Dáil Éireann díospóireacht -
Tuesday, 30 Jun 1953

Vol. 140 No. 1

Vote of Confidence—Motion by Taoiseach.

The Taoiseach

I move:—

That Dáil Éireann reaffirms its confidence in the Government.

When the Government was being formed some two years ago it was made clear that it was our intention to proceed with our programme so long as we had the support of the majority in the House. It was necessary on that occasion to make the position clear because it was being freely suggested by speakers from the Opposition and by Opposition newspapers that it was our intention, if we got into office, to have a very early general election. That was not our intention. The reasons that prompted the making of the suggestion are well known to everybody. It was one of these suggestions that was made after the 1948 election, for example. We wanted to clear the air in that regard. We did so and the purpose of this motion is to reaffirm that position.

Fianna Fáil was founded with definite national, economic, social and cultural aims. We have always been glad to have the opportunity of working towards the securing of these aims. Looking back, I think we can be reasonably satisfied that good work and good progress have been made but we have not achieved the ultimate goal in any one of these things. Perhaps it is not possible for any humansociety to secure some of them to the full but so long as there are definite gaps which have to be filled and definite work to be done in these directions, we are anxious to have an opportunity of doing it and so long as we have the support of the majority in this House we are constitutionally entitled to proceed on that line.

In the first six years of office, from 1932 to 1938, we were hampered in our work by having to meet the efforts that were being made by the British to foil us in our efforts to secure a free Constitution for this country. We had also to battle against the efforts that were made to get us to abandon our intention to retain the land annuities here. Hampered as we were during these six years, considerable progress was made towards the achievement of our aims but within a year after we had secured the agreement of 1938 a world war began. That world war put us into the position in which we had to defend our neutrality and bend all our efforts towards securing the safety of this country.

Again, during that period it was not possible for us to proceed as rapidly as we would wish along the lines which we had laid out for our economic progress and for our social development, not to speak of cultural development. When the war was coming to a close, we worked hard making plans to enable us to avail of the situation which we hoped was coming when we should be working in a condition of peace. These plans were intended to enable us quickly to get off our mark and to take advantage for this country of the favourable position in which we hoped to find ourselves. When the fighting ceased in 1945 we were ready, but raw materials, equipment and so on were not available because all the machines for the producing of such equipment and all the raw materials had been turned to other uses and it took time for the world to reorganise itself for peace. Communications were opened up and trade was beginning to develop on its usual lines in 1947 but there was such a demand from the countries which during the war years had been starved of raw materials and in many cases of food that pricesincreased rapidly, the demand being so great and the supply being relatively so small. I think there was about a 20 per cent. increase, for example, in import prices that year and about 15 per cent. increase in agricultural prices.

In the autumn of that year we found ourselves in a position in which prices and the cost of living were rapidly going up. We expected that it would be only for a short period and to meet that situation we proposed certain subsidies on food. To meet the cost of these subsidies, we had to impose taxation. In the usual way everybody likes to get benefits and everybody likes to get cheap food but if that cheap food can only be obtained from taxation they object to taxation. That objection was made here and although the food subsidies were effective in bringing down at the time the cost of living— I think it was some 13 points if my memory serves me right—nevertheless, there was a strong objection to the taxation that was required to meet the cost even though it was taxation on commodities that could not be regarded as fundamentally necessary. The result, however, was that we were put out of office. We were prevented from having the opportunity of utilising the plans which we had in mind for serving the nation's interest.

As we expected, the position of increasing prices did not last. Prices were relatively stable in 1948 and 1949. I think it was in June, 1950, when war broke out in Korea, that the relatively stable position was completely upset. A new world war was threatened. States and individuals had a lively memory of the conditions they had to meet during the previous world war and in anticipation of a war of the same type, perhaps, worse or, perhaps, even of longer duration—though that was a matter on which there could be differences of opinion—you had a rush by nations and a rush by individuals to provide themselves as quickly as possible with the various commodities they felt they might be in need of during the threatened world war. That rush sent up the prices of fundamental raw materials, of cotton and jute andof metals such as tin and zinc, with the result that prices were constantly rising for these raw materials. That was the position from roughly about the time the war began in 1950 and it also affected import prices in this country until September of the following year.

But, in the year that followed immediately after the outbreak of the Korean War, there were a few incidents which caused certain economic reactions. The first of these was when the Chinese Communists took a hand in the fighting, when they drove the United Nations forces down to the South of Korea, when the area which they could hold was confined to a very small space and when there was a danger of the United Nations forces being practically driven out of Korea altogether. That situation held for a little while, but it helped to keep up the rush for such materials as were available. Stockpiling was taking place in a number of countries and prices kept constantly rising. In the following April, 1951, a new situation arose when the position became more or less stabilised, I think, about the 38th Parallel. After that, the increase in prices more or less ceased, and the prices of fundamental raw materials began to decline, but, of course, for some time afterwards you had the consequences of rising import prices in the various countries and particularly here where the rise continued until September of that year.

I am giving these particular points in order that we may get a general view of the economic position. The rush for materials sent up prices both here and elsewhere, but it did something more. It entailed an almost certain recession afterwards. Individuals bought goods in excess of those which they would buy ordinarily. They were buying, so to speak, ahead. Those who would buy one suit of clothes bought two, and those who would buy a few shirts bought double the number and so on practically over the whole range of commodities. The retailers met the demand as far as the commodities they had in hand went, and then had further orders on the wholesalers. The wholesalers made demands on themanufacturers. The result was that everybody, every retailer and every wholesaler in so far as they were able to get a supply were making these demands on those manufacturers who had the raw materials.

That was the situation roughly shortly before we came into office. You had this buying of commodities ahead. The consequence of that, of course, followed. The consequence was this, that there was no demand on the retailer because those who had provided themselves in advance with extra commodities did not wish to buy at the high prices then ruling. They were able to hold off without buying and continued for a period to do so in the hope that they would force prices down. There was a form of buyers' strike so to speak. The retailers who had bought commodities at high prices did not wish to have these left on their hands, or to be in a position in which they had to sell them at a loss. The same was true of the wholesalers. The manufacturers were not getting orders because orders could only come when there was a need to replenish the wholesalers' stocks, and the stocks of the retailers. That situation would obviously lead to a certain amount of unemployment. It had led to high prices in the earlier stages, and in order to prevent very heavy losses the retailers and the wholesalers tried to hold on in the expectation that ultimately the needs of the community would demand that these goods be released to them. The manufacturers were getting no orders, and so it happened that here, as in many other countries, there was industrial unemployment. You had unemployment here in the textile trade. We set out to remedy that as quickly as possible by reducing quotas and by seeing, in regard to the goods which had been allowed in here in large quantities, that there would be a stop put to the flow of these goods and that an opportunity would be given to our manufacturers to produce for the home market.

In talking about the flow of goods into the country, it might be no harm to remember that we had the advantage also of the Marshall Aid dollarsof which full use was made in getting goods in from outside. When we came in we tried to put a check on the inflow of those goods that were held by our own manufacturers. The result of that was seen in the reduction by several thousands in the numbers unemployed in the industries mainly affected.

It has often been suggested that the high prices here, and the unemployment which increased with the decrease in the volume of production, have been due to action by the Government here, care being taken not to advert to the fact that the conditions here have been paralleled in practically every one of the countries in Europe. The O.E.E.C. reports confirm that statement to the full.

Mr. MacBride

Nonsense.

The Taoiseach

It is not nonsense. It is a fact. The O.E.E.C. reports, whether in regard to unemployment or in regard to industrial production or in regard to the increase in the cost of living have been paralleled, let me put it that way, in the great majority of the countries in Western Europe. In some cases there has been only a single exception. One has to know the conditions in these countries to be able to see why they are exceptional. We here then have had, as an automatic recession following the rush for commodities at the beginning of the war, to face a position which was similar to the position that had to be dealt with in other countries, and we claim that we have dealt with it as satisfactorily as any other country has done.

We are now entering into what appears to be a more stable position. Import prices have been coming down, and this reduction will affect the price of raw materials and ultimately the price of the finished commodities. Our factories are being set at work again and there is a prospect of a continued increase in industrial employment. The production of industry itself which came down a few points last year shows pretty definite signs of returning to its previous, or even a superior, position. All we have to do is to proceed steadily on the course which was essential if we were to make steady progress—namely to put thefinances of the country right. We did that and we believe we have done it with success.

We are now in a position in which we hope to have a balanced Budget. With regard to our international balance of payments we have no longer to fear an alarming deficit such as we had in the year 1951. It has been brought down now to at least manageable dimensions. We have reasonable reserves which enable us to purchase the materials we require. Industry is well advanced in the sense that we have experienced industrialists which we did not have some years ago. There is a wonderful opportunity for this country under the new conditions provided another world war does not intervene or, indeed, a situation which can produce an economic crisis. If a serious economic situation does arise, that will undoubtedly produce a new situation for a time but it is a thing which can be remedied. If we have to face that we can face it with high hopes and high hearts even though it may mean a period of difficulty. However, for the moment, in the conditions as we see them immediately ahead, we see no reason why this country cannot rapidly advance provided again we act reasonably and prudently, that we make the right use of our resources of every kind.

Amongst the resources of chief value to us, of course, are the resources of our land. Whilst industrial production had gone up from 100, let us say, in 1938 to 171 in 1951, agricultural production has scarcely advanced at all. A year or two ago it had actually decreased. There is no reason why that should be. We have fertile land. We have people who are traditionally rooted in the soil and can manage it properly if they are given an opportunity of making use of modern scientific methods and modern scientific knowledge. In other countries agricultural production has increased by 50 per cent.; in some cases it has almost doubled. We could hope for the same if we used modern methods here. The foundation for that is giving the soil the minerals it requires in order to produce proper pasture, proper cropsand a decent yield. There is awaiting us there an excellent opportunity if our farmers co-operate in using lime in the form of ground limestone. It has been said many times that on an estimate some 12,000,000 tons are required to give the soil what it requires as far as ground limestone is concerned. There are also other fertilisers, phosphates, potash, and so on, which are required.

It will be the aim of the Government to endeavour with all possible speed to make available for the farmers in the first instance and to induce them to make use of the resources that are available in order to bring up their soil to a proper degree of fertility. As I have said, it has been estimated that we could increase the volume of production by up to 50 per cent. and in many cases by even more than that, if we used those methods properly. We set out as our general aim—I shall have to come to a more immediate aim in a moment—on the industrial side— to bring up agriculture to a proper degree of production. I was going to say it was our most immediate aim; I hesitated because there is one other, that is, the position of employment and unemployment has to be dealt with.

We have always held that the best way to deal with unemployment is to provide employment through productive industry. There are special works of various kinds that are essential and those can also contribute to reducing unemployment but our main purpose is to try to develop industry to such an extent that it will have the biggest employment content possible consistent, of course, with proper productivity in the sense of proper output. Whilst employment in industry has increased—has actually doubled—the year before last there were about 220,000 employed in those industries detailed in the census of production whereas there were only 110,000 employed prior to our taking up office back in 1932—there is considerable room for further employment there. I think that the policy which was responsible for that vast increase and for laying the foundations for the building up of industry can be reliedupon to continue that progress and to bring about as high a degree of development as is possible.

In regard to agriculture, unfortunately, there is a different story. There has been constant diminution of the number who have been employed on the land. It has fallen considerably. If, by using modern scientific methods, we can bring about further employment upon the land, then certainly very valuable work for the nation will be done. The trend being what it is, however, one cannot be altogether too hopeful in that regard.

The more immediate task, however, is to deal with unemployment which has taken place mainly in the constructional industries as well as in agriculture. As far as these constructional works are concerned, present capital expenditure greatly exceeds the expenditure in the years before we came into office. There has been a constant suggestion that some of the unemployment has been due to the fact that there has been some curtailment of the amount of money that has been provided for State capital enterprise. Of course, there is no truth in that. The figures at once show how false that assertion is although it has been made and repeated many times.

In the two years before we came into office the amount of State capital expenditure was roughly £24,000,000 each year. In the two years that we have been in office it has averaged almost £33,000,000 each year and the amount that is to be provided for State capital expenditure in the present year is something like £39,000,000, giving a total I think of £153,000,000 in the period of the last five years.

I do not think it can be suggested that there is any curtailment or that in this case we have been miserly. In fact, at times we had to consider whether we would be able to continue to provide capital of that magnitude. The amount involved now is coming up to £40,000,000 a year. Ultimately we can only meet expenditure of this size if we develop the nation's savings to the maximum possible extent. There has been a remarkable increase insavings in the last year. In the year 1951, when we had that huge deficit of close on £62,000,000, there was no saving at all. In fact, that year we consumed more than we produced or we spent more than we earned. But we have always to remember that State capital expenditure entails debt, debt of the State to somebody, some groups. As long as the debt is within the State it can perhaps be defended but it does mean that through taxation each year the services of that debt have to be provided. It does mean increased taxation. The rates of taxation may not have to be increased if the volume of output is such as to give you, at relatively lower rates, the amount that you require but the accounts for some years past have shown very definitely that we are piling up debt charges which will eat up a considerable amount of the revenue we derive from taxation. For instance, last year, the gross amount would take up nearly half the yield of income-tax. That had to be set aside to meet the debt charges. Even if you can set every penny of offsetting interest you can get against the debt charges you will find even still there was over £6,000,000 required to meet the net debt charges—equivalent to about one-third of the income-tax yield. Therefore, there is need for prudent care in the way in which we incur debt for capital purposes.

If the money that was spent on the State capital programme produced a return then of course you would regard it as productive and consequently you would be able to set off against any debt charges the income produced by the expenditure but, if we analyse our State capital expenditure, we will find that a very large proportion of it is of a social and amenity kind. Undoubtedly, these amenities are important for the well-being of the community and we certainly have never taken up the position that a reasonable amount of capital expenditure should not go to provide these amenities. What has been done in housing is proof that we hold that view. Most of the housing has been done during the time that we were in office.

