ton every month or two months into every house. A very high proportion of the population in Dublin buy their fuel every day in small quantities, and clearly any weather conditions which prevent the daily distribution of large quantities of fuel create immediate hardships in the homes where that practice is followed. Furthermore, the circumstances are such that any general upset in the arrangements creates the risk of a general breakdown. We are not dealing here with half-a-dozen or even a couple dozen fuel merchants, men with offices in O'Connell Street, with staffs of typists and clerks to look after their business. In Dublin fuel is distributed by several hundred small traders known as bellmen. I do not think there has been any failure on the part of merchants, as such, to do their job properly. There has been a failure on behalf of some bellmen. Some bellmen have most conscientiously, in all weathers, endeavoured to draw their supplies of turf and to deliver them to their regular customers. Other bellmen, working under abnormal conditions and in circumstances of great hardship that reduced the supplies which were available to them, have been tempted to dispose of supplies to people nearest to the dumps from which they were drawing turf, and to leave outlying areas unserved.

I am not going to say that the distribution arrangement in Dublin has worked perfectly. I know it has not. No system of supervision over 600 or 700 bellmen, working under the circumstances which I have described, could ensure that there would be no irregularities in the case of any of them. Of course, there have been irregularities. Some of them have fallen into the temptation of securing higher than the fixed price, some of them have shortened their circuits and have left their regular customers unsupplied, and some have even diverted their supplies to channels which they did not ordinarily reach at all. With the staffs available to my Department we will endeavour to check up these irregularities as best we can. It must be remembered, however, that we do not solve anything by merely withdrawing a bellman's licence, or by putting some small fuel trader out of business. We have got to replace that merchant or that bellman, and get somebody else who will, in fact, distribute the supplies that he should be distributing, and to the people that should be getting them. That is a colossal task of organisation, and that is why I said, in my broadcast, that if we are going to get out of this crisis in Dublin we will want not merely luck but fine weather and a great deal of co-operation from all engaged in fuel distribution. The only effective action that my Department can take is to distribute the available supplies to local fuel depôts or co-operative stores wherever it is obvious that the system of distribution by bellman has broken down. It has, in fact, broken down, to some extent, mainly in the outlying suburbs, and that is understandable enough in its present circumstances. Anybody who has any difficulty in understanding this can try driving a horse and cart over an ice-covered road for two or three miles to find out the temptation to which these bellmen are subjected and the reason why they occasionally dispose of their supplies other than to the people who should get them.

The position however, because of the last couple of blizzards, has deteriorated to a considerable extent even as compared with the time when I was speaking on fuel before. It is now clear that if we are to have enough fuel to maintain a reasonable ration for all households to carry us on to April we must get firewood. There is a substantial quantity of turf on the bogs which can be reconditioned, but it is doubtful whether circumstances will permit of its being available before April. This time last year the new season's turf was being produced. It is obvious now that this season's campaign will be late. Consequently, it will be well after the 1st May before the new crop of turf is available. We must, therefore, get firewood.

Let us examine this question of firewood in a reasonable and sensible way. Every Deputy opposite is anxious to find fault and the one Department they are anxious to find fault with is the Forestry Department. That Department produced 500,000 tons of firewood during the emergency and disposed of it through Fuel Importers, Limited, or by direct sale to people who required it, or to local merchants. Since the beginning of this month they produced 41,000 tons of firewood. That was mainly disposed of in the towns adjacent to the woods from which it came. They are quite prepared to administer their various regulations in such a manner as to facilitate the maximum production of firewood.

I do not know if Deputies opposite think that we can get the production of firewood to the extent required by any centralised organisation. I do not think so. I think it is a futile idea to imagine that we can at this moment hand over to an organisation which has never done the work before the responsibility for getting firewood produced in the quantities required or create a new organisation for the purpose. If firewood is to be produced and distributed, it has got to be through the fuel merchants. It is they who must make arrangements for the bringing of the firewood timber into the cities and towns where it is required and get it distributed to their customers.

Mr. D. Morrissey

And if they do not?

Mr. Lemass

There have been a number of conferences with the merchants in recent days arising out of which I can assure the Deputy that the work is being organised. There may be difficulties. I do not assert that there will not be. I am certain, however, that we shall have the active co-operation of the enterprising fuel merchants, at any rate in Dublin, and I feel sure that fuel merchants in other centres of the non-turf areas will be equally enterprising. I want to emphasise, in any event, that if they are to have fuel to meet the requirements of their customers for some period between the middle of March and the middle of April it will be firewood. The State organisations will maximise their production. But an adequate supply, properly distributed, to reach the people who need it, can only be made available through the activities of the merchants. We heard talk here about the firewood reserve.

Mr. Coburn

That does not cut out the private enterprise to which you have referred? Will not men with lorries who cut down trees be allowed to deliver?

Mr. Lemass

No. The distribution of firewood must be done through the fuel merchants.

Mr. Coburn

What about all the other men?

