Vol. 129 No. 13
I would like to draw the attention of the House to the kept newspaper of the Government Party which reported the debate on the Vote of Account this morning. In the course of that report it says:
"Mr. MacEntee did his job extremely well.... If he has more hackles than, for instance, the Tánaiste——"
On a point of order. Has Deputy Dillon resumed his seat?
It is not my fault that the Minister is so small.
Has Deputy Dillon begun to make a speech or what is——
Deputy Dillon was speaking and moved to report progress at 1.30 p.m.
Is that a point of order?
That is the hackles.
I merely wanted to know what Deputy Dillon proposed to do.
I will continue my quotation:
"If he has more hackles than, for instance, the Tánaiste, he is not disposed to allow them to rise until he has been provoked to an intolerable degree. Then he can look after himself and the rasp of northern iron becomes a familiar sound across the floor of Dáil Éireann."
What is the Deputy quoting from?
The kept newspaper of the Government Party, commonly known as the Fianna Fáil Pravda.
Perhaps the Deputy would give us the name of the paper.
The Deputy in the back row did not seem to be in any doubt about its name. The Fianna Fáil Pravda is known as the Irish Press. God bless the mark!
Is the Ceann Comhairle aware that that paper has been removed from the Library?
That is so. It is there for the use of Deputies of this House.
Surely the Deputy does not think that Deputy Dillon would buy it?
The Minister has enough hackles without all the hackles coming from the back benches.
Before the Deputy proceeds, I wish to put another point of order. The Deputy has used an expression in regard to a commercial undertaking—a public newspaper— which has a very obscene connotation. I am putting it to you, Sir, that it is not proper for any Deputy to refer to an undertaking or a person as a "kept" person. Deputy Dillon might know a lot about some kept persons.
Who said it was a commercial undertaking, anyhow?
Politics are not a drawing-room game.
So far as politics are concerned, they can be dealt with inside this House, but the Irish Press cannot hold Deputy Dillon to account.
Oh, can it not?
It cannot hold him to account for what he says in this House any more than Deputy Briscoe could. When Deputy Briscoe challenged Deputy Dillon to say outside this House what he said about him in the House he threw up his hands and fell in a faint.
The term "kept" cannot endanger any commercial concern. Deputy Dillon on the Vote on Account.
Deputy Dillon ran away from Deputy Briscoe outside the privileges of this House.
Have the hackles now succeeded?
Deputy Dillon on the Vote on Account.
I quote again:
"Then he can look after himself and the rasp of northern iron becomes a familiar sound across the floor of Dáil Éireann."
Now that we have acquired these classical words "the Iron Chancellor of the Exchequer for Ireland," I would like to ask this man of iron——
Of cast-iron.
——what his demeanour was when he met his opposite number in London not so long ago. The facts as we know them, Sir, are that he was sent for and that after mature reflection the Head of the Government made up his mind that it was not safe to let him go alone. He was put in the custody of the Tánaiste.
Very wisely.
When he arrived in Whitehall, he sought leave to trot from one office to another where he appeared to get a chill and succinct reception.
This does not seem to be very relevant to the Vote on Account.
He ended up in the company of the Chancellor of the Exchequer, with whom he spent a considerable time and, according to his own report to us, gave comprehensive undertakings in reply to which he received the very dusty answer that the Chancellor would be glad to have them in writing. The Chancellor of the Exchequer was in a position to announce in the British House of Commons that he got them in writing and was in the position to tell the members of this House what we did not know, and that was, that the Minister for Finance of Oireachtas Éireann was going to make a statement in the agreed terms "to-morrow at 3 o'clock."
And remember there is not a single Deputy in this House who had any knowledge of that interesting fact until the British Chancellor of the Exchequer had to announce it in the British House of Commons that he had it in writing. The Iron Chancellor from this country was doubtless gratified to read that a murmur of approval was heard throughout the Tory benches. We have a poor fish of a Minister for Finance.
I think it is right to say at this stage that there is no Deputy in this House more solicitous than I to see Great Britain survive any trials through which she may now be called upon to pass. There is no Deputy more ready to concede and to proclaim that the future of all of us depends on the continued strength of Great Britain and the United States of America. But it is right to add that even holding those views, Fianna Fáil Deputies and Ministers ought to learn this simple lesson, that the British make hard bargains and they expect those with whom they do business to insist on the bargains being as hard as circumstances may require. You will get nothing from Whitehall by going there with your hat in your hand, and we have no occasion to go to Whitehall with our hats in our hand at the present time, for we are the creditors and we have put upon the common pool of the sterling area a lighter burden than any other participant in it.
The Minister has a duty to tell this House: Did he ask the British Chancellor of the Exchequer as our banker, to render an account to him, the Irish Minister for Finance, of what drawings have been made on the dollar resources of the sterling pool by the participants in it since June, 1948, so that their performance during the last four difficult years might be compared, when it was being determined what future access should be had to those resources, with the performance of this country which was in a position to say this: Since June, 1948, we never drew one single dollar effectively from the dollar resources of the sterling pool though every penny that was owing to us was owing to us on foot of goods sold and delivered to the British people when they could get them nowhere else; whereas the demands made by others on the dollar resources of the sterling pool were not infrequently made on foot of debts created by services rendered to the armed forces of Great Britain while they were defending the independence of those countries against the attack of the Nazi combination.