We have been accused somehow of being against the building of houses recently and it is alleged there has been some contraction, due to Government policy, in regard to housing. I think that can be proved to be also untrue. The highest number of houses that were ever built or reconstructed in a year were built in a year in which we were in office, the year just before the war, 1938-39. There were over 17,000 houses built or reconstructed in that year. The next highest figure was last year, when something like 15,700 houses were built or reconstructed. The next highest—14,500—was the year before that—all whilst we have been in office.

That proves very definitely that we are not opposed to the building of houses. We are not opposed to the spending of some of our resources in that type of work. It does not produce immediate revenue for the State but it is valuable in regard to the well-being of our people and we did not have to be told by any other Party that that was desirable spending.

It has not been our policy, then, to cut down on housing. Quite the contrary. Our aim has been to try to provide decent homes for every family in the land and everything that can be done reasonably towards that end will be either done by us when we are in office or will be supported by us if some other Party should be in office. Hospitals have been built by us by the score. We have, during the period in which we have been in office, done everything we could to try to encourage the building of the necessary hospitals for the care of our sick.

In every direction in which it was necessary for the well-being of our people that money should be spent, we have been prepared to spend it; but, again, we must, in regard to our total capital expenditure annually, have a fair regard to the proportion that exists between the amount that is spent on amenities and the amount spent on productive enterprises. It is quite clear that if we use all our resources on amenities we might enable a family to provide itself with excellent surroundings but it wouldnot be able to continue to have an income which would enable it to enjoy those surroundings. We want our people to be in decent homes, but we want them to be in a position in which they will have continuing resources which will enable them to have a continued occupation of those homes and enjoyment of those amenities. It is a question, then, of a proper balance.

We have to be just a little careful and not to wildly indulge in purely amenity expenditure when there is an obvious necessity that a considerable proportion of our capital expenditure should be for productive purposes. We are very glad, for instance, when we look at the development of the E.S.B. When we came into office there were about 151,000,000 units a year produced. Last year there was something like 1,164,000,000 units as against 151,000,000, as I have said, at the start —roughly seven or eight times as much as when we started. We expect in about three years' time to have stepped that up to over 2,000,000,000 units and we hope that by 1960, under the programme which has been prepared, to have an output of 3,400,000,000 units. That is something like 20 times the amount that was being produced when we first came into office. We rejoice at that because we hope it will reasonably pay for itself and that the amenity which is provided by having electric power and electric light and having our homes in the country lighted will give such a revenue as will not make too heavy a demand on the community as a whole in the way of subsidising it.

Similarly, in the case of utilisation of the bogs, we have proceeded there steadily with development of that particular natural resource. There was something over half a million tons of machine-won turf produced last year. There is a target of 3,500,000 tons for five or six years ahead.

These are developments which are not merely of the amenity type but of the productive type, and in balancing them and seeing what proportion of capital expenditure should be put into them, you have to try to strike a balance as between the amenity factor and the other. I think nobody doubtsthat State money used in enterprises like that is well spent.

The development of our beet factories similarly gave employment to some thousands of workers. The raw material comes from the land. That is obviously a type of enterprise which has been fostered by the State and a type of enterprise which is desirable, in which it is wise and proper to use our capital resources for development.

The development of the cement factories is of a slightly different kind but it also is of the desirable type, supplying us with materials which we need in the construction of our houses, and so on.

I need not go into other enterprises of a similar type, but these are the enterprises to which it is desirable that we should devote our capital resources and nobody has any hesitation about using them for such purposes. We hope that in developments of that sort we will be able, by State enterprise, so far as it is necessary, to supplement private enterprise. We unhesitatingly are in favour of private enterprise but we recognise that in many cases private enterprise either is unwilling to undertake works, which it is obvious in the national interest should be undertaken, or apparently is not equipped to do it, and in such cases we have not hesitated to use the resources of the State to step in and supplement private enterprise by State enterprise.

I have indicated, or tried to indicate, what is our general outlook in matters of that sort, and I do not think that any reasonable person could find fault with it; but we do stress the fact that wisdom in the apportionment of our resources is necessary and that if we did not act with wisdom we could have a feast to-day and possibly a famine to-morrow. We want planning so that when we do improve conditions those improved conditions will persist and not simply be a flash in the pan.

With regard to unemployment, it is naturally giving us concern although the position has improved and we are quite confident that it will improve and that with the absorption in industry and industrial activity a greatdeal of the unemployment of industrial workers will be taken up. We have a position in which, if you analyse the unemployment figures, you find that the majority now are unemployed in constructional and building work and in agriculture in rural areas. As far as housing is concerned, the position is, from the point of view of the local authorities, that I think we have 116 local housing authorities and about 45 of them have reached the stage in which if the works on which they were engaged at the moment are completed, they will have completed their programme as they envisaged it back in 1947. There is need to have another survey made to see to what extent conditions have altered since then, but at any rate you have the position that about 45 of the 116 are nearing completion of their constructional work. Of course, whenever you go enthusiastically about any task, if you aim to get it completed rapidly and you have got a large force of workers employed to the full on it, when it is completed you have an immediate problem of what you are going to do with the huge force that you have employed. As regards housing, I do not think we have reached that position yet in the cities. In the City of Dublin, in particular, where you have the biggest housing problem, we have not at all reached that position and there is housing work to be done. It was slowed up. I am not quite satisfied as to exactly how the slowing up occurred. There was some sewerage scheme on the north side which caused a certain amount of delay. The figures I gave the other day are an indication that there is a considerable building programme immediately ahead in the City of Dublin. A short time ago the number of houses being built was 1,538, I think. That has gone up to 2,200 and there are 678 houses and flats about to be put out to tender in the Dublin area immediately by Dublin Corporation.

There is something in the region of £6,000,000 being spent for hospitals, schools and other State buildings at present. Capital work of that sort amounting to £1,750,000 will be undertaken shortly, including a project in Baldonnel which will cost about£500,000. The £1,750,000 should be under way by the end of the year. There is another £6,000,000 on more or less the same type of activity which is under consideration for the years following. Therefore, there is a considerable amount of State-fostered expenditure taking place in the construction line in Dublin.

We are trying to get these activities pushed ahead as rapidly as possible and we hope that in a very short time the unemployment situation will be very considerably improved. There has been a lot of talk about unemployment figures, although they are likely to be very misleading. One would think there never was heard in the history of the country such a thing as 80,000 unemployed. We are very sorry to note, looking through the figures, that unfortunately it has occurred and has occurred within the last five years and occurred when the Opposition was in office. It is unfortunate that at the peak you should have a figure of that magnitude. About 60,000 is the average for a considerable number of years. I do not want to minimise it at all. As the Tánaiste said recently, one of the ultimate tests of the efficacy of administration and public office should be the extent to which our people are employed. Everyone knows there is a hard core of unemployment there. The lowest figure that has been reached was in September, 1947, I think, when it was under 35,000. I think the actual figure was 34,798 or some figure of that size.

The annual average figure of over 60,000 has been reached both in the time when the Opposition was in office and in the time when we have been in office. These figures are there and we do not want them there. We hope we will change them, but nevertheless they have to be faced. There was a time when the feverish rush took place for the purchase of goods and there was activity in all departments of our economy. There was activity in the distributing trade and in transport, as goods were being distributed to the retail shops. That was a feverish activity which was begotten of certaincircumstanues and which led to the recession which I mentioned in the earlier part of my speech.

I do not think at this stage there is anything I can add to what I have said. I have simply indicated the main lines of approach to these human problems. They are national problems and as long as we have the support of the House we propose to continue on the same line.

We have at all times pursued that line and we have found that it has been to the national advantage. As long as we have the support of the House, we propose to continue on these same lines. What we are asking now is that, as we got the confidence of the House when we took office two years ago, we should get similarly a vote of confidence now that we have dealt with the most serious and difficult part of our task, setting the national finances right as a necessary basis for future advance. If we get that, we shall continue to do our work and proceed with our programme. I am quite satisfied that we have the opportunity of doing it and that the people as well as the majority in the Dáil will support us.

Deputy J.A. Costello rose.

Mr. Norton

Is the motion being seconded?

An Ceann Comhairle

It is not usual to ask for a seconder for a motion, on occasions of this kind, from the Leader of the Government.

Mr. Norton

I wondered if anyone was prepared to second it.

Mr. J.A. Costello

Like people who have listened to the speech just delivered by the Taoiseach, I have been wondering whether we have been living in a dream, whether it has been all imagination that for the last two years this country has suffered from the impact of a policy of austerity and restriction which has brought untold misery to every section of the people.

I was wondering, too, whether we were dreaming that there had been three by-election results in recent weeks. During the course of his longspeech, the Taoiseach never once mentioned the people of this country, or the electorate. He started his observations by recalling that he had secured a tenuous majority in this House two years ago and he then said he would continue with what he called his programme so long as he retained the confidence of the House. He ended up by saying that he proposed to continue with his so-called programme so long as he retained the confidence of the House.

There has been not one single reference to the conditions or circumstances which brought about the tabling of the motion which this House is to debate to-day. There has not been a single reference to the fact that since the establishment of this State no Government has ever received such a clear and unambiguous indication from the people of want of confidence or a more mandatory direction from them to submit themselves and their policy to the judgment and verdict of the people, than this Government has got from the electorate of East Cork, North-West Dublin and County Wicklow.

We have the spectacle here to-day of the Taoiseach ignoring the verdict of the electorate of those three constituencies, interpreting, as I will show and firmly believe, the wishes of the vast majority of the Irish people and expressing those wishes in no uncertain terms, that this Government should clear out, get out and stay out. We have the motion put down here—a motion ignoring the people. The Taoiseach said that he and his Government will stay in office so long as they can get support from the Deputies of this House. I assert that this House and the majority of the Deputies of this House are out of harmony and out of touch with the wishes of the people. Any Deputy who supports this motion clearly demonstrates the fact that he is misinterpreting the desires and acting contrary to the expressed wishes of the vast majority of the Irish people.

This motion is nothing but a device to secure a ragged cloak for the Government's political shame—an attempt to secure, by means of a Parliamentarydevice, the inadequate ragged cloak of a Parliamentary Resolution. But it is even more than that. When the results of the North-West Dublin by-election were announced in this House the parliamentary correspondent of the Irish Presswrote a description, which appeared in that paper the following day, of the scenes of jubilation which occurred on the Opposition side of the House and the scenes on the other side of the House. He described those scenes, so far as the Government Party were concerned, by saying that “Government Deputies cheered defiantly.” That is the note that was struck then, when the people of the urban constituency of North-West Dublin declared in a fashion that was unprecedented in the history of this State since it was established, their condemnation of the Government's policy and of what they were suffering from. A note of defiance was struck at that time. This motion of the Taoiseach and of the Government continues that note of defiance of the people's wishes and of the people's desires. Notwithstanding whatever has been done and whatever has been said, this Government intend, if they can secure a ragged majority, a meagre majority, from Deputies of this House —in defiance of the will of the people— to continue in office in the hope that something may turn up at some time in the future to save them from the wrath of the electorate.

When I heard the Taoiseach speak to-day I thought to myself that here was a man who, for 16 years prior to his assumption of office during the past two years, had held office in plenitude of power with a strong majority behind him. For 16 years he governed this State. In 11 of those 16 years— at times when he had the clearest and strongest majority in this House—he imposed general elections on the people of this country. He imposed a general election in 1933. He imposed a general election in 1937 and again in 1938, in 1943 and in 1944. In 11 years, he imposed five general elections on the people at a time when the Fianna Fáil Party were at the height of their power—their arrogant power— because the people required to bepunished and the Opposition required to be put in their place. What a disedifying spectacle this Dáil and this country will witness to-day, and the remaining days on which this motion will be debated—a spectacle of that Government hanging on to office and seeking to retain their power by means of votes which will turn the division lobbies of this House into something resembling a hospital corridor and in complete defiance of the wishes of the Irish people. O mighty Caesar, dost thou lie so low! The head of that Government—a Government which was so arrogant in the height of its power, a Government which refused to take dictation or even advice from the Opposition or the people—imposed his will upon the people through general election after general election. Now he refuses to do what anybody or any head of Government would do after the defeats which his Party sustained in the by-elections. Fianna Fáil refuse to submit themselves and their Party to the ultimate judgment and verdict of the people. We have had the disedifying spectacle of this Government, this mighty Caesar, sinking so low that they are hanging on to office with the aid of the votes of Deputies whose mandate—if ever they had a mandate for his support—has long since been withdrawn.

General elections are bad for a country. They waste time, money and energy which could be spent on more national enterprises. No responsible Government would seek to impose on the people an unnecessary general election. No responsible Opposition would endeavour to bring about a general election before the end of the normal term unless for very special reasons. With these principles in mind, with a full sense of our responsibility and knowing the uncertainty that exists in every sector of the Irish economy at the present moment, we on this side of the House, from every Party, have, inside and outside the Dáil, in the interests of the democratic machine and the proper working of our democracy in this country, challenged the Government again and again to go up for general electionand submit themselves to the verdict of the people.