Mr. Lemass

The merchants will be glad to get in contact with people who will undertake to prepare and organise production for them, and the transportation, for that matter.

Mr. Byrne

I thought you were relying on private enterprise in that direction. It is considerable.

Mr. Lemass

We had talk about the building up of a firewood reserve. The labour involved in felling, transporting, cutting into logs and storing firewood is altogether out of proportion to the labour required to produce, transport and store a similar quantity of turf. The most uneconomic use of labour is to put it producing firewood if it can produce turf. We set out to produce an emergency reserve of firewood. It took four years to accumulate a reserve of 100,000 tons. The wastage on firewood is far greater than the wastage on turf. That firewood was, as I said, partially disposed of as industrial fuel in the crisis months in 1944 and finally disposed of on the domestic fuel ration in the winter of 1945. When that firewood was in the dump, I was badgered by every Deputy opposite and every local authority to release it. The toughest job I had during the emergency was to hold that reserve until as late as 1945. If the Deputies will go back over the Official Debates and look at their speeches and questions they will find that the mere existence of that dump seemed to be a lure to attract them into speech urging that the firewood should be released to meet the current needs of the winter in 1942, 1943, and 1944.

Mr. Byrne

Will the Minister state whether the turf haulage contractors will be permitted to haul timber for use in the City of Dublin? Will the turf hauliers get petrol to bring timber from a distance to Dublin?

Mr. Lemass

I will not answer that question until I have had a full oppor- tunity of considering what is involved in it. There is, of course, as Deputies said, a racket in turf hauling. I know the full extent of that and I am not going to facilitate it. That racket is not the racket that Deputies opposite talked about. It is in this business of getting petrol for the haulage of turf and selling the petrol. Everybody knows that is going on. If there is to be a question of facilitating the haulage of firewood by the release of petrol, I must make doubly sure that the petrol is not used for any other purpose.

As to the practice of Fuel Importers, Limited, in regard to haulage contracts, I am not very familiar with the details. All I know is that, in accordance with the directions of the Government, contracts are determined by competitive tender. Advertisements are published in the Press and those who tender lowest get the contract. I cannot think of any fairer system.

I think I have dealt with all the points raised in the debate. I want to conclude as I began. I have no desire to minimise the crisis. It is a real crisis. It is because it is a real crisis that I think it is deplorable that we should be dealing with it in the atmosphere of political controversy which the motion suggests. This crisis may be less acute in a few weeks, but it will continue for several years. We will not be in a position where we can feel that we have no fuel problem until we have reached a supply position in which rationing can be abolished. So long as we are dependent upon the production of hand-won turf to maintain the ration in the non-turf areas we will have a fuel problem and we can only minimise it by producing more turf. Deputies would be better advised to use their eloquence in urging the maximum turf production than in this type of futile political debate.

Mr. Blowick rose.

Mr. Coogan

I gave way to the Minister.

An Ceann Comhairle

Will the Deputy let Deputy Blowick in, as no member of his Party has spoken?

Mr. Coogan

I cannot help that.

An Ceann Comhairle

I do not mean now.

Mr. Coogan

I gave way to the Minister and I think I am entitled to speak.

An Ceann Comhairle

I am not preventing the Deputy from speaking, but would he try to give some time to Deputy Blowick.

Mr. Coogan

I will try to give him a few minutes.

Mr. Blowick

I only ask the Deputy to give me five minutes.

An Ceann Comhairle

At 9.40 somebody will rise to conclude the debate.

Mr. Coogan

I had to give way twice to-night. I have been cut out badly. There will be very poor comfort for the people of Dublin when they read to-morrow morning's papers, in particular, the Minister's statement on the fuel position. Stripped of all its verbiage it simply means this: we rely on the fuel merchants and we rely on the private producers to take us out of this mess. But that is not going to fill the grates to-morrow morning. The Minister and several of his colleagues twitted us with not offering constructive suggestions. I heard no constructive suggestion whatever from the Minister as to how this immediate situation was going to be dealt with. We all know that if we engage in timber felling and the haulage of timber from various parts of the country to Dublin it will take several weeks before that scheme can come into operation and the present cold spell may have passed and we may be well into April before we have timber delivered.

A most extraordinary thing emerges from the Minister's statement on timber. He has said that the most uneconomic labour that men can be placed in is the cutting of timber. The extraordinary fact emerges that timber can be supplied at £3 a ton whereas, with the subsidy, turf cannot be supplied under £5 to £6 a ton. The Minister's statement is a complete indictment of his own policy. At another point in his statement he said that the development of turf depended upon good luck and fine weather and that in abnormal circumstances it was necessary to juggle the distribution of the turf. I respectfully submit, Sir, that the Minister in his statement is juggling with the entire situation and that he has not faced up to the realities. He wants to know what foresight is. I say foresight is the ordinary reasonable anticipation which any normal businessman would give to the business of supplying fuel to the community. On that definition, the Minister, on his own statements, stands completely indicted to-night.

