The matter which I am raising is the publication entitled "Ireland is Building", issued by the Stationery Office and concerning which I addressed a question to-day to the Taoiseach. I think most decent citizens will agree that the utilisation by the Government of public funds to finance Party propagandist publications is a deplorable development. Whether we have another manifestation of that development in this pamphlet is the matter which we are now discussing. This pamphlet reached Deputies accompanied by a circular letter signed by Aodh de Blacam, described as Director, Information Section, An Roinn Sláinte, in which it was stated that it sets forth the facts of the national building programme for houses and hospitals. My assertion is that it does nothing of the kind. I contend that this pamphlet published by the Stationery Office is designed primarily with regard to its Party propagandist effect.
Private Deputies' Business. - Adjournment Debate—Printing and Distributing of Brochure.
Who is the Aodh de Blacam mentioned?
Director of Information Section of the Department of Health. I assert that it seeks to misrepresent and to disparage what was done by previous Governments in regard to housing and hospitalisation; that it exaggerates what the present Government is doing and that to achieve the Party propagandist aims of its authors it was framed in many respects in a manner which was inaccurate and misleading. The Taoiseach replied to my question to-day expressing the view that the pamphlet cannot reasonably be regarded as partisan in character and that utilisation of public funds for its production was not an abuse. I should, perhaps, have asked the Taoiseach what the cost of the publication, printing and distribution was. I have a feeling that, having addressed a question to the Taoiseach, I have already saved the taxpayer some money. I know, at any rate, that an advertising block was sent out to local newspapers announcing the appearance of this pamphlet and containing these words:—
"Write for free illustrated brochure on the building programme."
Whether as a result of my question or not, subsequent instructions were sent to the newspapers not to publish that advertisement and they were requested to replace it by another in which reference to a free illustrated brochure was substituted by a phrase asking people to get it, price 3d. The pamphlet was stated by the Taoiseach to have been prepared first to help the housing and hospitalisation programmes and secondly to encourage skilled building workers in Britain to come here on an assurance of long-term employment.
As regards the first of these aims, it is perhaps difficult to see how publicity of this character helps the housing and hospitalisation programmes at all but, if it could, then it would be entirely in consequence of the accuracy of the picture which it presented. An accurate statement of facts, not partisan exaggeration of the Government's achievements, might serve some purpose. I am prepared to concede that the Government is desirous of going ahead with these programmes. They know and we know, however, that progress is being impeded by problems of organisation which are not yet solved and they certainly will not be solved by pretence.
As regards the second of the declared aims, the encouragement of building workers in Britain to come back here, I assert that this pamphlet does not seriously attempt to achieve that aim at all. It is, I think, a reasonable contention that if building workers in Britain can be attracted home by an assurance of long-term employment then that assurance can best take the form of evidence that housing and hospital development are not Party issues here and that whatever maximum programme of development is devised by any Government will remain unchanged if that Government leaves office. That does not appear on this pamphlet. On the contrary, it seeks to suggest that only the present Government is interested in housing and hospital development, and because the whole purpose of the pamphlet is to create that impression, I assert that it defeats the professed aims of its authors and publishers and that these aims have been deliberately sacrificed to Party propagandist considerations. Most Deputies will have seen the pamphlet.
There is, I understand, a new technique in propaganda which seeks to convey ideas by pictures and diagrams rather than by words, and that technique was used in the preparation of page 2 of this pamphlet. Page 2 consists of two photographs and two identical sketches—(1) a photograph of slums in Dublin and it is associated with a sketch of a ship labelled "Emigration". That is described as the past. The present is described by a photograph of a modern housing scheme and another ship labelled "Repatriation". The purpose of the designer of that page was to suggest that past Governments of this country were content with slums and emigration and that only the present Government is trying to eradicate them. I will admit that that particular page is not very intelligent, but I do not think it was prepared for the higher intelligence groups. Other parts of the pamphlet are much more subtle and the propaganda in them is put over in a different form. Page 3 contains a letter signed by the Minister for Local Government and by the Minister for Health. It sets out reasons why workers in Great Britain should return home. It makes no reference to the principal attraction for any worker in Great Britain to return home if it was offered to him—a house. I do not want to elaborate that aspect of our building programme at the moment, but from the personal letters which I have received from many of our workers in Great Britain it is obvious to me that the prospect of housing accommodation here would weigh far more with them than any other attraction offered.
