I would be prepared to accept the view, because I think it must be accepted, that the emergency period threw the reafforestation programme in this country back a long number of years. Anybody who has had any knowledge of what went on in the country during that period knows very well that there was wholesale spoliation of the best timber. Timber which could have been put to good commercial use in many cases was consigned to the firewood market.
As has been mentioned, it was perhaps unavoidable because of the need for domestic fuel and the utter impossibility of maintaining adequate supervision wherever timber was being felled. The result was that in many cases trees in forests were felled far in excess of the permitted number and the best commercial timber was used for firewood. The standing timber of the country was diminished to an extent which it is almost impossible to calculate. We can, however, accept it that the development of the emergency did throw us back in the matter of reafforestation. In my view, that situation places upon the Minister a very grave responsibility. Each year it seems to be the custom in this House to talk piously of reafforestation. It has been stated with truth that practically the only publicity that reafforestation gets is the discussion which takes place yearly on this Estimate.
I feel that many Deputies, in their approach to the question of reafforestation, fail to see the human beings for the trees. The full effect of any long-term policy of reafforestation cannot be seen for 50 or 100 or 150 years. What great good is it going to do this nation to have tremendous wealth in the form of trees in 100 or 150 years if, meanwhile, these trees have to be planted and grown under miserable working conditions? We have to think first of all of the people who are now living and the unfortunate men who are condemned to work for the Forestry Department. People with little knowledge of the matter talk about the tremendous potentialities which reafforestation has in the way of giving employment. Sometimes I think it would do them a great amount of good if they visited some of these State forests in periods of inclement weather and saw what some of their fellow-Irishmen, who are paid low wages, are suffering under the present conditions on some of the mountain-sides in the most remote districts.
As an ideal, as something to be desired and aimed at, something which turies, everybody will agree that reafforestation is essential. I do not think we are approaching the matter in the right way. I do not think it has ever been approached in the right way. It strikes me that the Forestry Section of the Department of Lands has always been the forgotten child of that Department. That, again, is, to a great extent, unavoidable because the responsibilities which are thrust upon any Minister for Lands of administering the Lands section of his Department—and these responsibilities are very well evidenced by the Order Paper as we see it from day to day—must afford any Minister for Lands at any time very little opportunity of dealing with the question of forestry as it should be dealt with. That applied, I am sure, to Deputy Moylan when he was Minister and it must have applied to his predecessor.
It seems to me that if reafforestation is ever going to be tackled fully and adequately some reorganisation will have to take place. No matter how well-intentioned the Minister may be, I think it is a physical impossibility for him to give the attention that is necessary to this question of reafforestation and, at the same time, deal with every local dispute relating to land division and congestion that arises from day to day in this country—and, God knows, they number in their thousands.
I want, specially, as I have done last year and the year before, to direct the attention of the Minister to one aspect of this question with which I am vitally concerned, namely, the question of the wages and working conditions of forestry labourers. In the course of his speech on this Estimate Deputy Moylan endeavoured to justify the policy which he followed, and which was followed for a long number of years, in relation to forestry workers' wages, by arguing that because it was not considered that a forestry labourer required to have a greater degree of skill than an agricultural worker it was not, therefore, considered that the wages of the forestry labourer should exceed those of an agricultural worker but that, in view of the remoteness of the locale of his work, a case could be made for a differential. Surely that is an entirely false approach to this question? In the first place, we have to decide whether we are going to pay men working for this State upon what we describe here annually as a vital national project—the bringing into being of forests in this country—a living wage or not. That is the question we have to face.
Farmers in other parts of the country—those of them with whom we can discuss the question of wages in reason, and they are not too many—will always say that the agricultural labourer is badly paid. They will say: "We are ashamed that we must pay them so very little." How many times have we heard Deputy Corry say that? "The only reason why we do not pay them is because we cannot pay them"—that is their credo as far as wages are concerned. We know that they were singing that tune two years ago. Despite a very big increase in their income, they are still singing the same tune. They make the case that the reason why they do not pay a higher wage than an average of £3 odd per week is because they cannot afford to do it. They admit that it is not a living wage. How then, in conscience, can a State Department expect workers to accept that they should receive only a couple of shillings a week more than the agricultural worker?