I shall not go into the question of American coal and American flour beyond saying that it is clear to my mind that coal could have been obtained here by the private enterprise of the coal merchants of Dublin had not Fuel Importers, Limited, stepped in to prevent them completing their negotiations. The same position obtained with American flour. Not so long ago when a Dublin flour merchant was in negotiation with the American authorities and American businessmen for a cargo of flour he was informed that he could not get the necessary licence and that that flour must come through Mr. Rank's organisation.

The Minister has made another extraordinary statement, that is, that the strike did not reduce by one ton the amount of turf available in Dublin. Yet we have this extraordinary position, that the fuel merchants in Dun Laoghaire at the present time are working on a 25 per cent. ration of their normal ration and that even on their present ration they are four weeks in arrear with deliveries and, though the Minister had ten fine days between the blizzards which he has mentioned to enable deliveries to be made in Dublin and in Dun Laoghaire, the fact remains that at the present time the fuel merchants in Dun Laoghaire are still on a 25 per cent. ration and still four weeks in arrear with deliveries.

We in Dun Laoghaire took the trouble to interview these merchants and we find that the position is this— I do not know if the Minister's Department has adverted to it—that since the reduction in the price of turf there has been an abnormal increase in the number of customers. In one case in Dun Laoghaire alone, a merchant has 400 new customers on his books within the last six months. I am just wondering if many of these new customers are legally entitled to their ration with that merchant and I am just wondering if the system has not completely broken down. I think there is some looseness somewhere in this matter because the fuel merchants have informed us that if a new customer comes along they have to register and there is no way for the fuel merchant of checking the possibility that that person may have registered elsewhere already. Until turf is put on the same basis as all other commodities, namely, that the customer must have a ration card and produce that ration card to the merchant, there will be considerable looseness in the distribution of turf. That is one of the prime causes, in my opinion, in the City of Dublin, of the present shortage of supplies. I venture to suggest that if the Minister's Department were to investigate the books of these merchants everywhere they would find that situation has grown up within the last few months.

The Minister takes credit for the fact that there is no danger that the supplies of turf to the poor, the unemployed and those on low incomes will fall short. I say in all seriousness that there is no credit whatever due to his Department for that position. We in Dun Laoghaire made sure over a long period of time that whatever came this winter or last winter or any other winter our fuel depôt, which is available to these people, would be stocked to the roof and it is at present stocked to the roof and, without any interference, suggestion or advice from the Minister's Department, we will be able to continue, at least for the next month, without any fresh supplies. Again I say, no credit whatever is due to the Minister for that situation. That is due entirely to the foresight which the corporation and the manager exercised in the past.

On the question of distribution of turf supplies to the poor, particularly by bellmen, I want to say this much: there is a system obtaining, certainly in Dun Laoghaire, and it may obtain at the other dumps in Dublin whereby bellmen are shoved aside in the interests of the fuel merchants. If a fuel merchant's lorry drives into a dump the bellman is simply pushed to one side. These unfortunate men find themselves in a position that they may be waiting whole days and never get near the dump. We have gone into that and we are satisfied that that has happened and the fuel merchants and the Fuel Importers, Limited, people have admitted it. I am appealing to the Minister to take action in his Department to ensure that that does not obtain elsewhere. Not only has that happened, but the fuel merchants in some cases have unscrupulously cut down the ration of these bellmen and diverted that ration elsewhere. I appeal to the Minister again to ensure that the normal ration which the bellmen had will be restored to them. In that way the turf will be distributed to the poor and to the people who are in the habit of buying from bellmen.

I come from an area which is interested in coal and I feel that the Government, taking a long term view of our fuel position here, should give serious attention to the matter of increasing the production of native coal.

In Kilkenny, particularly, the coal resources are such that they are capable of considerable further expansion. Up to now there has been no proper scientific survey of the coalfield there. I appeal to the Minister, now that we are in the position that for many years to come we may have to depend on our own fuel, to make some effort to have our coal resources developed. If necessary, the Institute of Cosmic Physics should devote their energies to scientific research in Kilkenny, Leitrim and Munster to see whether or not there are deposits of coal available capable of commercial development.

I would like to quote from an expert, who furnished a report to the Minister's Department in 1943. This quotation is taken from a pamphlet issued by the Department of Industry and Commerce, giving a short review of Irish mineral resources. The expert says:—

"There are, for example, certain areas in the Kilkenny fields whose productive capacity is still undefined. This arises from various technical considerations, including the fact that it has not been practicable to develop the deep No. 2 seam further from outcrop, so that the slower and more expensive process of shaftsinking would be required, together with a preliminary programme of drilling to determine whether, in fact, the game is likely to be worth the candle. Such enterprises during the present emergency are conditioned by the limitations of equipment, materials and skilled personnel."

I am not appealing, on the grounds of this emergency alone, for a long-term policy in regard to coal. I ask the Minister to follow the advice given by the expert of his own Department. I ask him to initiate the steps necessary to ensure that drillings and borings will be made in the Kilkenny coalfield, and, if coal production is commercially possible there, the area could be developed.

