Dáil Éireann díospóireacht -
Tuesday, 11 Dec 1951

Vol. 128 No. 5

Supplementary and Additional Estimate. - Vote 50—Industry and Commerce.

Minister for Industry and Commerce (Mr. Lemass)

I move:—

That a supplementary sum not exceeding £3,079,995 be granted to defray the charge which will come in course of payment during the year ending 31st March, 1952, for the Salaries and Expenses of the Office of the Minister for Industry and Commerce, including certain Services administered by that Office, and for payment of certain Subsidies and sundry Grants-in-Aid.

This Supplementary Estimate is necessary to authorise payments due to Fuel Importers, Limited. As the House is aware, Fuel Importers, Limited, was formed shortly after the beginning of the war for the purpose of procuring supplies of coal, it being intended that it should, if possible, import coal in larger quantities than the ordinary merchant might handle and maintain a reserve of coal. As coal became scarcer during the progress of the war, the company was also entrusted with the work of building up reserves of turf and firewood. The money required by the company for the operation of these activities was obtained by borrowing from the banks, the repayment of the borrowings being guaranteed by the Minister for Finance. originally, the amount of the guarantee given by the Minister for Finance was for £500,000, but by 1948 the amount of the guarantee had risen to £6,000,000.

From the year 1943 onwards it was decided to operate a fuel subsidy. The turf which was acquired by this company was sold at a price which had no relation to its cost but which was deemed to be a reasonable price for the supply of that fuel to the consumers. In the course of other years the subsidy was extended to firewood and to coal. The method of operating the subsidy was to vote to the company each year an amount representing the difference between what it paid out for fuel and what it realised on its sale. The total amount paid out to the company in that way in those years up to 1948 was £6,776,000. Prior to that year, the loss shown in the company's accounts represented the element of subsidy and fuel prices. After 1948 the loss shown in the company's accounts was due to the disposal of the reserve stocks which were still held at the beginning of 1948—stocks which had been purchased at high cost and which were sold, in the better conditions of 1948, 1949 and 1950 at the price which they could realise. For each of these three years, 1949-50, 1950-51 and the present financial year, 1951-52, only a token provision was made under the fuel subsidy sub-head of the Vote of the Department of Industry and Commerce and no payment was, in fact, made to the company in respect of the losses which it had continued to incur.

At the end of this financial year the accumulated losses of the company are estimated at £3,080,000. That figure is arrived at as follows: The ascertained loss to the 31st December last, including interest upon bank overdraft and all overhead expenses, was £2,557,323. The company's audited accounts are prepared on the basis of the calendar year. At the end of the year 1948, after crediting the sum of £1,175,000 which was made available in the Estimate for that year, the profit and loss account showed a credit balance of £11,075. In 1949 there was paid out to the company a further £500,000, which was the balance of the provision in the Vote for the previous year. In that year only the token Vote of £5 was taken. Consequently, the company's loss at the end of the year amounted to £1,861,275. In the year 1950 the profit and loss account of the company showed a loss of £696,050. That, added to the loss carried forward from the previous year, brought the total undischarged losses of the company at 31st December, as I have said, to £2,557,325.

There is an estimated loss likely to be realised on the remaining 1947 coal and turf still in stock. At the beginning of this year the company held, of that 1947 coal, 224,738 tons and also 30,480 tons of turf. The coal was distributed between the dumps at Dublin and Cork. The turf was all at Cork. There were no sales of coal effected from the Cork dump during the present year to date, because the task of building up a new reserve in the present circumstances has been impeded there. The accumulation of a new dump at Cork has been retarded somewhat, but it is anticipated that the whole of the 1947 coal remaining at Cork will be disposed of before the end of the year.

From the 1st of January last to the 20th October, 177,000 tons of coal were disposed of from the Dublin dump involving a loss of £175,000. Stocks on hands on the 20th October amounted to 45,000 tons. The company also estimate that that will be cleared before the end of this month, at a further loss of £28,000, making a total loss for the year of £203,000. After deducting a small profit of £250 on the sale of anthracite, the net estimated loss in 1951 on the realisation of the coal stock will be £202,750.

The company estimate that a loss of £83,250 will be incurred on the ultimate realisation of the turf stock at Cork. That stock at the beginning of the year, as valued in the company's books, was £95,020. Sales during the year up to the 20th October amounted to 9,500 tons, including provision for shrinkage. These sales were effected at a loss of £18,600. The remaining 21,000 tons, valued in the company's books at £65,000, are of very poor quality and are expected to yield only about £1,000 in sales. In addition, it is estimated that it will cost about £20,000 to clear the Cork dump and remove the mould and unsaleable turf from it.

Wages and overheads are estimated at £90,000; while bank interest and depreciation come to £112,000. Certain retrospective amounts due to county councils against the emergency turf production are calculated at £10,000. There is approximately £4,000 due in compensation to the owners of dump sites. That produces a total of £3,079,323, which has been rounded off, for the purposes of the Estimate, to £3,080,000.

I should make it clear that no part of the cost of importing coal from America this year is included in this Estimate. All these costs will be borne on the selling price of the coal.

The House will appreciate that the building up of reserve stocks of coal or similar commodities may at some time involve a loss. A reserve stock is held against the risk of shortage due to an international emergency. If there is an international emergency, the stocks will be utilised, and it may be assumed that no loss will be experienced. If there is no emergency then at some stage a decision to that effect will be taken, and that decision will be accompanied, no doubt, by a consequential decision to dispose of the reserve stocks. I do not know how anybody can hope to fix a formula for deciding when the danger of an emergency is past. I think the most likely indication which anybody will have is the commencement of a fall in prices. It is to be assumed, therefore, that if the reserve stock is held for a period in which no emergency develops, it will be dispersed only when some fall in prices indicates that the danger of scarcity is past. It must be assumed that there is a risk that in respect of the present reserve stock which is now being accumulated, and which we hope to build up to about 200,000 tons, there will be at some future date a loss to be written off if the emergency against which the stock is being accumulated does not develop.

The Estimate does not include any provision for costs or expenses which the company may be called upon to pay as a result of the occupation of the Phoenix Park.

The ultimate payments of subsidy from the sum made available by the Supplementary Estimate will be made to the company on foot of audited statements showing the actual loss incurred.

In case any Deputy is under any misunderstanding, I should say that this sum is not being charged against tax revenue. There is no surplus tax revenue against which to charge it.

Mr. Dillon

That was a mare's nest, then?

Mr. Cosgrave

The deficit of £3,250,000 which Deputy MacEntee was supposed to carry on his back. This is not going to be charged to revenue?

Mr. Lemass

The total tax revenue will, in any case, be short of the expenditure charged against it in the Budget of this year, so that there is no question of charging expenditure over and above it.

Mr. Dillon

That statement is untrue, but in fact you are going to capitalise this?

Mr. Cosgrave

Is this to be a capital charge?

Mr. Lemass

Yes, certainly.

Mr. Dillon

Before the Minister concludes, may I ask a question? He has dealt with each element of the losses except one. I did not hear him deal with the loss arising from the disposal of wood blocks-timber. Can he give any information on that?

Mr. Cosgrave

He mentioned firewood.

Mr. Dillon

It is a very interesting story and I propose to recite it, after my colleague, the ex-Minister for Industry and Commerce, has had his say.

Mr. Morrissey

It is clear now that this is to be met as a capital charge. I have spoken so often in the House in the last three and a half years on the question of fuel stocks, I had thought it would not be necessary again to try to put the facts of the situation before the House and the country; but certain Deputies, for some reason which I have difficulty in understanding, seem to think that, in the question of fuel stocks and particularly in relation to turf, they have something with which they can lambast their opponents. I do not propose to go into this matter in any controversial spirit at all; I merely want to outline what happened -how these very large stocks of fuel in the various dumps came to be there, when they were put there, the reason they were put there and the conditions under which they were put there.

Deputies will have to throw their minds back to the winter of 1946 and the spring of 1947, and Deputies will remember that the winter of 1946 and the spring of 1947 were perhaps the two most severe seasons that ever struck this country, certainly in our memory. They struck us at a time when we were very vulnerable, because we had practically no reserves of fuel to meet that crisis, and it was a crisis when it came. In the cities and towns, and particularly in this city, during the winter of 1946 and the spring of 1947, I doubt if it would be an exaggeration to say that certain people perished from cold, and it is well known that during that period people not merely burned parts of their furniture but tore up flooring and tore down stairs for themselves and their families. That is well known to have happened here in the city and a scare was thrown not merely into the people generally but into the Government of the day.

At the end of that very severe spring, when the frost and snow had at last cleared off, we found that we had practically no fuel of any description and we then went from one extreme to the other and an all-out effort was made to get fuel, by hook or by crook-turf and firewood from home; whatever expansion, if any, could be got from our own limited coal resources; and the world searched for fuel. In a period of roughly eight to ten months, immense dumps of fuel were assembled almost without regard to quality and I might say almost without regard to price. Most of it, other than what we were able to secure at the time from Britain, came from America and some smaller lots from other places.

Mr. Dillon

Africa.

Mr. Morrissey

Turf was brought from the most remote parts of the country, irrespective of cost, to Dublin and various other centres. Firewood was brought, mainly, into Dublin at a very high price, and, in the middle of all that drive to get fuel, the Minister and, I think, some of his colleagues, went to Great Britain about October, 1947, in an effort to get from the British an undertaking that they would supply to us a minimum quantity of coal over the following 12 months and an agreement was entered into whereby the British bound themselves to deliver to this country in the year 1948—I am speaking from recollection—between 650,000 and 680,000 tons. I think there was some question at the time of their being unable to begin deliveries until about February, but actually they began delivery about two months before that, and the Minister found himself at the beginning of 1948 with a mild winter, and, ignoring the British commitments in regard to 600,000 or 700,000 tons of coal, with roughly 500,000 tons of coal in the Park and some of the other centres, with somewhere in the neighbourhood of three to four years' supply of turf at the then rate of consumption in the dumps; and with-using his own words —at the then rate of consumption something like ten years' supply of firewood in the city. On top of the 250,000 tons of firewood, 350,000 tons of turf and approximately 500,000 tons of coal, we had coming into us or due to come from Britain—and it was delivered-something in the neighbourhood of 700,000 tons of British coal.

