This Bill has generally been accepted as the forum from which each Deputy can air not only his grievances against the general implementation of Government policy, the nature of that policy, but also air in a specific way the many difficulties he may encounter locally in his constituency. While at stages of my contribution to-day I may refer to specific problems, my approach, in the main, will be to the broad general issue of the consequences of a Government policy which initially was based on false premises. The conclusions arrived at were erroneous. The method adopted to remedy the difficulties that might have existed in the economic system was, in fact, in its ultimate effect a chaotic effort, an effort which has led to complete unrest in business, insecurity in employment and a general weakness manifesting itself in unrest and uncertainty in the community. I hope to demonstrate clearly that all this has been the inevitable consequence of Government stupidity.
One must start with the general over-all picture that is covered by the various Orders and the various enactments which this Bill seeks to continue. One must inevitably go back to the general structure of Government control which, unfortunately, has the tendency to encroach further and further on individual liberty and freedom, and it is in that situation that we get an opportunity here in Parliament to raise a wide range of topics because I cannot conceive any subject which can be raised on this measure that is not in some way related to some Order continued under this Bill, Orders of which I do not believe the Minister has any knowledge or of which any Department of State can give you full details and certainly Orders many of which I know the Stationery Office cannot supply. So you have the general position of re-enactment by this Bill for a period of a year of a good many Orders, the nature of which is abstruse but the effect of which can be very serious on the general economic situation.
For the purpose of my discourse to-day, I propose to try, without any heat, to bring into a deliberate pattern the contribution I have to make and where I offer criticism of Government activity, I trust that I shall be able to offer an alternative constructive idea. My approach to this problem is not so much an approach on the basis of politics as on the basis of economics. I propose to take the view which is now generally accepted, even by the most diehard supporter of the Government, that the Government have been a catastrophic failure, that they are living on borrowed time and that their notice to quit has expired. We have to demonstrate here in a responsible way the consequences which will ensue if this Government does not take into consideration the present temper of the people and do either of two things: drastically amend its approach to the economy of the country, or get out and make way for a Government who will.
The situation has been reached politically where a succession of bludgeoning and butchering taxation imposts, rising unemployment, with uncertainty in unemployment, short time and half-time, have so aggravated the mood of the people that they now realise in the fullest possible way, with the impact of Government activity being felt in their very larders and falling on the very smallest of their essential commodities, how true indeed is what we believe, that this Government is on a taxation rampage, completely indifferent to the distress or trouble that such a campaign may cause. That is the present general situation. The country is thoroughly and unequivocably tired of this Government, of its ineptitude and its inability to tackle the situation. I propose to contrast the present operations of the Government with what I believe could and should be the approach of any Government in present economic circumstances.
Inevitably, we must place responsibility as the creator of this atmosphere of gloom and discontent not on the present Minister, who, I may say, I do not believe had any convictions which would compel him to align himself with the harsh and doleful utterances of the Minister for Finance. The chief architect of this policy is the Minister for Finance. We shall have to analyse the premises on which he built his policy and show how erroneous was his conception; we shall have to analyse how incalculably stupid were his suggested remedies and show in a realistic way how disastrous is the effect not only on industry, business and trade but—and this is where it has its toughest and hardest impact— on what I describe as the limited earning group, whether tradesmen, labourers or small salary earners.
We have to take responsibility in this House for demonstrating to the country not only the weaknesses in the Government but the real solution which we offer and I suggest that our effort must fail, unless we offer such a solution. I feel it my responsibility to do that, so far as I am able, because I think it is our bounden duty, in our representative character, to give the Government, in their present muddle, what help and assistance we can, not that they may preserve their being, but that they may at least ease the strain on the people whom they purport to lead and whom, in recent months, they seem to wish to bludgeon and grind down.
