Dáil Éireann díospóireacht -
Thursday, 6 Dec 1951

Vol. 128 No. 4

Undeveloped Areas Bill 1951—Second Stage (Resumed).

Question again proposed: "That the Bill be now read a Second Time."

Mr. Cogan

When speaking last night I was endeavouring to indicate that there has been a certain amount of confusion in the course of this debate in regard to the functions of this Bill and a tendency to bring into the discussion matters which do not come within the scope of the Bill. So far as the development of the undeveloped areas is concerned, we may consider that there are three lines— almost distinct lines, but correlated lines—of development.

There are, first, the various governmental projects for the development of such areas. These governmental projects come under the headings of afforestation, arterial drainage, minor drainage, land reclamation, harbour development, road making and all the other types of work carried on by Government Departments and which, we understand, will be co-ordinated by the activities of the Parliamentary Secretary. There are, then, a number of State-owned companies which carry out, and will continue to carry out, a considerable amount of productive and development work. There is Córas Iompair Éireann, engaged in the development of transport, which, in its own way, contributes to the improvement of undeveloped areas; there is the Electricity Supply Board, producing electricity—again a State company which can do a very considerable amount of valuable work for these areas; and there are Bord na Móna, the Irish Sugar Company, the Tourist Board—all these are bodies which in their own way will be expected to contribute to the cause of decentralisation and the promotion of productive development in our backward rural areas.

In addition to these two main bodies, that is, the State Departments on the one hand and State companies on the other, you have private enterprise which is, in the main, catered for under this Bill. Deputy Desmond was inclined to carp at the idea of promoting and encouraging State enterprise. He was inclined to suggest that the work of industrial development in rural and provincial areas could be carried out more effectively by public companies or by Government Departments directly. I think we ought to have our minds clear on this question and we ought to have certain clear-cut principles. I hold that any work which can be done efficiently by private enterprise should be left to it and any work which cannot be done by private enterprise should be undertaken by a State Department or by a State-owned company.

No evidence has been produced that private enterprise cannot, if given a reasonable chance, undertake very extensive productive work in remote and rural areas. This Bill is designed to ensure that private enterprise will be helped to do that by providing and assisting the manufacturing companies with the necessary buildings, developed sites, roadways and other services which are essential to them. If private enterprise is to function efficiently under this Bill, as I believe it will, it is essential that it be given a fair chance. This Bill is a big step forward inasmuch as it gives the man who is establishing a factory in Kerry or Donegal similar advantages to those enjoyed by a firm in Dublin, the advantages of working nearer to a large centre of consumption.

I think that all the good work envisaged by this Bill will fail unless we approach the subject in a spirit of goodwill. If we encourage a manufacturer to go down to the undeveloped areas and set up a factory and give employment to workers there, we must be prepared to give him some assurance that he will not be blackguarded, misrepresented and described as a racketeer who has gone down there to exploit the poor natives, drag from them their toil and sweat and, perhaps, inadequately reward them and make better profits at the expense of the worker and the consumer.

It was indicated that manufacturers who will avail of the Bill will only enjoy an initial benefit. They will be given a send-off and will be helped to establish factories and train their workers. After that they will have to fend for themselves and compete with other manufacturers. I think they are entitled to a fair chance. Suggestions have been made in a responsible and constructive way both by Deputies on the Opposition Benches and those on the Government side of the House that even if it is necessary to secure technical help and advice from outside this country, such technical help and advice should be availed of. I hope that, if people with foreign sounding names are brought in to help in the promotion of new industries, they will not be held up to ridicule in this House because they are not O'Reillys, Murphys, or Dillons.

Mr. Palmer

Or Cogans.

Mr. Cogan

Cogan is a good Irish name. Over the past 20 years there has been too much ridicule and abuse poured upon the heads of Irish manufacturers. When I was a boy, Irish manufacturers who established new industries in this country were regarded, in a sense, as national heroes and as men to be respected and revered. As a boy I remember how Michael Governey's name was deeply respected in the area in which I live. Why? Because as a business man he was patriotically inclined and established new factories and gave remunerative employment to the people of the town. Because of that everybody treated him with the deepest respect. Can we not have the same spirit in this country again? Why should manufacturers of all sections of the people be singled out for abuse and ridicule? Politically, it may be good tactics to abuse those people. They are only a small minority and have not a very big voting power.

There is a limited number of factory owners in the various constituencies. They cannot decide the election or rejection of any particular candidate. For that reason they may be a good target for ridicule. Many men make substantial profits and achieve considerable success in ordinary retail and wholesale business but nobody seeks these people out to attack them because they are too numerous. There are two retailers or business men to every three or four of the population. In any case, there is not a family in this country which has not one or two of its members engaged in commerce or business in the retail or wholesale line. Business men are not attacked in the way manufacturers are.

It is time for us to turn over a new leaf in this matter. I heard this whole project of helping the undeveloped areas, building them up and increasing employment described as a dirty political project. I think that statement has been repudiated by Deputies on all sides of the House. I think we can face this matter in a more constructive way, having got rid of the insinuation that there is anything dishonourable or political in this effort to foster and promote our rural areas and to achieve a measure of decentralisation in industry for which the nation has been crying out.

Many constructive suggestions have been put forward to the Minister from all sides of the House in the course of this debate. I was struck by the statements of some Deputies who seem to fear that the industrialisation of the West might be a bad thing, that huge factories would spring up which would perhaps spoil the natural beauty of the area affected. I think that nobody will take that seriously. The factories that will be established as a result of this legislation will not, in the main, be very large. They will, I think, be of the small type and will provide employment for the surplus population of the villages and parishes in which they are established.

One Deputy expressed disagreement with the idea of a factory which would employ only girls. Of course I agree with him that it is very desirable, as far as possible, to give permanent employment to men who will be the heads of families and support their families on the wages they receive. At the same time, I do not think that we should sneer at or discard factories which provide employment in the main for women and girls. We know that one of the saddest features of emigration is the large number of girls and women who go to Great Britain to seek employment in factories. After all, if they are to be employed in factories at all, why not employ them at home? If industrial development in our rural areas caters only for men then very large numbers of young women and girls will continue to emigrate and I do not think that is desirable. I do not pretend to be a very profound student of human nature but I have an uneasy feeling that if the girls go the boys will probably follow. In any case, if a country district is denuded of its young women it will not be a very bright or happy area.

I do not think, therefore, that there is any objection to an industry that will employ women and girls where such an industry can be established. We will hear, perhaps, the argument against an industry employing women that it affects them for their chief vocation in life which is household management. I do not think that there is very much in that argument because if the girls are employed for regular hours in the factory it is good training for them in any walk of life. If they do not acquire the necessary domestic knowledge as a result of their being employed in a factory they can acquire it during their leisure hours. We provide in almost every parish in the country domestic economy classes which are being availed of even by girls who are employed in factories.

An Ceann Comhairle

The Deputy should not let the girls lead him astray. He is travelling from the Bill.

Mr. Cogan

The point was raised regarding the establishment of industries that we should concentrate entirely on industries employing men only and I am just pointing out that we should not limit ourselves in that way. Many of the industries suitable for those areas would be light industries and such industries in many cases employ women.

Mr. Kyne

Cheap labour. That is why they employ women.

Mr. Cogan

I think it is about time that we got away from the idea of perpetually hounding down the man who tries to give employment of some kind. After all, there are very efficient trade unions in the country to protect the worker.

An Ceann Comhairle

We cannot discuss the type of labour we employ, whether it is to be male or female labour. What we want is industrial development.

Mr. Cogan

I may reply to an interruption?

An Ceann Comhairle

The Deputy has been looking for them for the last few minutes.

Mr. Cogan

Surely the suggestion that these new factories will employ cheap labour is one that cuts across the whole purpose of the Bill.

Mr. Kyne

That is not the suggestion. The suggestion is that factories employing women prefer them to men because they are cheaper.

Mr. Cogan

I do not accept that at all. In many cases factories employ women because they are more skilled and suitable for the particular type of work in which that factory is engaged. If the idea is to be put before the House and the country that the factories established as a result of this legislation will exploit their workers, it would be better to withdraw the Bill because its whole effect will be nullified. We are trying by this legislation to encourage well-meaning citizens of the country who have some capital to put it into industry. I think that we should give them reasonable encouragement and not brand them in advance as people who will be unjust and unfair to their workers.

There are quite a number of light industries, apart from those that have been suggested, which would commend themselves to enterprising people who wish to avail of the Bill. I do not want to name any in particular, but I did mention the other day the extent to which toys have been imported into the country and I do not see why we should not try to keep some of that money at home. With the Tourist Board we are endeavouring to develop the tourist industry and a very reasonable suggestion would be that we should in those rural or provincial areas where factories are to be established try to produce goods which tourists would be inclined to purchase, souvenirs of various kinds which would remind them of this country and which they would be anxious to take back to America or the other nations to which they belong.

A question which is pertinent and requires some consideration is how this Bill will affect other areas which are not brought within its scope. As we know, the Bill starts out with the areas that are defined in the Land Act of 1939. The Minister has power to extend them. I think that the general purpose of the House—and I think it would be the wish of the Government in this matter—is that it is not desirable that the Minister should be asked to extend the scope of the Bill to other areas, at least not unduly, because if you bring too large an area under the Bill its effect will be nullified. No Deputy who resides in a constituency where there are not undeveloped areas —I am not sure whether there are any constituencies in Ireland in which there are not some undeveloped areas —would want that. Take my own constituency, for example. I cannot see the Bill doing it any harm and I can see it doing a considerable amount of good.

Any move that stimulates industrial development in one constituency will have repercussions in all constituencies. If, as a result of the help given under this Bill, new industries are established, that will inspire the development of further branches of productive activity in other constituencies. Therefore, there is no need for any Deputy to worry unduly that the effects of this Bill will be confined to particular areas. Other areas have certain natural advantages. In reply to an interruption last night I pointed out that East Wicklow had many well developed and efficient industries because there are natural advantages in that area. There is a very large undeveloped area in West Wicklow. It is within the Minister's power to extend the Bill to all parts but I am not pressing that at the moment because I believe that the development of industry in these areas will be stimulated by the operation of this Bill. New productive ideas will be put into operation and in the exploitation of available resources in the western counties inspiration will be given for the development of similar resources that may exist in other counties.

For that reason I do not think there is any ground for objection to the Bill on the basis that it extends to a comparatively limited area. I am absolutely confident that the large undeveloped areas in my own constituency will benefit by any expansion in industry. Baltinglass has been crying out for industry for a long time and I believe it will secure it without asking for any grant under this Bill. I believe that with local effort and local enterprise and by availing of the natural advantages that we have we can build up new industries which are urgently desired.

Deputy MacBride suggested that, first of all, we should survey the undeveloped areas to see what industries are required and that then we should survey those areas to see where we should put the new industries. The whole idea that this authority will decide where the industries are to be put must be regarded with a certain amount of misgiving. In the main the people who establish the industries should have the decision as to where they will go. The people in a town who have acquired a certain amount of money as a result of their business enterprise will be well advised to consider how they can avail of this Bill by putting up a certain amount of money to establish an industry in their town and, having done that, they may secure the support of capital from some other part of the country. It is in that way that the location of industries will be mainly directed. The people who risk their money in providing capital must have a fairly large say, in fact the final say, in deciding the location of the industry. To try to do it on any other basis would make for endless political controversy and contention and competition as between one town and another. I admit that there will always be a certain amount of such competition but I think the matter will be decided mainly on the basis of the area which is favoured by those who put the capital into the industry.

Deputy Cowan gave this question a fairly light touch by suggesting that poteen production should be encouraged. Another Deputy suggested that the best way to encourage the production of poteen was to suppress it and seek to eliminate it. In that connection there is an industry that suggests itself, namely, the distilling industry. Whether that industry is capable of further expansion for export purposes, or not, I do not know. I am quite sure that it is not capable of further expansion for home consumption. If there is such an export market distilling would suggest itself as an industry that could be expanded.

Then we have the question of marine products, seaweed, fish and by-products of fish for the production of animal feeding stuffs and various oils and fats that are available from that source. These are all raw materials which are available even in the most western areas.

I asked a question yesterday about the development of wind power and the Minister indicated that experiments were being carried out. Over a long period of years I have been from time to time suggesting that there are possibilities connected with the development of wind power. I have also on a number of occasions suggested the development of tidal power. That may be a fairly formidable task but it is worthy of consideration, perhaps, as far as certain portions of the coast are concerned.

In matters of this kind I am relying more or less on common sense rather than on technical or engineering knowledge but I have always felt that there is still wide scope for the development of hydro-electric power from our small rivers. I suggest the development of comparatively small generating units, utilising the smaller rivers. That is a matter that would have to be examined. We know that over the past 1,000 years or more the power of rivers has been utilised. It was the first industrial power utilised in all parts of the country for milling purposes. With more modern technique and more modern type of turbines it should be possible to get power from smaller rivers, perhaps more cheaply than it can be obtained from large generating units and large reservoirs.

I think the whole House wishes the Minister success in this legislation and what it is designed to effect and the Parliamentary Secretary in his efforts to co-ordinate the various measures for decentralisation of industry. I think the whole House will congratulate the Minister's predecessor, Deputy Morrissey, on the manner in which he approached this Bill and the support he gave to the Bill and its objects.

Mr. Kyne

I join with other Deputies in welcoming the Bill as I would any other Bill which would tend to give employment in the areas mentioned. On the whole, these areas are rich only in their inheritance of our native culture, our language and our customs. They are mainly comprised of poor land, barren rocks and mountains and any Bill which will tend to improve the lot of the people in these areas should meet with support from all sides of the House. The people in the West of Ireland and other undeveloped areas have very little to thank three native Governments for. The need for such a Bill as this in 1951, almost 1952, is clear proof of that. There may have been reasons for that, one of them being that electricity was not available in those areas until latter years, but certainly, from this on there is no reason why we should not endeavour to do all we can to bring prosperity to the Gaeltacht areas either in the West or in the South.

I deplore that some Deputies from this side of the House took advantage of the Bill to level accusations that the motive behind the Bill was to secure the five seats lost by Fianna Fáil in those areas. I feel that that is a poor start to make. It is well known that no Government will introduce legislation to lose seats. But I fear, if that is continued, that any Government in the future which will seek to improve the lot of any area or any particular section of the community which, in their opinion, deserves help can always be challenged that they are doing something corrupt to secure political advantage. That would not be good for this country or for this House. This Bill should be examined on its merits and we should not inquire too deeply as to the reasons which were the mainspring of the idea.

