asked the Minister for Agriculture if he will state where and when two acres of land were, as stated by the Minister for External Affairs (Volume 131, column 663, Dáil Debates), cleared at a cost of £200 per acre in Connemara under the Connemara development scheme.
Ceisteanna—Questions. Oral Answers. - Connemara Development Scheme.
Mr. Walsh
I would refer the Deputy to the statements in regard to the provision of statistical data contained in the reply given to a question by him on the 7th May regarding the land project—special Connemara scheme.
Surely, if the Minister for External Affairs stated, at column 633 of Volume 131 of the Official Debates, that two acres of land in Connemara were cleared at a cost of £200 per acre under the Connemara development scheme, that statement is either a falsehood or one which the Minister for Agriculture could check and either confirm or deny, for he was given full notice of the context in which it was used when the question was submitted to him. Is he afraid of the Minister for External Affairs?
Does the Deputy not know that the figure is £400 and not £200?
Mr. Walsh
I have already referred the Deputy to the reply given to a question by him regarding the Connemara scheme. Deputies are supplied with quarterly reports. We have something more to do in my Department than—
Answer the idiotic observations of the Minister for External Affairs.
Mr. Walsh
——to answer questions put by Deputy Dillon. We have to continue with the work and I am not going to set up a new Department to answer such foolish questions as the Deputy is putting down.
Have Deputies, however insignificant, a right or not to address questions to elicit information from Ministers, however exalted? I think they have, but quite apart from that, are not the actual words used by the Minister for External Affairs, a member of the Government with the Minister for Agriculture, a matter of some substance on which the Minister for Agriculture should have at least the courtesy to give a coherent reply? Either that statement is false or it is true. Surely, in his duty to his own Department and the staff that serve him, the Minister should state publicly in this House that it is false or true.
Is the figure not £400 and not £200? Did an acre and a half at Roundstone not cost £600? And it is not finished yet.
Is the Minister going to protect his staff against slander of that kind?
And the people there look on it as a very inferior substitute for a glasshouse.
Just fancy this expatriate from Connemara——
Mr. Walsh
I have already answered that there was a scheme costing over £100 ——
Imagine this migrant from Connemara announcing that in public. He would not know his way through Connemara now.
asked the Minister for Agriculture if he will state when the Connemara development scheme was initiated, i.e., when applications were invited from would-be participants.
Mr. Walsh
The terms of the Land Project—Special Connemara Scheme applied as from the 2nd April, 1951. There was no formal initiation. Prior to that time and for many years previously schemes under which grants were made for land improvement were in existence. The present special scheme is a development of those schemes.
Would the Minister say when applications were invited from intending participants in the Connemara development scheme which did provide special terms for those who came within it?
Mr. Walsh
There was no special initiation of that scheme.
The question asks when applications were invited.
Mr. Walsh
On 2nd April, 1951.
Two weeks after Deputy Josie Mongan died—a by-election scheme.
You are a very low and dirty figure in the public life of this country.
Exactly three years after the Deputy came into Government and two weeks after Deputy Mongan died.
You are about as low a thing as ever happened.