Let us contrast the situation with the situation when, two short years ago, my colleague, the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Industry and Commerce, introduced this measure. The Fianna Fáil wails and bleats would have torn the heart of the loneliest and wildest banshee ever conceived in our traditional literature. From all quarters and areas of the country came tremendous remonstration about the cost of living and a particular Deputy excelled himself in a way which was consistent with his mathematical training. Deputy Vivion de Valera came in here, and, in a tremendously long discourse, referred to no fewer than 170 odd commodities which had gone up. They had gone up then, but there is not one of these commodities that does not show a far greater increase since. He now, however, is in the dumb servitude of the Whip, a silent Deputy no longer interested in the fact that the housewife in Dublin whom he represents has to pay more for tea, sugar, bread, butter, flour and a wide range of tinned and packet goods normally used in the house, as well as an inordinately increased price for many of the other semi-essential commodities—such items as various items of scullery and kitchen equipment, different types of articles like blankets and sheets and other requirements of that nature which inevitably must be replaced from time to time to keep a normal standard of life in the home.
The Minister should not think for a moment that I am going to try and lay the responsibility for the inordinate increases in wool prices or the external difficulties which affected us at his door—I do not believe that serves any purpose—but I do think that there are a tremendous number of increases in essential commodities which, although they were consistently and persistently resisted by the previous Government, have now been given with gay abandon, without the necessary investigation, without indeed a proper approach to the problem of basic costings or any consideration of the effect of their impact on the general community. We had a situation when Fianna Fáil took office that we had a country geared for expansion, a country that had been taught a new faith. It had been taught, first of all, a new political doctrine, one that was, of course, sneered at and jeered at, for with various types of gavottes and cavorts, the Fianna Fáil Party tried to discredit the inter-Party Government. They found, apparently, something obnoxious in the capacity of Irishmen with different political creeds being able to sink those parts of their policy which may have been non-essential or impracticable of implementation into a common basis from which they could work together for the common interests of the Irish people to the best of their ability.
It does not really seem extraordinary to me that the Fianna Fáil Party should be so loud and virulent and persistent in its denunciation of that spirit of unity which we were able to bring into a concerted effort in order to give all groups of the Irish people full representative Government, a Government in which the lowest industrial worker could sit down with the farmer and the businessman and iron out problems of mutual importance to them all. That fundamental spirit of co-operation was completely condemned by the Party which was then in opposition. The bleats that arose on the Supplies and Services Bill were directed at the impossibility of this and the impracticability of that. The Fianna Fáil Party do not want any portents of unity in the remaining sections of this country for that unity spells inevitably and irretrievably the ultimate elimination of their very effective political machine and political Party. But in the light of all that, they still come here to-day, masters of a Government policy by virtue of another unity, another Coalition—by virtue of the Four Doubtfuls. I do not believe that anybody, not even as brilliant a political manoeuvrer as the Tánaiste himself, would have the capacity to gauge what is the basic approach to Irish life of Deputy Dr. Browne, Deputy Dr. ffrench-O'Carroll, Deputy Peader Cowan or Deputy Cogan. We have a kind of pseudo-socialist-communist approach by the young doctor who allows everything to be coloured by a personal viciousness against his former colleagues. Deputy Peadar Cowan has been able to succeed in political gymnastics that do not involve merely a one and a half somersault but a kind of concentrated gymnastic effort by which he can do one and a half somersaults forward and at the same time two somersaults backwards. Deputy Cogan is again actuated in the main by his belief that Deputy Dillon when he was Minister for Agriculture had not bowed to what he considered his superior wisdom.
It is hard to know whether that concentrated wisdom is not now the guiding inspiration of a Government that cannot control a country in any reasonable way. But let us start in this discussion by impressing on the Government, as has been impressed on them before, that they are, in fact, a minority Government supported by four Independents who fear a general election more than the devil fears holy water. They are holding office in a situation where the country's general economic position is worsening while the people have clearly demonstrated their anxiety by a vote to see whether or not they condone and confirm the Government's idea of policy. There has been a change, as I explained, from a country geared up to expansion with a tremendous impetus in its housing drive. The situation before that change was that Deputy Keyes, then Minister for Local Government, was able to invite and encourage home to this country our skilled tradesmen who had to go abroad. In the building trade here there was at that time good employment and an expanding effort. Everybody knows what the situation is now even though Deputy Briscoe will glibly say that more houses were constructed last year, neglecting, of course, to say anything about the period of office when those plans were made. But face the reality: there are infinitely less people in employment in the building trade in Dublin to-day, there is growing unrest in the building trade and the threat of further disemployment. There is, as the result of Government activity, a serious slowing-up and a tremendous impact on the psychology that was growing up among our people to build their own homes where the local authority was not able to supply them. It took a while of deliberate and constructive Government effort to develop that psychological approach among so many boys and girls who were about to be married, to encourage them to get together, by each couple's joint effort, the necessary deposits and to go ahead with the building of their own homes.