The wages of agricultural workers are fixed by a wages board which is dominated by farmers—many of them large farmers. The wages are so fixed that it would be no hardship on the smallest farmer living on the most uneconomic holding to pay the wage. That is the method they have of paying the wages of the agricultural worker. It is suggested that the employees of a State Department should be paid on the same basis. I think that is a policy of poor expediency. It is a policy dictated only by the idea that no matter what else is done money must be saved and, in my view, unfair advantage is being taken of these men. They are relatively small in number. Until recently they have not been in any way organised. Because they have found very few friends to express in any kind of forcible terms at all their grievances and because of their lack of any kind of economic power to enforce their demands, advantage is being taken of them. More than that, it seems to me that it would be absolutely impossible—no matter how hard a Deputy might try—to get a more reactionary view on any question relating to workers as that which a Deputy will get if he once comes into contact with the officials of the Forestry Section of the Department of Lands.
I have a strong feeling and belief that the Minister for Lands has the best of intentions. I do not want to quote any clichés about good intentions. In passing, I should like to say that I had occasion, as a Deputy, to inquire, within the past few months, for a copy of the regulations governing the wage and working conditions of labourers employed by the Forestry Section. I was told I could not be given it. I was almost told in the House that they were almost an official secret—simply because, I believe, the officials of the Forestry Section chose not to give these regulations to any Deputy. Surely that is a denial of a fundamental right to the Deputies of this House? More recently still I was told by one official of the Department of Lands that I could only visit State forests within my own constituency with the permission of the officials of the Department and only if they permitted it. I wonder if that reflects the views of the Minister or is that, in fact, in accord with the rights and privileges of Deputies of this House?
In my view, while I do not want to be so foolish as to suggest that the reason for the refusal of these regulations was because they were of such an awful nature that the officials did not want to reveal them, that refusal reflects the obstructionist attitude, the die-hard, dyed-in-the-wool attitude that has developed in the Forestry Section, in the matter of workers over a long number of years. Sympathy or understanding or thought for the men out on the mountainside you will not get inside the Forestry Section. I often think it would do a great deal of good if some of the higher officials were brought out and put through the same course as these men have to go through, where they would get 62/- a week, in all weathers.
Last year I raised a question—it was looked upon as a minor one—of men who were working under very bad conditions on a mountainside. I suggested that, as well as amelioration of their conditions, rather than have them wading up to their knees in water they might be given rubber boots. There was something done about that. For one gang of 18 men concerned, two pairs of rubber boots were sent out. I suppose the idea was that they should share them. I do not know how they were going to do it, but that was the implication.
I am confident that the Minister means very well. However, this question of wages and working conditions must be taken away from the position where it now lies. It seems to lie almost entirely in the hands of a group of officials who care very little and apparently know very little of what these men have to suffer. These workmen make the Forestry Department what it is. All the planting and talk about reafforestation and national wealth and all the suggestions which may be made, are as nothing if we do not get the desire among the ordinary people to work hard to restore forests and to plant forests. All this talk that we do here does not matter one single iota, if we do not convince the people who have to do the hard slogging and go through the hardship, that this is beneficial to them, not in 150 years' time but now. Unless we do that, we cannot achieve that end and we are just wasting our time talking about reafforestation.
I had occasion in Galway recently to talk to a man who was on his way on the hard road of the emigrant. He was hoping that he might get a bit of a job in England up on a building and take the road that Irish navvies have taken from time immemorial here. I asked him: "Why do you have to go across to England? Is there no employment here in your own country?" He said: "The only thing you get here is the forestry work and sure nobody would work on that, because there is not a living in it for a man at all." That was in North Galway. It is true, and it is time that something was done about it. I am convinced that the Forestry Section of the Department of Lands, as far as the higher officials and the general staff are concerned—I do not say this in a spirit of bitterness —seem to be dominated by one idea, to economise every conceivable moment at the expense of the workers and to keep the few shillings they get each week as low as possible.
Take, for instance, a recent decision announced by the Minister, that forestry workers' wages would be increased in each county to the level of the rates paid to county council workers. That was all right, apparently where it meant an increase of 3/8 per week. The men were given that 3/8—3/8 in this day and age, the cost of a couple of packets of cigarettes, which, of course, they could not afford to buy. But what happened in County Dublin? I might mention that in my constituency there are roughly only 14 men working, or 17 in the entire portion of County Dublin under forestry. They had been receiving a rate of about £3 4s or £3 5s. a week. In County Dublin, had they been given the local authority rate, their wages would have been increased to £4. That was too good, it would have been too high for them, so it was decided that the forestry workers in Dublin would be given wages at the County Wicklow rate, which was lower and which gave them the princely sum of an extra 3/- or 4/-. We are just wasting the time of the House in talking about reafforestation while these circumstances are obtaining.