I again appeal to the Minister to allow the people in Kilkenny, particularly in the Castlecomer area, to work whatever outcrop coal is there. There is plenty of coal in small pockets here and there through North Kilkenny. I have had expert advice on the matter that in some cases there is as much as 1,000 tons in some of those pockets. Surely we could, in these circumstances, allow our miners—or direct unskilled labour, if you like—to quarry these outcrops. This coal can be made accessible by quarrying operations, and without any mining at all. I appeal to the Minister to reconsider his previous decisions on this subject. I know a place within a mile of Castlecomer, Glenmullen, where we can get 1,000 tons of coal, and perhaps more, in one of these pockets. Why should we not be allowed to get out this coal the same as the turf men are allowed to get out turf or the timber men to get out timber?

Again I will quote this expert. He says:—

"It is perfectly true that anthracitic coal has been extracted in past years from a number of the more promising points; and it may indeed be possible for local enterprise to obtain a limited quantity from scattered outcrops to assist in supplying a local demand...."

I appeal to the Minister to allow us in Kilkenny, wherever we find a group of people prepared to come together, to act on that advice. Let us go ahead and do not put any red tape restrictions in our way. Let us get the coal out.

Let me put this viewpoint. Whatever geological surveys have taken place, they are very ancient; they go back to Griffith and others, and they are purely surface surveys so far as coal is concerned. We had an industrial commission in 1921 and there were certain foreign experts on that commission. I am afraid those experts misled us. I do not believe there is anything like the quantity of coal in the country which those experts led us to believe, but I believe the modern process by geophysics could at least get us this far, that if we do spend a few thousands of the moneys devoted to cosmic physics trying to find out if there is coal available, it would be well worth while. One-eighth of the country is under bog and in any geological survey that has taken place heretofore only the surface of the country was examined. It was only possible for experts to examine rock formations wherever they appeared through the surface and they would deduce what was beneath, but they never were able to say what was actually beneath the bogs. Now that we have embarked on a long-term policy of producing turf, it should be possible, through Bord na Móna, Mianraí Teoranta, or the Department of Advanced Studies, to get modern scientific equipment to investigate the possibilities of rock or coal formation being beneath the bogs. We all know that coal is decayed forest matter and the bogs are the surface decay of our ancient forests, but it is possible that there is beneath the bogs some coal, and I ask the Minister seriously to consider when he is developing the bogs, to give that matter his attention. It may or may not lead to the discovery of coal, but it certainly would be well worth trying.

I want to emphasise this point as regards the long-term turf policy. It will take us ten years before we produce 1,000,000 tons per annum, in accordance with the Minister's estimate. Even assuming that programme is realised, we will be faced with the problem of importing something like 1,500,000 to 2,000,000 tons of coal. We have to find that coal and we have to make up the gap between the 1,000,000 tons of turf and the imports of coal. For these reasons I appeal to the Minister to give serious attention to the development of our own coal. I am familiar only with the Kilkenny area, but I understand that in Arigna the coal is much more readily accessible because it is in hilly, mountainous country and lends itself to tunnelling and quarrying.

I hope the Minister will, in his long-term policy, give serious attention to these matters because, even in a long-term turf policy, it is clear we will be in the position that we must find 1,500,000 to 2,000,000 tons of coal to fill up the gap. It is clear also that it will be a long time before we can hope to make up that gap by imports of coal from Britain.

I cannot see the immediate emergency being solved by the Minister's statement to-night on timber. He says it must be done through the fuel merchants and the private producer must supply the fuel merchants with his timber. I am afraid the timber proposition will break down. I cannot see from the statements made to-night, particularly by Deputy Corry and Deputy Fagan, that the private producers of timber will cut timber and hand it to the fuel merchants to make a profit. These gentlemen have already stated that it is not profitable to cut timber at less than £3 a ton—that is the private producer's proposition. If that is so, we will flop there.

I appeal to the Minister to give serious consideration to allowing the private producer who can get a lorry to come to the consumers in some way. I know there is considerable difficulty in rationing, but this is an emergency proposition and, as such, no restrictions should be placed on the private producer. I am afraid that if you compel him to sell through the fuel merchants you will not get results. I have information that in County Wicklow there is a vast territory taken over by the Forestry Department. That has to be cleared for afforestation. I am informed that on this land there are hundreds, if not thousands, of trees that would be described as non-commercial timber. I am appealing to the Minister to send the Army in there, knock down that timber, get it cut and into Dublin quickly. We have no guarantee whatever that this weather will not last till the end of March, and I appeal to the Minister, therefore, to use the Army, not only for the cutting of timber, but also for the transport of timber. We in Dun Laoghaire are getting a number of trees felled, through the corporation's activities. We will get a certain amount of volunteer transport, but we will have considerable difficulty in transporting that timber, even when we get it felled, and I think the Minister and the Government should release the Army for the job, and particularly for the transport of turf.