That psychology has been disrupted and bludgeoned by the savage impositions which are a result of the effort of the Minister for Finance in his recent loan. He glibly told us in the House that he paid £75,000 to the banks to underwrite a £20,000,000 national loan that was offered at 5 per cent. when even the least financially wise of us knew that a loan issued at such an amazingly attractive rate was bound to be over-subscribed. A Government that can do that, that can give £140,000 to dance-hall proprietors because they are unable to collect it, that can increase the burden on people who are contemplating building houses of their own, are killing the initiative and effort that was making for a better social standard in that class of the community and was ensuring the continuation of employment in the building trade.
During the period of office of the previous Government there was an impetus to expand industrial employment. I have always given unqualified credit to the present Minister for Industry and Commerce for efforts he has made in the establishment, propagation and development of Irish industry and he will recognise that during the period of office of his predecessor there was a considerable expansion of employment in industry that ran into figures of 1,000 per month. That was the situation. There was a flow of capital into Irish industry, a general impetus in trade, a general higher standard of living. The people were cheerful, which was evident proof of expanding economy, of permanence of employment and of the forward march of the country. That was the picture in industry.
In agriculture, after the spearhead and concerted attack on the personality of one individual had fallen to the ground, the constructive effort of a Minister for Agriculture who had returned to the basic principle of one more cow, one more sow, one more acre under the plough, and who had pursued a policy of directing and encouraging and leading the Irish farmer as distinct from the policy of compelling and controlling of a previous Government, had begun to show dividends. The Irish farmer was re-established in his self-respect and as master of his farm and was trying in every way, as he always had done, to do his part in stabilising the economy. There was the scheme of land rehabilitation in full operation and subsidiary schemes such as the ground limestone scheme, drainage schemes. As a monument to the memory of the late Mr. T.J. Murphy, throughout rural Ireland there was productive employment being given under the Local Authorities (Works) Act, on roads, for the benefit of people who, with patience and fortitude, had struggled for a living on isolated holdings and who had made their contribution to the Irish economy. By that legislation, and in giving money from the Exchequer without cost to the local authority for that type of work, the previous Government showed its consciousness of and interest in the problem of the person living in isolated or inaccessible farms and their anxiety to improve his lot.
There is a picture that is reflected in facts and figures. During our period of office as an inter-Party Government we had been able to give a substantial measure of justice to people who had been subjected to the barrier of a wage freeze Order by the previous Government. We were told that the heads and, indeed, the skeleton of a Bill were there in fact in 1948 to continue that policy. That has been a matter of discourse in the House. I shall not put it any further than that it was evidence of the approach of the Fianna Fáil Government to the wage earner and the wage problem.
The fact that it wants such a ceiling typifies the ineptitude of a Government. What did we do? We succeeded in our period of office in giving substantial rises, not only once, but twice and in some cases three times, to sections of workers whose claims had been too long denied and at the same time we were able to keep stability in the cost of living. We were not able to keep it completely stable after the outbreak of the Korean conflict, but prior to that we were able to maintain a stability in the cost of living. We were not able to reduce it but we were able to maintain a reasonable stability and at the same time we were able to increase the earnings of the people who endured the severest impact of the cost of living and to put them in a better position to meet it.
In other words, in succinct language, the position was simply this—that the cost of living remained virtually stable for a long period while the pay packet going to the housewife became fatter by at least two increases and in some cases by three increases. She had more money with which to meet the impact of the cost of living.
What is the contrast to-day? We have the absolutely diametrically opposite case; the pay packet is virtually the same while the cost of living has soared astronomically. I shall be fair to the Minister and, instead of taking the optimum figure, I will put the increase in the cost of living at about 15 per cent. There has been no commensurate increase in the earning capacity of the people who are hardest hit by the cost of living. Instead, there has been rising unemployment, half-time and insecurity in employment. That is the Government's contribution in the general economy to the pattern that they raved about, that they howled about with the penetrating howl of the lone coyote, when they were here in opposition. When they set their hand to the task of the control and management of the country, overnight, over a week, in the first month, we had a catastrophic increase in the price of certain commodities that are consumed by the general householder.