I congratulate the Minister on the wide powers he has seen fit to take in this Bill. There is practically nothing that he cannot do under it. All means of transport by land or water are subject to the decision of the board. They can acquire any lands they require. I am also glad that we had not from this side of the House such a complaint as we had from the Minister for Finance, Deputy MacEntee, on the Local Authorities (Works) Act, that it is almost a Communist measure. The Minister is aware that he had to have these powers. The right of the private individual must sometimes be sacrified in the interests of the majority.

I am surprised that Deputy Cogan did not wail at the idea of this board having powers to take land if necessary from private individuals. I am glad that the people from whom we heard so much of that wailing a year or two ago have now become converts to the idea that the good of the greatest number is the object we should aim at. I am also glad that the Minister has seen fit to put in a provision to extend the operations of this Bill to other areas. I do not see behind that any political trick. I believe it is the general wish that this Bill should be applied to other areas which may not be situated in the West. I suggest that some of the qualifications for these areas should be: (1) that the area is undeveloped; (2) that Gaelic culture is being fostered there, that the Irish language is spoken and that Irish dancing is encouraged; (3) that it is either a congested area or an area which has become so depopulated that it is necessary to bring back the boys and girls so that they can form a nest of Gaelic culture and tradition.

I have in mind such areas in my constituency as Ring and Old Parish which can be said to be undeveloped and which are rich in Gaelic culture. By no stretch of the imagination can they be termed congested. Men and women and boys and girls who once lived in these area are now walking the streets of New York or London or other cities in these countries. Ring, which is famous for its Irish college, which has spread the Irish language throughout Munster and a good portion of Leinster, was once a thriving fishing village which in my lifetime boasted of over 100 fishing boats. At present there are only two or three boats operating from the port. The cottages to which students from the college went in the evenings for Irish dancing and conversation are all practically closed because the boys and girls have had to go abroad to earn a living. No industry of any kind has been established there. In Sean Apobul, which is called Old Parish because Christianity was brought there before St. Patrick came to Ireland by St. Carthage, St. Declan and St. Colman, the population has declined in the past 25 years by 50 per cent. Like the West of Ireland, it is rich in its knowledge and its love of our language. There is no living for a boy or girl there.

These areas deserve the attention of the new board. Industries such as fish curing, the manufacture of fish meal, or any other industry associated with the production of marine products would restore to these areas the people who are so necessary for the life of any place. Like my colleague, Deputy Desmond, I cannot but regret that the Minister has decided to give no powers to the board to act on its own initiative. It is private enterprise which is to establish these industries. In the main we have to depend in our present system on private enterprise. I believe that if the board were given power to act on its own initiative that would be an added incentive to private enterprise to take more active steps in order to establish industries in these congested areas.

One speaker said last evening that private enterprise is interested only in the figures shown on the credit side of the balance sheet. The employment of our young people cannot be measured purely in £ s. d. There is a responsibility on those in authority to provide employment for our young people in order to keep our culture and our inheritance intact. I think the board would be well advised to set up a team of experts and advisers whose function it would be to examine each area and decide on the most suitable industry for that area. The board should make contact with local development committees or even the local authorities with a view to getting together groups of people who would be prepared to invest their money in a particular enterprise and who would not look for a high dividend on that money but would be satisfied if the industry paid its way. The biggest dividend of all would be the enriching of the country by keeping our young people at home, a much better dividend than £ s. d.

I think the Minister should insert a clause giving the board power to act on its own initiative. Transport difficulties will be a problem. Industry requires transport and the roads in these undeveloped areas are sadly in need of reconstruction. Roads will have to be developed before any transport can be placed upon them.

Again, I welcome this Bill on its merits. It is an effort to improve the position of people who have been too long neglected. This Bill will be judged on its results. The £2,000,000 given to the board will be the taxpayers' money and I presume the board will be held accountable for its stewardship. When that day comes I hope the board will be able to provide proof of the manner in which it has done its work by producing figures to show the numbers of our young people employed in these new factories in the undeveloped areas.

General MacEoin

This Bill has been introduced because the present Government decided to shut down on the plan already proposed for the development of the Gaeltacht areas. It is perhaps another method of doing the same thing. Notwithstanding all the talk about financial difficulties, I am glad the Government has decided to proceed with capital expenditure in this way.

This Bill gives £2,000,000 to a board over a period of seven years. Deputy Kyne was simple enough to think that the board on its establishment would immediately have £2,000,000 in its hand. That is not so. The money will have to be voted each year out of the £2,000,000. Therefore, it is not immediately £2,000,000. This is just part of the Fianna Fáil technique in erecting a large sign post. Why has it been done? It is good politics. I do not take the line, as Deputy Cogan did, of accepting that "dishonest" and "political" mean the same thing. Dishonest and political are two entirely different words.

Mr. Dillon

Dishonest and Fianna Fáil political are the same.

General MacEoin

They are not. I do not accept that view.

Mr. Lemass

Accept it our way.

General MacEoin

I will accept it in my own way to my own satisfaction. I am not interested in the Minister's interjection. I want to give Fianna Fáil a chance to deliver the goods. If they deliver the goods it will be good politics. Good politics is the art of good government. I do not believe any Government will remain in office unless it plays good politics. The best Government in the world will not stay long in office if it does not play good politics. We have had experience of that in both the first Government of this country and the last one. No matter how good its programme is, if it does not play good politics it will not stay in. Had the first Government and the last played good politics the story might be different to-day. That does not mean that there was anything dishonest about them. Everything that is done by a Government in the interests of the people has a two-fold objective: it is for the benefit of the people and it keeps the Government popular with the people. Any Government which does that successfully is to be commended.

Now, if the Government make a success of this Bill then there is no doubt but that they will get approval from a very great number of people for the work which they have done well. That will be whether we like it or not. We may not like it politically, but I for one will be quite satisfied if it has good results. As I said the other day on the Supplies and Services Bill, if this Bill achieves the object for which it is being established then I say "well done." Now it cannot achieve that object unless it is administered in a very impartial manner, and unless there is no partisanship in it. What worries me is that, if any organisation other than a local cumann initiates something, it will be brushed aside until such time as the cumann, or the local Fianna Fáil executive will have passed the necessary resolution calling on the Government to put a factory or a scheme, or whatever it may be, into operation.

The second thing which I do not like about the Bill is the power which the Minister is taking under Section 3 to add "any other area to which, by Order of the Minister, the Act is for the time being to apply." That is the mendicant part of the Bill. I should like to see the Government declaring what areas the Bill is to apply to, and to make that a statutory obligation. The Bill would apply then by right to those areas. What this Bill is going to do is that Deputy Cogan's area or portion of the North Longford area will be brought into the Bill when the Fianna Fáil executive passes a resolution calling on the Minister to bring it in, when a deputation is sent up here to the Minister, hat in hand, to say to him "Dear Mr. Minister, will you admit such an area and declare such an area to be one to which the Act will apply?" That is the part of the Bill which I think is not good. I would like to see the benefits of every Bill brought in here extended by statute to the people for whom they were intended and not by Order. Why name any place? Why cannot the section say that this Act will apply any place which we think it should apply to?

The Bill sets out the Counties of Donegal, Sligo, Leitrim, Roscommon, Mayo, Galway and Kerry and the former rural districts of Ballyvaughan, Ennistymon, Kilrush, Scariff, Tulla and Killadysert in the County Clare, and then to any other place by Order. Why not say in the first instance: "This Act shall apply to any place which the Minister by Order may declare"?

Mr. Dillon

You know why?

General MacEoin

I do not.

Mr. Dillon

I do.

General MacEoin

I am trying to be a little bit more charitable than you are.

Mr. Dillon

You are well employed.

General MacEoin

Well, I think it is the right line to take. Charity, in my opinion, is never outdone. You can never get a better virtue, and it is always wise to put the best construction on your neighbour's actions, even though you have a doubt in your own mind of what he is going to do.

Mr. Dillon

No body of men ever stood in greater need of charity.

General MacEoin

I am not a judge of that. I feel that this sort of regulation or Order is something about which we have had to complain in this country for a long time. One can call to mind several Acts under which a Minister has power to make regulations or Orders. It is very hard for the ordinary people to understand what these Orders or regulations mean. I hope on the Committee Stage to move an amendment specifying the areas which, in my opinion, the Bill should apply to. I do not know whether that will be in order or not. I have in mind such areas as North Longford, portion of Cavan, and areas along the Shannon which are just as much in need of development as the Gaeltacht areas.

There is very little hope that these areas can be developed without some aid which, I think, has been described as spoon-feeding, Well, if spoon feeding produces the desired results, it is an excellent idea, even in regard to cattle raising or anything else. A little bit of artificial aid is very valuable, even in the production of a tip top beast, or in the promotion of some industry.

We have had a declaration about the £2,000,000 and the seven-year plan under this Bill. Money is to be voted each year for whatever is to be done. By reason of that, I am afraid that the Bill is going to kill itself, because there is too much regulation and there is no initiative from the Board. The initiative is to come from the people. I just cannot see how that is going to work in the early stages or even in the later stages. The ex-Minister for External Affairs was told yesterday that there were no plans yet for the spending of the Marshall Aid funds.

Mr. Dillon

The Counterpart Grant aid.

General MacEoin

Well, the Marshall Aid grant. The Minister told Deputy MacBride that the Government had not yet prepared any plans for its expenditure. What I suggest is that the board to be set up under this Bill should be given £2,000,000 out of that grant to enable it to proceed with this work at once, that it could select the work itself and that it should be independent. I do not think it should have to go back with every proposal to the body initiating a plan for a factory, an industry or other development.

If the board has plans of its own ready, and if they are excellent plans, then it should be in a position to proceed with them. But under the Bill, the plans will come to the Parliamentary Secretary. He will, in turn, examine them, submit them to the other Departments and by the time they have gone round all the Departments, everyone will be sick and tired of the thing and will be heartbroken. There will be no results. You will have happening again what happened before—the people's minds in these areas will be raised, as they were raised before and nothing will be done.

We remember when a Minister was appointed before to look after the Gaeltacht areas. Fianna Fáil was then in its pristine youth and it was going to elevate the whole country. Now, we are doing the same thing again. Fianna Fáil is coming with its plans and, as I say, these will raise the people's minds, but I suggest that things will be worse than ever. At the end of the seven years, there will not be employment for 1,000 people, because there will be too many regulations to get through. You will have to get financial sanction for everything you propose. The Department of Finance will be clamping down on what is proposed. On the other hand, if this board with the aid of portion of the Counterpart Grant, could start right away, then it could do very great work.

I suggest that areas like North Longford should be included by statute and not by Order. When Fianna Fáil came into office first in 1932, their very first act was to declare North Longford a congested area. This was good political business. I must admit that North Longford benefited considerably by it, but so did Fianna Fáil. However, I have not the slightest complaint at their action because they did good work even though they were voting against me.

Mr. Dillon

They did the right thing with the wrong motive. That is damnation of the soul.

General MacEoin

It was good work just the same. As I say, North Longford should be included by statute but I do not want it to be excluded again. The Minister can do both, and that is the undesirable part of the whole thing. He has power to include it and if it does not act in the way in which he wants it to act, it can be excluded again by his Order.

Mr. Dillon

Why is that power in the Bill?

General MacEoin

Again, I say do not ask me to interpret that. It has been part of the Fianna Fáil political set-up. I admit that they have succeeded in retaining the confidence of the people for 16 years and of portion of the people for the last nine or ten months.

Mr. Dillon

So I see.

General MacEoin

A political Party that can do that is not bad. It is a test; if the people are accepting it, that is their business.

Mr. Dillon

I trust the Tánaiste does not enjoy these tributes.

General MacEoin

I would like the Minister to say if he is prepared to amend this section by adding to it the electoral divisions of Drumlish, Ballinalee and portion of the Granard electoral division. If he adds these by statute it will satisfy me for my own political ends and it will satisfy my constituents.

I wish the Bill every success. I feel that if the board has the right not only to establish these factories, but to develop, in the Gaeltacht areas, handicrafts, fishing, the woollen industry, kelp and seaweed industries and all the various activities that can be developed there, they will have done a great day's work. If the land reclamation scheme is proceeded with, even to a limited extent, it will prevent the depopulation of these districts. I am anxious that the people there will live in comfort and not have to struggle for a mere existence. The finest type of people in Ireland come from those areas and we have a great opportunity to develop and keep alive there our ancient Irish culture and customs.

I would like the Minister to look on my criticism as being designed to improve the Bill and to get rid of the charge that it will be utilised for partisan rather than political purposes. I would object to the word "partisan" more than I would object to the word "political". If the Bill is administered in an impartial manner and if organisations, such as Muintir na Tíre, Young Farmers' Clubs and, if you like, the various political Parties, club together and establish a sort of cooperative society for the benefit of the area, then I think good work will be done and that success will attend the Bill.

Mrs. Crowley

I feel that this Bill will do a great deal of good for the counties where it is provided that factories will be set up. There is one of these factories in a district in my constituency. Before it was set up there was an incidence of unemployment, and minor employment schemes had to be framed to relieve it. These gave a certain amount of employment for a few months of the year only. To begin with, this factory employed 170 people and in a short time it employed 200. This is the sort of thing we want in rural districts so as to keep the people from emigrating.

I would not agree with Deputies who say that women should not be employed in these factories. Women are emigrating as much as the men, and if they feel that they would like factory employment, I think they should get the same chance as the men. Most women are neat with their fingers and their talents could be used in the factories to great advantage.

I hope that when this board is set up, it will be able to circularise the different industries concerned, pointing out to them the presence of raw materials in different districts. For instance, in the mountainy districts where sheep-farming is carried on, these farmers could supply any industry with a quantity of wool for making carpets, etc.

I wish the Bill every success because it has the hallmark of genuine effort to tackle the difficult problems that will arise. I am sure it will have support in this House.

Mr. Finan

It is my intention to follow the example of the last Deputy and to be as brief as possible. I want to say quite frankly that I am glad this measure was introduced. I feel that for some considerable time native Governments have neglected the western part of the country. It seems to have been forgotten altogether that that part of Ireland west of the Shannon is the responsibility of a native Government just as much as are Leinster and Munster.

I do not want to suggest that I am expecting anything spectacular to accrue from this Bill. I believe it is going to do good—and that is my firm hope—but I do not believe that it is going to bring about a cessation of emigration or, possibly, full employment. I feel that it will take us a fairly long time to achieve that. However, I believe this Bill is an aim in the right direction and if we direct out best efforts towards the development envisaged, it will ultimately achieve success.