Regarding the location of these forests, there are plantations, as every one knows, in the heart of groups of mountains, high up on the mountain sides. Inevitably they must be a long way removed from the workers' homes. The workers are expected to be on the spot at 8 o'clock in the morning just as if it were as simple as getting on a bus at Cabra and arriving at Nelson Pillar. Many of them have to travel very long distances and in some cases I know of they must be out of their beds at 6 a.m., because of the long distances they have to travel. On the Friday of each week, they finish at 6 o'clock and get home about 7.30. They have been out since 6 o'clock in the morning, and they spend seven hours from the time they get their lunch—and a meagre lunch it is on the mountain side, where the mountain air has whetted their appetite—until teatime. Recently, when the Department were asked to make some kind of change, in order that a man would not be such a long time without food, we were told that "the Department after careful consideration, is satisfied that the working hours are the most suitable that can be devised and it is not proposed to alter them." It is difficult to talk on this subject and to read a communication such as that, which reflects the attitude it does—to read it and be content with it, having in mind that possibly the person who conceived and composed the letter has no knowledge of what it means to undergo the hardships that these men have to undergo.
The question of protective clothing was raised last year and the year before by myself and a number of other Deputies from various parts of the House. Little has been done about it. In connection with shelters, tarpaulins were provided for the workers as a sort of makeshift shelter. If you ask the men concerned are they satisfied with them, or if there is any effectiveness in these shelters, you will find that they are next door to useless for the purpose for which they were issued. If the Minister could direct his officials in the Forestry Department to make some kind of shelter available which would be waterproof and which would, at the same time, permit the workers to have some kind of fire whereby they could boil water for their meals—some kind of light asbestos shelter which would be portable—it would be much better than the present arrangement. That is the view of the workers in the forests throughout the country.
Last year the forestry workers had an average wage of £2 18s. 4d., and during his reply to the debate at that time the Minister said that the forestry workers had a middling wage. At the present time the lowest wage they have, as a result of the recent magnificent gesture made by the Department, is 62/- and the highest is 69/6. Forestry workers must, of course, be rural workers, and one thing rural workers everywhere are noted for is their very Christian belief in the idea of having large families. I think that is very true in this country. Here we find that the forestry workers, with few exceptions, are married men and, relatively, they have large families. They are asked to live on 62/- a week.
I wonder is there any appreciation or realisation of what the cost of living for these men is like? Nobody can put forward the myth—and it is no more than a myth—that forestry workers can go to their employers and get a couple of gallons of milk a day or a couple of stones of potatoes and all the other perquisites that some Deputies tell us farmers are wont to bestow upon those employed by them. I do not say that there are not farmers who do that, but I do not think they do it to the extent mentioned. Undoubtedly, there are farmers who give perquisites with wages. These perquisites, where they are given, represent a substantial increase to the wages paid, but they are not given on anything like as wide a scale as some Deputies suggest.
The forestry worker has not the slightest chance of getting any perquisites like these. He gets a bare 62/- to spend upon his family and himself. He wends his way down, after a week of hard work and exposure upon the mountainside, and I am sure when he picks up the paper to-morrow, if he gets it, and reads of the grandiloquent schemes suggested by one side or the other indicating the great benefit that can be got for this country, he will say to himself that he has very little faith in public representatives, at any rate. All these discussions, if they are not based upon hard facts, upon the mechanics of reafforestation, are entirely unrealistic.
Deputy Moylan, in the course of what I thought was a pretty constructive speech on forestry, the type of speech for which he is noted—for a man who is a member of the Fianna Fáil Party he is one who is singularly free from venom and malice—made some points which are worthy of consideration. One is the suggested use of the cinema. In this country of late years the cinema has become very popular. Possibly, our people spend as much time in the cinema as any other people on the face of the earth. In the cinema they have been presented with documentaries representing the progress that is being made in other countries in one sphere or another.
The American way of life is being thrown before our eyes every week, and British industry is shown on the screen, but never do our people get any opportunity of seeing what is being done in this country. Perhaps it is just as well. If we do make a film I think it would be as well if the camera would be directed away from the workers, because I am sure the workers would be inclined to demonstrate on such an occasion. They would show their disgust and dissatisfaction of the position that we now find here. This question of using the cinema to educate the public in relation to forestry is one that merits consideration, and it might be applied with good results to many other aspects of our national life. It is true, indeed, that there is sufficient trash of one kind or another being thrust on the youth of the country in the nature of imported films. It should be possible—and God knows there is sufficient help in the Department to do it—to get something different by way of a documentary that will be helpful to our people in taking a long view of forestry.
According to the tables with which we have been supplied in connection with the financial statement for 1950, I note that there is an increase under the heading of planting programme and increases in wages to the extent of £23,878. I move to report progress.