Then we had the evidence of their approach to the Irish people. First of all there was a wail of gloom, a false, hysterical atmosphere created by speeches of the Minister for Finance and his chorus, the deep voice of the Tánaiste trying to temper his intemperance, and the banshee wails of the Minister for Posts and Telegraphs talking about standing armies of pound notes in England that we must preserve at any price. Out of that summer madness—as one may describe it, with the Dáil in recess—came this time last year the reopening of Parliament and the complete scattering of this gloom that had been disseminated throughout the country. We had the Tánaiste, in his succinct characteristic way, saying there was no crisis now, only a problem. Here was the first bit of realism coming into the approach of the Government when it had got over what I describe as the midsummer night's madness. Then, emerging in its wake and apparently as the result—we must inevitably take it as the result—of close association between this Government and the Tory Government in England, we had a Budget designed on British pattern, a Budget designed for a debtor nation imposed on an Irish people who are a creditor nation. That is the broad final analysis of the financial situation.
We are entitled to comment here— and this is the opportunity we get—on the tie-ups in general governmental approach with the Chancellor of another Exchequer. Two responsible Ministers—at least, two Deputies of the House holding responsible positions; one I will describe as a responsible Minister, the Tánaiste as Minister for Industry and Commerce, and the Minister for Finance—take off for London. They have a series of talks with the Chancellor of the British Exchequer, Mr. Butler. We have no revelation to the Dáil of the nature, the scope or the effect of these talks. We are told in a most pugnacious way, in a most dogmatic way, that we will get no information. And then, in the light of all that, we get a Budget that has the same tracings, the same financial impact and the same effect as that of a Chancellor of a British Government.
No matter how vehemently the Tánaiste may interject to say that there was nothing but an exchange of views, we are entitled to say to the Irish people: "Here are the facts; as the result of an observation made by the Chancellor of the British Exchequer in the British House of Commons, that Mr. MacEntee was going to come over to see him, there is a flight over to London, there is a series of conversations, there is no disclosure in this House, as the final seat of authority in this country, as to the nature or scope of those conversations; but there is after that, first of all, an early Budget conforming as to time with the effort of a Tory Chancellor and then we find that that Budget is conceived and designed in pattern on the Budget of a Conservative Chancellor in England who is dealing with a highly debtor nation, a very heavily involved debtor nation, and that kind of Budget is imposed on this country, which we all know is a highly creditor nation." We are entitled to say until the Government can controvert that impression by laying bare what did transpire, that the directions and suggestions of a foreign Chancellor did, in fact, influence Government policy, the result of which we are discussing now.
In the Budget we had an approach that was tantamount to this: "I will take the maximum I can off the Irish people by way of taxation"—and the one gleam of relief is the now too-vaunted remission of the dance tax. We have a Budget that deliberately sets itself out to do one thing only, to depress consumption at home—and how successful it has been is only too bitter a reality. More money is extracted from the people; less money is available to them for the necessary purchases for the home; infinitely less surplus is there for the purchase of various articles of clothing and footwear; less money is there for the purchase of many of the small items that tend to ease in the domestic situation. The main buying bulk of the Irish people and the mainstay of trade, commerce and industry is the wage earner and the small salary earner and those people are not now in a position to buy. That is due, let me remind Fianna Fáil Deputies—they voted for this and this is their contribution to Irish economy—to the increased prices for bread, butter, tea, sugar, milk and every possible commodity going in by way of essentials to the home. That has to be met out of the same pay packet.
The impact comes most severely on the man with the large family. I know that some people on the Government Benches will endeavour to offset that by entering into hyperbolic exuberance of language in relation to increased social services, increased children's allowances and increased pensions. I would like some practical financier to explain to me how the old age pensioner or the parent in receipt of increased children's allowances can be better off when, through the impact of taxation, he will lose from 2/8 to 3/-per week while through the medium of increased social allowances he cannot get more than 1/- or 1/6 per week. How can a man who pays out 3/- and gets back 1/6 be better off?