I know the people in the West of Ireland are not industrially minded. They are not much inclined to speculate and they may be slow to invest money without some assurance of a dividend or a return. It is all very well to say that we should be patriotic enough to invest money for the purpose of providing employment. But business people do not accumulate their money in that way. They accumulate their money by making judicious investments and I think that is the first consideration, that the people must be assured of a dividend on their investment before they embark on it. They look at it from a purely business point of view and if they see a reasonable chance of success resulting in a reasonable profit to themselves, they will go in that direction.

This certainly would be an inducement to those people. An Foras Tionscal will be able to assist them financially, but I suggest that there should be a duty attaching to An Foras Tionscal other than dispensing money. I want to be quite distinct that I am not suggesting that they should have powers, but I say they should have duties and one of the duties that I would assign to them would be to educate the people, prospective investors, in the form of industry most likely to succeed in the district. They must have the technical training themselves for that, but they should be able to procure information which should be put at the disposal of the people in those areas that would enlighten them as to what would be the most likely form of industry to succeed in the different areas.

There are in my county, according to recent reports, rather large deposits of a certain type of clay very suitable for the manufacture of pottery. If An Foras Tionscal or some expert in these matters could provide information on a subject like that, they might induce people to invest in that type of industry, which ought to be a fairly profitable industry in this country. History tells us that there was on a former occasion, probably a couple of hundred years ago, a very successful pottery industry in County Roscommon. I believe An Foras Tionscal should be able to provide information that would induce people to invest their money in such an industry.

I know, however, that this question of transport charges, as it exists at the present time, will militate against industrial development in Ireland. A couple of years ago, shortly after the Industrial Development Authority was established, I discussed the possibility of an industry in my town. The gentleman to whom I spoke gave me this warning and told me to take it very seriously: "If you are starting an industry in your county or county town I want you to bear in mind particularly the freight charges that exist there and if you are aiming at a product you should endeavour to get some product as light as possible." To drive home his point he instanced the production of nylon stockings; something light in the way of products ensures lower charges in the way of freight. Freight charges are the greatest handicap that industry is suffering from in this country. I agree with those Deputies who suggest that now that transport is a national concern there should be some encouragement given to native industry by the provision of cheap rates for Irish manufactured goods. I am sure that would be an encouragement and incentive to industry.

To go back to what I previously said, one of the things which would contribute most to the success of this would be a mineral survey of the area which it is intended to develop. We were told some years ago that we had here several mineral deposits which could have been developed, but that under British rule, lest this might interfere with British industrial development or reduce their sales, the British Government would not allow us to develop our own industries or mineral deposits. We have had 30 years of native government and we should know now if there are really valuable mineral deposits in this country and we should make an honest attempt to develop them if they are there. We should not be left any longer in the dark in regard to these matters.

I have been wondering if our canals could not be brought into use in connection with this matter. Canal transport is the cheapest form of transport that we could possibly have and at the present time our canals are not serving any very useful purpose. In fact, very little use is made of them. If they could be brought into play now to carry the products which we hope will come about as a result of the introduction of this Bill, it would mean cheaper transport in the delivery of these goods.

I suggest An Foras Tionscal should work in the closest collaboration with the Industrial Development Authority and with the Industrial Research Bureau; and if you have the co-ordination among the Departments which it is intended to bring about, this Bill should confer a long needed blessing on that particular part of the country mentioned in the Bill.

I agree with Deputy Seán Flanagan, who said that, in his view, the most important function of this Bill is the technical training to be given to young boys and young girls. That is a thing we lack very much in this country. It was hoped, I believe, on the introduction of the vocational education system that some kind of technical training for boys and girls would be effected. I am afraid we were disappointed in that. There is very little technical training in our vocational schools. If, as a result of this Bill, our boys and girls will be given a technical training, that in itself would nearly repay to the country the amount it is proposed to spend.

I want to say in conclusion that, regardless of what may be said by other Deputies, we in Roscommon are very glad that a Bill of this type is being brought in. Some people seem to think that Roscommon farmers are all big farmers. They are not. In fact, in the western and northern parts of Roscommon—you might say 50 per cent. of the county—the valuations are under £20; there may be a few areas where there are large farms. But one thing we do know in Roscommon is that we have been completely neglected in the industrial development which is alleged to have taken place. You might say that Roscommon is a county without a factory.

We do not hope that this Bill is going to solve our unemployment problem, but we believe it will help in some small way. Actually the number employed in any particular factory is small in comparison with the number of people who migrate from the West of Ireland every year. What I said in the beginning I repeat now, that it is a step in the right direction and I sincerely hope it will bring about the end which is intended.

Mr. M.P. Murphy

I think it is only right that any measure such as this, tending to lead to the development of the poorer areas in this country, should meet with full approval in this House, irrespective of what groups may or may not be behind it. As a Deputy coming from one of these undeveloped areas, it is evident to me, and I am sure to anyone conversant with conditions obtaining in those districts, that the people living there are labouring under grave disadvantages by comparison with the people resident in the remainder of this country. As we know, the land is exceptionally poor and there are no industries of any kind in these districts. The only hope for the younger people when they reach the age of 18 or 20 is the emigrant ship.

I, too, do not regard this measure as an innovation because it is quite true that the former Government conferred many benefits on the people in these areas. I believe it was the first Government that held out any ray of hope at all to these people because under the previous Governments, both Cumann na nGaedheal and Fianna Fáil, these districts were completely neglected. I think that measures such as the Local Authorities (Works) Act, the land rehabilitation project and the afforestation scheme of the inter-Party Government set a very good headline and I would regard this present measure as following more or less on the lines of these previous measures.

I believe that in any development scheme for these areas we must take cognisance of the main industry there, namely, agriculture. The farms are mainly uneconomic and, as I have already mentioned, the land is exceptionally poor. It costs these people much more to produce say, milk, or any other product than it costs farmers who are fortunate enough to have first-class land. Special attention must be given to small farmers in these areas if they are to survive. They form the bulk of the community there and every effort should be made to provide them with opportunities of availing of schemes tending to make their holdings economic. For that reason, I think it quite relevant to suggest, even at this stage, that farmers living in these areas are entitled to a subsidy for their milk over and above the subsidy given generally to farmers at present.

There has been a good deal of talk during the past 12 months, as we all know, in regard to the price of milk and I think it quite relevant, even on this Bill, to point out that the cost of milk production varies very considerably in different areas in the country. The farmers in the poorer districts in Ireland cannot keep high milk-yielding cows because their land is too poor to maintain that type of cattle. The result is that they are able to keep only the poorer type of cow which gives lower milk-yields. I think it only right to suggest, therefore, that some part of the £2,000,000 provided under this Bill should be devoted towards giving an extra subsidy for milk in these poorer areas. I think that as important as any other item of production in these undeveloped areas. Some people seem to think that the £2,000,000 should be thrown around to provide factories here, there and everywhere. I hope that factories will be provided but I think that special attention should be given to the factories which already exist in these areas in the form of these small farms. Every effort should be made to rehabilitate these holdings and to make them as economic as possible.

So far as the measure generally is concerned, I believe it will meet with the co-operation of every section of the people. It will definitely have that co-operation in my constituency and I feel from what I have seen in the public Press, it will have co-operation all over the country. So far as the financing of any project that may be put into operation as a result of this measure is concerned, I believe that every inducement should be held out to small investors. Many people feel that if some useful project were established in any particular town in these undeveloped areas, probably a few wealthy people would provide the bulk if not all of the capital and that they would run the business of whatever factory is established to suit themselves. I think that should not be the case and the best safeguard is to hold out every inducement to small investors to invest whatever they can afford in these local industries. I would ask the Minister to give every consideration to the question of holding out inducements to the smaller investors in these localities to invest their money in Irish industry. Of course, you must hold out some promise to them that their investments will be safe.

We have heard that this is a political measure and that it has been introduced for the purpose of winning back some seats lost by the Government Party at the last election. I hope these allegations are without any foundation and that, as far as my own constituency is concerned, it will get its rightful share of any benefits accruing from the measure. We have heard a lot about Mayo, Galway and Roscommon to-day and yesterday, but I maintain that the main problems which confront these areas, the problems of emigration and unemployment, are as acute in West Cork as any district in Ireland. I know that, if this Bill is to be a success, local initiative is necessary, but I believe that in some districts, particularly those in which the people are finding it very difficult to eke out an existence, the board should take the initiative.

It may be said that all these districts come under the one heading but I think it only right to point out that the poorer districts are entitled to exceptional treatment. I have no hesitation in claiming that we have one such district in West Cork and that is the Berehaven peninsula. The plight of the people in their efforts to eke out an existence there, is a desperate one and it has been brought to the notice of this House on previous occasions by former members of the Dáil from that area. The peninsula extends over a distance of 40 miles from the more accessible centres. I believe that an area such as that, where it is sometimes almost impossible to find the wherewithal even to eke out an existence, should get special attention and that something should be done to provide suitable industries there. I hope, therefore, that the Minister will do all he possibly can to provide the initiative to establish industries in that area.

It is very peculiar that in many areas in this country—I take my own area as one and I am sure it is typical of other areas in the length and breadth of the country—we have plenty of mineral deposits and at the same time we are importing products that could be manufactured from these deposits. Take, for instance, the slate deposits. We have vast deposits of slate in West Cork that it would be quite easy to develop. Though that is definitely the case, we find that for house-building even at the present time local authorities have to import tiles for roofing. I think that is a scandalous state of affairs and I believe that it is the duty of the Government, seeing that local enterprises have failed and will fail, in my opinion, in this respect, to see that such extensive deposits are developed. Take the Benduff and Madrannagh slate quarries, for instance. There we have slate quarries which employed over 100 men some years ago. Vast quantities of slates could be produced in these places. I believe the time has now come to develop as far as possible the mineral resources of the country. In any areas throughout the country where private enterprise has failed to develop these resources the onus is on the State to take the initiative now and to develop them. We are fortunate, perhaps over and above the remainder of the country, in the mineral resources we have in my part of the country. As well as barytes, we have huge deposits of manganese. The barytes mines were worked very extensively in West Cork up to a number of years ago. During the recent war a gentleman came from Austria or Holland or some other country and worked the barytes mines and produced and exported barytes. If it was profitable for someone from a foreign country to export barytes during the war period it should be equally profitable either for private enterprise or for some State body to carry out that work now.

Another important industry in this country and one that is giving and has given a fair amount of employment is the turf industry. Every inducement should be held out to local authorities and to private people to develop the bogs of this country. I regret to say that at present it is almost an impossibility to get a bog development scheme grant. That should not be the case. If we were able to produce our own turf we would not have to import the amount of coal which we have to import—and which we have had to import in the past, even from America. Some effort should be made to make it easier for people who have undeveloped bogs high up in the mountains to get the wherewithal to develop them. That is a very important matter so far as my constituency is concerned and, I believe, so far as the other areas in this Bill are concerned as well. It should be made easier for people to get this money under the heading of grants for the development of bogs. If this money were made readily available, hundreds of acres of undeveloped bog would be developed in Cork, and perhaps the same could be said of a great part of the rest of the country.

Another important item so far as the undeveloped areas are concerned is the growing of flax. Fortunately, flax will grow on land on which wheat or barley or other crops would never grow. Therefore, I think it should get special attention. It would be very helpful to the small farmers in those areas if it were developed. In West Cork, flax is grown very extensively—and in land that could be classed only as of medium grade. The farmers are very satisfied with the results obtained and they are satisfied that it is a paying proposition. If it is a paying proposition for the farmers of West Cork to grow flax, it would be a paying proposition for people in some of the other undeveloped areas to grow it as well. It is the duty of the Government to point out that flax is a suitable crop for the type of land which you will find in many of these undeveloped areas. I am sure more flax is produced in West Cork than in the total of the remainder of the country—or very near that amount.

We feel that in present world conditions it is most unfair to have to export that flax and to send it to Northern Ireland to be processed. We believe we should have an opportunity of processing that flax where it is grown. We claim we are entitled— and part of the capital would be made available locally—to ask the Government for aid in the setting up of a spinning industry in West Cork. I have heard of late that such a mill is being established in or around Cork City. I do not see why Cork City should claim the right to have the only spinning mill in the South of Ireland. West Cork, where the crop is grown, has a prior claim. It is the intention of the people of West Cork to push that claim as much as they possibly can.

Another very important item in connection with this Bill is the fishing industry. As every one of us knows, the lot of the fisherman to-day is not a very happy one. I believe that the fishing industry could be expanded immensely. In general, the bulk of the fishermen are too poor to buy the proper equipment they require for their work. Every effort should be made by the Government, either by way of substantial grants or by whatever other measures may be necessary, to provide the fishermen with the modern equipment they require, in order to make the industry a paying one. I desire to refer in a particular way to the people living in the islands round the coast of this country. They are a class in themselves and they should have got better treatment from the different native Governments we have had in this country in the past 30 years. The people in the islands round the coast of this country labour under tremendous difficulties. Even their children have no opportunity of bettering themselves in life. They have no opportunity of getting a secondary education. Unless something is done for these people in the near future I believe island life will disappear altogether in the course of 25 or 30 years. I am convinced that special aid should be given to the islanders. I am sure the same disadvantages apply in the different islands round our coast and for that reason the people of these islands should be set aside as a special class. Any industry such as net mending, boat repairing, and so forth, which would be common to the areas and which could be set up would be of immense advantage to these people because undoubtedly they are entitled to better treatment than they are getting.

As I have said, I come from an area which is rich in mineral resources and it is only natural that in a very particular way I should welcome this Bill. I believe that local initiative is available and that, with the help of even small grants, we will be able to do something to develop West Cork as, unfortunately, no effort was made in the years gone by to establish any kind of an industry there. Anything that I or the Party of which I am a member can do to co-operate with any private enterprise or with the board which is to be set up will be done gladly.

I notice that the board which is to be set up under this Bill will be composed of three or four officers. What type of qualifications will these officers need to have and what practical knowledge will they need to have of how the people in those areas live? I should like to know if these officers will have any practical knowledge in that connection. This board will be composed of three or four civil servants who may have great ability but who may have no practical knowledge of how difficult it is for the people in those undeveloped areas to eke out an existence. It would be terribly unfair if this board were composed entirely of men who may have a thorough knowledge of the business in theory but who may have no practical knowledge of the life which is lived by the people in those undeveloped areas. These men may not know what it is to feel the want of a pound or a shilling— as the vast majority of the families in these undeveloped areas know it at the present time. Some member of the board should be a person who has not only a theoretical but a practical knowledge of the needs and requirements of the people in these undeveloped areas.

I reiterate my assurance that I and the Party to which I belong will do everything we possibly can to encourage the promotion of industries.