That was the situation we were met with and the Minister was informed by those charged with the responsibility of providing turf for the year 1948 that there were no further places where turf could be dumped, that the dumps were absolutely full and that, if they were instructed to go on producing to the maximum hand-won and machine-won turf, the turf produced in 1948 would have to be stacked along the sides of the roads. The Minister found himself in a dilemma. I am merely stating the facts. It was from one extreme to the other—from the extreme of having no fuel in the spring of 1947 to having too much fuel in the early spring of 1948. At a conference which was held, the Minister was asked to take certain decisions and he decided (1) that the camps in part of Kildare and over the border in Offaly where men were in camp for the production of hand-won turf should be closed down, and (2) that the decision—this was only a week before the change of Government -as to whether hand-won turf was to be produced during the 1948 season should be deferred from that meeting.

I am not surprised by the Minister's decision in that regard because he found himself with what I have outlined—500,000 tons of foreign coal, 350,000 tons of native turf, 250,000 tons of firewood, with firewood still pouring into the dumps at that time at the rate of 4,000 tons a week, and, on top of that, between 500,000 and 750,000 tons of English coal. I found myself in a dilemma. I do not think anybody will accuse me of being antagonistic to the production and use of native fuel.

What are we going to do with it? At the then rate of consumption, we had clamped in the dumps of this country 350,000 tons which the Minister admitted would not be used up under three years.

There are some Deputies who know something about turf cutting, saving and clamping. There are some Deputies anyway who know quite well what a clamp of good turf, produced and saved by a man for his own use, would be like if it were left in a stack for three years, much less stacks of turf cut and saved in the rushed period during which there was very little—and there could not be—supervision of the turf, its quality or saving. Turf was rushed from all parts of the country. All grades of turf from the top of the bog to the black spit below the bog were all piled in. We knew it would not last. Again, some of us knew that as rapidly as turf would deteriorate timber would deteriorate even more rapidly. All that was put into the Park dumps and other dumps at so much per ton. Mind you, it was not all bone dry going in. It had to be weighed out at so much a ton. In the natural way, under the climate, the tonnage of firewood shrank rapidly, as anybody who has ever cut or saved firewood for himself should know. It would be almost true to say that some of the turf after a year or a year and a half under the weather, with clamps breaking down and being remade, was washed down the main road of the Park. It had to be got rid of.

I tried to get rid of it originally at the nearest point to the economic cost we could find. People would not take it. We offered it at half what it cost. Then we offered it at a third of what it cost. I could not get anyone to buy it. It was a question of letting it simply be washed away or selling it to people and giving them the use of it at whatever price could be got for it. Finally, we had to bring the price of turf down to £1 a ton. There was one rick of turf in Cork which was offered, I think, to the local Society of St. Vincent de Paul or some other charitable organisation to take away for nothing because it was growing grass and weeds. It would not have paid to take it away.

With regard to the question of coal, you have to remember the circumstances in which this fuel was got into the country. It was got into the country following on the worst winter and spring we had experienced in our lifetime and when we had no fuel. We had no processed fuel. It had to be got. A lot of coal which was not suitable had to be brought from America. It was some of the most expensive coal that could be brought. Some of the coal had to be brought in the most expensive way from the freight point of view. I would like Deputies—if there are any here who have not been in the Park in the last three or four years-to visit the Park and see the dumps. Of course, the dumps are very small now, containing only about one-tenth the quantity of coal that was there formerly. I would invite Deputies to go up and drive between those huge dumps and see what coal there is there. The percentage of slack in that coal went as high as 80 per cent. I would say—I had a look at the dumps during the last week-that the slack content would now be 90 per cent.

What are we to do with it? Get rid of it? I am not criticising the Minister for bringing it in. I am not criticising the Minister about either the quality or the price of it but I am not going to allow some of the people sitting behind the Minister to criticise the people on this side of the House regarding it. It is the height of hypocrisy, to say the least of it, to denounce the people on this side of the House for having killed the hand-won turf scheme in 1948 in view of the facts. I want to know what would have become of the hand-won turf if it had been produced on the same scale in 1948? If that turf had been given a free run of the market what would have become of the 350,000 tons in the Park? Was it to be kept there until it was washed into the ground or down the main road?

I am not complaining of the amount of money that has to be met here. I confess that I do not know the Minister's reason for bringing it in now at this particular point. I do not understand the urgency for it. There may be a reason but the Minister did not make it very clear in his opening remarks.

Mr. Davin

The banks are pressing.

Mr. Morrissey

That is not the reason.

Mr. Lemass

In a sense that is a reason.

Mr. Morrissey

The Minister talked about interest. In any case, I hope the Minister will give his mind on this when replying so that we can finish—I hope once for all—this question about fuel, dumps and everything else being bandied about in the way it is.

The facts are as I have outlined them. I do not believe the Minister himself—unless on a point of detail-will question what I said. Those are the facts and Mr. Lemass knew in February, 1948, as well as I knew at the end of February, 1948, that our trouble was going to be to dispose of those dumps of coal, firewood and turf without completely dislocating home production. That is the situation. I am glad that the Minister was able to say that the loss on the sale of the coal from the Park this year would not amount to more than £1 a ton approximately. That is due entirely, of course, to the fact that the price of imported coal has risen so steeply that the price of the coal that we have in the dumps can be married into it at almost cost price.

I want Deputies to remember that some of the fuel that was landed in the dumps in 1947 was landed there at £8 a ton. Some of the home fuel that was landed there, given a subsidy and resold, cost £8 per ton as well as some of the stuff that was brought practically from the other side of the world. Some of the fuel that cost £8 a ton had to be sold at £1 a ton, or become a complete dead loss not merely to the Treasury but to the citizens of this State. Sooner than see it washed down the Park road we decided as a Government that it would be better to let our own people have it at £1 per ton, burn it and have the benefit of it. I do not think that anybody in this House can find fault with that. If I could have got £4 or £5 per ton for it I would have got it because it had cost the taxpayers more, but I could not get it.

I do not think it is necessary to say anything more than that about it. I could go into detail about it and say a great many things in answer to statements made during the last 12 months and even during the past couple of months by certain people on the opposite side of the House, but I would like to hear a clear statement from the Minister as far as this particular dump is concerned and have it buried once and for all.

Mr. Dillon

I thank God that my capacity for saeva indignatio is not dead. It is a mystery when I think of the martyrdom that Deputy Dan Morrissey was put through cleaning up the messes left to him by Deputy Seán Lemass, as he was after he left the office of Minister for Industry and Commerce, that Deputy Morrissey can have the patience, the heroic forbearance to get up here and say to him: “All I want is to let this business be buried.” I have not got it and I do not propose to show it, and I think that Deputy Morrissey is mistaken in shrugging his shoulders and simply saying: “This does not make any effect on me; I can afford to shrug it off.” Our people are entitled to know the truth, and although Deputy Morrissey is right in believing that the mountainous dump for which the present Tánaiste was primarily responsible has done him individually no injury in the eyes of his neighbour, I say that it is a mistake to consent to the deception of our people by the dirty, rotten fraud that has been done upon them. Bear in mind that the Tánaiste comes into this House to-night and says quite nonchalantly that all the Taoiseach said in Cork was a fraudulent falsehood. The Taoiseach went to Cork and he said: “My Minister for Finance is in a desperate position, to relieve which the Government, of which I am the head, must ask the people to make unprecedented sacrifices because we are confronted with a short fall in the revenue of £10,000,000 sterling.” The Minister for Finance had said, and repeated, that before this year is done the Government of Ireland would not have the wherewithal to pay the civil servants, and he said that before the world. The Minister for External Affairs also reported to the O.E.E.C. in Paris, and quoted from O.E.E.C. in Paris a report which has been plastered all over the world that Ireland is involved in an acute crisis which calls for drastic and extreme measures. There is not a shopkeeper in Ireland who has not felt the lash of the Fianna Fáil whip, and three and a half-fifths of the entire deficit alleged by the Taoiseach, three and a half-fifths of the deficit which the Taoiseach alleged was unprovided for, is now declared by his Tánaiste, and soon to be successor, as no deficit —a huge confidence trick on our people.

In 1948 when the Minister for Finance, Deputy McGilligan, dealt with this question, the Tánaiste, then Deputy Lemass, sitting on the front Opposition Bench, said: "Charge it up to the national debt and you will have come well out of this crisis of 1939 to 1945.". From the first fortnight that our Government existed the accursed question of this fuel appeared on the Cabinet agenda approximately once a week or once a month. When items come on the Cabinet agenda they get what is called a circulation, and pinned on the front of the circulation is a blue page which sets out the style and title of the matters set out on the agenda and the style and title of this matter tended to grow and grow with the passage of the weeks. Ultimately it came to be known by members of the Cabinet as Briscoe's coal. Many a time when this item appeared I turned to the Taoiseach and said: "Oh God, is this Briscoe's goal again"? Why? Because at the first Cabinet meeting I attended as a Minister of the Irish Republic one of the first questions to be decided was whether the Minister for Finance should issue a cheque for the commission payable to Deputy Briscoe.

Mr. Lemass

That is a falsehood. There could be no question of the Minister's issuing a cheque for that purpose to anybody. The Minister had nothing to do with a payment on coal.

Mr. Dillon

Was there not commission payable on coal which was then sailing up the Liffey from West Africa?

Mr. Lemass

That is untrue.

Mr. Dillon

If it is untrue then I will offer my apologies, but unless I am a Dutchman one of the first questions to be decided was whether there was any method of inviting the person who bought that coal from West Africa to go and sell the blooming stuff himself. It was decided that he was going on foot of an agreement entered into with perfect propriety, and the reason why the commission was payable was——

Mr. Lemass

No commission was payable to anybody.

Mr. Dillon

——that he as well as everybody else had been urged by the Minister for Industry and Commerce then, Deputy Lemass, to get coal from anywhere and my recollection is that Deputy Briscoe's contribution was that he located some coal somewhere in West Africa.

Mr. Lemass

I must protest against this because it is an unfair attack on a Deputy of this House.

Mr. Dillon

Is it?

Mr. Lemass

Let me say that on no occasion did Deputy Briscoe buy coal anywhere. He may have been associated as a shareholder with a company involved in the purchase of coal, but it was the company which was doing it and no commission was payable to anybody. Discreditable attacks on a Deputy of this House——

An Leas-Cheann Comhairle

I would remind Deputy Dillon that as there is no motion to refer this Vote back for reconsideration he is travelling wide of the Estimate before the House. He should address his remarks to the Estimate.