In the main that hyperbolic exaggeration is the defence of the Government when it comes to an analysis of our economic problem; things may be tough but we were living beyond our means. Is the man on the dole to-day, the man in receipt of unemployment assistance and the man who has had to fly the land of his birth because there was no work available for him better off? Is he the man who is living beyond his means? We suffer from three haemorrhages which must lead us to national disaster, namely, unemployment, emigration and a rising sense of insecurity, all attributable to the policy of a Government which, either because of advancing years or spite, is incapable of implementing an expansionist policy for the salvation of our people and which has bludgeoned an expanding economy into a depression. It is the duty of the Government now to take immediate steps to alleviate that depression or get out and let in a Government that has the courage and the foresight to take such steps.
This Government pays lip-service in one sentence to capital investment and an expansionist economy. In the next sentence, with an almost sinister efficiency it slows down all effort. When one presses, as I have pressed, for land rehabilitation, for farm improvement schemes and for all the various schemes subject to Government grant one is told that the matter will be examined. There is an inspection and six months after the inspection one is pressing all over again and then there is a reinspection. It is in that way that this Government is closing down on expansionist effort.
The situation here was crystal clear. The inter-Party Government had conceived a policy that I am proud to stand over and it is a policy that I will stand over as long as I remain in public life. I believe that the proper place for every Irish £ available for investment is in the improvement of Irish land and the social conditions of the Irish people and not in low interest loan for the improvement and betterment of the lot of a foreign people and a foreign country. The inter-Party Government set itself to the task of creating a flow of Irish capital into the improvement of Irish farm land. There is a wonderful field there for continued effort because the output of every Irish farm can be and should be increased by progressive effort under an expansionist policy. With proper nutrition of the soil the output of every farm can be increased by 200 to 300 per cent. and where one blade of grass grows to-day it should be possible to have three, four and five blades growing in the future. The cereals most suitable in our climatic condition should be developed so that we can walk off the land our mixed agricultural produce in the way of beef, pork, poultry and pigs.
That increased production potential can only be brought about under a Government prepared to adopt a realistic approach to agricultural expansion. If that is done our best economic theorists will be startled at the results in a period of three or four years. That should be the keystone of our policy. The inter-Party Government sought to improve every Irish acre and to get from it its maximum productivity by sinking in it all the capital we could put into it. We conceived it to be our duty to make Irish capital available for Irish agricultural production. We conceived it to be our duty to make Irish capital available to solve the housing problems of our people and to improve health services and hospitalisation while alleviating the distress and sufferings of those sections of the community least able to bear the burdens cast upon them.
We believe in remitting ill-conceived taxation on certain so-called luxuries. We believe in the policy of imposing a tax or an excise duty on beer, spirits and tobacco which will yield a satisfactory revenue return as distinct from imposing a tax which fails to achieve buoyancy in revenue while denying to our people the small luxuries to which they are entitled.
It was our experience in the inter-Party Government that having improved conditions for the aged, the infirm, the widow and the orphan we were able to give a forward impetus to Irish economy. What replaced that policy? It was replaced, as we now know, by an almost senile repressiveness, by Government ineptitude, by Government lack of foresight. We had an unnatural despondency as the forerunner of an economic stupidity. We had a Minister for Finance deliberately deciding to teach the Irish people a lesson for what they had done to the "Empire" of Fianna Fáil. He would teach them the lesson that there was no alternative Government to those who had abrogated unto themselves some peculiarly divine right to continue to be the masters of the destinies of the Irish people. We saw rapidly accumulating all the evils that had been the cause of the downfall of the "Empire." We are encouraged and emboldened to-day in our belief in the Irish people and in the salutary and no doubt alarming warning that has been given by the working-class people of our capital city—a city which has always jealously guarded Governments of this country and jealously guarded its right to have its say in the formation of Governments of this country.