I would like to refer in passing to the discontent this measure has created in portion of my constituency. There are four areas—Bantry, Castletown, Schull and Skibbereen—which have been included, as urban districts; but two rural districts—Dunmanway and Clonakilty—have been excluded. There is great dissatisfaction about that. I cannot see why Dunmanway should be excluded, as the land around it is exceptionally poor. The farmers in the area from Dunmanway to Ballingeary, as anyone travelling through there knows, are exceptionally poor and unemployment is rampant. I believe it has the qualifications that any of the other areas possess. I would ask the Minister to give this his close attention, to see that Dunmanway would be included—and Clonakilty, if possible.

Mr. J. Flynn

On behalf of the people I represent, I wish to say that this is the best effort on behalf of the people that any Government has made so far. Our people realise that this is a real effort, a businesslike, sincere effort, in regard to development. I have been listening to the Minister and I appreciate his statement on it. I would like to add a few points myself in this respect.

The Bill as it stands will help to provide numbers of well developed industries. Take, however, a small village or town where it is impossible to get sufficient capital, although the raw materials and other necessary items are available. I would suggest that the State should come in there and assist by making some grant available to be used together with the local effort. There is one village in particular in my constituency, Glenbeigh, County Kerry, where we have a rocky shore and there is carrageen moss which is exported. It is manufactured into the finished article up here or in some other centre and then sold to hotels and restaurants. The same applies to the West of Ireland.

In the comparatively poor district of which I speak, with the exception of one man we would probably have no one to invest money for its development. If a centre could be established where that material could be converted into the finished article, it would mean that a number of girls would be employed in that district on this small type of industry. I would like to see some attention given to that. I am aware that in the larger towns, from what I have heard and from what has been said when they read this announcement about the Bill, they are already taking steps and are anxious to see what they can put up by way of investment and what industry they can put forward to the Minister. I am very interested in this type of development in the smaller areas.

From my reading of the Bill, there seems to be a suggestion that amenities like electric current and power would be provided. I know one district where heretofore we were up against it in that regard. Last year I contacted people from Austria to start a little industry in Cahirciveen. They actually signed an agreement to start, but the first objection was that there was no local Electricity Supply Board current in the district. As a way out, these people are coming back now, and instead of manufacturing the raw material for an artificial pearl industry, they are bringing over from Austria a technician who will train our girls. They will manufacture the article in Austria and assemble it over here, pending the final installation of the plant. We are suggesting that as a compromise, rather than leave it over indefinitely. I am quoting this just to show what we are up against in towns like Cahirciveen and other towns on the sea coast where these services are not available and where development is very difficult. I would like to stress that very much, so that the Minister and his Department may assist under this Bill by getting the Electricity Supply Board to make current available or provide a local turf generating station. That would make it an inducement immediately to investors such as I have mentioned. They would know that these services were available just as in Dublin or Cork and that is where I see the great benefit of this measure.

In my opinion, the benefits can be two-fold. In one way, it can assist people who will invest to start an industry in a comparatively large town. Then, in the smaller areas, some grant can be given to people to develop their small local product in the rural villages and smaller towns. I am very anxious to make that point.

In regard to the training of workers, it was suggested that under the Bill these men might be sent to some of the industrial centres outside the country. It would be much more appropriate to bring in the technicians from outside to train the boys and girls locally in their own environment. In that way, the State might assist the local people under this Bill, by providing local training centres. We have not technical schools in every district. We have been approached also in regard to Cahirciveen, to establish a technical school or training centre there. If I am not out of order, I would also suggest that, in the effort to develop these areas, training centres or technical schools might be considered as an amenity, as well as other lines of development.

Take the case of an island like Valentia. There again, the people are handicapped. They had one of the finest slate quarries in the country 60 to 100 years ago from which they exported slate to England and other countries, but, because of difficulties of transport and so on, it would now be difficult to get people to put up sufficient capital to enable that quarry to be reopened. I know that these matters are not provided for in the Bill, but I mention them so that the Minister might consider them with other developments as a means of assisting these people. There is no good talking to these people about development if some inducement is not given to people from outside or to people in the area to invest, because, from the very start, they are up against it. They are handicapped in so far as their overhead charges and the costs of carrying out preliminary work are so high that they are unable to start in competition with people who are well developed and who have a long industrial tradition behind them.

I know that this measure is the real thing, a real effort on behalf of the people in the congested and Gaeltacht districts, and they know it. It is not on a par with all the statements we have had in the past 20 years to the effect that something should be done and something will be done, and the system of sending an inspector down to make a report about which nothing more is heard. This puts it up to the people themselves and I am confident that they will avail of the opportunity afforded them. In my area, we have already had meetings with regard to it. I myself consulted the Parliamentary Secretary in regard to a particular industry, a project for a woollen mill in the Killorglin district, sponsored by people from Scotland. These people, however, were very unreasonable. Instead of having 51 per cent. Irish capital in the company, they wanted it the other way—that they would hold 51 per cent. and thus control the industry. I quote these facts to show that the people in our district have tried to fit in their economy and their effort with the terms of this measure.

With regard to getting our people trained, we have our local technical schools in Cahirciveen and other towns. We have local parish councils and the parish priests in the different areas work in with us, in an effort to develop these local enterprises. I am anxious to see that everything will be done by the people locally and by the Government to make a success of this scheme, as I am sure it will be. It is up to both the Government and the people down the country to leave nothing undone to face up to the difficulties, and overcome them, and I congratulate the Minister on the introduction of this Bill.

Mr. Palmer

The Deputy who has just sat down seems to have arrogated to himself the duties which are to be conferred on the board to be set up. He has been consulting people from Austria, England and various other quarters and I think it is work like that, the politician coming in to interfere, that will damn the objects for which the Bill has been introduced.

Mr. J. Flynn

Do not be jealous of my effort. I am a year ahead of you all the time.

Mr. Palmer

There is no use in humbug like that or in talking about "us" and "we" and "I". There is really nothing in this Bill. The old English Government here made certain efforts in their own way to improve the conditions of the people living in Gaeltacht and congested areas and each of our own Governments since 1922, made efforts in various ways to do work of that nature. Their work, to a certain extent and in certain directions, has been successful, but I am sure that anybody familiar with conditions in the Gaeltacht will readily agree that the difficulties before this board are almost insuperable.

When speaking on the Estimate for the office of the Parliamentary Secretary, the Parliamentary Secretary to the Taoiseach remarked that the only way conditions in the Gaeltacht can be improved is by the setting up of industries, but, in the setting up of industries in these remote areas, we must have regard to the difficulties which exist—lack of suitable transport, costs of transport, lack of raw materials to a great extent and reluctance on the part of local people or people from other areas to invest their money in industries in which they perhaps have not got perfect confidence. All these difficulties will arise, but it will be for the board to endeavour to overcome them and the farther away politicians on all sides keep from that board, the better and the more successfully will the board be able to carry out its work. On the board and its personnel will really depend the success or failure of the Bill and the Minister must make a serious effort to ensure that those he will select for appointment to the board will be persons who are above reproach as regards political affiliations. The further removed they are from these affiliations the better it will be.

Mr. P.J. Burke

That would be a very hard job, Deputy.

Mr. Palmer

Not if you had anything to do with it.

Mr. P.J. Burke

It would be a very hard job to get a person who had nothing to do with politics in this country.

Mr. Palmer

If the Minister will select the right members the board will have the confidence of the people and they will be helped in every way to carry out their difficult and important task.

I hold that agriculture is the foundation of all industrial progress. When the Parliamentary Secretary to the Taoiseach ignores the agricultural side he has probably Connemara in his mind, but in the area I represent we have some very good land for development. All that is required is to drain, reclaim and fertilise it. We have some splendid mountains suitable for the rearing of sheep. It would be about time that something were done to improve the mountain grazing in those western areas. First of all, we should improve the land and make the holdings as economic as possible. We should also carry on all the other subsidiary industries connected with agriculture such as poultry, pigs and so on. In fact, one important industry that could be carried on in those areas would be bee keeping for the production of honey. Our mountains are simply covered with heather and heather honey is certainly the best that could be produced. Next in importance to agriculture is the fishing industry about which I spoke on the Estimate. I do not intend to delay too much on that aspect now. The development of agriculture and fishing alone would make a wonderful improvement in the conditions of the Gaeltacht and congested areas.

Situated on the western seaboard and extending from Donegal to West Cork are the beauty spots of this country. One very important industry that should be catered for in that respect is tourism. By the way, in passing, I might remark that, when the Minister for Industry and Commerce was setting up the publicity board on tourism recently, he did not select one individual from the areas referred to to act on this board. Most of the members on the board come from the City of Dublin and elsewhere. Evidently, the Minister did not keep in mind the importance of developing tourism in the western area. If industries are to be set up and carried on successfully, the first step to be taken along the western seaboard and in the congested and Gaeltacht areas is to extend the Electricity Supply Board services. People will be very slow to start an industry unless they have electric power. The board should develop rural electrification.

There is really nothing very much to be gained by speaking at length on this matter. It will be for the board to do its best to carry out the work and so far as we—and, I am sure, every Deputy in this House—are concerned we wish the object of this Bill every success. Any services we can give will be placed at the disposal of the board in an effort to try to improve and develop the congested and Gaeltacht areas.

Mr. Moran

I wish to welcome this Bill, first, because it is a positive step towards decentralisation and, secondly, because it will provide machinery to deal with some of the major problems in the congested areas, such as employment and emigration. It is about time, I think, that a measure of this kind was introduced in Dáil Éireann. We have watched with alarm the overgrowth of Dublin City at the expense of the country. The concentration of population of the country has become completely lopsided. This Bill, at all events, provides the framework whereby an attempt can be made by our country and State to establish and intensify the establishment of industry in congested areas having regard to the grave population problems that we have in these congested areas.

The time is ripe for a measure of this kind. The people in the congested areas —and particularly in some of the small towns in the West which have become ghost towns—are prepared to co-operate in every way. There are many small towns I know of in the West of Ireland the people of which are now prepared to invest their modest savings in Irish industry. Their modest savings are not sufficient to go ahead with an industrial project but, with the help envisaged under this Bill, there is a new spirit manifest among the people of those small towns which, as I have said, have become ghost towns. Possibly, there is no man more responsible for that confidence in Irish industry than the Tánaiste—the man who introduced this Bill.

Mr. Roddy

How can you expect that after he declared four or five weeks ago that this was a bankrupt State——?

Mr. Moran

I can assure the Deputy that he will get an opportunity of speaking on this Bill if he has anything worth saying, which I doubt. The Tánaiste has been mainly responsible for the feeling of confidence abroad that Irish industry is something to be cultivated and that the people would be well advised to invest their savings.

A number of industries that have been already in operation under the encouragement given by the Tánaiste in the West has done a great deal to further instil that confidence in our people. The result is that the people in many of these small towns in the West are quite willing to invest their modest savings in any industry that might be started in the area. We have also both advantages and disadvantages in these congested areas. One of our advantages is that we have workmen there who are very adaptable and who can become very skilled at any particular industry in a very short time. They have proved that both at home and in other countries. On that account industrialists, who consider coming to the congested areas to establish an industry, will start off with the knowledge that manpower will be available. That is one great asset to any industry that will be started.

Of course, the big difficulty to be faced by the Minister and the board is the distance these new industries would be from the market for their produce. One of the first things that any industrialist will point out to you if you ask him to come to a congested area, for instance in the West of Ireland, is that the cost of transport between the West and Dublin or the nearest port for export is so heavy that his produce will suffer unfair competition from people who manufacture in Dublin or Cork City, who have shipping facilities available to them and who will not have the cost of transport over great distances. This is one of the first things the board will have to look into. Some inducements must be given to industrialists to offset that difficulty. I consider that there are two ways of dealing with this problem. One would be the opening up of small western ports. If you could have a regular shipping service from ports like Galway, Westport, Sligo and the other ports along the west coast industrialists would be in a position to get their produce to the export market, and it would provide them with cheap transport to the centre of the home market, Dublin. Until some scheme is devised to offset the heavy transport charges between the congested areas and the market or port for export, any industry established in the West will suffer a certain disability.

A considerable amount of money has already been spent on these ports and with some co-operation—I think it is really a question of co-ordination— shipping could be provided from different ports on different days so that industrialists could reach their market easily and would not have the deadening overhead charges now imposed on industrialists in these areas. There is the problem that some of these ports can take only boats of a small draft, 600 tons in some of the smaller ports, but if the matter is handled with a will and with co-operation on all sides that difficulty could be solved.

For a start the board should concentrate on areas where raw materials are available rather than import them. Industries started in that way would have a better chance of success. I wonder whether Mianraí Teóranta have carried out any intensive survey in these areas. While the Bill is being considered by the House whatever experts we have in Mianraí Teóranta should be sent to the congested areas to carry out an intensive survey so that they could inform the board when it is established of the raw materials which could be worked with success by the new industries. Some things have already been mentioned by Deputies, bogs, surplus fish, limestone and other raw materials. The available raw materials should be concentrated on and the first step in that direction would be for Mianraí Teóranta to be able to tell industrialists where the raw materials are. They could say "as well as raw materials in unlimited quantity you also have the inducements provided under the Bill." That is the practical way to get industries started.

It is true, of course, to say that you must have power and where there is no electric power it must be made available as you cannot have industry without power. I do not know how far we have been going astray with regard to works done under the Arterial Drainage Act. There should be more co-operation between the Electricity Supply Board and the people who are carrying out those major works because in some of these places hydro-electric development could be carried out in conjunction with that scheme. There is not sufficient co-operation between the different bodies. If you want to concentrate industries in the congested areas one of the first things must be the provision of power for them. We all know—anybody concerned with industries certainly knows—the difficulty arising from electricity rationing and so forth. Industrialists have a problem because of the danger of the Electricity Board's supply breaking down. The Electricity Supply Board claim that the demand has increased so much that they cannot keep up with it and go on with rural electrification at the same time. The provision of power must not be lost sight of by the Minister or the Electricity Supply Board.

We speak of the decentralisation of industry but I wonder why some obvious things have not been done. For instance, the (A and R) F Branch of the Land Commission should be decentralised. Instead of the pundits in Merrion Street dealing with the division and rearrangement of land they should be in the area where the problems arise, in the heart of Mayo or Kerry. Instead of allowing the schemes suggested by local officials to gather cobwebs for six months or more in Merrion Street waiting for some of these gentlemen to approve of them, there is no reason why the gentlemen should not be beside their work. Unless a start is made with that body by bringing these gentlemen down so that their decision on schemes can be given on the spot there is a poor hope of the decentralisation of industries. After all we should start with the Government and with Departments of State.