Mr. Dillon

The Minister has given us details of how these losses arose. I am going to controvert every allegation the Minister makes. Surely to God I am entitled to do that.

An Leas-Cheann Comhairle

As long as you confine your remarks to the Estimate.

Mr. Dillon

The Estimate is for coal is it not? The Minister for Industry and Commerce, Deputy Lemass, had spread his wings throughout the country and called on all and sundry to bring in coal.

Mr. Lemass

No.

Mr. Dillon

Among those who accepted that offer—and the initiative came from the Minister—was Deputy Briscoe in association with some others. In any case, coal came in, and I remember some of it was still coming in when we formed the Government. It was very expensive coal and I think it was the coal that ultimately poisoned the seals in the pond in the Zoo, and the fish to book. We then discovered that sulphurous content was washed down the gutters in the Park, flowed down the channels into the pond in the Zoo, and the seals drank it and were carried away in a fainting condition and subsequently died.

That coal sat in the Park, and it was offered to the gas company; it was offered to the Electricity Supply Board; it was offered to anybody who would buy it, and it was one of the few matters on which unanimity was secured in this country, not in Parliament, but amongst the plain people of Ireland, that in the whole 3,000,000 of them, corporately or individually, you could not get anyone to take it away, and I believe some of it is there still. When the price of coal began to go up to the price at which it is at present standing then some of it became saleable and it was disposed of.

When I think that every blooming ton of this rubbish was brought in before we ever entered office and that the atmosphere sought to be created by the prophets of the Fianna Fáil Party is that this is one of the problems that they have to wind up, I must say that it is one of the multitude of blisters that were left on our neck by Fianna Fáil when they went out of office.

I have only begun on the coal. Wait until I tell you the story of the blocks and I want to emphasise that this represents 3.5 fifths of the whole case that has been made by the Fianna Fáil Government that this country is bankrupt. Is there no limit to the shameless indecency of the Tánaiste? Is he not ashamed to have been part of a dirty campaign around this country to maintain that it is bankrupt, knowing in his heart that he meant to come in here and declare that what the Leader of the Oppostion said was true, that that was a capital item which every sound financier in the State insists should be paid for out of borrowed money to be paid back over 30 years.

Mr. Lemass

Calling it a capital item does not make it easier to get the money.

Mr. Dillon

The man has no shame at all. I am always afraid that some day I will wake up and, when I see the Tánaiste, shrug my shoulders and say: "Oh, well, it takes all sort to make a world." The day the sight of him does not excite saeva indignatio in my soul I will confess to middle age.

An Leas-Cheann Comhairle

That has nothing to do with the Estimate before the House.

Mr. Dillon

I am just rejoicing that I am not at middle age yet because saeva indignatio poorly describes my reaction to the indecency of his performance here to-day. Remember this, a Leas-Cheann Comhairle, he did not think it necessary to mention that this item was to be capitalised until he was pressed. His charming disingenuous way of announcing that interesting fact was to say that there was not enough revenue to meet this item and that it was therefore proposed to make it the subject of a loan transaction. That may be good enough for what sits behind him. That may be good enough for a silver jubilee celebration of Fianna Fáil but he is standing in the Irish Parliament now. Does he think he can get away with it? Cantering around the stage of the Capitol just to show what he would look like when the present Taoiseach is in the Park is one thing but occupying his seat in Dáil Éireann is another. Here, after his jubilee speeches, he will be called to account.

Now let me tell the story of the blocks, because that was a princely transaction. When we came into office there was in Phoenix Park the plethora of fuel that Deputy Morrissey has described but into Phoenix Park there were then streaming every day hundreds of lorry loads of logs. Now, the basis on which those logs were produced was that, assuming we got the full sale price prescribed for them, the Treasury reckoned to lose £3 a ton. That was the extent of the subsidy on the blocks delivered in Phoenix Park. They were coming in at the rate of 4,000 tons a week at a time when Deputy Lemass, as he then was, told this House that there was ten years' supply of logs in the Phoenix Park. Will Dáil Éireann be surprised that Deputy Morrissey caused investigation to be made as to why 4,000 tons of logs per week were still coming into Phoenix Park when his predecessor de clared that there was ten years' supply there already and when there was a loss of £3 per ton by way of subsidy?

I now allege-let it be controverted if the Tánaiste dares to controvert it-that the facts are these, and they are a tragic story: When the emergency of the war period closed, a number of fellows who had gone into the Army and spent three or four years there with little or no earning capacity, got their gratuities when they came out. There was this fuel problem and wanting to be independent men, not beholden to anybody, with great courage, they took their gratuities, they bought lorries, they contacted some friend or trustworthy person in a forestry area in the country, they got the timber cut below and they carted it to the Park, sold it to Fuel Importers in the Park and divided the profits between themselves and whoever was associated with them. All honour to them for being impatient to get on their own feet and earn their own living and not be a burden on anybody. In October, 1947, the Minister for Industry and Commerce, Mr. Lemass, reported to the Government that there was too much timber in the Park and that they ought to stop the influx of logs. Now Deputies will remember that the General Election of 1948 was precipitated by the by-elections in Tipperary and South Mayo. Look at poor Deputy Ó Briain smiling.

Donnchadh Ó Briain

No election in South Mayo.

Mr. Dillon

God help him. He does not know. He is an innocent poor creature. The Government made up their mind as far back as October that they would have to go to the country in the spring.

Mr. Davin

They said so.

Mr. Dillon

The decision was taken that it would be highly inconvenient to stop the boys bringing logs into the Park or the chaps cutting the logs down the country this side of the general election and it would be as well to let things rip. If my memory serves me right, the loss was about £3 a ton on the logs. That was the convenanted loss; that was the subsidy. There were 4,000 tons a week coming in. For 18 weeks the Treasury deliberately undertook a loss of £12,000 a week on the assumption that they would be able to sell the logs at the price, although there was ten years' supply in the Park. Now, here is the tragedy: that 18 weeks represented a total loss to the Treasury of between £200,000 and £250,000.

When it became our duty to stop that business we found ourselves confronted at once with the problem that all these poor chaps who had put their gratuity into a lorry suddenly found that there was no use for the lorry. If that body of men there had had the moral courage to do in October what we were bound to do the following March they could have gone to every one of these ex-servicemen, bought back their lorries from them at 100 per cent. of the price they had paid for them, given back into their hands their gratuities and still have saved the Treasury money. But, instead of that, they continued to bring those logs into the Phoenix Park until we came into office and many of the poor chaps who put their gratuity into a lorry found themselves with a lorry, the resale price of which would not pay off the instalments still due upon it. Their whole gratuity was gone, their little enterprise was sunk, and Fianna Fáil was able to say when the general election was over: "If we were beat it was not by leaving a stone unturned. We thought of everything and made provision, but we got beat on the merits. There was nothing we could have done that we did not do." If their peace of mind was worth the price paid for it, they are even less than I think they are, and, God knows, that is pretty little. That was one of the most cynical, one of the most cruel, one of the most shameful things that ever came under my notice.

Of course the truth of it is that, like the fools we were, for the last three and a half years we were working too hard to have time to tell these stories. But, with the help of God, the members of the Front Bench of Fianna Fáil will stir any saeva indignatio I have and, when an excess of charity imposes silence on my colleagues, I will be here to fill in the gaps and to let the truth be told.

Hand-won turf! Do Deputies forget Deputy Aiken from those benches over there proclaiming the institution of an industry second only to Guinness's brewery and a greater source of employment than the agricultural industry? He said that on a Supplementary Estimate for the purchase of 250,000 empty sacks in which to win hand-won turf. He had one of them here and held it up. It was above seven feet long and printed on it in black letters was "Irish hand-won turf." I heard him say from those benches that this would yet be an industry in this country second only to agriculture in its power to give remunerative employment to our people. That came before the Committee of Public Accounts, and if anyone is sufficiently interested in it he can look up the records where I reiterated the prophecy I made in this House on the occasion of Deputy Aiken's démarche, amidst the execration of Fianna Fáil, that “the day will yet come when all we will have left whereby to remember this new departure is the remnant of empty bags that this Estimate is designed to finance.” But the time came when we had not even the empty bags—they disappeared with the turf. I do not know what became of them. They scarcely melted although most of the turf melted. If anyone who is in doubt about that goes to Deputy McGrath of Cork City he will take him by the hand and show him over about 4,000 tons of turf which melted. It is below in Cork City and no one will take a present of it. The lowest tender to cart it away and dump it daunted even the most extravagant Minister that could be found to examine the question.

Have you no shame? Is there no Fianna Fáil Deputy sufficiently ashamed of this business to get up and say that he will stand for a lot, but that this has hit the jackpot? Are Deputies not ashamed to go back to their constituents and admit to them: "We were taken for a ride; we were told the country was bankrupt because this £3,250,000 had to be found this year"? In Dáil Éireann the Tánaiste slapped them across the face and said: "We told them that because it was necessary to keep them quacking down the country, but we never meant it." They are sitting there like graven images. Are they ashamed or cross? I doubt if they knew the meaning of what he said. I have never seen men in my lifetime so humiliated as Fianna Fáil have been this night. Just imagine being sent down to tell your own constituents that this was the financial truth as explained to you by the Taoiseach, the Tánaiste and the Minister for Finance, and having to go back this week-end and tell them that you were taken for a ride, you were used as stooges in the confidence that you would not find out, and in the hope that the Opposition would not expose it.

Surely for men and women elected to this House as representatives of the Irish people there is some degree of degradation to which you will not submit. Surely there is some stage at which one at least of the Fianna Fáil Deputies will stand up and say: "I am here by the suffrage of the people and not by the licence of any individual, however ambitious or energetic, and I will not be used as a dishcloth to wipe up the messes whenever the Tánaiste thinks it necessary to do so."

I ask Deputies of the Fianna Fáil Party was it right to deceive our people in regard to this fundamental question as to whether profligate mismanagement of public money had confronted this country with a true financial crisis? Was it right deliberately to mislead them? Was it right to use Fianna Fáil Deputies to do it? Is there a man amongst them who will call the Tánaiste to account and ask him to-night: "Why did you order us to tell our friends in the country that the liability for this sum gave the Minister for Finance sleepless nights and caused the Taoiseach to apprehend an imminent financial and economic catastrophe for Ireland, when it was all a shameless fraud?" Oh, I do not mind the busted flush. The busted flush will take anything in order to hang on to the coat-tails of the Taoiseach, the Tánaiste, or anybody else who will have them on their coat-tails. One of them has crept into his pocket. I suppose all the rest are travelling that road too.