At the inception of the campaign in North-West Dublin, in the first speech I made, I emphasised the importance of the result of that election. I drew attention to the fact—which was a fact —that the continued existence of the present Government would almost certainly depend upon the result of that by-election. At that time, I asked the electors to declare with certainty their verdict upon the policy of the Government as they had felt it in the previous one and a half years. The people were electrified at the dramatic result of the North-West Dublin by-election. By a majority of two to one, two electors out of every three in North-West Dublin declared that they wanted the Government to quit. The phrase used was: "By your verdict and by the result of the by-election, serve on the Government immediate notice to quit." The result was clear, unambiguous and of the utmost significance and, when it was announced, even Deputies of the Government Party did not try to minimise the significance of that overwhelming electoral defeat which the Government had forced upon them by the outraged and enraged electorate of North-West Dublin. Only the Minister for Finance—who, as reported at column 138, No. 12, of the Official Report of the 8th of May, 1953—said that when it came to Wicklow we would get what he called "a land" because we would not have the support of the mob there. Wicklow came. We had the support of what he calls "the mob". East Cork came and we had the support of what he calls "the mob". North-West Dublin, East Cork and Wicklow have, by two to one—and these are the figures that I will show in a moment—declared that this Government no longer have the support of the people in those three constituencies. That verdict was given by two voters of every three voters in those three constituencies.

At Cobh, when I started a campaign on behalf of the Fine Gael Party at the East Cork by-election, I again drew attention to the fact that we had challenged this Government to get outand submit themselves to the Irish people's verdict, that they had refused to do so, and that we could not get them out of the Dáil so long as we had these so-called "Independent" Deputies clinging to them in self-preservation. I pointed out that every Deputy on the Opposition side of the House had repeatedly put to him one question over the past few months. I have been stopped in the streets. People have looked into my motor-car by the kerbside—people whom I do not know—and their question to me was: "When are you going to get this Government out?" We have tried in the Dáil to get them out but we cannot do it in this Dáil, nor can we, if the Division Lobby is turned into a hospital corridor, and if Deputies, whose political existence depends on their maintaining the present Government in power continue to do so, get them out and that is why this motion was brought before this House to-day.

I told the people of East Cork and Wicklow, and repeated in practically every speech I made that they had a chance of making it clear to this Government that they no longer had the support of the people, that the moral foundations of the Government were gone and that they ought to get out. I said in the speeches I made that what my colleagues and I wanted and I believed the people in the Opposition groups wanted was, not that an anti-Government candidate should win in each of these constituencies, not that we should have merely a Party victory or a political victory over our opponents, but that we should have such an overwhelming victory that even the present Government and those hangers-on of the Government who are keeping it in office could not mistake the meaning of the verdict and could not twist or misinterpret it.

The results of these two by-elections gave in a more startling and dramatic fashion even than North-West Dublin the view of the Irish people on the present Government. The people have submitted to unnecessary high taxation, recession of business, restriction of credit, unemployment, emigration, part-time unemployment, a soaring cost of living, increased and increasingrates; everything that they wear, everything that they eat, and everything they use has been increased in price, and their prospects of securing a livelihood have been diminished. Is that the programme which the Taoiseach is asking the Dáil by this motion to allow him and his colleagues to continue?

We had an elementary discussion on various types of policies, capital expenditure, increased industrial production, and other matters of that kind. I will deal very shortly indeed with some of these matters that the Taoiseach referred to, but I have no intention, and I am sure my colleagues on this side of the House have no intention either, of allowing this debate to develop along merely economic lines. The issue for every Deputy is this. Is he going to obey, in accordance with democratic principles, the dictates of the Irish people given to him in the dramatic fashion in which they have been given, not merely by Wicklow and East Cork, and not merely by North-West Dublin, but by the vast majority of the electorate of the Irish people? That is the inescapable question which has to be answered; not are you going to let this Government stay in office in the hope that something may turn up to save them and these other Deputies from the wrath of the electorate. The flood-tide has risen against the present Government. Like King Canute of old, the Taoiseach and his adherents, the so-called Independent Deputies, are trying to keep out that flood-tide by a device such as this and, just as King Canute failed to keep out the tide, so the present Government will fail to keep out the electoral tide. The tide will come even more strongly and will overwhelm them even more decisively when the time comes, as it inevitably must come.

By this motion, which as I say is merely a device to cloak their political shame, this Government are seeking to escape from the clear obligations which they have and which are demanded by the present political situation. We have challenged them again and again to consult, not the hangers-on of the present Government, not those people whose political existence depends ontheir staying in this Dáil, but the people, the only authority which can in present circumstances give them a vote of confidence. The people are the only authority from whom, under God, this Government derive their authority to govern. That is the authority which the Government should consult.

If the Taoiseach is entitled, as he says he is, or claims that he is, to continue in office here so long as he gets the support of the majority of the people, that presupposes that he has the confidence of the people of the country. Let him answer that, yes or no. He has alleged in this House that he and his Government have the confidence of the Irish people to continue the policy they have put into operation in this country in the last two years. If he says he has that authority, then his duty is plain to submit it to the Irish people, submit it to the ultimate test, and he will come back here with added glory, added prestige and added power and authority and we will have been proved wrong and we will remain in opposition for very many years to come.

Why has he not uttered one single syllable about these by-elections or the reason why this motion asking for the confidence of the Dáil has been put down? He did not give one single reason in the course of his 50 minute speech as to why the motion was put down. Was it not only a piece of make-believe, a sham designed to cover up the fact that the motion was put down in defiance of the Irish people? "The people cannot do wrong; they are not entitled to do wrong. It is not true that they have voted against me; it is not true because I say it is not true. Therefore, it cannot be true and therefore we will go on ignoring it." That is the philosophy behind the Taoiseach's speech. Not by a syllable, a suggestion, an innuendo or a hint was any reason given why this motion of confidence was put down or anything to connect it with the dramatic results of the last few weeks in East Cork and County Wicklow.

The Taoiseach asks for the confidence of this Dáil. What possiblesignificance can there be in a so-called motion of confidence which rests upon the votes of Deputies who would destroy their own political careers if they were to vote against this motion, whose votes must clearly be cast, not in the national interest, but in their own selfish interests and who ignore the fundamental principle upon which they as well as the Government should rest, that Deputies and the Government are the servants and not the masters of the people? But it is on such self-interest, ignoring all political principle, that this motion, if it be carried, must stand. What possible respect can the people of this country have for a Government rest ing upon such an insecure and such a foul foundation?

Deputy Cogan is one of the men who votes and keeps and maintains this Government in office. Over 14,000 of his constituents have told him to get out. The people of North-West Dublin told this Government that it no longer has the confidence of the City of Dublin or of the majority of the electorate of the City of Dublin. What respect can people have for the democratic institutions of this State, if the Government clinging to office and desirous of continuing in power, ignores and insults the wishes of the electorate in that fashion and continues in office in the hope that something may turn up, that some turn in international affairs may secure a change in prices, or that they may, perhaps, by secret adoption—as I gathered from what the Taoiseach said this afternoon—of the policy of the inter-Party Government, by the secret adoption of that, or by some fortuitous change occurring which may enable them in a short time to go to the electorate and say: We did scold you, we did bring unnecessary pain and suffering upon the people of this country and we did inaugurate and put into operation during two years, a régime of austerity, business recession, increased rates, unnecessarily high taxation, but forget about that, we are not as bad as you think we are, and we have learned our lesson although we are not saying it, and unemployment is not so bad, and anyway, you have no right to be criticising the present Government?

cial position and the problems which confronted us, may I remind Deputy Costello that, in the Budget statement, his Minister for Finance, Deputy McGilligan, stated—the reference is Volume 125, No. 13, column 1884 of the Dáil Debates:—

"... there still continues to be a substantial use of past savings merely to level up standards of consumption... it is to be feared that we are not producing and earning enough to pay our way."

It was not Deputy MacEntee, the present Minister for Finance, who said that. It was Deputy McGilligan, then Minister for Finance, when introducing a Budget which was never discussed or debated in this House as it ought to have been. In the same speech, at column 1879, what did Deputy McGilligan who was then Minister for Finance say about bank credit? He said this:—

"In present circumstances it is desirable that the banks, while continuing to finance capital projects, the laying-in of essential stocks and normal import requirements, should discourage any merely speculative or excessive borrowing."

Deputy Costello and the rest of the Coalition Cabinet have been very eloquent throughout the country during the by-elections and since the Budget of 1952, but were they aware of and do they take responsibility for these pronouncements made by Deputy McGilligan in his Budget statement of 1951? Apparently they had good reason for desiring a reduction in consumption and for pointing to the fact—because even they had discerned it though they were not prepared to take any steps to deal with the situation—that we were living beyond our means, that we were not financing our capital commitments from our savings, but were simply living on our past savings for as long as, and as far as, they would go.

According to the report of a speech delivered by the then Minister for Industry and Commerce, Deputy Morrissey, on the 30th January, 1951, he pointed out that:—

"Expenditure on drink, tobacco and amusements had doubled since1938 and amounted to no less than £44,000,000 in 1949 or one-eighth of the national income. The quantity of beer and spirits consumed in 1949 was nearly 50 per cent. over pre-war. The volume of betting last year, he said, assumed staggering proportions. Nearly £8,000,000 was wagered at race courses and on bets placed in bookmakers' premises, totalling an equivalent sum, so that he reckoned, when one took in track betting, that about £16,000,000 was expended on gambling last year, a three-fold increase since 1938."

The motor taxation register shows an increase of over 75 per cent. in the number of private cars registered, and, yet, according to Deputy Costello, the country is in a state of misery, agony and penury. It is strange that, in the affluent atmosphere of the law courts where we are to appoint extra judges to deal with the number of motor-car cases set down for hearing, where we have long rows of barristers and counsel picking up handsome briefs in cases that extend over long periods of time, Deputy Costello can conjure up this marvellous picture of misery and agony to which the country has been reduced.

I am not aware that the position to which Deputy Morrissey referred when speaking as Minister for Industry and Commerce, and as reported in the newspapers of February, 1951, has changed to that extent. I am not aware that the amusements and entertainments of the people have been reduced to any such extent as Deputy Costello alleges. I am aware that there has been a reduction, but only a partial reduction, in the number of cars which have been registered. Perhaps they all belong to barristers or to people who frequent the Four Courts or some such affluent place, but in any case the numbers are very substantial. In 1951, there were 3,877 new motor-cars registered; in 1952 the number was 3,113, and, in the first quarter of the present year already, 3,028 new cars have been registered.

Mr. O'Higgins

They probably belong to the dance hall proprietors.

Mr. Derrig

Of course, the peopleThat is the way the finances of this country have been put into order, as the Taoiseach indicated to-day—the saving of £3.9 million at a cost of £11,500,000.

The Taoiseach

That is not so.

Mr. J.A. Costello

Whether that be so or not, what was the justification for a democratic Government having stated that part of its policy to the people and having secured the support of the so-called Independent Deputies, saying they would maintain these food subsidies and have an efficient system of price control and not fulfilling it? That is the programme that it to be continued, is it? A policy of austerity, a régime of frightfulness, a hair-shirt policy, which was started in the 1952 Budget and was continued in this year's Budget without alleviation. Where is the moral authority for this Government to continue that policy or continue in Government when the people have spoken trumpet-tongued in denunciation of that policy and its effects on themselves, on their families and on the country as a whole? "The mob" in Wicklow, to use the words which the Minister for Finance used in reference to the electorate of the North-West Dublin, and "the mob" in East Cork spoke and spoke emphatically.

Let us take the by-elections over the whole country for the last 12 months or since this Government assumed office and see what lesson is to be learned therefrom. We would be justified, taking our stand here on this motion, in asking Deputies who have any regard for democratic institutions, any pride in their own esteem or any shame left in them, to vote against this Government, not to put us or any Party on this side of the House into office but to vote against this Government and to force the Government to go to the people and ask the people: "Do you approve of us or do you not," or "do you want us or do you not want us"? That is all we ask Deputies to do—not to put us in office but to let the ultimate authority decide. Those people whosepolitical careers depend upon their sitting here, will of course vote to maintain this Government in office but the division list will show the authority which this Government has, if they carry this motion, and whether or not it has been carried in defiance of all moral principles, of democratic ideals and of the unambiguously expressed will of the Irish people.

I could sympathise to some extent with the Fianna Fáil Party in their troubles, due to the policy brought into operation by the present Government without any consultation with the people, if it could be suggested that that bad policy had brought bad times for the Fianna Fáil Party but the consultation between the Leaders of Fianna Fáil, the members of the Party and the hangers-on should have taken place outside this Dáil. The country should not have been subjected to the disreputable and disedifying sight of the Taoiseach appealing here for the support he needs to these disreputable Deputies who brought this Government into being, who, by their actions in supporting the abolition of the food subsidies, in increasing the cost of living and in imposing additional taxation on the people, have brought misery and unemployment to their homes. They will no doubt continue to get the support of these Deputies to the great scandal of the Irish people and the great damage of democratic institutions in this country.

Let Deputies examine the cold and calm facts of the six by-elections which have been held since this Government took office. Elections were held in Limerick, Waterford, Mayo, North-West Dublin, East Cork and Wicklow in the last 12 months. At the general election of 1951 1,332,000 people over the whole country exercised the franchise. Of these 1,332,000 electors, 617,000 voted for Fianna Fáil—that is 46 per cent. of the electorate in 1951 voted Fianna Fáil. Notwithstanding the smear campaign which they launched against the inter-Party Government, notwithstanding their clamant denunciation of that Government for the increase in the cost of living which had taken place during their term of office, only 46 per cent. of the peoplevoted for Fianna Fáil. A total of 715,000 electors, or 54 per cent. of the electorate, voted anti-Fianna Fáil. At the same general election, in these six constituencies in which by-elections have taken place since this Government came into office, 176,000 votes in all were polled. That was 13 per cent. of the total poll in the country. Of the 176,000 votes in these six constituencies Fianna Fáil received 81,000 or 46 per cent. of the votes. Therefore you had the situation in 1951 where, over the whole country, Fianna Fáil received 46 per cent. of the votes cast and in the six counties in which by-elections have since taken place they also received 46 per cent. of the total votes cast, so that these six constituencies gave a perfect microcosm of the whole country. They reflected truly the feelings of the whole country in 1951; equally it can be taken that in the last 12 months the votes cast in these constituencies reflected the feelings of the people of the whole country with regard to the policy of the present Government. Since 1951, however, a remarkable change has taken place even in these six constituencies, in two of which Fianna Fáil won by-elections some 12 months ago. They won two of these very precariously, but still they won them.