Page 3 opens with a quotation from a speech delivered on the 16th December, 1948, by the late Deputy T.J. Murphy, Minister for Local Government. In that speech it is stated:—
"We have, however, doubled in the last 12 months the actual number of skilled and unskilled workers employed."
I would have preferred if that statement were made on the authority of the authors rather than as a quotation from a speech made by the late Minister. I shall, therefore, merely refer to the statistics published this morning in a White Paper issued by the Department of Social Welfare and in which it is pointed out that the number of skilled building workers employed in 1948, according to a calculation based upon the payments made under the wet time insurance scheme, did not exceed by 100 per cent. the number employed in 1947. They exceeded that number by 13 per cent.
On page 4 a number is given for houses described as, "in progress". I have no desire to disparage any efforts made by the Government to get housing done.
We are anxious to know that progress is being made. I do not know the precise meaning of that term: "houses in progress". I can, however, make a guess as to what it might mean. It does not mean houses likely to be completed and ready for occupation in this year. Why the "houses in progress" figure was given and not the more important figure of houses likely to be completed, I do not know. We see, however, that the number of houses in progress in Dublin is put at 3,219—that is houses in progress in 1949—but we know from a reply given by the Taoiseach to-day that the number that will be completed in that period is 1,500. It is clear, therefore, that the number of houses likely to be completed is less than half, 46 per cent., of the number of houses in progress. Assuming that the same percentage will apply in all areas, this figure of 10,014 is reduced to 4,600 completed. That is all right. We are glad to see that 4,600 houses will be completed this year but what we are objecting to is the false statement in the pamphlet that the pre-war level of building activity and employment has been surpassed.
I assert that the number of local authority houses which, on the basis of the calculation I have made, will be completed and ready for occupation this year, will be substantially less than the number completed in any year from 1934 to 1940. In 1938 the production of local authority houses was 6,932. The total of houses in progress by local authorities and private persons assisted under the Housing Acts is put in the pamphlet at 14,514. I assume that somewhat less than half that number will be completed in this financial year and I assert that the number of houses that will be completed and ready for occupation will be less than half the number completed in any pre-war year from 1933, less even than the number completed and made ready for occupation in the first of the war years 1940-41.
I am quoting these figures, not for the purpose of boosting the achievements of the previous Government or disparaging the achievements of this Government, but to dispute the accuracy of the assertion made in this official publication, the statement that the pre-war level of building activities and employment has been surpassed. In the case of Dublin, a figure which is supposed to represent all the housing activities of the past is given under one heading. We are told that the number actually built from 1890 to 31st March, 1949, was 25,703. That statement is not even fair to the British Government. The Housing of the Working Classes Act was passed in 1908 and financial assistance for private building began only in 1919. Do you not think that it would be more accurate to say that during 53 of the years to which that figure relates, up to 1932, the total number of houses erected by local authorities was 7,229, and the balance was built in the seven years, or mainly in the seven years, from 1932? There was some output even in the war years when about 4,000 houses were constructed. Then we are told in the pamphlet that the total volume of housing operations in Dublin now is equal to that achieved during the peak period of house building in the pre-war years. In 1938, the number of houses completed and ready for occupation was not 1,500 but 2,335. I know the 1938 figure was exceptional but the reference here is to exceptional output. We are told that the output this year equals the output in the peak period before the war. The output in the peak period before the war was 2,335.
We are also told that given favourable circumstances 110,000 dwellings will be built in the next ten years. In conditions which were not so favourable, 141,000 dwellings were built under the Housing Act of 1932 and other Acts, including houses built by the Land Commission and under the Gaeltacht housing scheme. I assert that the number of houses built under legislation enacted by the previous Governments and with the aid given by that Government constituted a world record and that there was no other country in the world in which was built the same number of houses, relative to our area, our population or our housing needs.