An Ceann Comhairle

Let us keep to the Estimate.

Mr. Dillon

I am asking the members of the Fianna Fáil Party: Did they or did they not use the substance of this Estimate to mislead our people? If they did, is there one amongst them who will call the Minister to account? I challenge the Minister to tell the House is or is not the story of these wood blocks the truth? The time came—and Deputy Killilea can tell this the next time he goes to Strasbourg—when they became so boast, and it is not only potatoes that can get boast, one would have to use coal to burn them. I think, ultimately, Deputy Morrissey, as Minister for Industry and Commerce, sanctioned a sale price of £1 per ton. We even had some qualms of conscience then that those who bought them would have to use one-half of them to burn the other half.

Wood blocks, hand-won turf, Briscoe's coal, the Taoiseach's deficit. Is it not a pretty picture? I put it to the hardiest Deputy amongst you on the Government Benches: Is there any quarter of that coat of arms that does not bring the blush of shame upon your face and the bend sinister into your mind? Let us read it again. Wood blocks, hand-won turf, Briscoe's coal, the Taoiseach's deflcit. Irish public life has sunk very, very low. Dante travelled far in his Inferno. Before we finish with this present Government we bid fair to leave Dante in the ha'penny place.

Mr. Cogan

There is a controversy, I think, in one of the evening papers on who leads Fine Gael. I think to-night we know who leads Fine Gael.

Mr. O'Higgins

Who leads Fianna Fáil?

Captain Giles

Who hangs out of its tail?

Mr. Cogan

We know an ex-Minister was speaking to-night who for 20 years has waged war on Irish turf. He came in to-night full of sound and fury, hoping to finish that war. He is flying for his life now like a scalded cat, because there are Deputies here who are not impressed by all this frothy dribbling fury. What case had he to make? He had no case. Deputy Morrissey put the position fairly clearly when he said at the very outset that this country faced a very abnormal position in 1947, an abnormal winter, in which all the fuel resources were completely exhausted. Is there any blame to the Minister in charge of the economic affairs of the country because he set out with all the forces he could command to accumulate supplies of fuel when he saw the position in which the people were in 1946 and particularly in the winter of 1947?

Mr. Morrissey

The spring of 1947.

Mr. Cogan

The spring of 1947—the winter of 1946-47. That was a winter that will never be forgotten. Was not the only thing that any conscientious Minister could do to go out and accumulate all the fuel he could? The one charge of which the Minister is accused to-night by Deputy Dillon is that he accumulated too much fuel and that he was not sufficiently optimistic to think that after an exceptionally severe winter there would be an exceptionally mild one. Was it not possible that the winter 1947-48 might have been just as severe? If the then Minister had failed to accumulate supplies would he not be condemned now not alone by the Opposition but by every section of the community? It was excusable to fail in 1946 because no one anticipated the severe winter of 1947, but there would have been no excuse for him if he had failed to secure supplies in the following winter. The crime he is now accused of is that he accumulated too great supplies.

Mr. D.J. O'Sullivan

Ten years' supply.

Mr. Cogan

Do not talk nonsense. His successors had liquidated it inside one or two years.

Mr. D.J. O'Sullivan

At a loss.

Mr. Cogan

Where is the ten years' supply then? Is it not true that the whole cause of all this trouble and the sole reason for the shortage of fuel last year is that we had a Minister who was not in control of Industry and Commerce but who apparently dictated to the Minister for Industry and Commerce-Deputy Dillon, Minister for Agriculture, dictating to the Minister for Industry and Commerce?

Mr. D.J. O'Sullivan

It is the reverse now.

Mr. Cogan

We had Deputy Dillon dictating to the Minister for Industry and Commerce and telling him to trample on turf, to destroy it, to blackguard it, to produce a situation in which nobody would burn it and in which we would be absolutely dependent on John Bull's cheap coal. I suppose he believed he would get cheap coal just as he believed he would get cheap maize.

Mr. D.J. O'Sullivan

Or cheap fertilisers.

Mr. Cogan

Cheap maize from America. He did not get cheap maize or cheap coal. The result was we had no fuel last year and we had to get the county councils and everybody else to produce fuel for us. There has been a lot of talk about having to sell these wood blocks for £1 a ton. The fact of the matter is that firewood which had accumulated here in the city was worth at least £3 per ton when it was sold for £1 per ton. It was sold at £1 per ton in order to discredit the previous Government. Although I was not opposed to the inter-Party Government at the time I told them they were making a mistake and I told them that, in order to make political propaganda, they were liquidating an asset which could be useful to the people. I know farmers in my own constituency who had timber on their own land but they came up to Dublin with lorries and bought this timber at £1 per ton because it was very good value.

It was wilful waste to liquidate the timber at that price, and I will tell the House why. Deputy Dillon believed that there would be no end to the cheap coal with which John Bull was going to supply us. He had put his faith in the unlimited generosity of John Bull, and said: "We will get rid of our native supplies of timber, turf and other fuel." If Deputy Dillon's fellow Ministers had not been so foolish at to listen to his brawling and bellowing they would, during 1948 when coal was coming in at a relatively low price, have set out to accumulate supplies of it, and would have used up the supplies of timber, turf and coal which they had in existence during that year. If they had done that, they would have been in a far better position than they found themselves in later. However, I trust the position now is that never again will Deputy Dillon be able to dictate the economic policy of this country in regard to peat, wheat or beet. He said that these projects had gone up a spout. I think that Deputy Dillon has gone up a spout now, and it is a good way to have him.

It is a pity that in this debate, and on this important subject, Deputy Dillon could not refrain from making a personal attack on another Deputy in the House. Is there any limit to the malice of this particular man who will insist on dragging the reputation of this House in the gutter with his slanders, and without any thought of charity for a fellow Deputy? Some people say that Deputy Dillon's slanders of another Deputy do not matter very much, because he does it every other day and nobody believes him. But I had this experience. I went into a hairdressing establishment in this city a couple of years ago and I heard the distinguished operator, the hairdresser, tell one of his clients about the awful scandal which had happened and which had been exposed by the Minister in which a Deputy had got lime by fraud. Everyone in this House knew that that charge was false, and knew that it was a malicious lie. Yet, it was swallowed and accepted by people in the City of Dublin.

An Ceann Comhairle

The Deputy ought to get back to the Estimate.

Mr. Cogan

I am getting back to an accusation which was made against a Deputy of this House.

Mr. Hickey

It is not surprising that we have not a quorum in the House.

Mr. Cogan

Deputy Hickey pretends to be a very conscientious man, but Deputy Hickey did not protest when a false accusation was made against a Deputy in this House. Does he consider that charity or christianity? Is that an example of christianity, I wonder, to sit there quiet and silent and listen to these charges?

An Ceann Comhairle

The Deputy will have to come to the Estimate.

Mr. Davin

Is it in order for Deputy Cogan to discuss here what he overheard in a barber's shop?

An Ceann Comhairle

I have told the Deputy that he must come back to the Estimate.

Mr. Cogan

I have pointed out that, in the course of this debate, a very serious charge was made against another Deputy in this House. I am simply protesting against that, and suggesting that the time has come when we ought to learn in this House to repudiate such charges and to condemn them, no matter on what side of the House they are made. I am asking Deputy Hickey to support me in condemning them.

Mr. Hickey

I will do nothing of the kind.

An Ceann Comhairle

I am asking the Deputy to come to the Estimate.

Mr. Cosgrave

Can the Minister tell the House what is that total amount of the fuel subsidy to date? As I understood from the Minister's opening statement, he said that the fuel subsidy up to 1948 amounted to £6,776,000, and that the present Supplementary Estimate is for a sum of £3,079,000. Can he say if that is the total of all the fuel subsidies?

Mr. Lemass

Yes, right from the beginning of the war.

Mr. Cosgrave

So that it amounts to £9,800,000. Secondly, the Minister mentioned that, by paying this sum now rather than later, there will be a saving of a substantial amount in the way of interest to the Exchequer. Can he tell the House the amount involved. In his concluding remarks, the Minister announced that it was proposed to fund this debt or, at least, to regard it as a credit item. Am I right in thinking that it is proposed to borrow to pay this sum, and that it is not being paid out of revenue.

Mr. Lemass

It is not being paid out of revenue.

Mr. Cosgrave

There are a couple of other matters arising on the Estimate which, I think, are worthy of consideration. Deputies are familiar with a fuel problem, particularly during periods of shortages of fuel supplies and severe weather. It is easy enough to discuss a fuel problem when supplies are plentiful and when the weather is not severe. Last winter, the fuel supply position seemed uncertain and, just as in 1946-47, when efforts were directed towards getting supplies of fuel almost at any price and anywhere, public attention was focussed on it. When, however, the crisis passes, nobody bothers thinking about the problem except, I suppose, when an Estimate for payment is presented to the House, or when the matter comes before the Dáil in some other way.

I believe that the whole fuel supply position merits consideration, not merely from the point of view of the high cost of imported fuels, but especially from the point of view of fuel economy—in the use of fuels. In other countries, where fuel supplies have been difficult, they have developed new techniques and new methods in order to conserve supplies. I do not think that anybody, knowingly, wastes fuel in this country, but I think it is no exaggeration to say that we are wasteful in the economic utilisation of fuel. I believe that an investigation should be conducted into fuel economy, and that the fuel problem should be considered as a whole, not only from the point of view of solid fuels but from the point of view as to what co-ordinated plan should be adopted by the Electricity Supply Board, Bord na Móna and any other body with responsibility in the matter, in order to conserve available supplies and so make the maximum use of these for domestic and other purposes.

The other correlated aspect of that matter is that, in any new trade agreement with Britain, the coal supply position will inevitably be the subject of discussion. With the change in prices for fuels and the increased cost, I believe that considerable care will require to be exercised in order to safeguard our position and ensure that, whatever arrangement is adopted, will enable us in the future to have a reasonable guarantee of minimum supplies, especially when supplies from elsewhere are both difficult to procure and extremely costly.

Mr. Davin

I believe that the Minister must have—I believe that he has it at his finger-tips—much more interesting information and figures than he gave to the House in the simple manner in which he introduced this fairly large Estimate. I am also satisfied, from what he admitted in the House last week, that this Estimate is being pressed for now because the banks are pressing him to clear up whatever is due to them in the shape of interest payments or other moneys. That, I suppose, is in accordance with the policy of the banks, who appear to oppose this Government in regard to their dealings with other sections of the community.