What is the position now? Taking the figures in these six by-elections, the total vote differed very slightly, if at all, from the total vote in the general election of 1951. Again 13 per cent. of the total electorate of the country had an opportunity of pronouncing their verdict upon the policy of the present Government, that is, one voter out of every eight in the whole country had an opportunity of declaring his views on the policy of the present Government. The results of these elections show that the vote for Fianna Fáil has fallen from the figure of 81,000 in 1951, to 69,000 in this year; in other words it has fallen from 46 per cent. of the total electorate to 39 per cent. or by a total of 11,000 votes. That is a clear indication from constituencies, which accurately reflected the feeling of the people over the whole country in 1951, of what the feeling of the people now is. I do not overlook the fact that two of the threeby-elections held 12 months ago—in Waterford, Mayo and Limerick—were won by the Government but that was before the full impact of the harsh Budget proposals had been felt by the people. The subsidies had not yet been withdrawn. The people did not really believe that what subsequently happened was going to happen. I have no doubt that if by-elections were held in present circumstances in Mayo and Waterford where Fianna Fáil won precarious victories last year, the results would be the same as they were in East Cork and in Wicklow. If the Government had the courage of their convictions, instead of having the courage which is represented by this bogus motion now before the House, they would submit themselves and their policy to the judgment of the people and abide by the result as we would abide by it.

That is the situation that speaks in trumpet-tongued denunciation of the policy of this Government. That is the result of the decision in these six by-elections, all the by-elections that have taken place, the most recent being North-West Dublin, Wicklow and East Cork—North-West Dublin being an urban constituency, Wicklow a rural constituency and East Cork predominantly a rural constituency. Two out of every three in these constituencies have united in emphatic condemnation of the Government and its policy and in a clamant demand that this Government should get out and submit itself to the verdict of the people. As I have said, no responsible Government and no responsible Opposition lightly demands or seeks a general election. No Deputy, irrespective of what Party he belongs to, likes to submit himself to the turmoil, the expense and the personal trouble involved in a general election, but we on this side have a duty not merely to our constituents and not merely to the people now in Ireland but to the people of the future who look to us to maintain respect for democratic institutions and to do everything that lies in our power to bring about that general election for which not we but the people have asked so clearly and emphatically inthe last three by-elections, and even in the entire six by-elections.

The Taoiseach has given an indication of what he hopes may happen. I say and insist that he should allow the people first to decide. I want to make it clear—I think I have already emphasised the point—that we do not seek a general election merely for the purpose of having a general election in the hope that we will get into office nor do we seek it merely in an irresponsible mood. We seek it because we believe we are interpreting the wishes of the vast majority of the Irish people. While I maintain with all the conviction I have in me that the people have demanded from this Government that they should render an account of their stewardship in the last two years to them, through the medium of a general election, I want it to be absolutely clear that I am not arguing to-day that if a Government—this Government or any other—happens to lose a by-election during its term of office, or happens to lose even a series of by-election, it necessarily follows as an inevitable consequence that they must submit themselves to a general election.

By-elections in a democratic country, by their results, give a warning to the Government that the people are not satisfied and that they had better watch their step, or they show the trend of public opinion and, in certain circumstances, can be such a clear and unequivocal denunciation of Government policy that it would require any decent democratically-minded Government forthwith to resign and submit themselves to the verdict of the people at a general election. That is the position here. I do not argue or contend, any more than I argue that merely because a Government happens to lose one, two or even three by-elections during their term of office, they must necessarily resign, that Governments must not endeavour, if the interests of the country require it, to put into operation unpopular policies.

This Government has been trying to make a virtue of the fact that they have been putting into operation unpopular policies. They have insisted upon putting into operation unpopularpolicies and particularly policies about which the people have not been informed, policies of austerity, of restriction, of increased cost of living, with consequential unemployment, in respect of which the people got no indication during the course of the general election or before the establishment of the Government that it was the intention of the Government to operate them. When by-election after by-election has gone against a Government, when they have suffered and sustained a dramatic defeat at the hands of the electors in the way in which this Government has, in Limerick, North-West Dublin, East Cork and Wicklow, when the result of all six by-elections is to the effect I have stated, it is not merely a warning to the Government to watch their step, not merely an indication of the trend of public opinion. It is doing what I and my colleagues asked the electors of East Cork, Wicklow and North-West Dublin to do, to give their verdict with certainty, with such emphasis and in such an unambiguous way that even the Taoiseach could not twist and turn it from a vote of want of confidence into a vote of confidence for himself.

That is what they did. They made no mistake and nobody can misinterpret the meaning of the results of these by-elections in the way the Taoiseach does it to-day by completely ignoring them, by failing to utter a single syllable about them. Does any Deputy want authority from me for the proposition that, if a Government have run away from the people, like an engine running away without a train, if they have got out of touch and out of harmony with the wishes of the people, their clear duty is to consult the wishes of the people by means of a dissolution and a general election? Does any Deputy want authority from me for that proposition as a principle upon which democracy must rest? Does any Deputy want authority from me for the proposition that, if a Government persists in imposing upon the people a policy of austerity, unpopular policies, policies which bring down upon them what they believe to be unnecessary hardship and suffering, that Government have no mandate from thepeople, particularly after a series of by-elections in which, in startling, striking and dramatic fashion, the people have expressed their views that they will have no more of it if they can help it and that in these circumstances, which are the present circumstances, it is the duty of any decent Government, of any self-respecting Deputy who has the interests of the country and not his own pecuniary interests at heart, to carry out the mandate of the people and let the people decide? Again, I emphasise that that is all we are asking—get out and let the people decide one way or the other.

If authority is needed by any Deputy who is sufficiently independent and clear-minded, who has a rag of respect left for himself, let him go to Lord Lindsay on the "Modern Democratic State." He will find on page 274 these words:—

"In a democratic society, laws, if they are to be successful, must rest largely upon consent. The force behind government can do something but not very much. If laws are to be effectually obeyed, their demands cannot go beyond what the people are prepared to do."

What the Taoiseach wants to do by this motion is to get this Dáil by means of the disreputable Deputies to whom I have referred, to continue in office, going beyond what the people are prepared to do. If authority is needed— I know the Taoiseach likes authority— let me refer him to Sir Ernest Barker's book on Elections of Government at page 46 for some principles on which he would be very well advised to ponder, not in the interests of himself and his precarious Government but in the interests of the Irish people and the future generations of the Irish race:—

"Parliament must maintain some sort of harmony, and act in some sort of contact, with the electorate. A parliament which has lost contact with the electorate is a parliament which is virtually functus officio:it has dropped out of the general current of national discussion into a backwater; and it must be brought back into the current by the machinery of dissolution and new election,before it can act in its proper office and perform its proper function.”

These words fit the present position here. This Government is out of harmony with the people. The people have expressed their view strongly that they want no more of this policy, a policy about which they were not told before the present Government was formed. The Taoiseach, instead of doing what the electorate has told him to do, instead of submitting himself and his Government and his Government's policies and his own record and that of his colleagues to the people for their verdict and their judgment, wants to hang on here in office in this disreputable and disedifying fashion until either death or the process of time takes the decision out of their hands.

Ministers have been good at peddling catch-cries. The Taoiseach in the course of his closing observations to-day said, so far as I could catch it, that they had set about and had settled —I think he said had settled—the national finances, had put the national finances right, before undertaking the resumption of the national advance. National advance, if you please! How has he put the national finances right? What is the programme involved in the outline of economic platitudes to which he treated this House during the course of his 45 minute speech? Was there a single suggestion during the course of that speech that the present policy of austerity is to stop? Was there any suggestion that this policy of austerity put into operation over the last two and a half years is to be reversed? Not a single word was said in the Taoiseach's statement to-day about a reduction in taxation. Does he not know—if he does not know he is far more out of contact with the people than even we think—that every section of the community is suffering misery and agony because of the excess of unjust taxation imposed upon every section of the people in every direction by the policy of the present Government during the last two years?

There was not a single indication in the course of that jejune speech we heard to-day of any intention on the part of the Government to relieve our suffering people. There was no indicationof relief for business from the sufferings that have been inflicted on it over the last two years. Every possible charge and commodity that could be increased has been increased. Even if one does not own a motor car or a radio or does not use a telephone or write a letter one does not escape. Even if one is an old age pensioner one suffers the impact of all these extra charges outside the actual Budget, including the extra halfpenny in the lb. in the retail price of sugar so surreptitiously put on by the Minister for Industry and Commerce in the last few weeks. All these charges bear heavily on every section because every section of the community has to meet the cost.

There is no use in the Taoiseach talking about our industrial advance. All the unemployed are not going to get employment now that the three by-elections are over. The disreputable rag, tag and bobtail supporting the present Government will continue to rag and to tag and to bob in the way in which the Taoiseach wants them to. Does the Taoiseach not know—if he does not know let him look at the figures in the Central Statistics Office —that year by year since this Government came into office industrial production has been falling? It is still falling.

Minister for Lands (Mr. Derrig)

No.

Mr. J.A. Costello

The Taoiseach said that he and his Government were relying on the fact that import prices were falling to bring about some alleviation of the cost of living. Has he forgotten that in the last few weeks the cost of living has shown an upward trend of three points despite the fact that import prices are falling? The real truth is, and the people have not yet fully realised it and it must therefore be emphasised and brought home to them, that although import prices have been falling here in the last two years and although they were falling when the famous, or infamous, White Paper was discussed in September, 1951, and although the Minister for Finance said then that he did not see any hope or prospect of import prices falling, they were even then falling andthey continued to fall thereafter. Despite that fact, what has been happening to our internal prices? They have been going up and up and up. How can there be any alleviation in that situation for the unemployed? How can there be any hope of industrial expansion when there is internal price inflation brought about by the policy of the Government? How can there be any industrial expansion? How can we hope to put our industrial products on the world market in those circumstances?

It is folly and futility and false pretences for the Taoiseach to allege that there is hope now, if the Government is allowed to hang on in office, that because import prices are falling prices are likely to fall here. Until policy here is radically altered and until something is done whereby this internal price inflation can be reversed there is no hope. So long as the policy of the present Government continues to be implemented there can be no hope. Of course the Taoiseach dragged in the balance of payments. He said that that was all over now and we could start and buy more of everything. The story of the balance of payments is one of the most disreputable in the disreputable repertoire of the Fianna Fáil Government over the last two years.

The people have had the experience of having their standard of living brought down by the deliberate policy of the Minister for Finance and his colleagues, by the restriction of imports—imports necessary for the maintenance of our standard of living. All that was deliberate Government policy. It was deliberate Government policy to restrict imports; we were eating too much and living too well; our incomes had advanced beyond the cost of living and therefore food subsidies had to be abolished. Our people had to pay more in taxation so that the excess money they had available for their own private spending or saving at their own will and pleasure could be taken out of their pockets. That was Government policy. It was Government policy to tax the people so that, in the words of Deputy Lemass in March, 1951, now Minister for Industry andCommerce, the people must be taught that instead of giving 5/4 in every £ to the Government to do their spending they must give 6/-, 6/6 or even 7/-and be made to learn that the Government is better able to do their spending than the taxpaper or the citizen with his or her own money.

These are the philosophies and policies behind the austerity régime that this Government has been operating over the last two years. The Minister for Finance said his first concern was the bringing into balance the unbalance in our international accounts. That was his first anxiety. His first anxiety was not the unemployed. His first anxiety was not the building up of the industries of this country. His first anxiety was not to bring back those external assets which are depreciating abroad and which could be utilised better over here, instead of allowing them to be utilised for the benefit of the London money market. That is the balance of payments. The balance of our international account was achieved, as we have said; because of the greatly increased export in our agricultural produce and because of the fact that last year our agricultural produce reached a point that it has never reached before. It reached that because of the policy of the inter-Party Government and of Deputy James Dillon, the Minister for Agriculture. That was one of the reasons why the position was rectified and also because of the destocking.

In the course of his remarks, the Taoiseach referred to the stockpiling that had taken place in 1950. That stockpile was destocked and you can increase your bank balance very easily if you sell your securities and lodge the proceeds in your bank account. These are some of the reasons why the balance of payments position was rectified and not because this Govern-has brought, as the Minister for Industry and Commerce alleged in the last few days, order into our financial affairs and that we could now resume what they are pleased to call the "national advance." The national advance so far has been downwards and in the direction of austerity, human suffering and misery. That iswhat is going to be continued. After all the penal taxes that have been imposed and after all the human misery and the hardships so unnecessarily imposed by the Budget of 1952, the best the Minister for Finance could say was that their Budget was unbalanced. He started in 1951 or 1952 by telling the people that the object of this Government, unlike the previous Government, was to balance the Budget. He imposed harsh and unnecessary taxation—we still say it was unnecessary taxation—in order to balance that Budget. The best he could do—I avoid the use of the word fake and use the word formal—was to present a deficit of £2,000,000 in the Budget of this year and on his own showing he has failed to balance the Budget.

Is that bringing order into our affairs? Is that bringing order into our domestic expenses? Is that the best he can show? That is the order that has been brought into our finances—high taxation through the medium of the Budget and higher rates through the medium of other instruments of taxation outside the Budget. The national loan stands at 104 at the expense of the taxpayer and for the benefit of those people who were fortunate enough to invest in it. This happened because the Minister for Finance failed in his duty to seek a loan 12 months before he did. Is that bringing order into our financial affairs? The truth is that were it not for the jolt the Government received from these three by-elections they would still be carrying on their policy.