Why does the Government not face up to the problem by getting as quickly and as rapidly as possible such sums of money as it may need? They will get it with our complete support as they got the last loan. All criticism of that loan and the method of its flotation was reserved until the loan was, in fact, fully subscribed—a courtesy and the political integrity that we never got from Fianna Fáil when we were endeavouring to get loans. I am giving you this assurance. What this country needs at the moment is a transfusion of vast sums of money into a return of impetus, into schemes such as those under the Local Authorities (Works) Acts, into schemes like the land rehabilitation scheme, into increased effort and impetus, into afforestation, into the completion of the drive to give every family its own house, into hospitalisation, into the completion and expansion of the drive towards electrifying the country. Into all those channels can be poured more Irish money that is available for investment. Into all those channels can be poured further people into employment to halt the growing unrest, to dispel the disquiet and the lack of confidence that is in the people. Into this country and into this country's development can be poured these things by any Government. Do not mind what State economists may say. Do not mind what conservative theorists may say. Any Irish Parliament, supreme in its power, exercising its supreme judgment, can gather together Irish money and use it to put back into employment in this country people at home—to put into this country the effort of the strong right arm of Irishmen and Irishwomen that it may build up at home something enduring and lasting—rather than that they should be forced into foreign lands whether England, Scotland, Wales, America or any of the dominions of the late British Empire. Their effort would be better here at home. We need a constructive effort to improve the land, the forests, housing, and all the various things which are crying out to be done in an under-developed, under-capitalised and capital starved nation. Far better that the Government, even to the extent of imprudence, should pour money into that effort than to allow a continuation of expanding emigration, decreasing employment and rising insecurity.
I believe, no matter what economic theorists may say or what people claiming financial rectitude may say, that we are entitled to pledge in this House and in this country the earnings of posterity for posterity's gain. I believe that it is the bounden duty of this Government to cushion its people against the economic shocks of depression when it can put its hand on the money to do so. I believe that any Government with a sane and broad approach—one that allows for the political march of a nation and not one that arrests a depressed nation— can get the money to alleviate the temporary distress and depression that has hit all sections, classes and types in this country. I firmly believe that if the Government has the courage to say that they will face this task and if they have the courage to come and seek the money that will preserve the essentials necessary to any development in this country it will get the complete and unanimous support of this House. We can never hope to build a strong and a better Ireland if our manpower is allowed to be too sadly depleted. We can never hope to rehabilitate industry in this country if the human element is allowed to fly from our shores at the time of its formative development. I have in mind the young man or the young boy from 18 to 21 years when all the strength of his development and all the dynamic impetus is there to be harnessed. Once that effort has gone no money can replace it. That is why I say to this Government, not in the sense of political antipathy but that of appeal, that the nation must preserve its right to survival by the maintenance of its young boys and girls at home so that they, in the fullness of their time, may marry and settle down and bring up families at home. This country is too rapidly becoming the playground of too many old people and of the terribly young.
I see a Deputy from Galway over there on the Government Benches. He represents the same type of constituency as I represent. We see only too well the denudation that has taken place. We see only too well that it is not the people that might best be afforded who go. We find that the people who go are the young in mind, the young in heart and the young in sinew. They are the people who are fleeing the land. All over our constituencies we see farms on which there is only an old couple and on which none of the children was prepared to stay—farms which none of the children will accept because of the economic hardship that has been their stigma in recent months. We see that emigration is increasing. I say to the Government, in this particular case, to blazes with politics and to blazes with Parties: we have a bigger problem to deal with. We have to preserve here at home in this country the very nucleus and the very life-stream of our own nationhood. We can do that only if the Government has the courage to approach the problem, irrespective of the cost, of ensuring those people a livelihood at home. I do not care what way you argue. I do not care whether we build hospitals, houses and enduring capital assets in this country, there is nothing either unethically wrong with it financially or anything in any way dangerous to a financial credit to commit posterity to carry in each successive year its share of the burden because it will get its full facet of the asset.