I would like to know from the Minister what is the full period covered by every item included in this Estimate. This is obviously what one could describe as a carry-forward Estimate. I would like to know from the Minister the date from which this Estimate originated, either in regard to money borrowed from the banks or interest charges due to the banks. Are we to take it from what the Minister said that some portion of this Estimate covers the period from 1943 onwards?

Mr. Lemass

No part of it does. The amount due to the company was cleared up to the end of 1948.

Mr. Cosgrave

Of course some of this arises in respect of commitments prior to that.

Mr. Lemass

On stocks that were purchased before that.

Mr. Davin

I think it is in the interests of the people who may be called upon to pay some portion of this loss that they should know what approximately is the portion or percentage of the losses over the whole of the period covered by this Estimate, in regard to turf, timber and coal, separately if the Minister has that information. I am sure he has the information or that he can get it from his official advisers. Could the Minister give the House any information—and this would be very interesting for future reference at any rate — in regard to the percentage covering production costs, transport, delivery, administration and wastage? Wastage must cover or represent a very high portion of the total losses involved since this scheme came into operation in the first instance.

Mr. Cunningham

Especially seeing that it was sold at £1 per ton.

Mr. Davin

The Deputy must not have been in the House when Deputy Morrissey gave us the very interesting information that a very big portion of the turf which still, apparently, lies in the turf clamp at Cork, would not be taken away for nothing by the St. Vincent de Paul Society and by other charitable organisations in that city. That is worse than selling it at £1 per ton. I would press the Minister also to let the House and the country know what portion of this Estimate, totalling £3,097,995, represents accumulated interest, and if it is correct to state the compound interest on moneys borrowed since the commencement of this campaign by fuel importers. Can it be possible, for instance, that one-fifth of the total amount of money which we are now being asked to pass at the request of the Minister represents, or covers, accumulated interest or compound interest? In any case, what is the total interest due to the banks and for which they now appear to be pressing, according to the statement made by the Minister here in the House last week? I do not want to delay the House or to hold up the passage of this Bill.

I am asking the Minister, and I hope he will not regard my request as unreasonable, for figures which the taxpayers of the country are entitled to get. According to what the Minister now admits, in a casual way in reply to a query by Deputy Cosgrave, this money, instead of being passed on to the taxpayer by way of increased taxation, is now going to be met by borrowing. It is very interesting to hear from the Minister that we are going to borrow £3,097,995 and to pay back to the banks a very big sum for interest charges. Are we going to pay them further interest on the interest which we already owe them?

Mr. Rooney

To-night we are being asked to agree to pay to the capital debt a further £3,000,000. This, of course, arises from the fuel muddle of 1946 and 1947, which eventually faced the inter-Party Government in 1948 and which they had to straighten out. When it was necessary for the inter-Party Government to take action at that time the Fianna Fáil Party made political propaganda out of it and complained that the inter-Party Government had stopped the hand-won turf scheme and had caused unemployment in the country. When the Minister for Industry and Commerce, at that time Mr. Lemass, realised the difficulties which were going to face the country if the stocking of turf in the Park continued, apart from the stocking there of coal and timber, he came to the stage when he found it necessary to face up to the situation, and to call a halt to the programme of piling up stocks in the Phoenix Park fuel dump. I think it is most unfortunate that advantage should have been taken of this £3,000,000 by the present Minister for Finance during the last few months in order to create the impression that this country was bankrupt and that we were in a state of financial chaos.

This £3,000,000 was used in his little argument and the result is that a considerable trade depression has come about and that unemployment has reached a figure higher than it ever reached at any time since the inter-Party Government took office. It is just as well that we have at last reached the day when the Fianna Fáil lie is exposed. It was a lie that was created in the minds of our people regarding the Phoenix Park fuel problem. The inter-Party Government faced up to the problem at that time and they found it necessary to sell this fuel at a loss rather than allow it run down the drain. We all see coal running down the drain after a heavy rainfall. Coal was decomposing in the Phoenix Park fuel dump, but the turf was mouldering even more rapidly than the coal. We were faced with ten years' supply of fuel. On the very day on which the inter-Party Government took office, the present Minister for Industry and Commerce pointed out that there were huge stocks of turf in the Phoenix Park and that it would be advisable to dispose of that turf as soon as we could. He said it would eventually show a loss, being perishable, if it were allowed to remain in the Phoenix Park for a long period. This statement from the Minister for Industry and Commerce to-night makes it clear once and for all to those who were engaged in the hand-won turf scheme the reason why the scheme was abandoned in 1948. It also makes clear to those who were engaged in the production of timber fuel and the haulage of timber why those activities also were brought to a standstill early in 1948. In 1947, apparently, the Fianna Fáil Government were overtaken by panic because during the winter of 1946 there was a desperate shortage of fuel in this country. Every day in the week we read, particularly letters in the newspapers from people advising how, first of all, to burn turf and, secondly, how to make a good fire from the fuel that existed at that time. They had all kinds of recipes. It all arose from the fact that we had a very hard winter and the Government were caught out; it was only when the hard winter came that it was found they did not make proper arrangements to ensure that there would be a sufficiency of fuel for our people.

But that was no excuse for the campaign which they undertook after the winter of 1946 and the early spring of 1947. It was no excuse for them to embark on a fuel production programme which resulted, in less than 12 months, in the production of a ten-year supply, including hand-won turf, a small amount of machine-won turf, timber fuel and imported coal. We all remember the racket which appeared to be going on then in regard to imported coal. Truck owners were able to earn something like £13 a day drawing that coal into the park under contract with the importers of the coal. In the long run, all that had to be borne by the taxpayers.

This action here to-night, when we are asking for this £3,000,000 to be transferred to the capital account instead of asking the taxpayers to bear the burden, reveals the whole story. It was thought from statements made by the Minister for Finance, Deputy MacEntee, that the revenue for this year was going to show a loss which included £63,080,000. He has now considered it wiser not to show these figures in his budgetary account in the matter of current expenditure when it comes to the time for him to produce figures again. It is just as well that it became necessary for the present Government to admit this loss and give an opportunity to the House whereby the circumstances which brought about the loss can be debated and discussed.

I do not wish to add any more to what has been said, but I approve of the action now taken. I think it is the only action that can be taken in the circumstances. I would not be in favour of advocating that the taxpayers of this country should pay through the nose for what now has proved to have been outlandish folly on the part of the Fianna Fáil Government. Possibly, this campaign of fuel production, particularly in the latter part of 1947 and early in 1948, was pursued for the purpose of deceiving the people and creating a kind of false prosperity. But who was paying for that false prosperity in the matter of haulage and supplying the money for this timber and turf that was being produced? It was the people themselves who were actually paying for that prosperity that was deliberately created prior to the general election which took place early in 1948.

It must be admitted now that this fuel production campaign could have been and should have been brought to a standstill when a sufficiency of the turf had been harvested in 1947 and when we had imported a sufficiency of coal and produced a sufficiency of timber. We could forgive the Fianna Fáil Government if they set out in 1947 and produced, say, a two or three years' supply of fuel—and even a three years' supply would not have been advisable, knowing that both turf and timber were so perishable, apart from the fact that coal was inclined to disintegrate when exposed to the weather. But we could have forgiven them if they had set out to produce a three years' supply. The basis of their activities was the result of a hard winter in 1946-47. It was an exceptional winter and their activity seemed to suggest that we should expect these exceptional winters year after year. Instead of producing fuel that would last for two or three years, we had the spectacle of having a ten-year supply gathered there in the Park. Due to the fact that this fuel was exposed to the weather, the taxpayers to-day have to bear the loss which might have been anticipated then by the Fianna Fáil Government.

Mr. Hickey

Would it not be very practical if we put a blanket over all that happened about fuel supplies up to now and tried to bear the brunt of this money we are asked for, rather than waste the time of this House discussing things that happened two, three and four years ago? I am rather inclined to address myself to the Minister about how we are to deal with our fuel supplies in the future, and I am now referring to turf that is being produced this year and being delivered in the City of Cork, about which I have some knowledge.

During the past week, I had representations made to me from very disinterested people from the political point of view—lady visitors to the blind and old age pensioners—complaining about wet turf that was being delivered to those poor people and gave me the chance of visiting some of the houses so that I could see the turf. That is the reason I am trying to put a blanket over all that happened in the past and to do something practical about our fuel supplies for the future. I went to see some of this turf—I visited two houses—and I must certainly say it was just scandalous.

Mr. Lemass

Was this delivered under the free fuel scheme?

Mr. Hickey

Yes.

An Ceann Comhairle

Is the Minister for Industry and Commerce responsible for that?

Mr. Lemass

It seems to me a matter for the Cork Corporation. Why are they buying wet turf?

Mr. Hickey

It is all being paid for out of money which the taxpayers are paying for producing turf.

An Ceann Comhairle

That has no connection with this Estimate.

Mr. Hickey

I shall leave it over then, but I say that there should be some check to see that the turf that is being brought into the stores at the present time should be left in the bog and that they should not be bringing in just muck.

Mr. Lemass

Why is the Cork Corporation buying it?

Mr. Hickey

I am not talking about the corporation. I am talking about merchants who are supplying turf to the ordinary citizens. There should be somebody responsible for seeing that wet turf is left on the bog and that it should not be sold as fuel to the citizens. I think it is somebody's business to intervene there.

An Ceann Comhairle

I do not see how that arises on this Estimate.

Mr. Hickey

Are we not paying for the turf that is being brought in?

An Ceann Comhairle

There is no provision in this Estimate in respect of what the Deputy is talking about. The Deputy may get it in on another Estimate, but I do not think it arises on this.

Mr. Hickey

Very well. I suggest that Deputies might forget what happened in the past and do something practical to see that we have proper fuel supplies for our people in the future.