Major de Valera

Is it possible to get at that timber in Wicklow at the moment?

Mr. Coogan

My information is that it is. It is available on lands quite recently acquired by the Forestry Department.

Major de Valera

I happen to have had actual personal experience within the last few days of trying to locate timber which is removable immediately in order to meet the immediate situation, and I can assure the Deputy that it is no easy matter to get timber so located that it can be removed in time.

Mr. Coogan

I cannot say at the moment where these lands are, but I can get the particulars to-night.

Major de Valera

There is timber in Wicklow and in the Dublin mountains, but it is snowed up and approach to it is practically impossible.

Mr. Coogan

I cannot say definitely at the moment, but I can get the particulars to-night and let the Minister have them. With regard to the strike, the Minister glossed quietly and gently over the strike situation. The cause of that strike was really the fact that a small number of contractors had sublet and the sub-contractors were compelled by the main contractors to take their petrol from them. The main contractors had got the licences for the petrol and the sub-contractors were compelled to buy their petrol from the principals, with the result that the sub-contractors found themselves giving a profit of 5d. per gallon to the principals. That was the extraordinary situation and naturally they objected. These men were doing the job—they were hauling the turf. The principals were getting their profits on the contracts, and, in addition, these men who were out day and night found themselves compelled to pay a profit of 5d. per gallon to the principals. I should like to know if these principals during the seven or eight weeks of that strike continued to draw their petrol, and, if so, what became of that petrol, because I can assure the Minister that it is commonly rumoured in my constituency, and I am sure his colleague, the Minister for Education, is aware of these rumours, that the petrol was available throughout the country at a price of 5/- per gallon.

Mr. Lemass

I explained that petrol is only given for turf haulage on the basis of log sheets.

Mr. Coogan

That, however, was the extraordinary position. The men doing the work under the contract which had been farmed out by the main contractors found themselves in that position and that was the cause of the strike. I appeal to the Minister, whatever the mistakes of the past may have been, to see to it that this whole business is tightened up, so that we cannot have a similar situation arising again.

Mr. Norton

Is it proposed to conclude the debate at 10 p.m.?

An Ceann Comhairle

Yes. There is a question on the Adjournment.

Mr. Norton

Would it not be possible to allow the question on the Adjournment to remain over until we next meet, in view of the fact that a number of people want to speak on this matter?

An Ceann Comhairle

The question on the Adjournment was put to me as a matter of urgent public importance. I refused to accept it as such, but it is still rather urgent, and I have consequently allowed it.

Mr. Norton

It is now 20 minutes to ten.

An Ceann Comhairle

And Deputy Cosgrave rises to conclude in five minutes.

Mr. Blowick

I do not wish to take the line of blaming the Government for either the very severe harvest weather we had last year or the unexpected inclement spell we are going through at present. I want to make it perfectly clear that I should like to see the turf industry protected and sheltered in every possible way, so that turf as a national industry would thrive and flourish. Two years ago I pointed out one line of action which the Minister might take if he wished to protect the turf industry and to encourage the people of Dublin to use turf and to get a liking for it. Most of the Deputies who have spoken have pointed out that the very name of turf stinks in the nostrils of the Dublin people, and I do not wonder at that. I have been up to the Park dumps several times, and there is no getting away from it—the turf is being seriously mishandled. The Minister cannot say that that was not pointed out to him. The Minister is a city man and may not understand the handling of turf, but there are many Deputies who can tell him about it.

I have already urged that one-third of the total supply for the city of Dublin should be covered, no matter at what cost. It might seem an extravagant suggestion, but a sum of £50,000 to £70,000 would provide enough roofing to cover at least the portion of turf that comes to the Dublin consumers for the three or four winter months. For the rest of the year, it is quite all right, and the Dublin people can use it out of the stacks and be assured of a good fire; but the stuff I see at present in the hotel where I stay and in other places is not turf, and any farmer down the country will tell you that he leaves better stuff on the bog than the stuff the Dublin people are asked to burn.

That was pointed out to the Minister two years ago but he failed to take cognisance of it. The suggestion may involve expenditure and may involve a completely different lay-out of the dumps. In that connection, I want to say that "dumps" is the proper name. They are dumps in the sense in which we understand the word. These supplies of turf should be located by the railway line, somewhere convenient to the city. All the overhead charges involved in emptying the turf out of railway wagons into lorries and transporting it out to the Park and emptying it again there must be cut out, unless the Minister wants to kill the turf industry. It does not matter whether Fianna Fáil, Fine Gael, Clann na Talmhan, Labour or some Party that has not arisen yet, is in power, the people of Dublin, if they have to go to Hong Kong for coal, will not burn turf in future because of the mismanagement connected with it.