It is open to me, I think, to query Section 8, sub-section (5) of the Bill which reads:—

"The board shall defray all the costs and expenses of the board and the Irish Land Commission of or incidental to the purchase."

From my experience of the Land Commission and the gentlemen here in Merrion Street I will say that before the board can get consent from them the board will be forgotten by the Irish people. If they have to wait for the consent of the Land Commission in Merrion Street to do anything I can assure the House that they will have a very long wait. That is why I say that these gentlemen should be brought to where the work is instead of their officials sending in schemes while the people in the West wait for months or for years for the approval of those schemes.

A certain amount of decentralisation was carried out under a previous Government and the head office of the Land Commission was situated in Belcarra in County Mayo. I would not like to see delays occurring particularly under this scheme and if approval of schemes by the Land Commission is necessary under Section 8, sub-section (5), that will be sufficient.

There are two methods to get industrialists to work under this particular board. One is by the inducements offered in the Bill. The question is, are they sufficient or are they not? There is one point that is not quite clear to me. Section 6 states that the total amount so granted—that is for the purchase of machinery or equipment— shall not in any case exceed one-half the cost of the machinery or equipment provided. I am just wondering if the inducements provided for in other parts of this Bill can be given to any particular industry in addition to the grants provided for in Section 6. In other words, if the board provide half the cost of the machinery, does that automatically exclude the industry from the other inducements offered, such as grants for the training of workers, and so forth? That is a matter that may be made more clear on Committee Stage. I should like to know whether all the inducements provided for in the various sections of the Bill will be available for any particular industry or whether the industry will be excluded, if they take grants under Section 6, from the benefits of the other sections.

It is a question as to whether the inducements in this Bill are sufficient or not. The inducements offered in this Bill are undoubtedly very substantial for the purpose of starting an industry but what industrialists, and particularly shareholders, will be more concerned about is the question as to whether there is a likelihood over a period of years of getting back the money invested or getting a profit on the money invested. While the inducements are excellent for the purpose of commencing an industry, there does not appear to me—perhaps I am wrong in this—to be a long term inducement to the investor to put his money in an industry started under this Bill.

There is some slight provision for the relief of rates, which I think is not very material. If it is not done under this Bill, possibly it may have to be done at a later stage, but I think some inducement by way of relief of taxation must be offered for a particular period, say, five or ten years, so that people who would be induced to provide capital for the establishment of an industry under this Bill would enjoy for whatever period of years might be specified a certain amount of relief from taxation.

All the inducements in the Bill are for the purpose of establishing industry. It may be good psychology to say that once an industry is established the people concerned will do their utmost to make it a success but I still believe that possibly the House may be driven at some future date to go even further by way of inducement so as to get people to start industries in congested areas.

In addition to inducements, there should also be a certain amount of compulsion on the part of the board and the Minister. I mean that any new industry that is given any form of protection on the Irish market should be ordered by the Department to go to the congested areas. We are dealing with a social problem here. If the Minister or the board, in their wisdom, are prepared to give certain protection to an industry so that they may enjoy the home market the Minister should be in a position to tell the industry that gets such a concession where they shall establish the industry. The industry is getting certain concessions. It is getting at least a limited market for its particular product. If it gets that protection, that should enable the Minister to say to the industrialist that he must go where the board, under this Bill, tells him to go; he must establish the industry in Mayo, Galway or whatever the congested area may be, that the board shall direct. I suggest that there should be that amount of compulsion vested in this board in addition to the inducements that are given.

As far as the training of staffs is concerned, I listened with interest to the suggestion made by Deputy Flynn that possibly the technical schools in this country could provide the necessary training. That would be the case only to a very limited degree. One flaw in that suggestion is that, even if you were to import teachers to any particular technical school to teach trainees for any particular industry, the necessary machinery would not be available. Probably, it would be a much more economic proposition to send young boys or girls for training to a factory where the machinery is installed and where they can see jobs being done. Then they could come back and train others.

Advantage could be taken of the technical schools in suitable cases. They are doing an excellent job, not alone in the cities but throughout the length and breadth of the land, in giving technical education and instruction in various crafts and types of industry. It is a good thing, however, that provision is made in the Bill for grants for technical education because, as I have said, in certain cases the necessary machinery would not be available in this country for training workers for some of the industries envisaged in the measure.

Everybody regards this Bill as the first real practical step that has been taken in this country to tackle the problem of decentralisation and the problem of overcrowding in the congested areas. The land problem in the congested areas is the fundamental problem. There is always this question of surplus population. Even if we were to solve the problem of land congestion and the rundale problem in those areas, in the morning, if every farm were in one compact holding instead of being in 50 patches, we would still have the problem of how to provide employment for the surplus people on the various farms. There is room on each farm only for one son to marry and to carry on the farm. The other members of the family must go somewhere, either to the nearest town or to another country. That is the problem in the congested areas. In my view, this Bill is the first practical step that has been taken to combat that problem. This Bill should get a good reception in this House. I have no doubt as to the reception this measure will get or as to the co-operation this board will get in the congested areas such as the area I represent.

Mr. Norton

If the real purpose of this Bill is to improve the economic and social conditions of those of our people who reside on the Atlantic seaboard, then I welcome it as a move in the right direction. The problem along the Atlantic seaboard is a very old problem. It is deep-seated and widespread. Generations of oppression, generations of neglect, poor land, shallow land and no industries have given us the problem of the western seaboard as we know it to-day.

While I would be happy to regard this Bill as providing a solution for the problem, I am afraid the problem is of such dimensions that it must be approached with the sobering thought that it will be extremely difficult to solve and that we are not likely to see a solution of it for a considerable period of time, if indeed we ever do, unless we marry the problem of development of the area to the migration of people from poor land along the seaboard to better land elsewhere.

As one reviews the legislation that has passed through this House in the past 30 years one must come to the conclusion that 30 years of legislation here have made little if indeed any impression on the economic and social life along the Atlantic seaboard.

The problem of to-day is the problem of 30 years ago and it seems as insoluble to-day as it did 30 years ago. I have listened to the problem of the Gaeltacht and the undeveloped areas on the western seaboard being discussed in this House for more than a quarter century. Yet the problem is there in all its nakedness to-day just as it was when this House was first set up. That fact has got to temper our whole approach to the difficult problem that confronts us in finding a solution for the difficulties thrown up by these undeveloped areas. To-day we have in the Gaeltacht areas and along the western seaboard the same old standard of life as we had 30 years ago. To-day we have got practically as little employment there as 30 years ago. To-day we have the same gross underemployment as 30 years ago; the same problem of migration and the same problem of emigration. In 1951, these are the same characteristics of the Atlantic seaboard as they were 30 years ago.

We have to face up to that problem and there is nothing to be gained by any attempt in this House to say that we have found a solution in this Bill. It will be a difficult problem, a problem which requires tact, patience and an ability to comprehend human beings and to get on the right side of human understanding. I do not think there is any one solution to the problem of the Atlantic areas. I do not think any attempt to provide industry there, especially under private enterprise, will make the Gaeltacht or the Atlantic seaboard any different in ten years' time from what it is to-day. The problem will have to be approached from a number of angles. It is only the product of the approach from all these angles which will in the long run make some perceptible contribution to a solution of the problem thrown up by these areas.

The problem falls under a number of headings. The first is the problem of finding employment, of trying to stop emigration overseas and even to stop, or at least curtail, migration to Great Britain. However bad migration is, emigration is the worst of all our national problems. One can look with less concern on the problem of migration where a man, perhaps with his sons and daughters, migrates for a portion of the year when there is no work at home to garner a living in Great Britain, then comes back with what he has earned and manages to finance himself through the lean period. That is an understandable pattern of life in a place like that— that a person should move from where there is no work to where there is work and then come back and see himself through with the produce of the labour he has given elsewhere.

The basic problem, however, is to try to provide employment for our people in the western areas. So long as children are born there, the problem is what to do with these children when they come to 14, 15, 16 and up to 20 years of age. The little crofts on which they live are incapable of employing any more than the head of the household and perhaps one son. The rest of the family have got to be kept out of whatever produce these two can win from poor land. It is because the whole family has to be kept out of the miserable pittances wrung from hungry soil that the standard of living in these areas is appallingly low. We have to try to provide not only regular employment for the bread winner, but employment for the adolescent sons and daughters. It may be possible to provide employment of an intermittent character, even to provide employment for some of the children during the summer periods when, perhaps, a particular type of employment is available for them under conditions which do not, of course, impair their health or in any way tend to dwarf their development.

Some Deputy suggested in this debate—I think it was not intended as a serious suggestion—that the State should encourage the manufacture of poteen along the western seaboard. I can only regard that as an effort to wipe out the Gaeltacht areas, because there is nothing more calculated to annihilate the inhabitants of the Gaeltacht areas than to promote or help to develop poteen-making in these areas. The two by-products of poteen-making are lunacy and murder. They go hand-in-hand with the manufacture and sale of poteen on an uncontrolled basis. If anybody wants to develop an industry calculated to stimulate lunacy and to multiply murders in this country, the way to do it is to take the lid off State control and allow anybody who likes to make this murderous concoction. I hope that nobody will listen for two seconds to a suggestion to legalise the manufacture of poteen. Not only would it produce murders and lunacy in greater volume in this country, but it would destroy for all time any concept of being able to lift the Gaeltacht areas out of the present economic mire into which they have been allowed to degenerate.

I think the development of these areas is a problem of trying to get together a number of possible phases of activity all of which when combined will provide a reasonable measure of employment in those areas. I have never been able to understand why an area like Connemara, like Donegal, like portion of Kerry, such areas as in most countries are associated with mineral development, do not yield up any minerals at all. Any examination of mineral-producing areas in the world will show that it is areas akin to the areas we are talking about that produce mineral deposits. Yet there is not a single mineral mined in any of these places to-day on anything like a satisfactory commercial scale. In fact, in some of those areas it is quite unknown.

I know, of course, that the geologists will say that a geological survey has shown that there are no minerals in these particular areas or that it is unlikely that there are minerals there. It has been shown, however, over and over again that the geologist is by no means always right in his exploration for mineral deposits. The modern method of ascertaining whether there is any mineral wealth in the earth is not the method of the geological survey but the method of the geophysical survey which enables the explorer to bore into the earth and there ascertain whether minerals are available and the density of the mineral deposit. All that work is expensive but we could well spend, and fruitfully spend, a substantial sum of money in geophysical surveys of these Atlantic areas in order to ascertain if there are minerals there.

If we find minerals we have a medium for immediately employing a substantial number of adult men and we have also a new and hitherto undiscovered source of wealth for the nation. I would urge this board, no matter what the cost, to explore the possibilities of finding minerals in these areas; firstly, because I think the establishment of any mineral operating concern affords the best means of providing employment for the adult population of these areas and, secondly, because that will give us commodities in the form of minerals of which we are extremely short to-day.

An investment of this kind is, I know, a highly speculative investment, but we are dealing here with a problem which is not only a commercial problem affecting the nation as a whole but also a problem of trying to find and providing in these areas some type of permanent activity which will anchor the people to the place they naturally regard as their home. I hope, therefore, that whoever is responsible for directing this board at the outset as to the work in which it should engage will not hesitate to tell the board to spend money in the thorough exploration of the mineral possibilities of these areas because I believe if minerals are found they will represent a very substantial contribution to the problem of providing employment for our adult men.

We have another problem and another potential industry in these areas which, I think, could provide a greater measure of employment than it does to-day. In all the areas mentioned in this Bill there are considerable deposits of turf. Now, in my view turf is a very valuable national fuel. In any other country in the world that would be exploited to the fullest extent; but here we develop it only in times of emergency when we cannot get sufficient coal from outside sources. In the production of turf there is a very valuable source of employment. It can provide employment on a commercial scale through, for example, Bord na Móna or through other agencies of that kind. It can provide employment for the head of the household and for other members of his family in winning not only fuel for themselves but fuel also capable of being marketed at a good price so long as we control the sale of coal in these areas.

I think it is the height of economic folly that a county like Galway should use coal brought from Pennsylvania when just outside the door there is a turf crop waiting to be harvested. One does not need to sink a shaft, to cut underground and tunnel through roads and avenues in order to find the fuel. The fuel is there looking at you. The crop is there waiting to be harvested. Despite the fact that we can produce in these areas a first-class domestic fuel, we still continue to walk over the fuel, look at it with disdain and go into the shop and order coal from Pennsylvania.

No country in the world would do that except the unpredictable Irish. It seems to me nothing short of folly to allow our people to migrate and emigrate when, if the State would direct in an efficient and competent way the fullest exploitation of our turf deposits, we could provide a substantial measure of employment for our people in these areas. Last year I had some responsibility for endeavouring to induce local authorities to cut as much fuel as they could for this year, not only for their own requirements but also in order that they would hold in each area a local iron ration which might be used should the fuel situation become extremely serious. Following agreement by the local authorities to cut fuel within their capacity, I then took up with them the question of cutting fuel each year by semi-automatic machines for the purpose of heating their own establishments.

I am glad to say that up to June last quite a number of local authorities had agreed to buy these semi-automatic machines and had agreed that, where turf could be burned in local offices, furnaces, boilers and grates they would cut turf each year and use it in their own institutions. Is there any reason why every local authority along the Atlantic seaboard where turf abounds should not be required to cut turf and use it instead of simply sending an order to a Dublin coal merchant to get them coal from Lanarkshire or, if it is not available there, to send to Pennsylvania for it?

If local authorities can be required to do that—and I think they should be required to do it as a matter of good national housekeeping—then a very substantial measure of employment in winning fuel can be given regularly each year to people who are not employed to-day and who certainly were not employed last year or the year before instead of having our local authorities heating their institutions with British or American coal and neglecting the heat-providing qualities of a fuel just outside their own doors.

I hope the board will be directed to explore the immense possibilities that reside in the fullest exploitation of our turf deposits. If they do that, then they will make a tangible contribution to providing regular employment and a good income for those who engage in turf production.

It is fortunate in one way that these areas, which one might call the depressed areas from an economic-point of view, have a coastline which is relatively rich in fish if sufficiently up-to-date equipment is provided for the fishermen. One of the ways in which we can help to provide employment in these areas is by developing our inshore fisheries. That can best be done either by the establishment of a State organisation for that purpose to deal with the catching, canning and marketing of the fish or by the creation of a co-operative organisation for the purpose of undertaking fishing on a national scale, not merely from the standpoint of catching and selling the fish but also from the standpoint of marketing it under the best possible conditions and canning the surplus for subsequent disposal.