We are in this astonishing position at the present time that we are told that the British Chancellor of the Exchequer has warned our Minister for Finance that all he will get is 16,000,000 dollars for the second half of this year. But the Minister that brings back that ultimatum is wholly unable to tell us what became of the thousands of millions of dollars that were in the sterling pool 12 months ago; who got them; and if all the other participants in this joint venture drew large sums in dollars during the past four years and we drew none, is there no account to be taken of that now in agreeing amongst ourselves as to the proportion of access to dollars which the participants in the sterling area shall have? Is there a Fianna Fáil Deputy in this House who feels that in failing to put Oireachtas Éireann in possession of that information, our Minister for Finance has failed most deplorably, when you realise that every other Minister for Finance has reported faithfully to his Parliament whether it is in Australia, New Zealand, India, Pakistan, or Egypt, as to what the future holds and why? I want that information and I think I am entitled to have it and, unless this Parliament has lost all sense of responsibility, it should want that information and it should insist on having it.
Now, Sir, our Iron Chancellor's journey to London was not wholly in vain. He learned one lesson and that was how to operate a Tory bluff in Ireland. The only mistake he makes is that he has not got the technique to play the bluff out to its logical end.
The whole world has rung for the past three months with the thunderous descriptions of the appalling confusion of public finance in Great Britain. The whole world was led to believe that the foundations of Britain's economy were crumbling and that anyone associated with the sterling group stood in peril of their lives. The whole world was told that nothing but the most revolutionary and ferocious austerity could conceivably pull Great Britain back from the brink of the catastrophe towards which she had been unwittingly led. The whole world stood still when the British Chancellor of the Exchequer unfolded his Budget which everyone anticipated would be of a character unprecedented in British finance.
This mountain having roared, rumbled, smoked and groaned for three months, gave birth to the British Budget, the net effect of which was to reduce taxation by £225,000,000 and raise the bank rate. That is what the whole hullabaloo was designed to achieve, to raise the bank rate, and that is the lesson our Iron Chancellor was taught in London. That is the fraud he is trying to put on our people, but the poor, silly little man did not understand that if you wanted to put that over you should not take a Vote on Account.
He thought that the British Chancellor of the Exchequer was making a magnificent gesture in setting the British Budget, for the first time in 70 years, before the end of the financial year. It never dawned on him that the British Chancellor of the Exchequer was an astute man who knew you could not get away with that kind of financial burden if you had to show your hand on the Vote on Account and be held up to public ridicule between that date and the date on which you introduced your Budget.
He increased the pensions. He increased the family allowances. He removed 2,000,000 citizens from the ambit of the income-tax. He increased marriage allowances and children's allowances, and everyone so busily rejoicing that the threads and thongs were made of silken wool. Nobody adverted to the fact that for the last six months we were told that unless everybody in Great Britain was stripped naked the British would not survive. Our poor little performer flapped in here yesterday and thinks he is doing the devil in the bag when he repeats the lesson that he learned in Whitehall, and he is all bewildered because it does not seem to have clicked. It has not dawned on him yet that the reason for that is that he did not go the right way about it.
Can you imagine, Sir, I will not say in any civilised, but in any known country, a Minister for Finance coming into Parliament and proclaiming that he has in anticipation a revenue of £85,000,000 with a deficit of £50,000,000 sterling? If the recently appointed Minister for Finance of the recently established State in West Africa had come in in a loin-cloth with a ring in his nose to introduce a Budget on those lines friends would have sympathetically shaken their heads and said that he must have misread his brief and that, perhaps, he would do better the next time. When the Minister for Finance of this State holds this Parliament up to the ridicule of the world as a deliberative assembly into which the Chancellor could come with a revenue of £85,000,000 and a deficit of £50,000,000 nobody believes him here, but that is not what the world will say.
People who talk in Dáil Éireann or in Strasbourg should remember that their audience does not know them as well as we do. This Book of Estimates was designed to deceive. It was designed to do more than that, and the pathetic effort of these silly men to conceal the nigger in the wood pile is contemptible. Do not Deputies know why the double Budget has been dropped?
When we introduced the principle of the double Budget we indicated on the Book of Estimates every year the items which this Government regarded as capital items eligible for financing by borrowing. The moment we so certified, those items were brought within the grip of the appropriate section of the Finance Act, 1950, which imposes on the Government the duty of charging on the Central Fund forthwith a 30-year annuity for the amortisation of any money so borrowed. Mix these items up in the Supply Services without distinguishing them in that way and the borrowing becomes a charge on the ordinary national debt, the amortisation provision of which extends to somewhere between 60 and 70 years.