Our county surveyor in charge of turf production in Mayo—we send up 88,000 tons of turf—takes the greatest pains to ensure that only the very driest turf leaves the bogs. That turf is brought to the railway and dumped into open wagons. God knows how long it takes the wagons to come to Dublin. They are open to the weather and the turf drinks in every drop of rain that falls from Heaven. The stacks in the Park are made so that they will absorb every drop of rain that falls, so much so, that of the average ton of turf that I see people being compelled to burn 15 cwts. are turf and 5 cwts. water, at 54/- per ton. The Minister has been told that, but he has taken no steps to put an end to it. If he wants to encourage the Dublin people to get a liking for turf, if he wants them to continue burning turf when coal becomes available, if it does become available, the first thing he must do is give them turf which will provide the ordinary good fire which every farmer's house in the country knows. If the farmer down the country saw his turf being treated the way the national turf is treated in the Park and in the other dumps, he would deal very drastically with the person who would so treat it.

The Minister must mend his hand completely. He asked for co-operation in order to have a supply of turf for the coming year and the year after. His Government and his colleague, the Minister for Local Government, are going the wrong way to bring about that co-operation. The Minister for Local Government, through the agency of some super-smart official in the Valuation Office, has discovered under an old Act of 1851 that turf can be called a mineral, a decision which I question, although I am no lawyer. It is not a mineral; it is a surface product, and a mineral means something that is mined. The Minister has increased the valuations of bogs, and there is not a bog owner in Mayo who is not afraid that if he produces turf, or allows the county council in on his bog to produce turf, his valuation will be increased. In taking turf from a bog, you take away the very product which makes the bog valuable, because turf cannot be restored in the way in which fertility in the land can be restored.

The Minister criticised Deputy Flanagan for his remarks about the bog workers not being paid sufficient wages. How will you get the best work out of a man unless that man knows he has a job worth holding? It does not matter in the slightest whether he is in turf production or not. The sum of 42/- a week is not sufficient pay. I am putting up these arguments not by way of criticism but to help the Minister by showing the way to safeguard the turf industry, which is a valuable industry, if developed.

The Minister astonished me by one statement—a statement to the effect that the British Government has power to allocate coal to Córas Iompair Éireann. Did I understand the Minister correctly when I got the impression that the British Government, during a period of emergency, could throttle this country and bring the network of transport over which Córas Iompair Éireann has control to an end by allocating coal for other purposes and leaving Córas Iompair Éireann without it? If that is true, it is an astonishing state of affairs. I raise this matter not because it is the British Government which is in question. If it were a landlocked country, such as Switzerland, I should say the same.

I should like to point out, as Deputy Coogan has ably pointed out, that only God knows when a survey of our mineral deposits was made. We know nothing whatever about our mineral deposits. It must be a geological certainty that the same coalfields which exist in Wales, divided from us by only a strip of water, exist here. The two countries suffered the same climatic changes. We have had the same rise and fall which produced the coalfields on the other side. In the same way as when the Minister for Lands on a previous occasion took the advice of a foreign forestry expert, who, I believe, came over for the purpose of discouraging forestry here, if we are dependent on foreign experts to tell us whether there is coal here or not, we shall never get anywhere. All our resources will go overboard. In the same way, the Boundary Commission long ago, as we may recollect, went up in smoke.

Deputy Corry made a most remarkable speech, which I should like to dwell upon shortly. He was at the age-old game of Fianna Fáil— trying to drive a wedge of antagonism between the town dweller and the country dweller. I want to tell Deputy Corry that the country people do not want to fleece city people in the price of the turf they produce. Does Deputy Corry understand that turf produced in Mayo at 18/- is sold at the equivalent of 73/9—64/- and 9/9 Government subsidy? Where does the difference go? The railway company never paid dividends on their shares until the emergency. If the Minister was sincere, he would have asked Córas Iompair Éireann to make a similar sacrifice to that made by the bog workers and the people in the cities and to carry the turf at cost. They could make a handsome profit on passenger and goods traffic without getting a profit on the turf. Turf is being sold cheaply in the country, but if the producers are given a miserable price, which does not pay them for taking away a substance they can never replace, consumers should not be charged the equivalent of 73/9 a ton, or perhaps more. There must be something radically wrong when that is happening. The Minister stands condemned for not giving turf more cheaply to the people of the City of Dublin, or, alternatively, for not giving a better return to the bog workers.

Mr. Byrne

On this night fortnight, when this matter was raised on the adjournment, the Minister said:—

"I am told to cut timber. I do not believe the quantity of firewood timber available in the City of Dublin is large. During the emergency, it was practically all utilised and, although every facility has been given to fuel merchants and other persons who might be interested in that business to acquire and transport that timber for sale here, the quantity coming in has fallen to practically negligible dimensions during the past year."

The Minister invited anybody who was interested to get timber and transport it to Dublin where it is urgently needed. Has he any knowledge of the restriction imposed by his Department, which prevents turf lorries from hauling timber? If he says that he wants those engaged in fuel-supply to cut and take in timber, why does he not relax the restriction which prevents turf lorries from carrying timber? If he would answer that question and say that he would relax the restriction, I should be deeply grateful because it would enable 6,000 tons of timber, which has been acquired by the City Manager and Dublin Corporation, to be brought in.