Mr. Corry

We hear a lot of noise to-day about fuel subsidies. I asked a question some seven or eight months ago in connection with the quantity of fuel that was on hands in January, 1948, and how much of it was left in January, 1951. I got certain figures which showed that about £8,000,000 worth of fuel had been sold in that period. We hear a lot of noise to-night about the loss on fuel and about the outrageous idea of putting in stocks of fuel. Judging by the present attitude of the British Government in regard to agreements made and not honoured, we may be very glad to have some fuel next March, even the wet turf about which Deputy Hickey talks. I suggest that the fact that there are not stocks of fuel in the country now is a pretty grave responsibility for somebody, and I say that the stocks of fuel which were accumulated and disposed of should have been replaced. I say, further, that the manner of their sale was a scandal and an outrage. I saw down in my own district, from Cork to Youghal, every day, lorry loads of blocks floating down to the farmers' yards at £1 per ton—one-third or one-fourth of their value. I do not know what is the reason for their sale at that price but I know they could have fetched without any trouble whatever three times that price. You would not cut a ton of blocks for £3.

Mr. Hickey

They were lying for three years in the Park.

Mr. Corry

If they were three years in the Park they were perfectly sound, and I was very glad to get them at £1 per ton. I say that that timber was sold at £1 per ton and that is the reason for the deficit here.

Mr. Morrissey

You did not buy it at £2 per ton when it was offered at that.

Mr. Corry

I bought it when I saw it was going for nothing.

Mr. Morrissey

Exactly.

Mr. Corry

And I am a farmer who has plenty of timber of my own. It was cheaper to buy it at that price and to draw it home from Cork than to cut down a tree on my own land and saw it up.

Mr. Hickey

You would be better occupied talking about the future.

Mr. Corry

Apparently the future is a thing we are not allowed to talk about so we must talk about the past. However, that is what has caused the deficit. I am sure that if we tracked out the rest of the stuff we would find that the cheap stuff travelled a lot. I am sure that some of the cheap coal followed the Tuam lime up to Ballaghaderreen. A hundred tons of it went up there.

An Ceann Comhairle

There is nothing about lime in this Estimate. I cautioned the Deputy about that before.

Mr. Corry

I hope to have another opportunity of dealing with it. Before we adjourn for Christmas I shall follow that 100 tons of lime. However, that is the reason for this deficit. I think more blame attaches to a Government which got a pretty well stocked larder, so far as fuel was concerned, and who left it empty—who left this State dependent upon a country that never kept her word so far as agreement was concerned and never will.

Mr. Hickey

I hope the Deputy has seen all the stacks of turf in the three parks in Cork.

Mr. Corry

I know there is no timber or no coal there.

Mr. MacCarthy

Why was the new turf not left in the Park and the old turf used?

An Ceann Comhairle

The Cork Deputies should settle this in Cork.

Mr. MacCarthy

Why was not that used and the fresh turf kept?

Mr. O'Higgins

To light bonfires for the new Lord Mayor.

An Ceann Comhairle

Deputy Corry on the Estimate without interruptions from any side.

Mr. Corry

I had the curiosity to put down a question a few months ago to know what became of it and I got an answer. I got the stocks of fuel that were left. All I have to say is that the attitude of the inter-Party Government toward fuel is the attitude of an individual who comes to town, takes a furnished room, and who, the first week, sells a table, the second week sells the old chair and in the finish sells the bed. So far as the fuel is concerned, it was put up and sold——

Mr. Morrissey

So far as you are concerned, you got a few of the bargains for yourself.

Mr. Corry

I was accused in this House before of getting a bargain and the Deputy who accused me went himself and bought ten times the amount I got at a quarter of the price. That was Deputy Dillon, who bought 100 tons of lime and had it carted up to Ballaghaderreen. That is the Deputy who had the neck when he was Minister to accuse me of something like robbery because I had purchased 16 tons of lime and brought it down to Cork.

Mr. O'Higgins

Is this in order?

Mr. Corry

I promised the Deputy we will have a full day on it later and we will probably track some of this coal in the way we traced the lime.

Mr. O'Higgins

Mud squirt.

Mr. Lemass

And that is in reference to a remark concerning Deputy Dillon. Deputy Dillon is entitled to no consideration from anybody.

Mr. O'Higgins

Nor is the Minister. Will you go down to Banagher now and make the same speech which you made there some time ago?

Mr. Corry

It was far more useful to lay in a stock of fuel for the country than to come along, during the past 12 months, and shove into this country 9,000,000 or 10,000,000 yards of foreign shoddy that threw our workers out of the mills.

Mr. Morrissey

That is not true.

Mr. Corry

That is not true.

Mr. Morrissey

I said before that Deputy Corry is the sewer pipe of Fianna Fáil.

Mr. Corry

Seven and a half million yards of foreign cloth was brought into this country under quota from September, 1950.

Mr. O'Higgins

Is this in order? It is perfectly obvious that the Deputy has been put up to this.

Mr. D.J. O'Sullivan

On a point of order. It would be well if some Fianna Fáil Deputies would come in and listen to Deputy Corry.

Notice taken that 20 Deputies were not present; House counted and 20 Deputies being present,

Mr. Corry

Attacks have been made on the Fianna Fáil Government because they took steps during the war years to ensure that the people of this country would have fuel.

Mr. O'Higgins

I hope they will not take the same steps again.

Mr. Corry

The Deputy's colleagues in the county council were pretty active during the summer months endeavouring to get some small bit of fuel to replace the coal which they purchased from Britain but which they did not get. After the agreement we made with Britain for the coal she increased the price, though I cannot say now how much the increase was. These are pretty tough facts. The behaviour of the Opposition in connection with the fuel question reminds one of nothing more than an old lady going off to the pawn with something under her shawl. That is the way they went off with the timber and sold it for half the value of the ticket. That is the way the timber, the fuel that is mentioned here, was sold. That is the way the coal was sold.

Mr. Morrissey

Tell us about the way it was bought. How was it bought?

Mr. Corry

There were no secrets as to how it was bought.

Mr. Morrissey

If that is the way you want it, you will get it.

Mr. Corry

It was brought into Cork City and dumped. I would far rather see a stack of timber or a pile of coal in Cork Park to-day than have a promise from Great Britain that she will supply coal—a promise which she has already broken. I should feel far surer of my fire under these circumstances than under the circumstances created by the Parties now opposite.

Apparently there was no intention of paying this bill this year, to judge by the Estimate. The original Estimate was for a fiver.

Mr. Davin

What year?

Mr. Corry

This year. The Estimate for 1951-2.

Mr. Morrissey

You should not depart from your brief. You are making it difficult.

Mr. Corry

I do not mind how difficult I make it for anybody. My worry is that there was no intention of clearing it and no intention of clearing anything. I suppose it was to be put in abeyance, like everything else. One would think that according as the accumulated stocks were being cleared, the losses would be cleared also or that some attempt would be made to clear the losses. Apparently, that was not done. These are the accumulated losses over a period.

Mr. Davin

What period?

Mr. Corry

The Deputy got a copy of this little sheet, too.

Mr. Davin

You know more than the Minister, though.

Mr. Corry

Study that little sheet. Surely the Deputy has learned how to read?

Mr. Davin

Yes. Tell us about Cork dump, the one you know about.

Mr. Corry

It is many years ago since I spoke of the Cork dump.

Mr. Davin

I heard you.

Mr. Corry

I did not get much support from the Deputy at that period. It may have been rather an unpopular thing to do but I did it. I see far more justification in putting in supplies of fuel than in putting in supplies of foreign shoddy.

Mr. Cafferky

I only wish we could approach this matter in a more enlightened manner than that shown in the past 20 minutes. It is not a question of other Parties wishing to find fault with this payment of £3,000,000. It would be more appropriate if we could find means whereby in the future we would not have to provide such an Estimate as this, arising out of fuel subsidies. I was not here when the Minister was addressing the House and I do not know whether he apportioned the £3,000,000 out between coal, blocks and turf. I have a feeling that the big percentage of this £3,000,000 goes towards the subsidisation of turf.

Coming, as I do, from a turf area, naturally enough, I have some interest in the production and utilisation of that fuel. I am quite candid about this —I believe that turf is not a suitable fuel for large cities and towns, not because it does not generate sufficient heat but because it is bulky, hard to store and hard to keep dry. There is also a certain amount of waste, which tends to bring about a subsidy in the long run such as we are asked for to-night covering a period of years. It would be better for the Government to advise Bord na Móna or whatever body is responsible for turf production, to see if they could utilise it in another form, such as electricity, which could be used more economically in large cities and towns. I believe that would call for less subsidisation and that there would be less waste. I have been through the Park, and while I do not wish to fix the responsibility for the accumulation of fuel between 1947 and the latter part of 1948, definitely there was quite a bulk of fuel there. Though I am no judge of coal, it was apparent to anyone that the coal that went out from there was not first-class. The Minister has explained that there was no alternative, that he availed of the only opportunity he had to acquire that type and quality of coal. Of course, it would be better than no coal. I believe the accumulation of such a large pile of coal, turf and blocks was not essential.

If we are to continue to use turf in Dublin, Cork, Limerick and large towns, we must provide some kind of shelter so that it will not become waterlogged, with resultant waste arising out of hundreds of thousands of tons being stacked, as occurred during the war years and up to lately in the Phoenix Park. If we can turn turf into some other form of power, it might solve the problem. For instance, in the last three or four years we have developed large housing sites in Dublin, where central heating would be more appropriate than the kind to which we have been accustomed. If we had a furnace able to provide heat for 1,000 or 2,000 houses in a newly developed site, we could provide the necessary fuel in an area adjacent to the furnace and under shelter. That would be more economical and there would be less waste, while it would have the desired effect of heating the homes. We could look to cities in other countries and see what they are doing in modern houses to provide central heating by new methods. As the Minister is well aware, turf blocks the chimneys in a very short time and is especially dangerous in cities, as far as fires are concerned, because the charcoal or that which rises from the fumes piles up if the chimneys are not cleaned every three months. In the country, where the houses are set apart, it is sufficient to do that every six months or every year, but in the cities it is particularly dangerous to property and to the lives of others. There is also in the cities the dirt and dust which make it not at all healthy or wholesome as a city fuel. We should try to address our remarks to the elimination of waste and consequently the elimination of the necessity for these subsidies. I dare say that, no matter what Government was in power, we would have to provide this subsidy, in view of the circumstances that developed out of the war and its aftermath. We should try to get the Government of the day —no matter what Government that may be—to ask Bord na Móna to consider turning the turf into some other type of power. Until that is done, the large cities and towns will not take the turf unless there is dire necessity and no other alternative, as occurred in 1943, 1944 and 1945 when coal was not available.