Similarly, many of our inland rivers in the West are rich in salmon. In many of them salmon fishing is preserved. In some of them it is let at fees which make it an expensive luxury. I think the State would be well advised to take over, in the public interest, all the inland rivers, at least along the Atlantic seaboard, to bring these under public ownership and public control, to cheapen the fees for salmon fishing and to encourage anglers to come here, realising that the more you bring into these areas the more money will be circulated there, and, again, the more employment you provide in all the activities associated with the inland fisheries.

It happens, of course, too, that these particular areas have considerable scenic attraction. Their tourist possibilities are considerable. Most of the tourists who come to these areas are struck by the extraordinary natural beauty which they find there. Most of them go away feeling that we have not done enough to advertise these scenic beauties. I should like to see the Tourist Board concentrate especially on endeavouring to popularise these areas as tourist centres, even to the extent of providing special facilities for the hotels to attract visitors, and in that way bring not only the tourists but the money which they will spend, thus providing additional employment in the areas.

Afforestation is a problem which affects the nation as a whole. There is little doubt that the possibilities of afforestation are probably greater in these areas than they are elsewhere. Elsewhere, the problem is that of acquiring land. If the land is any way good at all, it will yield a much better return, if utilised for grazing, than it will from afforestation; but there are immense possibilities in afforestation in the West, in the NorthWest and South-West. This is the most tree denuded country in Europe. Even in Iceland, there are more trees than we have here. That gives one a picture of the problem that confronts us. Even if we were to concentrate our afforestation programme on the Atlantic seaboard counties, I think we would be able to provide, at the outset, employment for a considerable number of people, and, ultimately, provide not merely timber for our national requirements, but perhaps encourage the establishment of industries which are usually to be found in areas which are adequately afforested.

I do not suggest, of course, that we should proceed to put trees down at the tide's edge in Connemara, but once trees can be sheltered from the wintry blasts of the Atlantic, they offer the possibility of being able to grow there. In that way they would not merely help to improve the soil, and improve the conditions of living there, but would provide a valuable raw material, and more important than all, would help to provide regular employment throughout the year for a fairly substantial number of workers who in these areas to-day can find no employment in that valuable work.

Even if we do these things, and do all of them, we still have to take cognisance of the human factors which operate in these areas. If one travels through these areas, and meets the people there and talks to them, the one thing that strikes a person is the absence of the facilities for amusement and healthy recreation which are found in other parts of the country. In many of these places, there is no hall in which the people can meet, in which they can have a dance, in which they can hear a lecture, or in which they can see an educational film, and very often the street corner is the only club in the town or village. I think we have got to take cognisance of the natural and understandable requirements of the people who say "life under these conditions represents boredom", and who, naturally, hope to be able to find somewhere else amenities which attract them and fill in the blank gaps in their social life.

I would like to see this board, or some other body, endowed with money for the purpose of erecting parish halls in these places so that the local people could meet in them and promote healthy amusement and recreation for themselves. I think, too, that a play field should be provided, and that somebody, or some other local committee, should have the responsibility of endeavouring to develop a bright communal life among the people in the towns and villages there. Many of the emigrants who have left these areas and gone over to Britain will tell you of the great attractions which they have found in Britain, the facility with which they can meet friends, the facilities available for dances and for the various amusements which can be held in places where there is a hall capable of holding a crowd. We have neglected too much in the past our approach to the human problem in these areas. I hope that that side of the problem will be tackled by this new board, or some other board, so as to ensure that we make some kind of a psychological appeal to the people to remain there. But that will not be achieved merely by providing an industry if the local circumstances are dreary, bleak and drab, and if you cannot provide them with a lively local life where they can get the amusements and the recreation which are to be found elsewhere in the country, and employment as well. If you can do that, then you will probably do more to anchor them in these areas than if you approach just one side of the problem and neglect all the others.

The outstanding fact which we have got to face so far as these areas are concerned is the problem that they are black spots from the point of view of employment. I think I calculated on one occasion that more than 50 per cent. of the people receiving unemployment assistance benefit were registered in the Counties of Donegal, Mayo, Galway and Kerry, with less than 50 per cent. being drawn by people in the other 22 counties. That shows the problem you are up against. In many of these areas unemployment, if I may use what may seem to be a paradoxical term, was the normal avocation of the people, because, except for the short period when they were cut off unemployment benefit by means of an Emergency Employment Period Order, they were automatically in receipt of unemployment assistance benefit from the local employment exchange. That position was only relieved whenever there was a relief scheme operating in the area, or some additional road work to be done. Otherwise, the normal avocation there was signing for unemployment assistance, because there was no other work available for them.

I think that anybody who examines the figures relating to unemployment assistance will arrive at the same conclusion which I arrived at after a close examination. That is a situation which everybody regrets. It is a challenge to our ability to sit in this Parliament to-day, and a challenge to our powers to govern ourselves. That is a challenge to the obligations which we owe to human beings whose lives are cast in these economic circumstances. In so far as this Bill will make a contribution to relieving that situation, to improving the social and economic conditions of the people along the western seaboard, I most heartily welcome it. In so far as it makes that genuine effort, I would be prepared to make all the money necessary, even in excess of £2,000,000, available to the board, realising that we are expecting the board to undo in a relatively short time all the neglect and to reverse the process which has been in operation for generations.

As I said at the outset, I do not think there is any one solution to the problem there. I think substantial alleviation should be found and will be found by getting a number of agents to co-operate to relieve the problem. But the problem is there and I think everybody concerned with relieving it and relieving the plight of these people will welcome a Bill of this kind especially if it is used as a genuine effort to face up to a problem which is a challenge to the existence of this House.

Mr. Dillon

I stated what I believed to be and what I still believe to be the true background of this Bill on the Estimate we were discussing on a previous day, that it is a political racket, solely and exclusively. But having gone quite clearly on record with that profound conviction, I am not in the least shaken in that conviction by all I have heard since. On the contrary, much of what the Minister for Lands, Deputy Derrig, said, and what the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Agriculture, Deputy Bartley, said, confirms me in the belief that they do not believe that anything effective can be done in the Gaeltacht areas designed to make the people there self-supporting and independent, and that they regard any attempt to rehabilitate the land or to enable small farmers living in those areas to earn their own living as a waste of money.

That much stated, I want now to deal with this Bill in what possibly is the vain hope that it is a bona fide procedure. On that assumption I want to point out to the Minister for Industry and Commerce the fact that there is a fatal flaw in this legislation and that is the apparent failure to recognise that there are two wholly distinct problems which the Government seeks to meet with one Bill. One is the problem of doing for the Gaeltacht areas that which will enable the people who live there and who want to go on living there and who have a right to live in their own homes if they want to, to get something approximating to a fair return for the labour they do on their own holdings.

That is one problem and it is entirely distinct and unrelated to the problem of the dispersal of industry generally from Dublin to the provincial areas. Both of these objectives are excellent but there is a great danger that, if you allow the two to be associated, the dominant influence of the Minister for Industry and Commerce will prevail and we will revert to the old experience we have had in the past that the Gaeltacht gets lip service and those areas of the country in which the Minister for Industry and Commerce is interested get the attention.

Now I believe that industrialists, and so forth, are very well able to look after themselves, and in dealing with them I have never experienced the slightest atmosphere of backwardness or diffidence or lack of resource. But I do know that the people in the Gaeltacht areas are willing and ready very often to work hard, far harder than Dublin Deputies or Leinster Deputies would think it reasonable to ask anybody to work, but very often it never occurs to their minds to ask for the help of Government Departments, like the Department of Agriculture, the Department of Industry and Commerce, and the Department of Lands, who are ready and willing to give them that assistance if they would only ask for it. I told the House, and, I am going to repeat it now, of my experience in Dunquin, where the difficulty was to find someone to ask us for help. We went down and put before them the resources to which they had a statutory right with no compliment at all. It appeared to the people in Dunquin that a revolution had taken place, but the fact was that anyone in any part of Ireland could have asked for it. They had our services at their disposal for the asking. Therefore, I felt that what you wanted for the Gaeltacht was an administrator who would go down to those areas, make contact with the county engineer, the Land Commission inspector and any other public official who was charged to do work in those areas and sit down together to see how they could interlock their several activities for the benefit of the area and then bring that up to a Minister who would say: "Are you all agreed with this programme for that parish?" If they were all authorised to act together it would result in a greater benefit than each one could attempt to achieve singly. If they stated "Yes," the Minister could invoke the assistance of his colleagues in the Cabinet, the Minister for Local Government, the Ministers for Health, Lands, Agriculture, Industry and Commerce and send down the line from headquarters to whatever officer was concerned under the jurisdiction of his Department a direction: "Give what help you can to carry out this joint effort to success."

I know a great deal of what wants to be done in the Gaeltacht and nine-tenths of what is urgently necessary to do in the Gaeltacht areas is utterly unrelated to conditions obtaining in Roscommon and would be fantastic in County Roscommon. I bitterly resented in the last few weeks the flagrant falsehood in the Government-kept newspaper that the land project has reclaimed land at £500 per acre. When that lie was nailed, the Minister for Agriculture said in this House that that statement was untrue. He admitted that the highest cost per acre heretofore was £100. The Minister for Lands and Deputy Bartley chose to say that the cost was £150 per acre.

Mr. Bartley

I said the cost was £100 per acre, but I pointed out that it included no item for the purchase of machinery or for administrative expenses. You can estimate yourself what that addition would be.

Mr. Dillon

I did not make any estimate. I put down another question.

Mr. Bartley

My £100 is a net estimate.

Mr. Dillon

I put down another question which asked how many acres have cost £100, and the answer which I received was one acre. That was the first acre we attempted in Connemara.

Mr. Bartley

Is the Deputy making a distinction between the two schemes——

Mr. Dillon

We started on a scheme which nobody had ever attempted before. I approached the Galway County Committee of Agriculture and held out prospects of success to them of perhaps three chances in ten. I know it was a departure which might easily bring down ridicule and all the penalty of failure on my head and on the heads of my colleagues. I asked the Galway County Committee of Agriculture last December, taking these things into consideration, would they, speaking for the local people, agree that this effort was worth making.

Mr. Lemass

On a point of order, this is a Bill to aid industrial development in undeveloped areas. I would suggest that the operation of the land project, fisheries, afforestation, or such matters has nothing to do with the Bill under discussion.

An Leas-Cheann Comhairle

I am waiting for the Deputy to relate his remarks to the Bill under discussion.

Mr. Norton

Is it not true that, on the Second Stage of a Bill, we are entitled, in accordance with customary practice, to complain of what is not in the Bill. That is what Deputies are doing.

Mr. Lemass

This Bill is not presented as a measure for the general economic regeneration of the congested areas. It is presented as a measure for industrial development.

Mr. Norton

Because of that, Deputies have a right to complain that the Bill does not go far enough. That is what Deputies are doing.

An Leas-Cheann Comhairle

They must relate their remarks to the Bill before the House.

Mr. Dillon

This is the danger we are in. This man does not understand the problem. The land project brought in its wake 24 limestone grinding factories.

Mr. Lemass

Good God!

Mr. Dillon

Why do you say "Good God"? This man does not know and he does not care. Unless he is invited down and given a key to open the door, make a speech and cut a ribbon, it is not a factory.

Mr. Lemass

Will the Deputy put down a question with a view to finding out how many limestone grinding factories were erected west of the Shannon?

Mr. Dillon

Is not that the devil, that there is too much east of the Shannon? We want to get west of the Shannon and the Minister wants to stop us, because he does not give a damn about the regions west of the Shannon. That is what I am trying to tell the Gaeltacht Deputies. He is asking support for a Bill which he says is going to help the Gaeltacht, but this Bill is not going to help the Gaeltacht at all. The Minister does not give a damn about the Gaeltacht. That is what I have been trying to drag out. Everything we have done for the Gaeltacht has been done with the object of helping the people to live there, to earn their living, to hold their heads high, and to be as independent as everybody else. Just as I suspected, this man does not give a hoot about the people of these areas. He has the common Dublin view that the Gaeltacht is a sort of a pain in the neck, and that the people in it are a burden and a pest. I know that philosophy and that cast of mind. I know the mind of the man who, when you ask him what he thinks should be done for Erris or for the Rosses says: "The best thing you could do for these people is to knock down the rocks and let in the sea." It was Senator Connolly, the Minister's colleague, who said in this House that the best thing to do for Connemara and the Rosses was to leave them to the seagulls. What shocked me was that Deputy Bartley should be one of the people who would deride somebody who went down to Connemara and said: "This does not look to be very fruitful ground, but what we can do for it we are going to do." If the cost is in excess of the economic return, the people of Connemara are under no compliment for that, because the society to which they belong has an obligation to provide them with holdings where their work will give them a living. If these holdings are not fit to give them a living at the moment the best job possible should be done to improve the holdings——

Mr. Bartley

What you think should be done would not bring about a stoppage of emigration. That is what we are trying to do under this Bill.

Mr. Dillon

——and what appals me is that those opposite do not believe in that.

Mr. Bartley

You say that the people down there do not understand it. You are declaring that you are completely ignorant of the subject under discussion and have a blank mind on it. This measure is to stop emigration. You are dealing with agricultural development of holdings which has been going on in any event. We want to stop emigration and this is the way to do it.

Mr. O'Higgins

You do not give a thraneen about emigration.

Mr. Bartley

Did not Deputy Dillon say that he would like to see the people of Connemara going to the four ends of the earth?

Mr. Dillon

What Deputy Bartley is now doing is trying to vex me. I believe Deputy Bartley wants to get up and bellow like the Bull of Bashan.

Mr. Bartley

You have reverberated more around this House than I ever have.

Mr. Dillon

I propose to continue to reverberate, though not on the lines which Deputy Bartley would like. I am going to tell the truth. We want one of two things for industrial employment in the West of Ireland— either to create a new industry there or to expand an existing industry. Either will provide employment. We have got to make up our minds on this. There is the view in this House that if you want to provide an industry in the West of Ireland you must choose the most remote spot in the countryside and erect a large, isolated factory there, so that the young fellows and young girls who work in it will only have about a half-a-mile walk from their own homes. That view is a cod.

If you want an industrial undertaking of any value it must be associated with running water, sewerage, electric light and facilities of that kind. That is why, when we wanted to get a supply of protein feeding-stuffs for live stock in this country, we erected a factory at Ballinasloe which will manufacture fish meal, meat meal and all the by-products derived therefrom. That appears to me to be a valuable kind of industrial development calculated to employ people in the West of Ireland. It was with that end in view that we instituted inquiries to discover why we were shipping sea-rods in powdered form to Scotland instead of manufacturing them into suitable yarn in Kilkerrin. Of course, the problem is that there is a limited market for that yarn and until you can make contact with the market where the yarn is saleable to the spinners and weavers of fancy woollen goods in Bradford, there is no use in making the yarn. The Scotch people have that contact; our job is to get it.