Mr. Cosgrave

However unsatisfactory the experience of the people has been, we cannot profit now by discussing the events of the past few months. The Minister, however, stated that the coal allocated to this country from Britain was largely allocated to firms which had in the past taken coal from British firms. It was desired to retain that system under which merchants would continue to trade directly with coal merchants in England. It may be desirable, in normal circumstances, to continue that practice. However, during all last year, with the possible exception of the last few months, the British coal output had been decreasing. The increase over the whole year was a little over 4 per cent. In December last, the British Minister for Fuel in a circular issued to industrial undertakings stated that the situation, while showing an improvement in the actual output, was more serious than it was in the previous year. Here is what he said:—

"From the point of view of supplying industry this winter with the coal it requires, the increase of consumption at the current rate must give cause for anxiety, for, in spite of the improved output, we are in a worse position than a year ago, since the improvement in production has been more than offset by the increase in consumption."

At that time, the Minister for Industry and Commerce should have exercised a little more foresight. His Department should have restricted by certain measures the quantity of coal being used directly by Córas Iompair Éireann or other firms, while, at the same time, securing that no interference would take place with the trading rights of firms in their relations with British merchants when normal conditions return. The Minister has referred to two plans—one a long-term plan and one a short-term plan. We have heard to-night and on many other occasions a great deal about selfsufficiency——

Mr. Coburn

That has been blown sky high.

Mr. Cosgrave

Whatever may be said about utilising our resources to the best of our ability, every country has to recognise that there are certain limits to its resources. There are limits to the productive capacity of our country which do not obtain in the case of countries with natural resources which we do not possess.

While that is so, the first thing we ought to seek is a revision of the 1938 Agreement or to say to the British, that if we are prepared to honour our end of it, they should honour their end of it. I appreciate that they have to contend with considerable difficulties owing to weather conditions just as the weather conditions have resulted in difficulties for us, but at the present time we are honouring, as during the emergency we honoured, that agreement so far as cattle are concerned. Judging by the White Paper recently issued on the subject in England, it is obvious that they expect that we shall continue to supply them with store cattle for the future and in that way carry out our end of that agreement. I suggest to the Minister, therefore, that when the present severe weather passes it should be pointed out to them that while we are prepared to honour our end of the agreement they should carry out their obligations under it or, if not, that suitable modifications will have to be made in the agreement which will not be less beneficial to this country. Pending any modification of that agreement, we should make representations to the British Government to consent to the cancellation of the duty on American coal while the present conditions exist.

So far as firewood is concerned, there are available at the present time large quantities of suitable timber which could be cut but while the present severe weather lasts, it may not be possible to reach to these supplies. So far as the supplies in the Phoenix Park and certain other supplies in the south-eastern end of Dublin are concerned it is possible to approach them with road transport. It is true that certain areas such as the Pine Forest and portions of Wicklow are inaccessible for the moment at all events but when all these sources of supply are accessible, we may find ourselves in trying to end one difficulty, getting into another. There is quite a large quantity of timber which is unsuitable for commercial purposes and which can be made available for firewood but in the last few weeks I have seen timber which could be used for commercial purposes being cut for firewood, merely because there was not a selective felling of trees. People who are inexperienced and who do not know the difference between commercial timber and firewood sometimes cut timber for firewood which could be made available for building purposes. I suggest that the Forestry Department should ensure, certainly so far as large woods are concerned, that only selective felling should take place, otherwise we may find ourselves using timber for firewood which would be much more valuable as commercial timber.

I would also suggest that close attention should be paid to the matter of firewood prices. Experience during the emergency has shown that when a particular commodity is in short supply, numerous people are only too anxious to avail of the opportunity to get rich quick and to take advantage of the people's difficulties. At the present time the retail price of firewood has reached exorbitant figures. I admit that there is a control of prices, but it is merely a nominal control so far as standing timber is concerned. The price of standing timber is controlled at 7/6 per ton. which is a totally inadequate figure, as people will not agree to cut timber at that price. Much closer attention will have to be paid to the difference which exists between the price of standing timber and the price at which timber is subsequently sold as logs.

So far as turf production is concerned, sufficient stress has not been laid on the fact that in the Dublin mountains the county council and other authorities responsible for the upkeep of roads have done practically nothing to make the roads suitable for turf transit. It is true to say that some effort was made to improve the roads some years ago but, with the possible exception of the Featherbed, the roads at present are in a very bad condition. That applies especially to the Castlekelly, Glencullen and Ticknock areas. If a private turf producer goes to the Dublin mountains, he is, first of all, faced with the job of getting into the bog. After the long trek from the city, unless he gets an allotment in one of the first bogs, there is no road capable of taking out any decent quantity of turf. After you get from the main road into the bog there are no suitable roads for the transport of turf.