I have not very much time at my disposal and cannot therefore refer to the parts of the pamphlet dealing with the hospitalisation programme. I should like Deputies to turn particularly to the final two pages where, in a film type of photograph, there are a number of illustrations of hospitals and other buildings. I should like Deputies to note particularly the extraordinary descriptions that appear under the pictures. "Some recent works" appears under the first. There are seven photographs so described—the first a hospital completed in 1945 in Ballinasloe; the second, a hospital completed in Cavan in 1939; the third, a hospital completed in 1942 in Portlaoighise; the fourth, a hospital completed in 1942 in Tullamore; the fifth, a hospital completed in 1938 in Naas, and one completed in Galway in, I think, 1938, although I am not quite sure. Then there appears a picture of Colaiste Mobhi, which although reconstructed recently, has actually existed for about 100 years. You might think that the reference to "some recent works" was not intended to suggest that these works were completed within the last two years but, if you think so, turn to the next list of photographs and you will find that the title there is "Progress of three decades". There are four of the buildings, there illustrated, which were started in the past four years, and which are not yet completed.
Store Street is one of them.
Store Street is one of them. Another is the new headquarters of the Ministry of Industry and Commerce. "Progress of three decades" I suggest was deliberately designed to convey that these buildings represent the very limited nature of building activities during the three decades covered by previous Governments.
I am very sorry the Taoiseach took the line he did to-day. I hoped that he would have seen reason and that he would realise that the publication of propagandist material of that character can do no good to anybody, no good to the interests of either of the Parties which it is apparently intended to serve, no good to the country or to the housing programme. It would have been far wiser to have considered the suggestion that this pamphlet should be withdrawn. If a pamphlet is required in order to get the building workers back from England, we are prepared to co-operate in the preparation of it, a pamphlet that will not be open to the suggestion of partisanship which applies in this case. However, if the Taoiseach wants to proceed on the basis that he does not care what harm he does to the policy of housing development, so long as it suits his Party's purpose, and so long as he can get such propaganda publications at the taxpayers' expense, we shall have to deal with these matters on that basis.
Deputies who were present this afternoon when the Deputy who has just spoken put certain supplementary questions to me and, in the course of those supplementary questions, made certain statements, will have observed a notable absence from Deputy Lemass's speech to-night when compared with the statements made this afternoon. This afternoon the words "dishonest" and "dishonesty" came trippingly from his tongue. To-night he merely suggested it by innuendo in many of his phrases. We are entitled to say that he must have now at least that sense of shame that he ought to have had this afternoon when he used the word "dishonest" and "dishonesty". Coming from Deputy Lemass, those decent citizens to whom he made reference to-day will clearly assess on which side the dishonesty lies and to which portion of this House the word "dishonesty" is best applied.
Indeed they will.
Deputy Lemass purports to say that every Party in this House has devoted itself to the task of providing for our people the houses and hospitals that they need. Is there any decent Deputy in the House and any decent person outside the House who would for one moment think that the speech we have listened to to-night is anything other than definitely harmful to the progress we desire to make in our houses and in our hospitals? We have had the task of providing houses and hospitals for our people. We have tried every method that lies within the wit of man and the ingenuity of our people to achieve that purpose. It was apparent to us, from the beginning, that one of the outstanding difficulties preventing the completion of the housing programme and hampering the all-out drive that we initiated was the lack of skilled labour. I had numerous conferences with the late Mr. Timothy Murphy, then Minister for Local Government, on this problem of skilled labour. He, who knew this problem and knew the working-men of this country and the working-men who had emigrated, devoted himself to endeavouring to get back those skilled labourers who had emigrated. We did not inquire the reasons why they emigrated. We merely tried to get them back here to help. We are carrying on the work now that he initiated to try to get them back. To-night Deputy Lemass has definitely told the skilled workers not to come back because, he alleges, we in this brochure are telling them what are falsities, lies and inaccuracies, according to Deputy Lemass to-night, and "dishonest", according to his statements here this afternoon.
Deputy Lemass and his Party are now exposed for what they are. They are full of malice. They definitely do not intend in any way to co-operate in the national effort. They definitely do not intend in any way to co-operate in the work that has to be done. But the work will be done.
The Fianna Fáil effort is what this pamphlet should be.
I referred this afternoon to certain phrases in this brochure which, to an unbiased and impartial observer, clearly demonstrate that, far from this brochure being in any way intended to advance or boost the political kudos attaching to any Party supporting this Government, it is purely objective. It is accurate in every detail. It intends as its primary and sole purpose to bring back our people who have gone abroad—to bring back our skilled workers to the building trade to bend all their efforts to the efforts we are making in order to build hospitals and houses for the poor and the middle classes who require them. In the short space of time at my disposal to-night, I want to put before the House and the people some of the references that will demonstrate the falsity, the dishonesty and the utter recklessness of the charges made by Deputy Lemass to-day in the House and under a pseudonym in the Irish Press this morning.