I think of the Gaeltacht in terms of Connemara because the sane thing is to take a relatively restricted and defined area, bring to it whatever your resources appear to be, and learn there procedure which can then be suitably employed in West Donegal, West Kerry or wherever it is adaptable. The first thing you want in a place like Connemara is to provide reasonable transport facilities for men and goods. Travelling the road from Galway to Clifden, it will not take any reasonable man long to realise that the population position in that area is such that it can never maintain on an economic basis a sufficient passenger transport service. The area is much too large and the population is much too scattered. The same remarks apply to the Rosses, Gweedore and large parts of West Kerry.

What you have got to do is to provide the transport and to charge up the difference between the receipts and the cost to the revenue of the State. If you are not prepared to do that, transport will never be provided. I would do that, just as we have now provided an adequate passenger service to Aran, not by sending people from Galway 30 miles across the sea to Aran, but by bringing them by road half-way to Aran and then sending a decent boat out from the nearest point on the coast to Aran. The only fault at present is that the boat is not big enough but that will be corrected. It is much better to start with the boat we have available and to learn by experience.

The second thing we have to do is to provide electric light and power. There can be no genuine industrial development of any kind without power. That is why, as the Tánaiste announced yesterday, wind-power experiments have been proceeding in Donegal and are being extended to Connemara. By linking up wind-power with such modest hydro-electrical resources as we can provide in the area, we can develop sufficient electricity in the Clifden area probably to supply a considerable part of Connemara, as defined by the Connemara project. It seems to me that the first thing to do is to ask what are the readily accessible things in these areas. Is it wrong to remind the House that a small farm can be as efficient a factory as any industrial plant? If I bring feeding-stuffs from the United States and convert them into meat for export to Britain, is there any fundamental difference between that operation and bringing cotton from Carolina and Egypt and converting it into yarn and textiles in Athlone for export to Great Britain?

An Leas-Cheann Comhairle

That would open a very wide discussion and would get away from the terms of the Bill which is intended to promote industrial undertakings in limited areas.

Mr. Dillon

Let the House beware. We now see that, apparently, the purpose of this Bill is of so restricted a character that the prospect of doing anything in Connemara or West Donegal is hopelessly remote. I submit that if you want to promote industry it is not enough to set up a factory and put in a staff. How is Castlebar bacon factory, Claremorris bacon factory or Tralee bacon factory to function if there are no pigs? Suppose we have bacon factories standing idle as we had in Limerick and other centres and you want to provide employment in the West of Ireland—in Castlebar, Claremorris and Limerick, how better can you do that than by saying to yourself: "The knub of this problem is not demand—there is ample demand; it is not labour—there is ample labour; it is not equipment—the equipment is there; it is not capital—there is plenty available; it is supplies of raw material." The way to help industrial development in the West is abundantly to produce the raw materials to keep that industry working 24 hours a day. The bacon factories in Castlebar, Claremorris and Limerick at one time stood idle for days, but we got to the point when they were kept working 24 hours a day because all the raw material was provided for them on the adjoining lands. They had to multiply their staffs to deal with the supplies of raw materials that were made available.

I submit that one of the great dangers with which we are confronted is that so complete is our obsession going to become with what the Minister calls industrial development, instead of concentrating on the things that can be done now to the advantage of the Gaeltacht, we shall just throw up our hands, abandon the Gaeltacht and concentrate on the development of places like Roscommon, which stands in very much less urgent need than does the Gaeltacht.

I want to put this to the Minister. I want to see the Gaeltacht used as the source of raw materials for factories located west of the Shannon. Is that unreasonable? I think to do that you require to have reasonable transport. The second thing is to say to these people living in the Gaeltacht: "If you produce the raw materials we shall see that you get a regular market for them." Is that too remote? I do not see what factories without raw materials are going to do. I do not see the point of setting up factories where raw materials should be produced and producing raw materials where the factories should be erected. I do not believe in fattening pigs in O'Connell Street and in curing bacon in the pig sty. Therefore I want you to say to the people in the Gaeltacht: "If you produce pigs, if you produce fowl, if you produce eggs, we shall see that on regular and stipulated dates there will be men there to buy them from you."

If the jobbers do not turn up, do not worry. The representatives of the Pigs and Bacon Commission will step forward and buy all the pigs in the fair which you attend. If the jobbers are there and are prepared to pay more, the Pigs and Bacon Commission men will step back; but we will never see the day again when people will bring pigs or fowl or eggs to the market to discover that there is only one man there and prepared to pay what he wants. That is the second thing—to give the people regular markets. I want to see established in the Gaeltacht—and there is no reason why we should not—plants to grind limestone to fertilise the areas. The whole of Aran Island is a solid block of limestone. Across the water, in Connemara, there is not a grain of limestone to be had and it is the most acid soil in Ireland. I remember saying that I hoped to grind up Aran Island and deposit in it Connemara. Is that odd?

Breanndán Mac Fheórais

It sounds odd.

Mr. Dillon

But nobody thinks it odd to grind up the North African shore and spread it on Ireland. To grind a bit of Aran Island and spread it on Connemara—the fellow is daft. But 80,000 tons of North Africa was carried here in ships and ground up in Dublin and railed down the country and spread on the land. If it is daft to bring Aran to Connemara is it not double daft to bring Gafsa to County Longford? Where does the name "Gafsa" come from? It is a place in North Africa from whence lumps of North Africa come—and when these lumps of North Africa come here all we do is grind them up, nothing more. If you venture to say that you will bring a bit of lime from one place to another—the fellow is daft. That is the mentality that will paralyse us.

You could bring the whole of North Africa and turn it into superphosphate of lime in this country and spread it on the land, but if you do not put lime out along with it you will be throwing your money away. Lime is as precious a fertiliser to this country as phosphate or potash ever was. You can put all the phosphate and potash ever dreamed of on the land, but if there is not lime there before it you are throwing your money away. But because lime happens to be on Aran Island you are daft. But if the lime was in Guadalcanal we would be building ships to go out and collect it. If we can get the lime to Connemara from another source, cheaper, quicker and more effectively, I believe in getting it from that source. But if I could not get it from anywhere else, after I had finished using all I could find on the seashore, I would bring it from Aran and grind up all Aran—and I would not think it one bit wonderful to grind it there. I would put up mechanical loaders, and I would load barges just as is done on Lake Michigan for carrying the big ore deposits on the Canadian border by lake and river down to Pittsburg. I would not think it one bit wonderful to root up big lumps of northern Illinois and load it into barges and bring it to Pittsburg and Pennsylvania, and similarly I would not think it odd to bring lime from Aran to the mainland—but I would not do it if it was not the cheapest way of getting the limestone. I do not believe in this business of assuming that it is impossible to employ anybody west of the Shannon except in the capacity of a professional pauper. Why should we not build at Foynes, the best deep-water port in the West of Ireland, a factory for the production of ground rock phosphate and superphosphate of lime? If you want to do that you will have to do it by a State corporation. You will either have to get the Sugar Company to set up a new corporation to do it and build a factory at Foynes to manufacture super ground rock phosphate and compound manures, or——

Mr. Davin

Subsidise private enterprise, if you are mad enough.

Mr. Dillon

No private enterprise will manufacture fertilisers in this country against the manure ring. They will beat them or they will buy them out. There is only one power in this country strong enough to stand up to the international phosphate and sulphuric acid cartel and that is the Government. That ought to be done and done without delay. I think there is mineral development to be done in the Gaeltacht but I do not believe in getting it done by theorists or by people whose approach to it is anything but the approach of a practical-minded engineer. Unlike Deputy Davin, I would retain the services of a well-established and tried firm of engineers. I would tell them to go down to a certain area and ask them to inform us whether, in their opinion, it would be worth while making the necessary exploratory borings. I would retain them on a fee basis to do it. Then I would discuss with them which was most attractive to them for the exploitation of the deposit, if it is exploitable, a fee or profit-sharing basis—and whichever method was most attractive to them and best calculated to make them do their level best to get the maximum return, I would make an agreement on that basis and we would say to them that the more money they get out of it the more pleased we will be. That is the only way you will get effective exploitation of the mineral resources of this country—by sharing it with the people who are doing a technical job, which we do not know how to do, and by making it worth their while to put their best efforts into the work.

Mr. Davin

What about some outside group buying them up?

Mr. Dillon

There is only one racket in the world that can challenge the sovereign Government of this country and that is the international oil racket. So far as I know that is the only cartel in the world which is strong enough to face the sovereign Government. But there are many cartels and vested interests which will be too strong for anybody else but a sovereign Government authorised and prepared in the last analysis to employ the full resources of the State if that necessity arises. I think I would be perfectly justified and right to choose a place like Galway and set up there a factory for the production of antibiotics for our own people and for export when we have a surplus of them. There, again, it might be necessary to do it by Government cooperation, but if I could get a private firm prepared to do it on satisfactory lines, I think they ought to be encouraged. That is the kind of industry which could be located with perfect propriety in a place like Galway, and on which we could readily venture to risk a loss on establishing. A situation could easily arise when, in time of war or emergency, we would be completely cut off from our entire supplies of antibiotics. Without them, we got along very well for 2,000 years, but they are now in use and we have to maintain supplies of auromycin, chloromycin, terramycin and the others; and it is not at all impossible that there would emerge a number of new antibiotics found in the soil of this country.

The Cement Company has agreed— and I think we are all agreed—that it is necessary to produce more cement, and can do so with safety, as, even if the housing problem were disposed of, there would always remain in the background the whole question of a new roads system. Surely it would be eminently legitimate to locate one of the new cement factories in the West of Ireland. I do not give a fiddle-de-dee where you put it in the West of Ireland. Supposing you do not put it there, surely it is eminently an industry that calls for further distribution and it is an unimaginative, poor kind of thing to content ourselves with expanding the factories in Drogheda and Limerick. Deputy Corish has always been rather anxious to have one in New Ross.

Breanndán Mac Fheórais

In Wexford.

Mr. Dillon

There used to be a desire for one in Cork. I do not give a fiddle-de-dee where you put it, but I think it is the rational thing to do. That must have occurred to the Minister.

I tried to get set—again in Galway— a marine biology research station. We have some extremely good people in Galway University on that rather obscure sphere of learning and I think we have probably good people also in Trinity College, University College, Dublin, and University College, Cork. No one would suggest to the contrary. I suggest it should be set up and given wide terms of reference, allowed to do fundamental and practical research, to pursue the question of how far we can use seaweed for the production of useful substances and—now I am going to shock the House again—how far it would repay to fertilise the surface of the sea. Poor Deputy Bartley will have fits when he hears that. Imagine somebody spreading super on the surface of the sea. Could you imagine anything dafter than that?

A Deputy

No.

Mr. Dillon

Yet you discover that plankton do depend for their multiplication on the phosphatic content of sea water. Pelagic fish depend for their shoaling on the presence of plankton, and in so far as we know anything about it—and we do not know much—it seems that if for a protracted period the pelagic fish appear to desert the coast it is due to some mysterious collapse of the phosphatic content of the sea, and when that phosphatic content is restored by normal development the pelagic fish come back. People may have read some little time ago about Galway Bay turning green or blue or some other colour. The explanation was that there came a period of very high plankton development, with consequent very high shoaling of the fish. I do not know whether it is useful to spread super on the sea but, by heavens, I would try. I would get advice from the best people I could and I would fertilise the Gulf Stream if necessary. People think that is crazy. Then they discover that someone has done it in Venezuela.

Mr. Lemass

Who stopped you?

Mr. Dillon

As the Minister knows, I was just on the very pop of doing it along the Connemara coast.

Mr. Cafferky

We would need aeroplanes to do the Gulf Stream.

Mr. Dillon

That frightens Deputy Cafferky, that we should do that in the West of Ireland; but if some fellow with a dark complexion and crinkly black hair did it in Venezuela, we would have Deputy Cafferky rushing in here with his breath in his fist, to tell us what they were doing in Venezuela. Why should we not show Venezuela instead of Venezuela showing us? Would it astonish Deputy Cafferky to realise that it is being extensively done?

Mr. Cafferky

You will not see it done in Galway, Sir. Less than that we would not do.

Mr. Davin

It would take more than £2,000,000, anyway.

Mr. Dillon

I think it is worth investigating and I think there is excellent scientific support for the view that it would be eminently justifiable if we really intend to make inshore fishing what it ought to be in the West of Ireland. Now, let us get out of our minds this habit of imagining you could build up the fishing industry by sending fishermen out to catch fish to turn into fish-meal. The only fish you turn into fish-meal is the unsaleable fish that used to be dumped and now, rather than dump it, they take a couple of shillings a stone for it; but a beggarman could not make a living in catching fish to be turned into fish-meal. You can convert the residue of the catch, but whatever is available for conversion—whether it is whale meat or dead cows or protein in any form, fish or meat—there is going to be a factory in Ballinasloe that will take all that is offering. There is a factory in Cahir at the present time which is willing and anxious to take any meat protein for conversion into meat meal. Let us get it out of our heads right here and now that the dispersal of industry is a flash of genius from the brazen countenance of the present Minister for Industry and Commerce. In one 12 months, the Department of Agriculture, over and above what the Department of Industry and Commerce were doing, established a factory in Dungarvan, another in Cahir, another in Clonmel and another in Tipperary.

Mr. Lemass

Do not forget the one that was half built in Ballinasloe.

Mr. Dillon

I was talking to the manager of it ten minutes ago in the restaurant. He told me the directors were going ahead on the site next Monday.

Mr. Lemass

The Deputy told us last week that the factory was half built.

Mr. Dillon

Now, clearing the site is a considerable portion of the work.

Mr. Lemass

It has not started.

Mr. Dillon

I told in this House that I had got the Industrial Development Authority to establish the factory and that there were two Fianna Fáil Senators and one Fianna Fáil Deputy as directors. That is a queer set-up. But, after all, this is an Irish Government, and we cannot run the Government on Party lines. If the Industrial Development Authority say that these are the best people to do it, that is all right with me.

Mr. Lemass

They were at it before ever the Industrial Development Authority heard of it.

Mr. Dillon

Do not fall out with me if they are a bit slow off the mark. I am sure they are doing the best they can. As far as I am concerned, they have my best wishes, and I think they ought to acknowledge some day in public that a factory instituted at the instance of the Minister for Agriculture was committed so confidently into the hands of three such loyal and devoted supporters of Fianna Fáil.