These performers described their predecessors as profligate and irresponsible. The difference between our procedure and their procedure is that, before the Vote on Account was submitted to this House, every Deputy was notified in black and white of every item in the Book of Estimates in respect of which we thought ourselves justified in borrowing. Every Deputy in this House was notified in advance of the charge that would follow on the Central Fund for the ensuing 30 years in respect of the items set out and, in the light of that information, every Deputy in this House could discuss not only the Budget but the Vote on Account itself. Is there a Deputy on either side of this House to-day who can tell me what items in that Book of Estimates it is proposed to finance by borrowing?
Deputy Burke.
What are the Fianna Fáil Deputies going to say to their constituents this week-end when they are asked where we are going to get £50,000,000 by taxation? That is what your own Minister says he has got to get—£50,000,000 over and above the revenue which is to be derived from the taxes at present in operation. If you put back all the taxes that the Fianna Fáil Party put on four years ago, and which we took off, they will only yield you £10,000,000 a year. If you remove all the food subsidies you will have only £25,000,000 a year. Where are you going to get the other half of the alleged deficit? Will you not stand like fools at your own street corners? Will you not have to confess to your own neighbours that you are treated like fools—that you are told to crawl into the Lobby in defence of a proposition that we should budget this year for a deficit of £50,000,000 which national solvency requires the Oireachtas to meet out of current taxation? Are the Deputies of Fianna Fáil not ashamed at being sent down to look like pantaloons throughout the country to sell that story to the people who were fools enough to vote for them? Will Deputy Burke tell me what he will say in Balbriggan——
Or in Kilsallaghan.
——to these constituents —single, married and widows——
Do not mind the widows now. Remember Monica Duff.
Stop juggling, at any rate.
That lady happily went to a better place before Fianna Fáil was ever thought of. I envy her. But we who have the bequest of looking at Fianna Fáil and trying to work for Fianna Fáil are fully competent even to grapple with that—one of the greatest of Ireland's misfortunes. I am asking any one Deputy of Fianna Fáil what he is going to say to his constituents if they ask him: "How does your Minister propose to get the £50,000,000 which he says must be got by taxation?" The answer is that Deputy Burke does not know, Deputy McGrath does not know, Deputy O'Reilly does not know—and they do not give a damn.
Would you not love to know the Budget proposals beforehand?
I should love to know the proposals designed to achieve that purpose. There are not any proposals to achieve that purpose and Deputy McGrath may wonder why. I will tell him. It is because that Book of Estimates is a carefully constructed fraud.
Like yourself.
I want to ask the Government this question. Can they point to any country in the world, in all recorded time, which has maintained the standard of living of its people by cutting down its imports? I defy the whole Fianna Fáil Party, or any of their advisers, to produce evidence in the recorded history of man of a single economic unit in the world which has maintained the standard of living of its people by cutting down its imports. There is the mark of cleavage between the Fianna Fáil Government and the inter-Party Government.
You were the Minister for Imports, were you not?
Answer his earlier question.
The Fianna Fáil Government, confronted with the problems that every country in the world has to meet in far greater degree than Ireland, cries havoc and lets loose the dogs of war and climbs up the nearest tree they can find.
They will not have to go to America where you were sent in order to get you out of the way when they wanted to fix the price of oats.
Let us pause a moment. Every country in Europe, including Great Britain, is at present faced with the obligation of employing from 15 per cent. to 20 per cent. of their national income in rearming. Ireland, by her own decision, is not committed to the outlay of 1 per cent. of her national income for that end. Now, if we do not choose to share those burdens, let us not go through the motions of making provision to do so. It is sheer masquerading to impose on yourself rigours and austerity appropriate to the expenditure of 15 per cent. of your national income on unproductive armaments when, in fact, you are not spending .5 of 1 per cent. on them.
Are you not going to defend the Republic?
Fianna Fáil's remedy for an in-balance of trade is to cut down imports. It is the economic schizophrenia that I described in this House before. The schizophrenic is a man whose first symptom is that he finds it disagreeable to walk abroad. His next stage is that he does not like to leave the parlour but he will still come downstairs. The third stage is that he does not like to leave his bedroom. Then comes the time when he thinks it is safer to stay in bed. The last stage is when he disappears under the bed-clothes and is seen no more except in his bed-jacket. That is Fianna Fáil policy—to be comfortably and warmly clad and to give up buying clothes suitable for going abroad. Shortly we will be told that we ought to stop buying waistcoats and trousers and that we should stay upstairs in our dressing-gowns. Thereafter we will be advised to jettison the dressing-gowns and stay in our pyjamas and keep in the warmth of the bed—and after that we will be told that once you go under the bed-clothes it does not matter what you have on or whether you have nothing on at all.
A hair shirt.
That is economic schizophrenia. There is only one man in recorded history who carried that out to its logical conclusion, and he was Robinson Crusoe.
You always get under the bed.
When he reached the acme of his desire there was no man in the known world more anxious to escape from his Utopia than the same Robinson Crusoe.
It would be a great blessing to this nation if we had some place to put the Deputy.