We have no desire to avail of office. We oppose this motion not for the purpose of filling office. May I use the words of a famous British statesman:—"We know what the torments of office were. We know what the fruits of office are not." We also know that it is the unmistakable wish of the vast majority of the Irish people at the present moment, as expressed in the recent by-elections, that there should be a general election. That is what we ask for. Let the people decide whether they want this Government or not or any other Government, whether it be inter-Party or otherwise. The people have an alternative Government tothis. The policy of such a group cooperating together has already been before the people. I have never criticised this Government on its policy without including points of concrete policy and proposals not a single one of which has been criticised by any one of the Fianna Fáil Party or Government or subjected to any constructive criticism. We have that constructive policy available for the people. We have the record of this Government and it can be compared with the record of the inter-Party Government. Human sufferings and miseries have been unnecessarily inflicted on the people by the present Government and all we ask is that the wishes of the people expressed in these by-elections be given effect to at once. The Government should have the decency to get out and submit themselves to the verdict of the people and to abide by the result.

Mr. Derrig

Deputy Costello reminded me that I read a speech by him reported in the newspapers on the 8th May, 1951, in which he told the Irish people that general elections were a bad thing.

Mr. J.A. Costello

I quoted that to-day.

Mr. Derrig

Deputy Costello said that elections were bad for the country.

Mr. J.A. Costello

I said that to-day

Mr. Derrig

It was not Fianna Fáil that created the election in 1951 but Deputy Costello and his colleagues. They had suffered no defeat in by-elections and they had suffered no defeat in the Dáil but Deputy Costello took to his heels to Mills Hall to announce to the Irish people that he was having a general election because he was not prepared to face defeat in Dáil Éireann.

Mr. O'Higgins

He faced the people.

Mr. Derrig

Before we put this country to the expense and the trouble of a general election and before we upset the normal business of this countryat this time of the year, we are entitled to put the question to Dáil Éireann whether they want the present Government to remain in office or not.

Mr. O'Higgins

You will wear your white feathers—74 of them.

Captain Cowan

There has been no interruption up to this.

Mr. Derrig

The Deputies have given themselves sufficient time for the next few days but interruptions here or elsewhere have never prevented me from saying what I have to say and never will. The more I am interrupted, the longer I can continue so long as my physical strength permits me to do so. I was dealing with the point that Deputy Costello and his colleagues, when in office, went to the country when, according to the thesis he has laid down to-day, it was not necessary for them to go, but they were faced with a defeat in Dáil Éireann and they went out taking very good care not to tell the Irish people the state of affairs they had left behind them for us to clear up.

Deputy Costello and his colleagues were three and half years in office and even those of them not familiar with the administration of Government had ample opportunity to understand such questions as the balancing of the Budget and the maintenance of the national finances and the national credit in a proper state. They did not choose to put their affairs in order. At least before we go to the country I hope that we shall leave a better situation behind us than they did in regard to the Budget, to the international payments and to our economy generally. I think it will not be very difficult to show that that is not only possible but is certain.

As the Taoiseach has said, there were no net savings whatever in 1951 —we spent more and we consumed more than we earned. In the Budget debates which took place in a perfunctory manner for a single day when the usual Budget resolutions were passed in the informal manner that has been customary in this House, and when the Opposition were denied the opportunity of properly examining our finan-

The Taoiseach in the course of his observations this afternoon referred to his intention and the intention of his colleagues to continue in what he called the Fianna Fáil programme. What is the programme he intends to continue? Is it a policy of austerity, increased taxation, increased rates, recession of business, restriction of credit, unemployment, human misery in all directions? Is that the programme? Because that is the programme that has been carried out in the last two years. That was a programme that was never put before the Irish people. That is a programme which is out of harmony with our wishes—that programme which the people never got an opportunity of endorsing or approving or saying whether or not they wanted it. That is the programme which the present Government do not want now to give them an opportunity of pronouncing a verdict upon. Is that a policy that was told to the people during the course of the general election of 1951? It was not. Was it a policy that was even told to those people, those Deputies, whose votes the Government and the Fianna Fáil Party were seeking at that time to make them a Government? Was it told to them? It was not—after the election, but not before. In order to secure Government at any cost, a 17-point programme was published by the Fianna Fáil Party as being the programme on which they would operate when they became a Government. Whether it was as a result of that, I do not know, but by a slender majority of two votes they got into office. Even then, did they start putting that programme which they had misrepresented to the Irish people that they intended to carry out if elected into operation? They did not.

Outstanding in their policy as put into operation was a repudiation of the principal point in that 17-point programme, the maintenance of food subsidies and the maintenance of an efficient system of price control. That was the policy that they told the people in the Press before they became a Government that they would operate. Instead, when they came into office, the Minister for Finance and hiscolleague, the Minister for Industry and Commerce, threw the country and, in particular, the business community into confusion and unrest by speaking and talking about crises and by references to difficulties amounting almost to desperation. And they destroyed the credit of this country and the reputation of this country, and have fastened upon the backs of the taxpayers for many generations to come, avoidable taxation because of their assault upon the credit of the people which had stood very high until they operated in the manner in which they started to operate from the time they took up office.

We have the position where they were unable to go to the country to get the same terms for a loan for this country that had been as credit-worthy a State as any in the world before they came into office, and they had to borrow money on terms higher than a British city corporation could do it many months afterwards. That policy was never told to the people. And the Irish people have now to pay in their taxes and in their rates, and in the prices of the things they have to buy, for that loan which they got after a period of stress and strain and trial when they sought credit of this country. That loan now stands at a premium of four points—the selling price is 104. That policy was not told to the people. And when the Budget of 1952 was indicated in all its severity, there was not a single thing in that Budget which had a policy or principle or philosophy embodied in it which had been told to the people to build a policy of confidence or for which the people had been prepared. Were the people told, as the Minister for Finance told them in the 1952 Budget, that the Government was satisfied that incomes generally had advanced beyond the cost of living? That was the fundamental principle on which that Budget was founded, that incomes generally had advanced beyond the cost of living and that, therefore, it was wrong and economically unsound for the Government to continue still the subsidies or subsidisation of foodstuffs; and off went the food subsidies to the extent of something like £3.9 million at an expense of over £11,500,000 in taxation.who own these cars are not in any of the constituencies where by-elections were fought, particularly North-West Dublin, but they are in some part of the country, and money has been found to pay for them as well as to pay tax on them and to maintain them. That does not indicate that the standard of living of the class which is in a position to purchase cars, either for their own use or the use of their families, has deteriorated very greatly.

Deputy Costello's Government not only left us in the position in which we had to face the heavy deficit of £6.7 million in 1951, but it would have been £2,000,000 greater if the famous social security scheme which had been promised to Deputy Norton in 1948 had been brought into operation. It would then have been a deficit of £8.7 million.

There was no surplus for investment and the Government had to use whatever moneys were available to them by selling out securities which they held, selling them out to the tune of many millions of pounds and realising heavy losses in the process. That may please some of the gentlemen on the Opposition side but even the merest tyro knows that, so long as you have securities—Government securities of a foreign nation—you are going to get a considerable income in the way of interest, and that when you sell those securities you lose that income. There is also the additional loss sustained in realising them at an inconvenient and inappropriate time. Besides Deputy Costello is in a minority of one among all the economists, thinkers or writers, or politicians, for that matter, who have been dealing with financial affairs in all the countries of Europe, not to speak of the United States and Canada. It is recognised by them that an unbalanced Budget is a primary cause of inflation. And what does inflation mean? Inflation means the worst and most unjust type of taxation. It is nothing less than wholesale robbery. You are pretending, by putting additional millions of pounds into circulation, that you are benefiting the people, but since the value of their money depreciates and they can no longer purchase what theywere able to purchase before the inflationary spiral started, even when their remuneration has been increased one half or twice as much as it was before, are you not committing the greatest possible act of injustice towards those people?

The pretence has been that by simply putting money into circulation, not knowing where you are going to get it from or what commitments you are putting upon the people of this country for perhaps generations to come, you are benefiting the working classes. Every working-class community in Europe, because they are politically mature people, know that the worst enemy of the working classes, of the consumer, for whom every penny in his household budget is an important consideration, is inflation.

We have not to go back to the First World War. We have seen what has happened in France. Those who have travelled in those countries know what the value of the French unit of currency is at the present time and the value of the Italian unit in spite of the efforts that have been made in that country to keep their finances in order. I say Deputy Costello's Government failed to deal with the budgetary situation as it should have been dealt with when they knew—and goodness knows their Minister for External Affairs was often enough in Paris to tell them, if they had not read the publications and the reports of the O.E.E.C—what was happening on the Continent. Deputy Costello has the temerity to contradict the Taoiseach. I have extracts from the Official Reports covering every word the Taoiseach has said. In fact in every country in Europe, in the United States and in Canada steps had to be taken to curb inflation. If Deputy MacBride questions it I refer him to "Financial Stability and the Fight Against Inflation," an O.E.E.C. Report, 1951, paragraph 21:—

"A wide variety of measures to restrict credit have been taken. In many countries discount rates were raised at an early stage, while in the United States, government support for the bond market was withdrawn. In several countries (e.g. Germany, Sweden and the United States)minimum reserve requirements have been raised, and in some (e.g. Canada, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom) regulations, or directives, from the Central Banks instructed the commercial banks to tigthen their credit facilities. Selective credit restrictions designed to reduce speculative purchases have been imposed, for example, in Belgium and in Norway."

When Deputy McGilligan referred to the fact that the banks should not lend money for speculative or unnecessary purposes, purposes that did not lead to genuine increases in wealth, production and employment, he was only doing what has been done in other countries. The difference was that Deputy McGilligan spoke a great deal but did nothing. He was a thin lath, a sally rod done up to look like a rod of steel, but there was no decision that he ever could take—presumably even if he wished to take it, he was not allowed to take it—in the interests of the country. Again the political exigencies and the make-up of Deputy Costello's Government made it quite clear that he would not be allowed to make the decisions that were necessary.

The Government has a duty to the public in regard to maintaining the value of the currency, to securing the public credit. It also has a duty to investors. It is rather surprising to hear Deputy Costello referring in rather contemptuous terms to the loan which the present Minister for Finance issued as if Deputy Costello objects to the Irish people receiving fair interest and generous interest on the money they invest in Government securities for the development and advance of their own country. Is it better policy that the present Minister for Finance should in his public issues strive to give an incentive to public saving, to encourage investment without which you cannot have any development, without which you cannot have progress? Is it better that the Minister for Finance should give that inducement and incentive to the Irish investor or should we, like Deputy Costello's Government, borrow from abroad, have to meet our obligations in foreign currency?

Our £ was revalued in 1949 by the Government which now talks so much of the increase in the cost of living, but that single act, which they chose as the lesser of two evils, in itself increased the cost of everything we imported into this country from the non-sterling area by about 30 per cent.; and as if they had not learned anything and the moral had not been drawn by our predecessors in office, they entered into this tremendous responsibility of borrowing no less than £128,000,000 to be paid back in foreign currency in a capital sum of nearly £46,000,000 over a long period of time.

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

Mr. Derrig

The devaluation of the English £ was described, as far as I remember, by the present British Premier as being the penalty for failure to take proper measures in time. According to Deputy Costello, we are living in a mythical world where we have not to increase taxes; we have to make no provision for increased expenditure; we can introduce schemes costing millions of pounds but we are not to increase taxes or the rates of taxation in order to provide for them; we can speak of capital investment and capital programmes but we are going to take no steps to encourage savings to provide for the investment that is necessary if these capital works are to continue.

Our approach to the problem of investment and capital development is of a constructive nature. We believe, and have always believed and carried out, a policy for the expansion and development of our own resources. We believe that that is the only real and permanent remedy for unemployment and the only real and true way in which to place the economy of our country and the prosperity of our people on a firm basis.

Deputy Costello has referred to agricultural prices. May I remind Deputy Costello that so far back as 1947 and again in 1948 the present Government carried out negotiations with the British Government, as they have done again recently, for the improvement of our trading relations and, in particular,for the benefit of the agricultural industry?

There is no way in which this or any other Government can control the price of articles produced in other countries —raw materials and others—and brought in here. We simply have to purchase these things at the international price level or go without. Agricultural prices have been moving up steadily since the war. Is it the contention of Deputy Costello that, because agricultural prices have risen and because it has been a boast of his Government that they did something to try to increase agricultural prices and bring a better return to the farmers, that in some way the farming interest is in opposition to the interest of the urban consumer? The position is that the prices that we have to pay for meat, butter, eggs, in general, the food we eat, is determined very largely by the price on the international market. The British have been paying and are compelled to pay higher prices for the food they are importing from this country and, as a corollary, agricultural prices and food prices have gone up here.

I believe that it is of benefit to this community that that should be the position and that it is particularly fortunate for us at the present time that the prospects for the farming industry are so very bright as they are. For the first time for generations, following on this last Great War, the food producer has found himself in a position the reverse of that to which he had been accustomed for the past 100 years or more with, perhaps, odd phases of change. What he has to produce has become scarce in the world with the growth of population. What he has to sell has gone up in value and continues to go up steadily in value. We, as a food producing country, ought to be satisfied with that position but we ought also to be satisfied that we are taking every advantage of the wonderful opportunities that are presented to us, while prices and markets are so favourable, to increase our agricultural output to the maximum.

In 1951, the adverse trade balancewith which the incoming Administration was faced could not, of course, have been sustained for any lengthy period of time. It has been pointed out that, for the five years from 1947 on, the deficits in our trade balance amounted to no less than a total of £200,000,000. In 1952 the position has been very greatly improved. Our imports have fallen by nearly 16 per cent., a fall almost entirely of volume, and this year's figures indicate a further fall, bringing the reduction to something over 26 per cent. as compared with the corresponding period two years ago.