Mr. Lemass

The Deputy left me a couple of contradictory promises. Go and have a talk with Senator Baxter.

Mr. Dillon

I never spoke to anybody about it except the Industrial Development Authority and I told them to tell Messrs. Burnhouse, who are subsidiaries, I think, of Levers, that they would manufacture the meat meal in Ireland or get no more licences to take fellen meat across the Border. I did not care two hoots where the factory was in Ireland so long as it was done here and we got the protein. It is not a bad record in 12 months to put a factory in Dungarvan, a factory in Clonmel, which employs, I think, between 200 and 300 men, a factory in Tipperary and a factory in Carrick-on-Suir. During all the past three years factories were going up, giving good employment in rural Ireland. I think more can be done and what I want to ask the Minister is: How is he going to encourage people to build factories in rural Ireland in preference to the City of Dublin? I want to make a suggestion. He has a great opportunity now to make a fascinating economic experiment of the first importance, not only to our people but to the world— that is, to offer to people who are prepared to locate suitable industries in provincial towns capital amounting to a £2 loan for every £1 they put up, free of interest, repayable over 20 years.

Mr. Davin

You will shock the Governor of the Central Bank.

Mr. Lemass

It is about the worst possible way of developing industry. You cannot establish industry on the basis of repayable capital.

Mr. Dillon

I am asking the Minister to make this experiment in our time— to see what the effect on industrial development would be of lifting the blister of interest from the backs of management and labour and see what would happen if it suddenly became possible for men who had materials and the desire to work them and to produce finished articles which the public wanted to consume to have access to the means of doing it without paying interest. Maybe those who hate the institution of usury are mistaken and that usury——

Mr. Lemass

You do not finance industry by loans, except in very exceptional circumstances and to a limited extent. You finance it by capital invested at risk which gets no return unless profits are made.

Mr. Dillon

My submission to the Minister is that if people are prepared to put up £10,000 of their own money at risk, but require £30,000 wherewith to provide the factory and the fixed assets, the Minister should lend them £20,000 as a first charge on the fixed assets, to be repaid in 20 equal instalments over 20 years. If they fail to make a profit, they get no reward for their own £10,000 which was invested at risk, and, if they finally close down, they lose their £10,000 and the factory reverts to the ownership of the Minister, to be offered to somebody else on the same terms.

Breanndán Mac Fheórais

He will have a good many on his hands.

Mr. Lemass

That is the trade loans guarantee system and look at all the failures under it. We have that Act on the Statute Book at the moment.

Mr. Dillon

What was the interest on those loans?

Mr. Lemass

Whatever was negotiated. The State guaranteed 2½ per cent.

Mr. Dillon

I do not see how else you are going to do it. If you do not make the man entering on the venture put a substantial block of his own money into it, you will have white elephants erected all over the country. The system of building a factory and leasing it to somebody else is a violation of the most fundamental instinct of human beings. Any man rejoices in minding his own property. Any man who lives in rural Ireland will tell you that the farmer would not thatch his roof, repair a ditch or fix a gate, so long as the place belonged to the landlord but, when the property became his own, he did not want to do anything else, and the joy of his life was to go out alone and look at the improvements he had carried out on his own property for himself and for those who came after him. So long as he was paying a rent to a landlord, he grudged every improvement he had to make, and rightly so. Why should he improve it for the benefit of the landlord? If you invite people to lease factories which they can never own, why should they want to improve them, to care for them, to develop them? The better they make them, the less prospect they have of ever owning them because the more expensive they would be to acquire; but if you enable a man to acquire it, and, as he goes along, to advance further and further to the fee simple ownership of it, he will put his heart into the job.

I do not see what other inducement you can give a man. How else, I ask, can you induce people to erect factories remote from the point of maximum consumption? What other argument can you advance? The sane thing to do is to put your factory as near as you can to the point of maximum consumption and bring your raw materials thither, so that your finished article will have the shortest hazard and the shortest journey.

Either you build a factory for him in which he ceases to have any interest and in respect of which his only object, if the going gets tough, is to get his own money out and leave you holding the bag, or you say: "If you are prepared to put £1 of your own money at risk into it, we will enable you to use £3 without any additional cost." Or £4—I do not mind. If he puts £10,000 in and the Government says: "If you put it at risk in that provincial centre, you can use £40,000 and, instead of paying 5 per cent. interest on it year after year, every 5 per cent. you pay will be deducted from the principal, and when you have paid it 20 times the property is yours." The £2,000,000 voted would have to go towards meeting the cost of that money, but our eyes would have beheld the glory of an isolated experiment of running society without the institution of usury, and I think it might be a glory that would dazzle the eyes of us all.

Remember that I am proceeding in the vain hope that this means business. Will the Minister nationalise flour? He can save £800,000 per year by nationalising the flour industry.

Mr. Cafferkey

Nationalising what?

Mr. Dillon

By nationalising the flour industry he can save the community £800,000 per annum.

Mr. Davin

The Minister did not hear that.

Mr. Dillon

He can insulate against the social problems of the closing down of the small uneconomic units in the industry which would inevitably take place if it were nationalised under private ownership. If the State nationalises it, we can mark down each uneconomic unit and so soon as we can convert that little rural uneconomic mill into a feed mill or some alternative activity which will maintain employment in the district and use the premises for an economic purpose, we can lift it out of the flour business and put it on to one of the economic units, some of which will be inland and some of which will be at the ports.

I venture to suggest that, without putting the employment of a single creature in peril, he could save the community £800,000 a year which he could perfectly properly use to buy out the existing milling interests who have, after all, to be compensated for the property taken over whatever we may think of the past history. They have got to be treated equitably. The surplus income would enable the Minister to do it without placing any additional burden on the community at all. It would give him a number of potential factories which could be most advantageously diverted to other industrial activities when it was convenient to transfer the existing uneconomic milling activities to the economic.

Mr. Davin

He said he would do that in 1932 but he forgot all about it.

Mr. Dillon

I wish I could believe that this Bill was bona fide. I find it hard to believe that the Government, which closed down the boatyard at Fanny's Bay near Downings and abandoned it in order to concentrate on Killybegs, is thinking along the same lines as we thought. I put the boatyard back in Fanny's Bay. I think it is one of the best little boatyards in Ireland. I wonder will it be closed down now? I want to warn the Deputies who represent the Gaeltacht in this House that they are being sold down the river.

I want to warn them that the Minister for Industry and Commerce does not give two hoots about the Gaeltacht. I and my colleague the Minister for Industry and Commerce in the Government to which I belonged were colleagues who recognised the relative importance of industry and rural life and each conceded to the other his fair share of Government activity.

Dr. Maguire

You assert that the present Minister for Industry and Commerce does not care two hoots about the Gaeltacht?

Mr. Dillon

I do.

Dr. Maguire

You could have said the same thing about the last Minister for Industry and Commerce—do you?

Mr. Dillon

No, but the last Minister for Industry and Commerce left the Gaeltacht to me.

Dr. Maguire

That is all bunkum.

Mr. Dillon

Can you picture the Fianna Fáil Party leaving it to Deputy Tommy Walsh from Kilkenny? Can you picture the Minister for Agriculture when his colleague the Minister for Industry and Commerce gets up and says: "If Deputy Walsh said that, he was wrong?"

Breanndán Mac Fheórais

Tomás Breathnach.

Mr. Dillon

Yes, but when the Minister for Industry and Commerce is talking bluntly he does not bother to Gaelicise the name. He just says out plain and prompt: "If Deputy Tom Walsh said that, he was wrong." You could hear Deputy Tom Walsh's knees knocking in Rome. Did you ever see him sitting there looking out of the corner of his eye to see if his lordship was looking cross or vexed and wondering whether he had said the right word ?

An Leas-Cheann Comhairle

What has this to do with the Undeveloped Areas Bill?

Mr. Dillon

I think the Gaeltacht is going to suffer the same fate as the flour and cereal section of the Department of Agriculture suffered.

Mr. Blaney

Or as the glasshouse scheme in Connemara suffered?

Mr. Dillon

I am waiting to see it expand. We have messengers throughout the Rosses, Gweedore and Connemara waiting to see the crop of glasshouses. From June to December you had six months in which to start this process of procreation. I have not seen any young glasshouses. I hope the Deputy will tell us at an early date how many more glasshouses we are going to see installed. I would be interested and sympathetic. It is the Deputy himself who mentioned tomatoes. I am apprehensive that the Gaeltacht is going to go the way the flour and cereals divisions of my late Department.

Who transacts negotiations now with the Australian and Canadian Wheat Board for the purchase of wheat?

An Leas-Cheann Comhairle

What has this got to do with the Bill before the House?

Dr. Maguire

Maybe the Deputy hopes to represent a Gaeltacht constituency.

Mr. Dillon

There is a significant smile on the face of the tiger.

Mr. Sweetman

You are not giving him that dignity are you?

Mr. Dillon

I warn Deputies that this Bill is going to be upcast to them in the future as the ample provision made by the Government for the Gaeltacht. I warn them that it will give them nothing. It shocks me that Deputies, representing the Gaeltacht, should have been a party to this and that they should have suffered the people of the Gaeltacht to be used as the alibi for these proposals. All through this debate that has been the line. They are providing £2,000,000 for the Gaeltacht.

Mr. Blaney

At least.

Mr. Dillon

When you come down to it, the Tánaiste intervened to say— let us get this clear—that this Bill is for industrial development and nothing else. Do Deputies honestly believe on the far side of the House that these factories are going to be built in the Rosses or in Connemara?

Mr. Blaney

Are you opposing it?

Mr. Dillon

If I adverted to Deputy Blaney I would so rapidly get out of order that I would put my position in this House in peril. Let him not address me, because I entertain sentiments for him the very mention of which would be out of order.

An Leas-Cheann Comhairle

Order.

Mr. Dillon

If this Bill is in good faith it is not impossible that it might be used to great advantage. I am certain of it. I have, however, pointed out certain lines on which it could proceed if it were in good faith to achieve a great deal that might be of advantage to achieve. I believe that it is, in fact, a Bill to establish a political slush fund with which Fianna Fáil hope to buy back some of the seats they lost in the last general election.

Mr. Blaney

The Deputy may drown if there is slush about.

Mr. Dillon

I believe that the reason the Minister for Industry and Commerce is in control of it is that he anticipates leading the Fianna Fáil Party with whatever rumps or tails he can add to it into the next general election.

An Leas-Cheann Comhairle

That has nothing whatever to do with the Bill.

Dr. Maguire

Is there any chance of your getting back in Donegal?

Mr. Sweetman

There would be a great temptation for him to leave Monaghan with the ignorant interruptions of the Deputy.

Dr. Maguire

He is my greatest asset in the county.

Mr. D.J. O'Sullivan

That is why you lost a seat there.

Mr. Dillon

I think that the Party responsible for the Bill degrades itself. I think that the vast majority of our people know the reason for its introduction and despise the people who brought it in.

Mr. Lemass

Is it that you are talking this out or that you cannot stop?

Dr. Maguire

Deputy Dillon's articulation is occasionally defective.

Mr. Sweetman

Is the Chair going to make any attempt to allow Deputy Dillon to proceed without interruption ?

Mr. Dillon

I reasseverate my conviction that the purposes for which Fianna Fáil seek the passing of this Bill are dishonest and politically corrupt. I believe that the powers could be used for a useful purpose if the Party were bona fide. I deplore the fact that they have conceived it desirable to use this Parliament for what I believe to be their own dirty purpose.

Mr. Cafferky

I welcome the Bill, not for what it contains or for what it is going to do, but because, for the first time in the history of this country, the introduction of a Bill of this kind clearly indicates that the Government and the House have been forced to focus their attention on the conditions which exist in the West of Ireland. If I am to accept from the introduction of the Bill that the House, after 30 years' existence, has at last recognised that a problem exists in the West of Ireland, then I am prepared to support it and wish it every success, although, in my estimation, the success of the Bill will be very limited indeed.

The West of Ireland requires something more than what is contained in this piece of paper, and something more than what we have listened to here during the past few weeks from either side of the House. I believe in private enterprise, but I do not think that left to itself private enterprise is capable of solving the problems which exist on the other side of the Shannon. The Minister and the Parliamentary Secretary, Deputy Lynch, who visited the greater part of the West of Ireland, are fully aware of these problems and know that the Bill or private enterprise cannot solve these problems as they exist. The Minister is well aware that he is going to depend on individuals who may or may not come together in the far distant future to provide a few paltry thousands to establish a factory which will employ ten, 20 or 30 little strips of boys and girls. If he thinks that that is going to solve the problems of the West of Ireland he is making a big mistake.

In the West of Ireland we have been accustomed to emigration and migration. For over 100 years we have been forced to do so by an alien Government and by our native Government. Since the outbreak of the war the young men and women who have been migrating to Great Britain backwards and forwards have become accustomed to earning big money in a short time, and if you think for a moment that by the erection of factories that will pay them 30/- or 50/- a week on part-time employment you will entice these people to wait at home, you are hitting your head against a concrete wall.

Breanndán Mac Fheórais

You will surely have a trade union if you have such factories.

Mr. Cafferky

Although trade unions are supposed to exist in the City of Dublin you still have thousands of people working outside the unions and they seem to have handled that problem very badly.

Breanndán Mac Fheórais

That is nonsense.

Mr. Cafferky

If we look at the few factories which are in existence in the West of Ireland, their labour content, wages and the kind of employment they give and if that is an example of what we are going to have in the future, then it is clear that the future will be as bad as the past and that this Bill offers no future to the workers in the West of Ireland.

Neither the Minister nor the Parliamentary Secretary, Deputy Lynch, nor the Minister for Education nor any other member of the Government who contributed to the debate outlined what the Government had in mind as far as the industrial development of the West of Ireland is concerned. The Bill gives no indication or information. £2,000,000! Two paltry millions! Why, £2,000,000 would not be sufficient for the congested area I come from, namely the Swinford area, not to speak of the whole western seaboard and the various areas mentioned in the Bill for which the Bill is supposed to cater and for which £2,000,000 is supposed to make provision. I think that this is more a laughing stock than anything else and I am inclined to agree with a lot of what Deputy Dillon said when he claimed that the Bill would be used for a certain purpose. I do not wish to go into that matter, but I believe that the people of the West of Ireland have become sufficiently enlightened over the years not to be deceived by a Bill of this kind or by any promises coming from the Minister for Industry and Commerce or any spokesman of the Fianna Fáil Government.

I move the adjournment of the debate.

Debate adjourned.