It was suggested here on some occasions that shelters should have been erected in the Park. I think it would be impossible to cover such a huge area of land to store turf. The only solution I can see would be to try to use it on large housing schemes in some other way. The mental hospital in County Mayo, a large building housing 2,000 people between patients and staff, is heated solely by turf, and I am told by those in charge that it is more economical than coal and means a saving in every direction. If an institution like that can be heated by a furnace, a number of institutions or a large number of houses could be similarly heated. That could be one way of helping to eliminate these subsidies, as it would eliminate waste, eliminate the hauling and rehauling, bringing a few tons here and a few tons there, creating dust and waste. That is one approach to the problem.

I do not wish to introduce Party politics on this matter. I am prepared to admit that, in the circumstances arising out of the war, the Government were faced with a peculiar situation and I suppose they did the best they could. They may have been at fault or could have done better but this is not the time of the day to discuss that and will not bring us nearer to solving the problem so as to ensure that this time 12 months we will not have to provide a similar subsidy again. We should make our remarks with that in mind. If we do so, we may achieve our object and will have done a good night's work.

Let us forget what happened in the past and cease trying to put the baby in anybody's arms. We would have a very difficult search if we wanted to find out who actually was responsible for all the fuel muddling that has taken place over the past years. I hope the rest of the debate will be on a higher level than the debate to which we have listened for the past three-quarters of an hour.

Mr. D. Costello

The first intimation the House had that this sum came due in the current year was in the speech made by the Minister for Finance during the debate on the Supplies and Services Bill a couple of weeks ago. In that speech, it will be recalled, the Minister endeavoured to make the case that the Budget in the current year was a cooked Budget, a faked Budget, and, in order to bolster up that case, the £3,000,000 odd due to Fuel Importers Limited was paraded among the figures for which the previous Government failed to make any provision in the Budget for the current year. It was pointed out in the course of that debate to the Tánaiste and the Minister for Finance that this sum of £3,000,000 odd which was included in the sum of £10,000,000, which was to be the Budget deficit for the current year, was not a proper figure to be included in the current Budget. It was a sum which should be funded and treated as a debt to be paid off over a number of years. I must say that I came into the House to-night to try to make that argument here and to compel the Government, if possible, to take the view that this amount due to Fuel Importers was something which should be treated as a debt, an amount to be paid off over a number of years. I regret that I was not here when the Tánaiste made his speech, but I understand that it is now the policy of the Government to treat it as a debt, as something to be paid off over a number of years.

Mr. Lemass

But the money has to be raised this year.

Mr. D. Costello

If the money is to be raised, it should be raised as a debt——

Mr. Lemass

Saying that makes it very easy.

Mr. D. Costello

——and should not be included in order to make it appear as something for which money from the current Budget has to be paid. Our objection to the Minister for Finance introducing this figure in the context in which he did introduce it was that he was endeavouring to persuade the country that this was something which was going to lead to a deficit on the current Budget. We say that that is not at all a correct interpretation of this figure and that this is a debt which is repayable over a number of years. In order to demonstrate the fact that this was a debt and not an item to be met out of current expenditure I quoted here to the Tánaiste in the course of the debate on the Supplies and Services Bill a statement in the Central Bank Report — that much maligned Report—on page 12 where they implicitly treat this debt due to Fuel Importers as a debt to be repaid over a number of years. I am glad to see that that debate had many beneficial results in the form of bringing the Government to its senses and this, I think, we can claim to be another.

We heard a lot in the course of the past few weeks about the current Budget deficit. If that deficit is broken up in the manner in which the Taoiseach broke it up in his speech, it will be seen that a sum of £1.5 million was allocated by the previous Minister as a surplus for the current year; that savings on Estimates were estimated at £1.5 million; and that a sum of £2,000,000 was estimated as an increase in the buoyancy of the revenue for the coming year. On the Taoiseach's figures the estimated deficit for the current year was then going to be £5,000,000. It appears now that the £3,000,000 are not now to be included in that sum.

Mr. Lemass

This sum of £3,000,000 is not in the £5,000,000. You add and do not subtract.

Mr. Morrissey

It was in it.

Mr. D. Costello

It was included in the £10,000,000 deficit.

Mr. O'Higgins

The Taoiseach said so.

Mr. D. Costello

Is that not correct?

Mr. Morrissey

It is, of course.

Mr. Cosgrave

The Minister for Finance included it.

Mr. O'Higgins

And the Minister knows that the Taoiseach said it.

Mr. D. Costello

The Minister for Finance, on Wednesday, 14th November, gave a lot of figures and he referred to the sum of £3,079,950 in respect of fuel losses. He went on to say:

"It might be of interest, and the House, I am sure, will be concerned to know, what provision was made in the Estimates against that item. The £3,079,950 was provided for in the Estimates by a token vote of £5."

It was included in the estimate of £10,000,000 deficit and now we find that £5,000,000 is the estimated deficit given by the Taoiseach and in that £5,000,000 is included this sum of £3,000,000 which is not a current deficit but a matter of capital expenditure.

Mr. Lemass

Why is it capital expenditure? It is an accumulated debt which was not paid off in other years.

Mr. O'Higgins

It is one of your bad debts.

Mr. Lemass

It should have been paid last year and the year before.

Mr. D. Costello

It was the policy of the previous Government to pay back this debt over a period of years.

Mr. Lemass

It was the policy of the previous Government not to pay it at all.

Mr. D. Costello

No, it was not. It was their policy to fund it.

Mr. Lemass

Quite obviously, the debt had to be paid back and the proper policy to adopt was to pay it back over a period of years.

Mr. Morrissey

That is what he was proposing to do.

Mr. Lemass

At the rate of £5 per year.

Mr. D. Costello

I am glad that the Tánaiste agrees with that policy. I merely rose to draw attention to yet another victory for the Opposition in the debate on the Supplies and Services Bill in demonstrating that the Government, in trying to make out that there was to be a £10,000,000 deficit in the current year, were making a false case. The Minister for Industry and Commerce has unburdened himself in the course of the past couple of weeks of some remarks about lawyers in the Government. Lawyers' training does help them to this extent: that they will not make a bad point in an argument if they cannot stand over it. That is what was demonstrated in the course of that debate as a result of the pressure put on the Government by the Opposition in relation to the proper financial method of dealing with this debt due to fuel importers.

Mr. Lemass

Wait until you hear the bad arguments of the next lawyer.

Mr. O'Higgins

I do not know that the Minister should be so terrified yet, but perhaps he is thinking of the past. I welcome this opportunity, as one of the Deputies for Leix-Offaly, to speak on this Estimate. It is notable that the Estimate should have been introduced by Deputy Lemass as Minister for Industry and Commerce, because if ever an Estimate had a history, this Estimate has. During the years from 1948 to 1951 we heard time and time again a wail from the members of the present Government, as the then Opposition, with regard to the entire turf policy of the inter-Party Government. That campaign was created, fashioned and led by the Minister for Industry and Commerce. Starting in April, 1948, wearing, as I imagine, some bog-worker's trousers, he tramped from one end of the country to another throwing up his hands in holy horror and telling us that the inter-Party Government had stopped hand-won turf production; that hand-won turf production had an assured and guaranteed market here; and that their stoppage of that particular campaign was something that could not be justified.

He indulged in that campaign knowing well the facts which are now disclosed by him to the country three years later, knowing well that the continuation at that time of subsidised turf production was costing the country far more than it could afford. The present Minister knew that. Nevertheless, for political purposes, he indulged in a very dishonest campaign. Furthermore, he knew, six days before he left office, on the 12th February, 1948, that—the Minister now has the records and can check them—at a departmental conference he had decided to stop the county council hand-won turf production scheme.

Mr. Lemass

Deputy Morrissey says that is incorrect.

Mr. O'Higgins

The Minister has the records and can look them up now. I state that the present Minister, on the 12th February, 1948, decided to discontinue the hand-won turf production scheme.

Mr. Morrissey

No, no. Let me put the Deputy right. I am going to do something that is never done by those on the far side of the House. At the conference, the then Minister decided that the hand-won turf scheme in the camps was to be discontinued and he deferred taking a decision as to whether or not the county council scheme was to continue.

Mr. O'Higgins

I am obliged to the Deputy. The present Minister, Deputy Lemass, when he engaged on this campaign in the year 1948 and from that on, did so, knowing that had he been reappointed by the Taoiseach as a Minister in the last Government in February, 1948, he would have acted exactly as his successor did.

Mr. Morrissey

He could not do anything else.

Mr. O'Higgins

Nevertheless, for cheap political purposes, he started that dishonest campaign. I wish that the Government Deputies of Leix-Offaly were in the House to witness this debacle to-night. I wish they were here to listen to their deputy leader explaining to the House and to the country the parlous position in which he had placed turf production before he last left office.

I know well that turf producers down the country will view this Estimate with considerable interest. They will be able to assess the value of the campaign that has been indulged in during the last 3½ years. I heard a Fianna Fáil Deputy, Deputy Martin Corry, who has now gone out of the House, talking about all that Fianna Fáil did to preserve fuel supplies. It is hard to be patient, listening to Deputies speaking in that fashion. None of us are so young that we cannot remember the winter of 1946. None of us are so young that we cannot recollect that, some six years after the emergency broke in this country, the Minister for Industry and Commerce had the fuel supplies in such a mess that there was not a fire to be had in this city or in any other city of this country. That was in 1946. Then, in the greatest fit of ministerial panic ever shown, we had this fools' progress in the year 1947 for which the country is now asked to pay.

I do not think there has ever been any part of administration so mishandled as turf production was mishandled by the present Minister during the entire years of the emergency. Money was made, we know that. Plenty of money was made. It was not made by those who produced turf in Leix or in Offaly. It was not made by the primary producers. It was made by the flock of get-rich-quick merchants who were able to get between the producers and the unfortunate consumer. Every one of us knows that well.

Mr. Hickey

And the moneylenders.

Mr. O'Higgins

And the moneylenders. It opened up a new market for financial organisations in the country. Men started in that campaign with a wheelbarrow and finished owning a fleet of lorries. Those are the people who made money out of the turf. The producer and the consumer did not make it. The emergency and the entire period of turf production over which the present Minister presided unfortunately have done more harm to the production of turf in this country than any flooding of the country with British coal. When the emergency came, you had turf producers in this country—certainly in my part of the country—who had a genuine belief in turf as an industry. You had men who, unlike the Minister, did not like it merely as a means towards a political end. They looked to the emergency—as they were entitled to look to it—as an opportunity of selling turf freely in Dublin City and in Cork City, making it not merely an emergency substitute for coal but a national fuel. They regarded the emergency, when it came, as giving them that opportunity to which Griffith had made reference some 30 years earlier. It is tragic that the opportunity was destroyed completely by the Administration over which the Minister presided. He allowed the production of turf to go on regardless of the cost, regardless of quality and without supervision merely for the purpose of backing up an alibi of wet clay for himself in the Phoenix Park.