As I have been saying, what is most significant and encouraging is the very welcome increase in exports. They have risen in value—seven-eighths of it attributable not merely to increased price but to increased volume—by nearly 25 per cent. in 1952 and have continued to rise for the first four months of 1953, an increase over the corresponding period last year, in the first third of the present year, of 10 per cent., of 36.5 per cent. over the same period in 1951. The excess of imports has fallen by nearly one-third since 1951. Export prices have risen while, as the House has been told by the Taoiseach, import prices have fallen over the period.

Deputy Costello has shown himself strangely out of touch with the economic position in this country. Apparently he does not read or is not provided with the latest returns from the Statistics Office. He made the statement to-day that industrial production was still falling. That is not accurate. The volume of industrial production showed an increase of 9 per cent. in the December quarter of 1952 over the preceding quarter. I have not the figures for the last quarter but I believe the increase has been maintained and, if it has, then the recession has been corrected and our position is stronger than it was before.

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

Mr. Derrig

The Government during the present year has provided£4,750,000 in the capital programme for agricultural development including land reclamation, provision of lime and fertilisers, grants to farmers to improve their outoffices and buildings, and enabling them to get loans where necessary for the provision of stock, for the installation of water supplies and so on.

Reference has frequently been made to the lime scheme of the Government. The last Government, we remember, did away with the lime subsidy. It was only introduced by Deputy Dillon as Minister for Agriculture, under pressure from the Marshall Aid administration in this country although it had been in operation during our previous term of administration. Apparently that in itself was sufficient condemnation for Deputy Dillon to ensure its condemnation and withdrawal. I am glad to say that the lime scheme as operated by the Minister has been wonderfully successful. It is the provision of an essential in the recuperation and improved fertility of the soil, and the Government has made it available on very handsome terms. It is satisfactory and encouraging to us to know that very widespread advantage has been taken of the scheme to the extent that whereas in 1950 there were only 75,000 tons of lime spread, last year the amount was 480,000 tons—an increase more than six fold; and during the coming year we are confident that the amount of lime to be spread will reach the 1,000,000 figure. That is the target that we have fixed and that is the figure we hope to achieve.

I have not heard any criticism, and there could not be any, of the provision that has been made for the improvement of land, because between June, 1951 and June, 1953 the amount of grants more than doubled, the figures being £1,144,000 in June, 1951 as against £2,450,000.

One of the great problems particularly in connection with the dairy industry and the improvement of our milk supplies is the question of improving the breeding of our dairy stock. The insemination centres that have been established have already improved the breed of both dairy and beef stock very noticeably, and withthe continued progress that is certain to take place in the future there is no reason to doubt that there will be a very great and perhaps phenomenal improvement in milk yields during the coming years.

Deputy Costello referred in passing to the food subsidies. We had a speech in Cork recently from Deputy McGilligan. I do not know whether Deputy McGilligan was speaking as spokesman of Fine Gael on that occasion, but he announced to his hearers and to the readers of the Cork Examinerthat he had gone back, or perhaps he had never left, though some of us think he had departed from, the position that he took up in 1945, 1946 and 1947 when he denounced the extension of the social services as leading to the servile State, the workhouse and pauperisation, demoralisation of the people, public charity, and all the rest. These were some of the phrases that he used in Cork, although he added to them some new ones. We were not alone leading to pauperisation of the people now but we were leading to a materialist, secularist, bureaucratic State, according to Deputy McGilligan; and Deputy McGilligan is the gentleman who, as Minister for Finance with Deputy Costello, had been denouncing the social services, as Deputy McGilligan has reminded us, in 1946 and 1947. “A sign,” said Deputy Costello, “of ill-health in the body politic.”“They should be kept in the medicine chest”, medicine bottles, only to be used on occasions presumably of special danger. Deputy McGilligan, of course, went further. He reminded the present Minister for Social Welfare that he should take the opportunity of abolishing that Department at the earliest opportunity. Yet these were the gentlemen, these two leaders of the Fine Gael Party, who put their names and guaranteed in the most solemn manner to introduce a comprehensive scheme of social security.

I have often wondered about their political principles, and they talk a great deal about public morality. But the same principles of public morality, according to Edmund Burke, should obtain as in private morality. I oftenwonder about this marvellous transformation of these gentlemen that in 1947 they could be denouncing all extension of the social services and a few months afterwards they could guarantee, in so far as their guarantee was worth anything, that they would introduce a comprehensive social security scheme. What are we to think of them when now Deputy McGilligan, presumably their spokesman, tells us that we are still on the high road of pauperisation, materialism, secularism, and so on? One of the extraordinary things about this outburst of Deputy McGilligan was that in a few lines, in almost the next moments after he had returned to his old forte of condemning the extension of the social services, he referred to the food subsidies. One good thing, he said, was that the food subsidies had been kept on apparently until they left office but they had been abolished by the bureaucrats because the people were living too well. That was very interesting indeed, when you recollect that in the Seanad on the 22nd June, 1950, this is what Deputy McGilligan, then Minister for Finance, said:

"Do not overlook what is being done with these subsidies. The inquiry which we recently had into bread and flour, and the report of which I hope the public will soon have an opportunity of seeing, indicates that the community is being taxed not merely to subsidise the price at which bread is sold in the bakeries and in the bakers' shops but the community is actually paying a subsidy to provide the cost of transport of bread to houses in, say, Ailesbury Road and Merrion Road. The community is paying the costs of distribution and the costs of transport; these are being paid out of the subsidy, to say nothing of the cost of these magnificent buildings, which almost rival Store Street, that one sees in different parts of the city. They, in the main, are being built out of subsidy. Once you have too many subsidies there is no way of seeing that they are applied to the purpose for which they were originally meant."

The Irish Independenton the 16th December, 1950, referring to food subsidies as a system of universal outdoor relief, said it would be a welcome day “when the Government reaches the goal at which we have no doubt it is aiming, when each of us can eat his bread and butter and take his cup of tea in the sure knowledge that the neighbours have not helped to provide it”. TheIrish Independent, which at times is fairly well informed, believed that the Government was aiming at the reduction or perhaps the abolition of food subsidies and they had in mind, I have no doubt, that at an early stage they would deal with that.

Deputy Costello and others of his colleagues have referred to mandates. When challenged about his mandate, Deputy McGilligan when he came into office here in 1948 was not short of an answer. According to Deputy McGilligan you could have a mandate for retrenchment and cut down on the one hand; you could have a mandate for expansion and build up on the other hand; and not only that, you could have two, as far as the man in the street might see, completely opposite policies working simultaneously. In other words, Deputy McGilligan as Minister for Finance and presumably his colleague could assume whatever mandate they choose. When a Government is elected by this House it has the mandate of the elected representatives of the people behind it and so long as that position continues and until it loses the confidence of this House it can legitimately claim that it has the confidence of the House and is entitled constitutionally to carry on as a Government.

Deputy Costello referred to those "disreputable Deputies" on the Independent Benches who are supporting the Government. I do not know what the word "disreputable" means —perhaps it is a parliamentary expression—but in my opinion, a Cheann Comhairle, it is a slur upon the character of the person to whom the epithet is applied. As far as this Dáil is concerned, every Deputy who is elected by the people can claim to have precisely the same right of representation, the right to vote, the right toexpress his views, as the Taoiseach or Deputy Costello or any other Leader. Deputy Costello was not averse to accepting the support of these "disreputable" Deputies, as he now insultingly describes them, when it suited him. He remained in office with their support. He actually placed an Independent, who would never have reached it in the ordinary way, in charge of a Department of State so that there may be no doubt that he would have the support of the rest of the Independents, seeing that with the organised Parties he had not sufficient strength to turn out Fianna Fáil and form a new Administration.

I read recently that the Conservative Government in Britain by winning a by-election had done an almost miraculous thing, that since 1924 no Government in Britain had succeeded in taking a seat from the Opposition Party until then, that is, on the straight system of election. In this country we are not working on the system which Deputy Costello when it suits him describes as the one-Party system, what most people in the textbooks which the Deputy is so glib in quoting would describe as the two-Party system, which is good enough for the United States Republic and for Great Britain. What is the position in the United States Senate at the present time? The Government has a majority of only one vote—perhaps that of Senator McCarthy. What is the position in France or Italy or Britain? In the United States House of Representatives the Republicans have a slightly larger numerical majority but very slightly larger than that in the Senate, relatively.

We have been occupied during the past two years in dealing with the budgetary situation which we found and in raising money to provide for the commitments which Deputy McGilligan and his Government left behind them and placed upon our shoulders. We have also been bending our best efforts to remedying the very lamentable situation in our international balance of payments. In these two respects, whether the Government remains in office or not, whether welose this vote of confidence or win it, we can at least say when our time comes to face the people that in the essential, the foundation of our prosperity and of the welfare of our people, the settlement of our national finances and the restoration of equilibrium in our international trade payments, we have succeeded in a very large measure.

It is pretended by Deputy Costello that we in this part of this island can isolate ourselves from economic disturbances in the world outside. If the Deputy were candid and honest in his statements, he would admit that economic weaknesses in the countries with which we have trading relations affect us and that we cannot escape some repercussions. If there is a depression or a recession not alone in Great Britain but even in the United States of America, it is going to affect us. Everybody knows that that is so. If there is a boom—as there was in wool, for example, in 1949-50—it affects us. If there is a recession such as has been experienced in 1951-52, and which has been much more marked in Great Britain and other highly industrialised countries than here, that also affects us.

When Deputy Costello sought the suffrages of the people in 1948, he promised certain things categorically, as did the Leader of Fine Gael, the Leader of Clann na Poblachta and various other members of the Parties supporting that Administration. "All other considerations," said Deputy Costello, "must be subordinated to the overriding necessity of reducing the cost of living and increasing the value of the people's income." Their first task, he said, "must be to grapple vigorously with and produce a solution for the problem of the soaring cost of living" which, in 1948, Deputy Costello described as "menacing". His language was not quite so eloquent or so forceful in the ensuing years although there was no reduction in the cost-of-living figure in the succeeding years until it began to rise again in 1950. But in 1948, in spite of the steps that we had taken, Deputy Costello was either so completely out of touch with the situation that he could notsee the plain reality or, if that was not the position, then he was having only a very slight contact with the true and real considerations of the time because he said that the soaring cost of living was menacing the economic life and the happiness of the people— a type of colourful phraseology and forceful language somewhat similar to that to which we have been listening here to-day. According to Deputy Costello, we are even worse off now because we are in agony and misery. At that time, we were merely unhappy and our economic life was being menaced.

There was a ten-point increase in the cost of living before our predecessors left office in 1951. In reply to a parliamentary question on the 23rd November, 1950, Deputy Liam Cosgrave, the then Parliamentary Secretary to the Taoiseach, stated that between mid-August, 1949, and mid-August, 1950, there were increases in the prices of bacon, other meat, flaked oatmeal, coffee, knitting wool and woollen goods accounting for a rise of 1.2 per cent., half of which was accounted for by wool prices. On the same day, the Parliamentary Secretary said that the devaluation of the £ in 1949, followed by the Korean conflict, had caused increases in import prices. He said that the price of clothing had already risen—even at that time—by 11 points. When referring to the improvement in agricultural prices that had, even then, taken place the then Minister for Agriculture, Deputy Dillon, interjected: "They are embarrassingly satisfactory."

On the 14th November, 1950, Deputy Costello spoke to the Dublin Chamber of Commerce and reminded all concerned of the fact that "the prices of many commodities were far too high." The fact was that, even at that time, late 1950, after the panic-buying campaign had more or less spent itself, people refused to buy at the then prices. They were unable to buy, or they did not choose to buy, or they had provided themselves with the essentials they required and, therefore, there was a falling-off in the demand, but the cost-of-living index figure stillshowed the prices as recounted to the Central Statistics Office with the result that, in July, 1951, the Irish Trade Union Congress expressed dismay and viewed with apprehension the continuous rise in the prices of essential consumer goods "which are soaring higher and higher every day." I am sure that the situation did not change appreciably between June and July, 1951, and that the Trade Union Congress, in passing resolutions regarding the increase in the cost of living and the increase in the price level, had in mind their own experiences as experienced trade unionists of the situation throughout the country for some time before it.

But, we may ask, in what countries did the cost of living not go up between 1950 and 1952? There is hardly a European country whose Government has not had to take drastic steps, as I have mentioned earlier, to combat the inflationary pressure after the outbreak of the Korean War. Tax rates were increased, credit was restricted and subsidies were reduced in various countries.

Deputy Costello has made great play of the by-elections. There were six by-elections. Fianna Fáil lost one seat which belonged to them: that was the Wicklow seat. The other seats, which Deputy Costello claims as a victory for Fine Gael, were not, in fact, a victory for Fine Gael. The vacant seats had been created by the decease of Deputies other than Fianna Fáil Deputies.

Mr. O'Higgins

What about Limerick?

Mr. Fanning

What about Waterford?

Mr. Derrig

We lost Limerick but we won Waterford. Deputy Costello and his Party have received a remarkable transfusion of red corpuscles from the sensational victory of Deputy Byrne, Junior, in the North-West Dublin by-election. That was not a Fine Gael seat. It was an Independent seat. Deputy Byrne never voted for Fianna Fáil and probably never will but at least it was the seat of an Independent —a seat taken by the brother of thedeceased Deputy. We all know that Deputy Alfred Byrne and his family have a special position in the City of Dublin.

Mr. O'Higgins

You know it now.