Mr. Lemass

There are a number of roads around Glencree.

Mr. Cosgrave

That is the one exception—the Featherbed which I mentioned. In the case of Castlekelly, Glencullen and Ticknock the county council made a limited effort to repair the roads, but the roads there deteriorate very rapidly. There is a continual slope and when rain comes it washes away the surface of the road very quickly. I have had strong representations made to me on this subject and I have carried out an examination of these districts myself. It is quite obvious that the construction of roads through the bog is the first essential and Bord na Móna or whatever body is responsible should get this work under way at once because many people who would wish to cut turf there cannot get it to the bog head under present circumstances.

Another matter to which I should like to refer is the transport of turf from turf areas to villages in County Dublin or for that matter to the city itself. At the present time some turf merchants in villages such as Lucan and Saggart say that they could get turf if they were allowed to take it from Kildare but they assert that it would not pay them to have the turf brought to Dublin, reloaded there and brought out to these villages to be distributed.

There is the other difficulty that many people drawing turf from the Phoenix Park dumps with their own horses and carts are obliged by the merchants to go to the North Wall and get tickets there. When they get the tickets, they have to proceed to the Phoenix Park from which they have to draw the turf to their own areas and distribute it there. There might have been some excuse for that arrangement during the emergency when there was a shortage of transport but at the present time when Army lorries or other transport could be utilised for this purpose, I suggest that the turf should be brought to the areas where these men have to distribute it. It is impossible for a man with a horse to cover all this ground within a reasonable period. I had a complaint from a man who had bought a second horse to assist him in the distribution of turf from the Park. The horse fell on the road and died as a result. Even before the present difficulties due to the frost arose, a man who had to take turf from the Phoenix Park to a village like Rathfarnham and then distribute it amongst his customers was under a serious handicap. There should be some arrangement whereby the turf would be transported direct to outlying towns and villages from which the bellmen could distribute it to their customers.

Some difficulty has arisen in certain other areas arising out of the fact that a number of people have to register for the first time with fuel merchants. Many of these people in the past provided their own requirements of turf, but when the weather prevented their getting it down from the mountains, and a shortage arose, they were obliged to register with merchants for their supplies. I think that there should be a general rationing system which would allow a uniform ration for every person. It is much better that every consumer should at least have a certain quantity of fuel, rather than that some should have considerable quantities, while others are left without any. The Minister has assured us that people who are in receipt of fuel under the voucher system will have their interests protected. I quite accept that, but there are some poor people who are not getting vouchers and who are without turf. I would suggest that the first essential is to provide for a general rationing system, so that all consumers, whether they get their supplies from bellmen or otherwise, would be entitled to a uniform quantity.

Motion put.

The Dáil divided: Tá, 23; Níl, 46.

Tá

• Blowick, Joseph.
• Byrne, Alfred.
• Coburn, James.
• Cogan, Patrick.
• Coogan, Eamonn.
• Cosgrave, Liam.
• Costello, John A.
• Dockrell, Henry M.
• Dockrell, Maurice E.
• Doyle, Peadar S.
• Fagan, Charles.
• Flanagan, Oliver J.
• Giles, Patrick.
• Halliden, Patrick J.
• Heskin, Denis.
• Hughes, James.
• Keating, John.
• McGilligan, Patrick.
• Morrissey, Daniel.
• Mulcahy, Richard.
• O'Driscoll, Patrick F.
• O'Higgins, Thomas F.
• Reynolds, Mary.

Níl

• Aiken, Frank.
• Allen, Denis.
• Bartley, Gerald.
• Blaney, Neal.
• Boland, Gerald.
• Brady, Brian.
• Brady, Seán.
• Breathnach, Cormac.
• Breen, Daniel.
• Brennan, Thomas.
• Breslin, Cormac.
• Briscoe, Robert.
• Buckley, Seán.
• Burke, Patrick (Co. Dublin).
• Butler, Bernard.
• Chlders, Erskine H.
• Colibert, Michael.
• Colley, Harry.
• Corish, Brendan.
• Crowley, Honor Mary.
• Derrig, Thomas.
• De Valera, Eamon.
• De Valera, Vivion.
• Flynn, Stephen.
• Fogarty, Patrick J.
• Furlong, Walter.
• Harris, Thomas.
• Hilliard, Michael.
• Kissane, Eamon.
• Lemass, Seán F.
• Loughman, Frank.
• Lydon, Michael F.
• Lynch, James B.
• McCann, John.
• McCarthy, Seán.
• MacEntee, Seán.
• McGrath, Patrick.
• Moylan, Seán.
• Murphy, Timothy J.
• Norton, William.
• O'Connor, John S.
• O'Grady, Seán.
• O'Sullivan, Martin.
• O'Sullivan, Ted.
• Ryan, James.
• Ryan, Robert.

Tellers:—Tá: Deputies Doyle and Giles; Níl: Deputies Kissane and Allen.

Motion declared nagatived.