When the turf production campaign ended in the early part of 1948—before the inter-Party Government came into office—with it ended the greatest chance that the producers of turf ever had of selling turf as a popular fuel in this country. I wonder does the bog Deputy, Deputy Cogan, from Wicklow, remember his own speeches on that matter only three and a half years ago?

Mr. Cogan

I remember them distinctly. I condemned your fuel policy.

Mr. O'Higgins

I wonder does the Deputy remember King Herod? As a Deputy of Leix-Offaly and as a Deputy who had to stand up to the campaign launched by the present Minister as Deputy Lemass in the years from 1948 to 1951, it is gratifying to me at least to see the evidence given by the present Minister to-night that his campaign was a dishonest one. In the present year a new turf production campaign was started. I think I am in order in saying that that campaign, unlike the former campaing, was started on a proper basis. I think I am in order in saying that this time, at any rate, the primary producer has had an opportunity of supervising the production of turf from the bog, of presenting it to the market himself if he so wishes, and of getting a fair price in return. I hope that that will continue and that the Minister, learning from his mistakes, will, in relation to future turf production, endeavour to ensure that more and more societies and cooperative movements are banded into the production of turf, and that he will more and more ensure that those who produce turf are given the facilities and the help not merely to produce it but to carry it also to market. If that is done the turf industry will benefit. If that is not done we will get back to the situation where middlemen, counting merely the profit guaranteed to them by the previous Minister, and for which the taxpayer is now asked to pay, cared nothing for the quality of what they were carrying but thought only of the load. I hope that we will not see that happening again.

May I join with Deputy Costello in referring to the other aspect of this Estimate, the manner in which it ties up with the second scandalous campaign indulged in by the present Minister, the later one which he started some months ago to convince everybody that this country was bankrupt.

An Leas-Cheann Comhairle

It scarcely arises on this Estimate.

Mr. O'Higgins

I think it does arise because I hope to show to you and to the House that this Estimate was moved by the Minister as part and parcel of his campaign to convince the people of the country that the country is bankrupt, a campaign which has had very unfortunate results.

An Leas-Cheann Comhairle

This is a fuel Estimate.

Mr. O'Higgins

The Estimate would not have been moved if this Minister were not Minister for Industry and Commerce. I say that it was moved deliberately by him for the purpose of proving if he could that this liability had to be faced by the present Government and accordingly that the financial position which they were approaching was not their fault. It is part and parcel of a very deliberate campaign. The Taoiseach, the Minister for Finance and the Tánaiste were hard pressed during recent months to tot up figures of our liability in order to prove their contention that the former Government had budgeted for a deficit. They argued figures, totted figures, crossed out figures and substituted others, the whole effort being designed to show that the former Minister had deliberately underestimated the amount of money he required this year and this Estimate is part and parcel of their campaign. What does it mean? It means that the people of the country represented by the Deputies of this House are being asked to pay in this financial year £3,000,000 in respect of a debt incurred some years ago to Fuel Importers. It has been paraded in such a way as to imply that this was a liability incurred in this financial year.

Mr. Lemass

A large part of it is.

Mr. O'Higgins

The only part incurred in this financial year was the salvage of some of the wreck.

Mr. Lemass

About £500,000 arises in this financial year. Against that £5 was provided.

Mr. O'Higgins

The Minister will not get away with that. The Minister knows that if some effort had not been made by the former Government to undo the mess created by the Minister we would be asked to foot a bill far larger.

Mr. Lemass

All this arose since 1948. You were paying it off at the rate of £5 per year.

Mr. O'Higgins

The country is asked to treat this particular sum as if it were to meet a liability incurred in the present financial year. That is not the case. The Minister says that £500,000 of it was incurred in this financial year. That may be so. I admit the presence of £500,000.

Mr. Lemass

Thanks very much.

Mr. O'Higgins

But there is £2,500,000 in respect of a liability incurred three or four years ago.

Mr. Lemass

No, it was in 1949 and 1950 that they were incurred.

Mr. O'Higgins

Why in the last month of the calendar year, December, is the country being asked ultimately to meet this liability?

Mr. Lemass

Because it has to be met.

Mr. O'Higgins

Why has it to be met? Why should it now be met as a Supplementary Estimate in the present financial year?

Mr. Lemass

Because it was left out of the main Budget.

Major de Valera

How does Deputy O'Higgins suggest meeting it?

Mr. O'Higgins

I suggest to Deputy Major de Valera that if he contains himself for a bit perhaps he will learn the answer. The first notable thing is that at the very end of the present financial year the Minister asks the people of the country to pay for something which was incurred three or four years ago. There is a political side to that. That is part of the colour which has been given by the Minister and his colleagues to the entire financial position of the country, part of the effort to justify increased taxation in the next few months. We all know that.

Major de Valera

Is it? Is it not a debt that should be met?

Mr. O'Higgins

In doing that the Minister forgets what has been mentioned by Deputy Declan Costello, that he now raises that liability but that if at any other time there were a debt of this size it should be funded and paid off over a number of years.

Major de Valera

In what way? Do you propose borrowing?

Mr. O'Higgins

The Minister says that £500,000 was incurred in the present year. Why not pay it that way?

Major de Valera

You provided only £5.

Mr. D.J. O'Sullivan

Why should Deputy de Valera not be prevented from interrupting?

Mr. Lemass

Deputy O'Sullivan gives the House a good example.

Mr. O'Higgins

The position is that at the end of the financial year we are suddenly called upon to meet a liability incurred some years ago. It is interesting that that should be so. I know that if the Minister had remained in office continuously from 1947 to date the manner in which the liability would have been met——

Mr. Lemass

It was met every year.

Mr. O'Higgins

The liability never arose until the Minister lost his head in 1947, until the Minister went daft in 1947 and until, as Deputy Dillon pointed out, the Minister had not the political courage to take the steps in October, 1947, which the circumstances indicated.

From the moment this Government lost three by-elections, he poured the taxpayers' money into the pocket of every cheap "spiv" in the country, because he had not the political courage to take action then. That is what caused this liability to arise. The people are now being asked, suddenly, in the present financial year, to fork up the £3,000,000 in order to pay for the fact that the present Minister, from October, 1947 when he knew, because he made the agreement, that British coal was coming back into this country, when he knew, because he made the mess, that Irish turf could not be sold in Dublin, to February, 1948, he continued to pay £4 a ton for useless fuel and to stock it in Phoenix Park. That is what created this liability. We have to find £3,000,000 out of the pockets of the taxpayers because of the Minister's political cowardice in the past.

I use the Minister's own expression. That is a serious situation. It becomes slightly more than serious. It becomes slightly criminal, when the Minister should take advantage of his own folly under present circumstances to ask the people at this late time of the year to pay this particular debt.

Ordinary prudence would dictate that the debt be levelled over a period of years. An ordinary interest in the turf industry itself would dictate that course. Apparently, political expediency dictates every action that the present Government takes. I have no doubt that after this money has been voted by the House, as I am sure it will be, the next step will be increased taxation which has been hinted at time and time again by different members of the present Government.

When proposals for that taxation are introduced in this House it will be stated that the Government had no other course open to them in respect of this liability than to raise it by taxation in the present financial year. We have pointed out to them the alternative course. We know well that they will make a parade of this as an excuse but that they will do in fact what any sensible Government would do and parcel out the liability; that they will make the noise; that they will try to make the case that this liability has to be met but in fact they will not meet it.

Mr. Killilea

The speeches that we have listened to to-night from the Opposition clearly demonstrate the deceitful Party that they are. Here we are asking for a sum of £3,000,000 to pay off a debt that was incurred when it was essential to provide fuel for the people. The speeches of Opposition Deputies to-night clearly demonstrated that their knowledge of fuel production is nil. Deputy O'Higgins said that we all remember the winter of 1946. The people must remember the harvest and the winter of 1946. It was in 1946 that we had to organise workers all over the country to try to collect the harvest. The harvesting of turf was an even more difficult proposition. I happen to be a turf producer myself and to know the difficulties under which we have to produce turf in the winter months.

Mr. Norton

Where do they produce turf in the winter months?

Mr. D.J. O'Sullivan

Where do they produce turf in the winter months?

Mr. O'Higgins

Strasbourg.

Mr. Killilea

I know the conditions under which we have to protect turf in the winter months. Everybody knows that turf is not a commodity that is easily protected. It could not be done during the emergency. Everybody knows that most of the turf that we hear was left in the dumps in the Phoenix Park is turf mould. There is an enormous amount of that. It is alleged that we brought that into the park and left it to go waste.

This country must face up to the fact that during the emergency it was essential to produce fuel for the people in the towns and cities. That was the duty of the Government of the day. If the inter-Party Government had been in office at that time they would have found that it was their duty to try to get turf produced. At that time machinery was not available or procurable for that purpose. There was only one way in which we could get turf produced and that was by the sleán and the barrow.

Reference was made in the speeches to-night to what was done by us to do away with hand-won turf. Do the Opposition not realise even now that they themselves had to call upon this House to get hand-won turf produced to tide the country over a difficult time when other fuel coul not be obtained? Do they not realise that every county council that was called upon by the then Minister for Social Welfare, Mr. Norton, produced most of their turf as hand-won turf and that it is hand-won turf that is in the ricks and stacks all over the country at the present moment? Why do we continually abuse the people who made the effort and responded to the call to produce turf? Deputy O'Higgins said a moment ago that we tried to pour money into the pockets of every cheap "spiv" in the country. Is the man who took off his coat and went into the bog and produced turf a cheap "spiv"? Is the man who harnessed every type of vehicle during the emergency when new vehicles were not obtainable, a cheap "spiv"? Of course, Deputy O'Higgins has a tradition behind him and it is not one that I would like to have behind me.

If the timber that was sold in the Phoenix Park had been handled properly, £3,000,000 would not be required to pay the debt. Anybody who knows anything about timber knows that timber is not suitable for firewood until it is seasoned and that it will not season in a day or two days. Timber that has been cut two years and has lost all its moisture is suitable for firewood.

I move to report progress.

Progress reported; Committee to sit again.