The attitude of the inter-Party Government was very different. It rejected the Fianna Fáil view that any standard of living, superior to that appropriate to a peasant, was too good for our people to aspire to. We ventured to believe that our people, with the resources at the disposal of this nation, were entitled to a decent standard of living, subject to the certainty that they would never be rich, and we set out to get that for them in the full confidence that the safest place for us to invest the savings of this nation was in the land of Ireland and in the people who lived and got their living on it. The Fianna Fáil philosophy was that the safest place for our people's savings was in the freezer of sterling assets. The man who has been sitting on that store for the last 48 hours has a very wet seat to his pants, for our sterling assets—and there are nearly £450,000,000 of them — have lost in the last 48 hours very nearly enough to meet the deficit on Deputy MacEntee's Budget.
I remember once describing Deputy Aiken, when he was Minister for Finance in a previous Administration, as reminding me of the elderly grocer in a rural village, who had passed his apotheosis, who had forgotten his salad dreams of enterprise and who determined to play safe. There was a swarm of moribund bluebottles gathered in his shop window. His respectable black coat and hard hat grew greener with the passing of every day but he rejoiced in the knowledge that he had his store of good bank notes in a jam-pot up the chimney. He ultimately faded out and the fire burned the jam-pot and the store of notes and there was nothing left.
The Vote on Account.
Would the Deputy relate this to the Vote on Account?
An enterprising person living opposite him, who was not afraid to invest in his own capacity and his own future, grew rich in exactly the same circumstances as the man who lost the courage to live grew poorer, though the enterprising man was poor when he started out and the man who died penniless was rich when he began. I want to show the House now that, unless Fianna Fáil at this stage successfully wrecks what the inter-Party Government put under way, this country can continue to be, and in greater degree become, the most prosperous nation in Europe. I want to go on record now as saying that at this moment Ireland is the most prosperous nation in Europe, with the greatest wealth potential of any agricultural country in the world, and nothing but the obscurantist folly of the Fianna Fáil Party, the disintegrating Fianna Fáil Party, can prevent this country realising that eminently desirable state.
Why is unemployment on the increase?
I spoke of the scarcity of dollars which has been imposed on this country. Sixteen million dollars is what the British Chancellor is prepared to make available to this country for the last six months of this year.
You spent it on American coal.
Why are we spending it on peas and beans? I asked the Minister for Finance a couple of weeks ago as to what he had given dollars for, in the recent past and, as reported in column 743 of the Official Debates, Volume 129, No. 5, he replied: "The total approvals during the period, amounting to 11.9 million dollars approximately, included 2.9 million dollars in respect of sugar for domestic consumption and 8.4 million dollars in respect of household coal. The remaining 6,000,000 dollars covered 16 other items"—which he mentioned. The first of these items was peas and beans (dried).
Did the Deputy not suggest that the sugar factories should be blown up?
If the sugar factory has nothing better to do than refining Cuban raws, for which we have to pay in dollars, in order to enable them to be mixed with 20 per cent. glucose and then exported to Britain as fondant for sterling, we are not getting very far with our sugar factories. If Deputy McGrath can find no more profitable occupation for his neighbours in Cork than bringing in coconut oil from the South Sea Islands and sugar from Cuba in order to make sweetened fats for the British confectionery trade, he should give up.
It would be all Cuban sugar if you had your way.
I think it a disgrace that we should spend dollars, scarce as they are, in buying peas and beans dried, and sugar for conversion into fondant and sweetened fat for export to Britain to get sterling. These allocations of dollars were made by the Minister for Finance. He told us to-day or yesterday that this nation must steel itself for the severest austerity lest—mark this—in the words of the Minister for Justice we should all have to go on short commons and lest, in the words of my illuminated successor, the Minister for Agriculture, the people of Ireland should go hungry for want of food. And we are exporting food to the value of £50,000,000 sterling per annum!
The policy of the inter-Party Government was to balance the trade of this country by expanding our production and exports so that we could buy and pay for whatever our people require. To that end we surveyed the Irish economic scene and came to the conclusion which every economist has come to who has ever studied Irish economics, and that was that, in the last analysis, this country has one natural resource and one only, and that is the land and the people who live on it. The standard of living of our people, whether they live in town, city or country, is ultimately fixed by the standard of prosperity enjoyed by the agricultural community. If the farmer is well off, everyone in Ireland will be well off, and if the farmer is poor everyone in Ireland will be poor, too, with this distinction: that no matter how poor the farmer gets on his holding he will never go hungry, but the city dweller or the town dweller, if he lets agriculture sink too low, will know hunger and destitution because the source of his livelihood will be gone.
The source of the livelihood of everyone, in every town and city in Ireland, is the profit earned on our land, and with that in mind we set out to do three things: (1) to undo the dereliction of the land of Ireland which had been brought about very largely by 15 disastrous years of Fianna Fáil government; (2) to re-equip our people with the machinery and buildings requisite profitably to work their lands, and (3) through the parish plan to make available to the smallest farmer in Ireland, as well as to the largest, the best expert advice on every agricultural problem that could be made available, no matter how rich or wealthy the seeker for knowledge might be, and to put within the reach of the smallest farmer in Ireland the best expert advice that money could purchase in any corner of the world. We had the men here, we had the knowledge, we had the resources and we had the means to put them in the honourable employment of their own labour, and those men would have gloried in the opportunity of serving as their neighbours' servants.