Mr. Derrig

In the other constituencies, Deputy Costello conveniently forgot to mention that, without the support of the other Parties whose preferences enabled the Fine Gael Deputies to secure election in the recent by-elections, the percentage of votes cast would show an entirely different complexion. We have never been ashamed or afraid to meet the people of this country. The present Taoiseach is, and probably will be, the only statesman who has been able to secure a clear-cut majority for successive Governments, of which he was the head, under the system of proportional representation. Deputy Costello knows that full well. He knows that, as the City of Dublin increases, the voting strength of the metropolis increases and the number of Deputies with an urban point of view and urban inclinations is bound to increase in the national Assembly and that, as they increase, the rural or the country vote will decrease. Therefore, Deputy Costello and the other leaders of political Parties in this House have been able to concentrate in the by-elections where there were large urban areas. I think Deputy Costello is wrong in suggesting that Wicklow and East Cork are rural except in the sense that they are country as distinct from metropolitan or city. I am quite certain that, in actual fact, there is more than a majority of urban electors in these constituencies.

Mr. D.J. O'Sullivan

Is the Minister serious?

Mr. Derrig

The Minister is serious.

Mr. D.J. O'Sullivan

Will Deputy Cogan take notice?

Mr. Derrig

Therefore, having gone carefully into the various combinations and permutations which might enable them to take office with the assistance of other Parties or, as I have often expressed it, climb into office on theshoulders of other well-intentioned but not so well-knowing interests, the present Leader of the Opposition, Deputy Costello, and his colleagues in the former Administration have been able to carry on a campaign for the past 18 months against a Budget which was rendered necessary by the steps that they failed to take and should have taken to balance their Budget in 1951 and was entirely due to their failure to carry out their plain responsibilities and obligations to the people of the country. The present Government have taken steps to clear up that situation, to enable the State to pay for its recurring services year by year, not to put them on the long finger or not to attempt to carry any further the practice of borrowing for every possible item that, by any theory known to humanity, could be described as being one for which one might legitimately borrow. We have reduced the finances of the country to the position that we can say that if there is a legitimate fluctuation or a legitimate increase or a new development in the present year demanding financial assistance the Minister for Finance will be able to deal with it.

Had the Government been merely looking for popularity, I suppose they could have refused to pay the Civil Service award and reduced the taxation on cigarettes or on beer, or on both, which would have been quite possible, and would perhaps have been popular. But what are we to think of the Party which pretends that you can pay £3.83 million when all public servants have to be accounted for in the 1952 Budget, and this year another £2,500,000? Where is that money to come from? If it is to come from economies, where are the economies to be found? Obviously it can be only found from taxation and from revenue. Revenue during the current year is expected to be somewhat better than last year. The Minister for Finance believes that the situation will improve and he will be able to carry that burden.

The Opposition Parties were enthusiastic in condemning the Government for not adding another £1,000,000, and if there had to be that extra taxationto pay for these awards, I wonder what their tune would be if the Minister for Finance came in here with proposals for additional taxation amounting to £1,000,000 to do as they seemed to suggest?

Reference has been made to the fact that unscrupulous and misleading statements have been made regarding the Government's capital programme. It is a sad state of affairs that Deputies and candidates for election to the National Assembly have so little scruple as to utter the statement that the Government have cut down on capital expenditure when they know very well that the opposite is the position. The figures are interesting. In 1950-51, at the height of the boom period, with Marshall Aid and so on, the actual expenditure on the capital side of the Budget was £24.6 million out of £34,000,000 estimated. In 1951-52, the expenditure came to £32,000,000; in 1952-53, to £32.27 million of an estimated £35.9 million, and for the current year the estimate for State capital expenditure is £39.29 million. The items include over £10,500,000 for housing; £8,000,000 for electricity supply development; over £5,000,000 for hospitals; £4.7 million for agricultural development; £4.4 million for transport; and £4.5 million from the Road Fund for roads.

One of the slogans and one of the principles of action of the last Government I understand was to borrow the tune: "Anything you can do I can do better". In this case I think we can say we have done better than they have done. We have proof, not to-day or yesterday, of our solicitude for those in need of betterment and of assistance from the State and from the welfare agencies which it administers. A guarantee was enshrined in the Constitution where we laid down the social directives which determine our policy. We have never tried to deny our obligations and responsibilities in that direction. We have certainly never displayed the double-faced duplicity that Deputy McGilligan has recently shown the country. We may not have always been able to implementthese principles to the fullest extent as we desired but, as the Taoiseach pointed out, we realise that everything cannot be done at once. A great and heartening amount has been achieved, however, and so far as we are concerned, we shall continue to press forward in the same spirit for even better results in the future.

In my own Department, the wage bill in the Land Commission was £183,000 in 1951. Last year it was £234,000. The average number of employed increased from 1,333 to 1,525. The amount of the wage bill for forestry increased from £389,931 in 1950-51 to £666,863 in 1951-52 and in 1952-53 to £744,000. That is almost double what it was in 1950-51, and the average number employed has increased over the same period from 2,664 to 3,545 in the present year.

Mr. MacBride

Would the Minister like the employment figures?

Donnchadh Ó Briain

The Deputy did not do much about it himself.

Mr. O'Higgins

Does Deputy Ó Briain want the by-election figures, now?

Mr. Derrig

I want to say a few words in regard to housing, a Leas-Cheann Comhairle, and the misleading statements that have been made that through some action of the Government, work on housing has been cut down. I would like to amplify the figures given by the Taoiseach that from July, 1951, to April, 1953, 18,700 houses were built. That is at the rate of 850 houses per month. In fact, the last Government were just the same length of time in office almost, as we are now, since we came back in 1951, before the figure of 850 per month was reached. The average number of houses in 1949 was 538 per month; in 1950 it was 1,004; in 1951 it was 1,011, and in 1952 it was 1,085; and in 1953 so far, the average—I cannot say that it may be maintained—but the monthly average is 1,112. Having regard to increased costs of materials and labour I think the increase or even the maintenance— if that is possible—of the figure that had been attained in 1950 or 1951would have been very creditable, but so far at any rate in spite of increases in cost, it has been exceeded.

Reference has been made to the live register. In 1948 the percentage of insured persons on the live register was 9.4 per cent.; in 1949, 9 per cent.; in 1950, 7.5 per cent.; in 1951, 7.3 per cent.; in 1952, 9.1 per cent. As regards the totals, in 1947, the average was 55.2; in 1948 it was 61.9 (these are in thousands); in 1949 it was 61; in 1950 it was 53.8; in 1951 it was 51.6, and in 1952 it was 60.8. In February, 1953, largely due to changes in the method of keeping the live register, due to legislation passed in 1952 which is estimated to have brought some 10,000 people on the register not already registered, the figure was very much inflated, and in February, 1953, it was 89.6 thousand. A very high and somewhat alarming figure, but if the reasons for the increase are carefully examined in spite of the fact that there was undoubtedly an increase in unemployment at the docks and unemployment —although the situation has been steadily improving since last summer— in the textile industries, there was the explanation of this 10,000, and also of the fact that, so far as we have been able to ascertain, some 4,000 persons have returned from England and are drawing their insurance on cards to which they put stamps during their employment in England.

The former Tánaiste has been very eloquent about the emigration figures and I need not go into them except that I can show that the increases were substantial, at least up to 1950. They are fairly well known and cannot be questioned. Emigration in 1947 was 10,000; in 1948, 28,000; in 1949, 34,000; in 1950, 50,000. May I remind Deputy Norton that according to a report in the press on May 13th, 1949, in reply to a question in the British House of Commons, it was stated that in the year ending March 31st, 1949, approximately 8,000 persons were placed in employment in Britain through the British Liaison Office in Dublin. It is ridiculous, nonsensical and showing unheard-of contempt for the intelligence of the people to suggest that all these evils of the cost of living, unemploymentand emigration, were nonexistent while the former Government was in office and began to show their heads, as if there was some magical or satanic influence working in this Government, so that when we set out to do things which we considered necessary and which we were prepared to stand over and defend in order that this country might make the progress that we all desire, and in order that it may develop its resources and provide a proper standard of living and amenities for its people, one would imagine we were doing something that the totalitarian régimes have never been accused of.

I have a complete statement here, a Leas-Cheann Comhairle, but I am not going to weary the House by reading it. I dealt with it before, explaining in detail the changes which had taken place in the live register showing clearly that due to increased benefits, improved conditions and the lesser difficulties in securing benefit the number of recipients had greatly increased and also the number of those registering in the hope of making themselves eligible.

I have dealt during the course of my remarks, as has the Taoiseach, with the encouragement of private investment and incentives to investors. Encouragement to people to save must be one of the principal aims of democratic government. The habit of investment must be encouraged and built up. The Government has given these incentives to our people to invest, not alone in State securities and State-planned schemes, but in industrial and agricultural development generally.

I agree with an authoritative statement made some years ago that continued progress in technical efficiency is a dominating factor in the growth of real national income. As well as encouraging the replacement of older equipment, machinery and buildings with the object of improving the output of our industries and improving conditions generally, by encouraging frank discussions between the management and employees on the problems of their industry, Fianna Fáil has shown in the past—and the Tánaiste hasshown by legislation he has introduced into this House when we were previously in office and which, please God, he may again have an opportunity of introducing—that they were thoroughly in favour of organisations of workers having an opportunity to discuss the problems of their industries, the conditions of their employment and the future prospects generally of the work in which they are engaged, with the management and the directors of these industries. We have to realise that the strength of the United States of America, the enormous power of its economy, arises from the fact that its industrial system is kept absolutely up to date. It has been stated that one of the reasons for the troubles of our neighbour, Great Britain, is that her industrial system has been deteriorating for the past 50 years and that the task of improving it, bringing it up to date and up to modern standards, is only now being tackled.

If we want to keep our place in the world, if we want genuinely to improve conditions of our workers, to better their standard of living and to provide increased employment for those who are not so fortunate as to have it, we shall have to devote a great part of our attention in future to the encouragement of private investment. The Government, at any rate, by its industrial policy—steadfastly pursued over the years, in spite of jeers, in spite of insinuations of all kinds—has shown those who are prepared to put their brains, their capacity and their fortunes into Irish industry that, so long as we hold office, they will have an assurance of security and that this Government will not let them down. We give them the protection that is reasonably necessary, subject to the consideration, which must always be there, that the product that is turned out shall be of good quality and shall compare favourably in price with the imported article. That has been our policy during the whole of our period in public life in this country. That is the policy we have pursued earnestly over our period in office and which has been, I am glad to say, now generally accepted. I think I need hardly assurethe Dáil that if Deputies reaffirm their confidence in us, we shall carry on that policy with even more vigour and more determination in future. We believe that with the conditions that exist at present—the fact that money is available, that our people have acquired a good deal of technical knowledge and a good deal of managerial experience —opportunities will enormously improve and, therefore, those who are interested in Irish industries can be confident that if they invest, expand, develop and build new industries and new factories, they will have the wholehearted support of the Government in every way possible.

Mr. Norton

After listening to the two speeches by the Taoiseach and the Minister for Lands, I suppose we should all now fall down on our knees in repentance and say that we are really sorry we ever had the slightest doubt of the magnificent capacity of this Government to guide the people into the Promised Land. There is nothing wrong with the country, according to the Minister for Lands. There is nothing wrong with the country, according to the Taoiseach. If any section of the people see anything wrong with the country and say that we have unemployment, a high cost of living and increasing emigration, it is merely because they are dull-witted citizens and do not know what they are talking about. If they look at the situation through the spectacles of speakers from the Government Benches, they will see beyond the bleak picture the sight of the Promised Land, and nothing can prevent them reaching that Promised Land if only the Government are given a sufficiently long term of office to take them along to the El Dorado which awaits them. Of course the Taoiseach and the Minister for Lands are too long in the tooth now to be deceived by the noise which they made in this House. The Minister for Lands treated the House to nothing but noise because there was no substance whatever in some of the statements which he made—I could not call them arguments—in an effort to keep an attenuated House sufficiently interested to listen to theráméis which passed for logic this evening.

I was struck by one thing while the Taoiseach was speaking. It seems to me that the passing years have produced a profound change in the Taoiseach. There was a time when the Taoiseach had an incurable passion for dissolving the Dáil. Away back in the old days, if anybody looked crooked at the Taoiseach he threatened to dissolve the Dáil immediately and appeal to the people. The trials and tribulations of Presidents and of Governors-General during that time when the Taoiseach was in one of his tantrum moods and was liable at any moment to dissolve the Dáil on the slightest display of indiscipline on the part of any member of his Party or if he were taunted to the point of anger by any member of the Opposition, are something that have not yet been recorded in history. There was a different Taoiseach here this evening. The Taoiseach this evening was not the old war-horse, pawing at the ground eager to go into battle.

The Taoiseach was here this afternoon more like a purring kitten. For him the prospect of exercising his winning ways with the electorate has no more attractions. Instead he spent an hour in a dreary dirge giving his reasons as to why he should be allowed to cling to office for a further period. I remember the old days that if you dared to question the Taoiseach's right to rule in this House or to question the wisdom of his policy, you would be launched into an immediate hysterical appeal to the electorate. People would be told that the Government were being impeded in the special national advance which, strangely enough, nobody could ever see except the Taoiseach. He had his own mystical approach to that kind of national advance into which he used to delude the people in believing many years ago. At that time we used to be told that the national will was being frustrated. Then he was the old crafty warrior bringing to bear on the electorate the collection of old phrases and old shibboleths that, mind you, deceived the electorate for many years.However, the tinsel looks like wearing off now having regard to the results of the last three by-elections.

I remember reading at one time of the aims and objects of the old Chartist movement. One of its objects was to give the people an annual Parliament. At the time many people thought that the Chartist movement was very far ahead of the times and seriously out of step with the aims and objects of the people generally. The Chartists failed to give the people an annual Parliament, but the Taoiseach very nearly achieved what the Chartists failed to do, because at one stage this country looked as if it was going to get an annual Parliament from the Taoiseach, so passionate were his desires to consult the people at the slightest provocation. But the Taoiseach has changed, as we saw this evening—the old passion for dissolution has faded with the passing years.