The purpose of this brochure is clearly apparent from the outset to the end of it. The speech of the late Deputy Timothy Murphy, Minister for Local Government, is set out at the beginning. Just a year ago in this House he referred to the urgent necessity for getting more skilled operatives into the building industry. An appeal was made at that time to the workers here and elsewhere to stand foursquare behind the effort being made to provide houses for our people. That is all that appears there.
Is it suggested that that is the first appeal of that sort?
Not the first appeal. Deputy Lemass did not get the response to his appeal. But he did not say that he was wrong or that there was anything wrong with it. The late Timothy Murphy's appeal was received with enthusiasm and the full and cordial support of every Deputy. But Deputy Lemass now twists that statement of the late Timothy Murphy, when he is dead, and he tries to put into his interpretation of that speech of the late Timothy Murphy something he was afraid to say when he was alive.
That is most unfair.
Why did he not issue the pamphlet over his own name?
Let me say something for the purpose of showing the objectivity of this so-called partisan pamphlet. Deputy Lemass referred to that, and I can only do so very briefly because of the limited time at my disposal. On page 3, under the heading "12,000 Houses a Year", we have the words:—
"During the years of the world war, building was almost wholly suspended, and skilled workers were driven to emigrate for employment. In the year 1945, when the war ended, only 923 houses and flats were under construction, and less than 500 skilled workers were employed by local authorities."
Deputy Lemass has not stated that these figures are inaccurate. He has not said that "skilled workers were driven to emigrate for employment" was partisan and inaccurate. He did not say there was any inaccuracy there, so the House may take it that that phrase passes his censorship. It is, in fact, stated in this document that skilled workers were driven to emigrate for employment. Deputy Lemass, even with all his brazenness and recklessness, could not, in the face of the facts, in the teeth of what are known to be the facts, controvert that position— that skilled workers had to go to Britain to seek the work they could not get here.
That statement is absolutely objective. It does not state that Fianna Fáil failed to do it. It gives the reason —the conditions arising out of the world war. It then goes on to deal with other aspects. This partisan document that we are told about by Deputy Lemass goes on to say that that having been the position up to 1945, due to the world war, there was a rapid recovery, as could be seen from a table set out in this document, covering the years from 1945 up to 1948, when we came into office. The table deals with local authority schemes from August, 1945, after the war ended, and covers the years 1946 and 1947, when Fianna Fáil were still in power, and also portion of 1948. Is that a partisan document? It shows the progress made and it shows what I am endeavouring to demonstrate to the House, that this document was framed objectively for a national purpose and with a national object—the bringing back of our skilled men, who had to emigrate during the war, for the purpose of doing work which requires to be done.
"Already, under successive Administrations, immense progress has been made." We go on to show what has been done in regard to decaying tenements, new Government offices, churches, schools and industrial premises, buildings that have risen or are rising. Does that say that they have risen in the last 18 months? Anybody but a fool looking at these pictures will see that many of them, in fact, most of them, were done in the years prior to this Government taking office. Dealing with the hospitals there is a footnote.
What about Cashel hospital?
The Taoiseach should be allowed to make his case. Deputy Lemass was not interrupted.
Except by the Deputy.
Perhaps it helped you.
Take the cover—I suppose that is a partisan cover? Does Deputy Lemass say that is dishonest or reckless? I say that his statement is dishonest and reckless. Reference was made to Cashel hospital. The Cashel hospital was completed in 1940 and the architect was Mr. Vincent Kelly, M.R.I.A.I. If time permitted me, I could go through every word of this and demonstrate its accuracy and the falsity of the charges made by Deputy Lemass. Every one of these photographs speaks for itself. These photographs show in a more abundant way than would ever have been shown if this were a political propaganda sheet, as Deputy Lemass alleges, that all these buildings were completed before we ever came into office at all, including Store Street. So partisan is this document that we put that monstrosity in Store Street into it!
I will say, in conclusion, that Deputy Lemass has deliberately done a piece of national sabotage to-day; he has done it recklessly and deliberately.
Will the pamphlet now be withdrawn and reprinted, with what Fianna Fáil built?
The Dáil adjourned at 11.10 p.m. until 3 p.m. on Thursday, 15th December, 1949.