The restoration of the land was undertaken under the land rehabilitation project. Let me refer again to the kept newspaper of the Fianna Fáil Party, the Fianna Fáil Pravda which describes itself, God save the mark, as the Irish Press. Now, the controlling director of this paper is the Taoiseach.
The control of the Irish Press does not come into this Vote on Account, and I cannot see that there should be any discussion about control of the paper.
Any person reading the paper would expect that the information contained in it was of a quasi official kind. It has ready access to many Deputies of this House to check whatever information it publishes. When our Government put its hand to the rehabilitation of the land, this is what the kept newspaper had to say about it in its edition of October 24th, 1951:
"It is pointed out, for example, that many of the public works undertaken did not promise a return that would compensate us for the income on the external assets which they used up."
Mark these words "a return that would compensate us for the income on the external assets which they used up."
"This criticism seems to be particularly relevant to Mr. Dillon's ‘land project' under which as much as £500 an acre has been spent in reclaiming land which will scarcely yield an annual return of 1 per cent."
Now, I know the body of disinterested public servants who devote their working life to the operation of that project, and who have made of it the splendid success it is. The duty devolved on me, when their own Minister, Deputy Tom Walsh, would not go to their defence and insist on that rag recanting that lie, of raising the matter here. I had to ask the Minister for Agriculture, on whose staff those public servants work, as to whether £500 had been spent per acre, and this was his generous rejoinder: "The most that has yet been spent per acre is £100." Now, that is the Minister for Agriculture speaking of his own Department. I put down a further question to ask on how many, and where, was £100 per acre spent, and the answer was: "On the first acre reclaimed in Connemara." He had charged up to that acre reclaimed in Connemara the whole staff, the transfer of machinery and the establishment of the entire organisation to deal with the whole Connemara area, and he thought it becoming in an Irish Minister to come into this House with that rejoinder, that the most that has been spent to date is £100 per acre.
I hope that his colleagues are proud of that performance. The fact is that the money invested in the land rehabilitation project to date enables us to look on 200,000 acres of Irish land that was unproductive 18 months ago, and which is now producing crops or is in the actual process of being rehabilitated to that end. Is the Fianna Fáil Party proud of that achievement? They are not, for they did everything they could do to frustrate it, and Deputy Bartley was foremost in the mob that tried to denigrate the Connemara scheme. I asked him a month ago to go down to Roundstone or Costello and repeat there what he had said here; and I have no news to date that he accepted the invitation.
The Deputy is now getting away from the Vote on Account and discussing Estimates which are not before the House.
What is a Vote on Account?
General financial policy, but certainly not the items in the Estimates.
What is the consequence of making available to our people supplies of fertilisers, for we borrowed money to bring in 100,000 tons? What is the consequence of making available credit to our farmers to purchase machinery, to build better cow-houses and pig-sties and hen-houses? What has the result been of our bringing within the reach of our farmers sources of information to which they hitherto had not access? It is to be seen there in the statistic published by the Central Statistics Office.
It rejoices my soul to discover that the Minister for Posts and Telegraphs has suspended his activities before the Longford County Committee of Agriculture, sufficiently long to attend here for a little education. What mi-ádh has come over Dáil Éireann that it has become fashionable to belittle the farmers of this country? How is it that every city-bred Deputy in this Assembly considers it wise and politic to get up here and say, by implication, that if the farmers of Ireland would work our economic troubles would be over?
I do not think that is true.
The Deputy will find it in his Budget speech of last year when he referred to the fact that production has not been expanding as he had hoped it would. If the Deputy chooses to continue on that line I suppose we shall have an opportunity of dealing at length with all the statistics of the Government Departments——
And with the sentiments of the four distinguished Belgian trade unionists who spoke to the Minister, incognito, and proclaimed: "Mais, Messieurs, nous travaillons."
They will not be able to speak any more now with the travelling allowance cut down.
I do not think that applies to Ministers who are on tours of inspection, even incognito.
Not to Ministers.
I want to tell the House now that the agricultural output in Ireland has expanded in greater degree than the agricultural output of any country in Europe. I found that assertion on statistical information furnished to me—by the Taoiseach in Dáil Éireann. I asked the Taoiseach to tell us what the gross agricultural production of the agricultural industry was, excluding turf, but making allowance for the changes in the livestock population between the beginning and the end of the year; and he told me that, taking the year 1938/39 as 100, our agricultural production in 1947 was 86.3. Remember, that is the point at which our production reached its nadir after 15 years of Fianna Fáil. It went steadily down and hit rock-bottom in 1947.
For the Deputy's information, it was the fourth highest in Europe.
In 1948 it was 95.4; in 1949 it was 104.7; in 1950 it was 99.6, and the figure for this year is not yet available.
And it was the eleventh highest in Europe in 1950.
The Minister for Posts and Telegraphs, though he wears a sophisticated exterior, is an unsophisticated man. He has been browsing in the O.E.E.C. statistics, and if there is anything dafter than the O.E.E.C. statistics I would like to know it.
Yes—the County Wicklow ones.