We have members of the Government Party here "meowing," particularly in the person of Deputy Briscoe, about putting the country in pawn. This is a Government that has become the dream of the big investor, the wealthy corporation, by floating a loan at a rate of interest well beyond the wildest hopes of these investors. I believe that a Government facing in a responsible way the task of eradicating the cancers in our economic system and eradicating the unrest caused by rising unemployment and the general economic depression, will get the wholehearted support of the Irish people. Mind you, I go this far and you can describe me as anything you like afterwards. If it is necessary for the preservation of the Irish people at home, to raise money to enable them to keep these people at home, I will support any Government that needs authority to deal with the banks because I say without fear of contradiction that no section has battened so successfully or so well on Irish economy as that particular section and if the necessities of our economic ills call for a remedy that involves our being allowed to use all our available resources for development here at home, resources that are otherwise invested in various types of foreign securities, I would not raise a whimper of protest against any Government taking that line.
I stand here to make an appeal to the Government, not in any narrow political sense because many of the people who were forced to leave our country have no formulated idea of politics at all. They are pressed and depressed by the one reality that, born and reared in this little island of ours, once they reach budding maturity, they have to flee the land and the homes they love so well. That is a tragedy, a tragedy that becomes a reality to a person as young as myself who has seen his friends, his school contemporaries and his contemporaries in various efforts from boyhood to early manhood, dispersed and scattered over the world. Indeed can I not bitterly recall how many of them in the exigencies of the war situation, had to lay down their gallant young lives in that effort, not because of any desire on their part to defend any other country but because of the sheer economic necessity that drove them from this nation into these other countries, there to suffer premature death because we did not face up to or are not facing up to the task that is the Government's first duty?
The Government, by the judicious exercise of its power over the finances and the economy of this country, could cushion the people against depression, against the illnesses that are now so manifest in our economic system. It is their duty to do it as rapidly and as quickly as they can, no matter what the ultimate result may be, because I say in a positive and deliberate way that the denudation of rural Ireland, the flight of skilled tradesmen and competent workers in various avocations of life, in their early manhood represents a loss to this country that no money can repay. It is a loss of something so vital, such an integral part of the fundamental basis of expansion, a loss of what one might describe as the right human digit for economic development, that no money can replace it. I am talking from my heart out when I say it is indeed a tragedy to find that we have a situation in this country where there is growing specialised employment for non-Irish people while there is this tremendous flight of Irish people from their own land. That is a sign of an economic cancer, for the removal of which I demand Government action.
I am here as the representative of people who, generation after generation, played their part in every organisation and in every effort that was made to win us the right to a Parliament in this country. As the representative of these people, and proud of their representative trust, I come here to demand of the Government that they do either of two things: that they leave the way for a Government that will tackle this problem or get down to the task of putting into rural Ireland the means of employment and the life-stream of money necessary for investment if we are to keep Irish boys and girls in their proud and lordly fastnesses of West Cork. These people are entitled to some action of that kind. We have seen what is happening. We have seen the Beara peninsula denuded of its young people. I asked in a series of parliamentary questions what was the real situation in Beara and whether the Government was going to take any action in regard to it. We have the situation painted by the Minister for Education that in Beara peninsula there are fewer than 20 per cent. of the number of children attending school that were attending there 30 years ago.
We have the situation in the peninsula and in Beara Island where the doors of houses are sealed and a name left on them so that, perhaps, some returning emigrant having made a successful career for himself in some other country can come at some future period and say with sentimental and tragic reality: "That was my home from which I had to flee because there was no sustenance or livelihood for me at home."
No matter who forms the Government, in the present situation that faces rural Ireland, I would be fearless in my demand that they take immediate and speedy action to arrest these ills. We are now approaching the festive period and we shall very shortly go on holidays. Before doing so, let us shock ourselves and ask ourselves the question: what is the situation that is facing so many people in this country, a situation that is so different from that of Christmas two years ago, despite all the wails and bleats that we had then? We should ask ourselves why has this cancer come so suddenly into our economic life. I believe, no matter what central banks may say, what the trends of foreign trade may be, no matter what interpretation the Minister for Finance may try to put on it, in the fundamental strength and will of the Irish people. I believe in their capacity for work and in their capacity to develop the land with homes worthy of its people. I believe their production will be worthy of the Irish farmer and that their industry will be of a standard that will be worthy of a proud race. They will do that if given the least bit of encouragement, of hope and financial support by an Irish Government. That is the minimum that might be expected by a people who, in the final analysis, have made it possible for all of us to be Deputies or part of any Government.