That is because they do not agree with Deputy Dillon.
Oh, no. I invite the Minister for Posts and Telegraphs to come home from Belgium, Denmark and Scandinavia to the despised resources of Ireland and consult the Central Statistics Office as to the method and procedure whereby the statistical figure that has been seized on by the Minister for Posts and Telegraphs is arrived at. I am quoting the statistics of our own Central Statistics Office and statistics which that office is prepared to defend in Ireland or elsewhere. The Minister is quoting statistics from O.E.E.C., and that body knows as much about this country as my foot; and its statistical methods are open to the gravest doubt. If that body wants to challenge that I will be glad to avail of any challenge they issue.
There is no statistician in the world, outside O.E.E.C., who can tell what methods that body employs in order to arrive at the figures it produces. One method is that a cow is a cow whereever she is. The result of that is that a hairy ould warrior harnessed to a plough in Brittany is valued at the same money as a three-year-old heifer sold to a Dublin butcher for £60. You would not take 60/- to cart the ould warrior harnessed to the plough and bury her for the price of the hide, and you would not sell the three-year-old heifer in Dublin for less than £60. I venture to swear that the natty Minister for Posts and Telegraphs did not get his telegraphic mind properly around that statistic.
The director of statistics has not himself accepted the manner in which Deputy Dillon is quoting these figures of production. They are in disagreement and the Deputy knows it. It is most unfair of him to quote these figures as being, in the opinion of the director of statistics, ones which he believes to be genuine.
They were given to me by the Taoiseach in this House.
The House will have to listen then to a rather long, detailed and tiring explanation of these figures of agricultural production. I am sorry to have to give it to the House, but it will have to be done in any case.
The Minister would be tiring in any case.
If the Minister is going to usurp the functions of my unfortunate successor and then start edging the Taoiseach out of the bed, where will he end? I suggest that he should have a chat with the chief and at least borrow a long, black cloak before he comes in here incognito to play the role of Taoiseach. He may fall foul of the Taoiseach if he allows his ambition to show itself too early.
I suggest the Deputy should come back to the Vote on Account. The Deputy should keep away from personal remarks.
I am dealing with figures given to me. These figures are impugned by the Minister for Posts and Telegraphs and I say it is unbecoming of the Minister for Posts and Telegraphs to usurp the functions of the Taoiseach. I think that is a remark I am entitled to make.
If Deputy Dillon could keep away from personalities it would be one of the greatest miracles since Moses struck the rock.
Fianna Fáil say they have produced for our people an abundance of food from the soil of Ireland which compared favourably with anything that had been done since they left office, and that during the war years they had created a situation in which the Irish people made themselves self-sufficient in respect of cereals. What are the facts? Taking the seven-year period from 1939 to 1945, inclusive, the average annual imports of wheat were 4,252,000 cwt. Taking the years 1946, 1947, 1948, 1950, 1951, inclusive, the average annual imports of wheat during those years were 3,400,000 cwt., so that during the entire war period the Fianna Fáil Government brought into this country on an average 800,000 cwt. of wheat more per annum than were brought in in the six years afterwards. Those figures were given to me by the Taoiseach in Dáil Éireann, but that is not half the story.
If I can find them I would like to give Deputies the figures for oats and barley. Remember the substance of the indictment against us is that we dissipated the national resources buying oats and barley that Fianna Fáil had got grown in Ireland and never had to seek outside. I refer, Sir, to Volume 129, No. 10. I asked the Taoiseach to tell me the average quantities in cwts. of barley (other than seed-barley) imported during the three-year period 1945-1947, inclusive, and during the four-year period 1948 to 1951. The answer is that in the three Fianna Fáil years, 1945 to 1947, the annual average imports of barley were 720,788 cwt. In the four years of inter-Party Government the average annual imports were 412,421 cwt., so that in each of the three years after the war, while Fianna Fáil was in office, they brought in 300,000 cwt. of barley more each year than was brought in by our people during the four years when we were in office.
Give us the figures for maize.
Hold your horses. Deputy Cogan is entitled to his education and he will get it.
He is getting "amazed."
I then asked the Taoiseach would he give us the figures for oats. Here are the figures the Taoiseach gave me in respect of oats. In the three years 1945 to 1947 inclusive, the annual average imports of oats were 274,165 cwt., and during the four-year period, 1948 to 1951 inclusive, the annual average was 139,914 cwt., so that Fianna Fáil brought in during their period of office twice as much oats each year as the inter-Party Government brought in in any year during their period of office.
What about maize?
Is it not amazing what brazen effrontery will get away with? I have given the House the figures for gross agricultural production. I warned the members of this House to beware of the figure for net agricultural production because they would want to inform themselves before they dwelt on that figure how it is arrived at. Net agricultural production is the difference between what the farmer brings on to his farm and what the farmer sells from his farm, so that the way to get maximum net production for the farm is to sell all the live stock off it, all the implements, all the crops, all the fertility of the soil, pull the thatch off the house, and get out on the road——
And do Robinson Crusoe.
And you get the maximum net production which it is possible to derive from a farm of land in that particular year. The gross agricultural production is the total production of the farm with nothing deducted for expenses. There you will find in order to get the gross production a farmer must bring on to his land feeding stuffs and fertilisers, so that the manurial content of his land is maintained and improved.
It is true there are no people in Ireland who have given a more exquisite demonstration of the technique of net agricultural production than some of the most prominent members of Fianna Fáil.
They bought farms in Tipperary and took four crops of wheat out of them. Then they passed the land on to the Land Commission in exchange for a farm in County Meath. They got seven crops out of that, sold it and bought another farm in North County Dublin. In that way they had net agricultural production from Tipperary and from Meath for those 11 years that was the admiration of Deputy Cogan. But it was lucky for Deputy Cogan that he was not allotted a parcel of land in County Meath on a farm the Land Commission acquired, which was a net production farm, for if he were, he would have died of starvation in the first two years he was left there, because the land he would have got would not grow weeds. The man who sold it to the Land Commission was a rich man. His net production had been a dazzling performance, but the community to which he belonged was the poorer for his personal aggrandisement. I commend Deputy Cogan a careful study of the underlying factors of the statistical figures of which he is so fond, and I feel sure he will resolve that he will never go down to posterity as a net production farmer, for, if he should, he will come to be known as the locust of Irish agriculture.
On a point of order. We were told, on the Vote on Account, to speak——
Well, I am not a member of the Fianna Fáil Party.
——in general terms, at least that is what I was told when I was speaking. However, apparently Deputy Dillon is not speaking in general terms. Is that in order?
According to the Minister for Industry and Commerce, we must conserve our dollars in order to bring in broken-down motor-cars from the United States, not to supply demand but to maintain employment. It is the Fianna Fáil doctrine that nothing should be made in this country that could be made better or cheaper some place else. That was not the policy of the inter-Party Government. I would invite the Fianna Fáil Deputies to go down and have a look at a factory in Carrick-on-Suir and at other factories in this country which employ hundreds of people and whose entire products are profitably exported to the tune of over £4,000,000 per annum, having paid the farmers 3d. per gallon more for milk.
The Fianna Fáil Deputies should also go down and have a look at the apple-packing station in Dungarvan which employs a large number of people at the present time and which can give to those who supply them with apples from Tipperary and the surrounding counties a higher price than they ever got before. That is the kind of employment the Government of which I was a member was proud to provide for our people and up to the day we left office one of our problems was that we were short of labour in Ireland and were crying out for the men to come home, and they came home. The last two men to whom I spoke before I left office and who were working on the land project had returned from foreign parts. One of these men had been employed on the ground nuts scheme in North Africa, to which he had gone from County Mayo.
I remember listening to this story before.
It is very difficult to get it into the heads of some people.
I hoped the Parliamentary Secretary would do me the courtesy of listening to me again. One of these men had gone from Mayo to the ground nuts scheme in North Africa and was glad to come home. We were prepared to give employment to such people and the enduring problem with which we had to grapple was to try to get Irishmen to come back home and to use their skill to serve their own people. We did not go in for shipping carpenters and plasterers to Liverpool on every boat because we were afraid to employ them in providing houses for our own people.
Does nobody realise what this country is capable of doing if it only gets the chance? Does nobody know what our exports of cattle were in the last 12 months if one combines those exported on the hoof with those exported as carcase meat? When I came into office our annual exports of cattle were in the area of 440,000 head. In 1950, combining fat cattle, store cattle and those processed and dressed, the figure amounted to 611,531. The money paid for them was £29,500,000, while we had to spend £750,000 in 1949 and again in 1950 purchasing hides for the tanneries of Ireland. To-day the problem with which the Fianna Fáil Government finds itself incapable of grappling is that we have in Ireland a surplus of hides for export to the most profitable market we can find for them. The capacity of our abattoirs has vastly expanded, but it is still grossly overtaxed. The raw material of our tanneries is not only available in sufficient quantities, but we have an unmanageable surplus now ready for export to profitable markets. The obligation to import is banished for all time. Twenty-nine million pounds or £30,000,000 are coming in for a trade which, unless those lunatics across disrupt it, will rise from 600,000 head to 1,000,000 head in the next ten years.
We are told in this House that Irish agriculture is stagnant. What other country in Europe will produce a record to compare with it? Who could ever dream in Ireland that we would see before us, in a realisable time, the opportunity to supplant the Argentine in the British market, and that we would create a situation in which not a single carcase of beef would be brought to that country from the Argentine? Let me sound this note of warning. The carcase meat trade to the United States of America is a valuable one, which yielded us nearly £3,000,000 this year. However, there is a dangerous snag in it, and I am warning those engaged in it to watch out. There is a permanent remunerative market in the United States for all the manufactured meat which we may be in a position to send them, but there is no permanent trade there for prime beef carcase. If one studies the history of the American meat trade there is a record there for over seven years that during a period of shortage the Americans are prepared to receive meat from any quarter of Europe. However, should their domestic resources approximate to their requirements they are ruthless in shutting off the markets. However, circumstances are such at present that we can profitably supply them.
That is a trade which can safely be extended and developed, but there is no permanent future in a United States market for prime beef. There may be a useful profit to be picked up there now. However, it is a consoling thought to have that if the United States market fails, under the 1948 Trade Agreement, until the Irish Government revokes that agreement, we shall get for every cwt. of meat exported to Great Britain from this country, on the hoof or on the hook, the price guaranteed to give the British farmer a profit that will please him, and we can leave it to the British farmer to fight our battles with the British consumer from this time onwards.
All this would be more relevant to the Estimate for the Department of Agriculture. It is not relevant to the Vote on Account.
I submit that it has a certain relevance to the balance of trade.
Not if the Deputy is going into minute details. This has never been done on the Vote on Account.
The Deputy might analyse the cattle population for 1951, and tell us about it.
They ask us what we got for the capital expenditure we undertook. I want to tell them——
The Deputy is not going to tell many because there are not many on the benches opposite.
I do not blame them. They must be ashamed of their lives.
The Minister ran away.
To date, for that investment we got 200,000 acres of our land. We got houses for our people. We got hospitals and sanatoria for our neighbours who heretofore were left, many to die.
How many have been provided?
Perhaps the Parliamentary secretary would fight out that with Deputy Dr. Browne.
We got no schools.
I think Deputy Dr. Browne did a good job in respect to the provision of hospitals and sanatoria for our people.
How many have been provided?
We had 24 hospitals and several hundred schools.
We got rural electrification. We got a water supply, and, actually, that water supply is the country people's boon. Listen, we knew that the houses and the hospitals and the sanatoria would not pay cash dividends. The only dividends they would ever pay are in the lives of our neighbours and our neighbours' children, and, perhaps, our own.
We provided hundreds of houses and hospitals.
The dividends which we asked our people to forgo on the British Government securities held on our behalf in London were set against the health and happiness of our people for whom this provision was being made. I will meet the Fianna Fáil Party in any arena in Ireland and debate the merits of that decision, and I warrant that I will defeat them.
The Deputy has so left the country to-day that we are looking for millions.
The Deputy has just woke up.
It is time this House and country faced the fact that 90 per cent. of the tariffed industries in this country are badly run relief works charged on the agricultural industry.
Let me tell you the story of how the retail price of a pair of shoes is built up in Ireland.
Surely that has nothing to do with the Vote on Account?
I am told that the country is threatened with inflation, and surely I am entitled to make my submission.
I do not see how the Deputy can relate the price of a pair of boots to inflation.
It is an integral part of inflation.
Deputy Dillon is responsible for having the country as it is to-day.
If you drive up the cost of this commodity unduly you may create in the industry a certain type of inflation which, I think, does threaten us but which it is in our power to direct without adopting promiscuous, fiscal instruments appropriate to the different type of inflation which may, at the moment, obtain in Great Britain.
How many tariffs were reduced?
A man makes a pair of shoes which costs him 20/- to make. He sells them to a shoe wholesaler and is entitled by the price regulation machinery of the Department of Industry and Commerce to charge 15 per cent., 3/-. The price is now 23/- to the wholesaler, who will charge 20 per cent., that is 4/9, when selling the pair of shoes to the retailer. When the pair of shoes reach the retailer, they will cost him 27/9. The retailer may put on a retailer profit of 30 per cent., which is 9/3, and he then sells the shoes to the consumer for 37/-. Will the House be surprised to learn that the manufacturer, wholesaler and the retailer are all the same man?
That is entirely irrelevant, as I have already pointed out. That matter would be more appropriate for discussion on the Estimates for the Department of Industry and Commerce.
Every citizen in the land is affected by this.
I am making a case against the allegation that there is the British type of inflation in Ireland. If you allow a provision to obtain where-under a man must pay 37/- for a pair of shoes in the circumstances I have outlined, you may very well create a different type of inflation. That is not the type of inflation which obtains in Great Britain at the moment, but this is the type of inflation which we should, and could, control.
I do not want to deal now with the story of the pram but some day, perhaps, the Chair will permit me to describe that transaction——
On some other Vote but not on the Vote on Account.
—— and to describe the financing of the project of the pram, and I will tell you that the gallant gentleman who is the manufacturer is also the wholesaler and retailer in the one operation.
Give that information to the Prices Commission.
It was from a report of the Prices Commission that I collected that information. The Deputy will find it in the public proceedings before the commission during the last few weeks. Balbriggan is not so far away as all that.
He has been living in Kilsallaghan.
Would Deputy Dillon tell us how we can improve employment?
I think I can tell the Deputy. We can do so if we cease being afraid to develop our own country and stop looking all round the world for some other place wherein to invest our wealth. There is no safer place in the world to-day where the most conservative financier in Ireland can invest his money than in the land and the people of Ireland.
I want to ask a question—I expect I shall be called upon to move the adjournment in a few moments—but I am going to find out before I sit down what has become of the Grant Counterpart Fund. I want to tell this House how and why we spent the Marshall Aid dollars and the great advantage that has accrued to our country and to this present wretched administration as a result of the prescience displayed by us in our outlay of those moneys when we had control of them. I move the adjournment of the debate.