Although he knows now that his is a minority Government, a Government which the people never elected and a Government which the people do not want, instead of the old fire for going to the people being made manifest this evening, the Taoiseach has decided, no doubt after perusing the by-election figures, that political wisdom suggests: "Hold on; the people are in no mood to be fooled at the moment and they are no longer sufficiently pliable to be codded". The Taoiseach knows that what he met in North-West Dublin, in Wicklow and in East Cork awaits him in many other constituencies and therefore appeals to the people have lost their charm. So far as the Taoiseach is concerned, they have clearly lost their magnetism—and why? Because the Taoiseach, being a crafty political warrior, scents danger in going to the country and scents that danger because he imagines that this fashion, created in North-West Dublin, of beating the Government candidate two to one, a fashion which, 12 months later, extended to East Cork and was repeated in Wicklow, is something which might spread itself to other constituencies, and that going to the country might not result in his beingable to pull the same political tricks as he was able to pull in his younger years.

The position now is that the Government have sustained three crushing defeats in three successive by-elections; in other words, in every by-election the Government have fought since last year's Budget, they have been signally and overwhelmingly defeated.

Mr. Brennan

That is wrong.

Mr. S. Flanagan

Leave him alone.

Mr. Brennan

We won two immediately after.

Mr. D.J. O'Sullivan

The subsidies had not been taken off then.

An Leas-Cheann Comhairle

Deputies might allow Deputy Norton to proceed.

Mr. S. Flanagan

We were six weeks waiting for you to say something, but you were afraid to say anything. The people of North Mayo said something.

Mr. D.J. O'Sullivan

The subsidies were not off then.

Mr. Norton

The position is that the Government have lost three successive by-elections.

Mr. Hilliard

Labour has lost one.

Mr. Norton

I say that the Government have lost every by-election since last year's Budget and it is because of that fact that going to the people has no thrills for the Taoiseach and no thrills for any member of the Government Party either. However dull they may be in certain matters, they can count up election figures and they know perfectly well that what awaited them in North-West Dublin, in East Cork and in Wicklow, will be repeated in every other by-election held from now on. The truth of the matter is that the Government cannot win a by-election now and the clear evidence of that is to be found in the substantial slump in the Government's vote in the recent by-elections.

There is only one poor simple soulwho sees brightness on the horizon, the political correspondent of the Irish Press.That gentleman was apparently locked up during the period of the by-election and let out immediately afterwards, apparently when the light was not on the by-election figures because that remarkable mathematician wrote:—

"Since the general election of 1951, there have been six by-elections and, until the Wicklow election, where local circumstances militated against Fianna Fáil, the Government had come through unscathed. This was remarkable evidence of popular support, in view of the fact that Government policy had been under constant fire."

He is the cheeriest soul the Government must have met this year, the Government having been walloped in three by-elections. When the by-elections are over, that poor simpleton writes that these three by-election defeats were remarkable evidence of the popular support for the Government. Does anybody on the Government Benches believe that? Of course, he does not, and that fellow should be locked up again until the next by-election, because not even he nor "Deputy" Smyllie, of the Irish Times,can manage to make this Government popular now. The Government have got two out of three morning papers, but they will want three out of three before there is any improvement in their political fortunes.

I was interested in listening to the Taoiseach telling us in the nebulous way which the Taoiseach has made all his own, that the Government have plans ready. The Government always have plans ready when political danger threatens. The Tánaiste was let loose at a Fianna Fáil cumann to tell the boys about the plans they have ready, to tell them that they were nearly ready and that it would be only a short time before——

Mr. Brennan

"In the foreseeable future."

Mr. Norton

I will acccept the Deputy's phrase.

Mr. Brennan

Like your Social Welfare Bill.

Mr. Norton

That is a euphemism for "pie in the sky," which is the usual stock in trade of the Fianna Fáil Party. The Tánaiste, as I say, was let loose to try it out on the boys and to tell them of the plans maturing for the past two years which have suddenly matured when the by-election figures were examined. The Taoiseach came in this evening to tell us that the Government had a plan and he told us what the plan was. It seemed to me that the gist of what the Taoiseach said was that all the people will have electric light to read by by 1960. What a profound benefit that confers on humanity! We will all have electric light to read by, if we live, in seven years' time, and there will be cement to put into our houses. These are the attributes of civilisation all over the world and there is no great discovery by Fianna Fáil in giving the people electric light at the people's expense. Anybody would imagine that it was a world-shaking achievement that people, by 1960, would have electric light to read by and cement for their houses by the same year.

What the Taoiseach talked about was the most inconsequential nonsense. The things he promised are the attributes of civilisation everywhere. Every other country in the world has these things—countries which have come through the war, with its attendant devastation, have all the commonplace things the Taoiseach talked about. We apparently ought to utter words of admiration because the Taoiseach threatened that they may be provided if the Government can get a vote of confidence this week. We were told that the plans were ready, that there was a great regeneration movement on foot, and that prosperity was around that elusive corner, a corner which we can never measure when trying to put some valuation on what in fact is the Government's policy.

The Taoiseach used all these words in asking the House to give the Government a vote of confidence—all that is necessary in order to ensure thatthese plans are produced and put into operation is that the House this week should give the Taoiseach a vote of confidence. Who is to give a vote of confidence to the Government? When a Government asks for a vote of confidence, one presumes that somebody, other than the Government, is going to judge the Government's merits, that they are going to be weighed, that somebody is going to examine the case for giving that vote of confidence and the case against it, but that is not the position here this week. Sixty-nine valiant warriors on the Government Benches are going to be hunted into the Division Lobby, whether they like it or not, and woe betide the Deputy who says he cannot turn up to vote for the Government or who has some doubts that the Government should get a vote of confidence.

It is really a dishonest trick on the Dáil and an insult to the intelligence of the House that the Government should ask for a vote of confidence in circumstances in which the only people who are going to vote for it are the Government themselves who are in the dock. That is not a fair way in which to decide that the Government should get confidence or that confidence should be withheld from them. The Government is really going to vote confidence in itself. No other Party will vote for the Government. The Government's attitude is that they are satisfied they are doing well and, because they may have a temporary majority— although a very transitory one—they propose to give themselves a vote of confidence and then say that vote of confidence entitles them to carry on notwithstanding the overwhelming defeat suffered by them in the recent by-elections.

There is one thing we can say: modesty is not one of the Government's great or obvious weaknesses. Who will give this vote of confidence? I venture to say that every one of the 69 Fianna Fáil Deputies will be dragooned into the Division Lobby.

Minister for Defence (Mr. Traynor)

We will not carry them in on stretchers anyhow.

Mr. Norton

I have seen you use a basket chair.

Mr. Traynor

You did not see us use a stretcher.

Mr. Norton

Acknowledge yourself that a basket chair was wheeled in here with a Fianna Fáil Deputy sitting in it.

(Interruptions.)

An Leas-Cheann Comhairle

These personal references should cease.

Mr. Norton

The Minister says we did not wheel them in on stretchers.

Mr. Cogan

Deputy J.A. Costello started that.

Mr. Norton

The Minister started it. This vote of confidence will demand the support of a Government Party afraid to go to the country and of some so-called Independent Deputies, really indistinguishable from Fianna Fáil Deputies except that that Party is all the better for not having them in it. They are the people who will vote for this motion. The Government Deputies dare not vote against it because they will lose. The so-called Independents cannot go to the country because they will find, as Deputy Cogan has no doubt found, that their votes have evaporated as Deputy Cogan's votes have evaporated in Wicklow. Deputy Cogan has no more authority and no more right to give this Government a vote of confidence or vote against the Government than has a visitor in the gallery. Deputy Cogan was elected at the last election but his mandate has long since been withdrawn, and the recent by-election shows that, as far as Deputy Cogan is concerned, the political tide has gone out and left Deputy Cogan behind.

Mr. Burke

Is this a debate on Deputy Cogan?

Mr. Brennan

Deputy Cogan was a grand fellow when he voted for Deputy Norton as Tánaiste.

Mr. Sweetman

He had a mandate to do that.

Mr. S. Flanagan

He had not, and Deputy Blowick admitted that in Mayo.

An Leas-Cheann Comhairle

If Deputies cannot allow the Deputy in possession to speak without interruption, then they must leave the House. Deputy Norton is in possession and he should be allowed to speak without interruption.

Mr. Norton

I am glad there is sympathy on the Fianna Fáil Benches because Deputy Cogan's votes have evaporated.

(Interruptions.)

Mr. S. Flanagan

Is the Deputy in order in saying Deputy Cogan has as much right to be here as a visitor in the gallery.

An Leas-Cheann Comhairle

Deputy Cogan is an elected representative and has every right to be present.

Mr. Sweetman

Deputy Norton did not say he had no right to be here. He said he had no right to vote either way.

(Interruptions.)

Mr. Norton

Deputy Cogan will not have much character left by the time the electorate finish with him so he need not trouble about his character. I was saying that Deputy Cogan has no right to vote. He has no right to put the Government out. He has no right to keep the Government in. He represents nobody here.

Mr. Hilliard

Can you not say the same about yourself and the Clann na Poblachta Party? That Party only got 2,000 votes in the Wicklow by-election.

Mr. D.J. O'Sullivan

They are increasing.

Mr. Norton

This is not a vote of confidence in the popularly understood sense. This is really a vote for hanging on or clinging to office after the people have spoken clearly and decisively in three by-elections. The people do not want this Government. Ordinary decency suggests that the Government ought to go to the people and see if they can get a vote of confidence from them. This House is notqualified to give such a vote. The proper place to get such a vote is by going back to the people. But this Government will not go back to the people.

We are asked to give this Government a vote of confidence. We are asked by the Taoiseach to believe that he has some mystical views of plans for national regeneration; if he gets this vote of confidence, we will either see these plans or be told about them. I want now to test the Government's policy, or lack of policy, on certain main issues affecting the lives of the ordinary people.

When this Government took office employment was rising. The inter-Party Government put 37,000 additional people into employment in three years. Unemployment was falling and had reached a new low record. Prices were substantially lower than they are to-day. That cannot be questioned. Industrial production was rising. House building was increasing. Over and above all these considerations, when we left office, we left the Government political peace. There was nobody on hunger strike. Nobody was waiting to be executed. Nobody was waiting to be hanged. There were no political prisoners in the gaols. Not only were there favourable economic circumstances and favourable economic factors calculated to promote increased prosperity but, for the first time in a long and chequered history, there was no discord. There was, on the other hand, a measure of political peace such as this country had never known in all its 30 years of independent Government. That was the situation when we left office in 1951.

Let us contrast that situation with the transformation that has taken place since then. The Minister for Lands spent a good deal of time this evening talking about industrial production. Quite clearly he did not understand the figures he quoted. According to the Irish Trades Journalthe number of persons employed in producing transportable goods in December, 1951, was 139,000. By December, 1952, it had fallen to 135,000, a fall of over 4,000. Notwithstanding that fact, the Minister for Lands pretendedto see in that fall an increase in industrial production. The figures for March, 1953, the only figures available since December, 1952, show there has been a further fall of over 1,000 in the number of persons employed in the production of transportable goods. Yet, the Minister for Lands speaking here this evening, pretended to see in those figures evidence of an increase in the production of industrial goods.

Let us take the facts. In 1948 when we took office industrial production was represented by a figure of 130. By 1949 it had jumped to 148. By 1950 it had jumped to 168. By June, 1951, it had jumped to 181. We went out of office then and in June, 1952, it had fallen to 163. By September, 1952, it had fallen to 156. The last figure available, that for December, 1952, shows that it was at 170 but it is still substantially less than it was when we left office.

There are certain figures which conceal even the significance of the figures I have quoted. In certain industries there has been a very substantial decline in industrial production. Anybody who cares to examine page 17 of the March, 1953, issue of the Irish Trade Journaland to compare production in the December quarter 1951 with the same quarter in 1952 will see a very substantial drop in industrial production in a considerable range of commodities. That range covers furniture manufacture, the production of men's and boys' clothing, the manufacture of boots and shoes, woollen and worsted manufactures, the production of vehicles, the production of fertilisers and a considerable number of other commodities. All these have fallen much more substantially as compared with the average fall over the period mentioned. So far as industrial production, therefore, is concerned this Government has not yet attained, although they have been more than two years in office, the level of industrial production which they were left when the inter-Party Government left office in 1951.

Let me come now to unemployment in regard to which the Taoiseach made scanty references but to which the Minister for Lands made some lengthyreferences without, however, indicating in any way what exactly the Government proposed to do for the relief of unemployment. Everybody knows perfectly well that to-day there is a wave of unemployment throughout the country such as has not been experienced for many, many years. We now see week after week—it is the first time we have seen it for a very long time—demonstrations of unemployed marching through the streets demanding work. Until this year we have not seen those for a very long time but these demonstrations of unemployed have now become so substantial in proportions that the Taoiseach is apparently concerned with the growth of this unemployment movement—a product of the mass unemployment which exists in this city and in every other city in the country.

Certainly these demonstrations of unemployed were not to be seen during the term of office of the inter-Party Government. There were then no unemployed marchers. There were then no long queues at the unemployment exchanges. There were then no daily meetings outside the employment exchanges in Dublin, but there are now weekly marches and daily meetings outside the unemployment exchanges. The figures in respect of registered unemployed have risen by over 100 per cent. as compared with the position two years ago.

I was in my own constituency on Saturday, Sunday and Monday last. Everywhere I went deputations approached me with a view to seeing whether any money could be secured for grants for the relief of unemployment and that in places where, two years ago, there was not a single unemployed man. Many told me they were idle for the past six months and that there was no local authority work. Everywhere in the area for the past six months they had borne all the rigours and all the hardships of unemployment. They had been going to the Carlow Unemployment Exchange and were not able to get work there. There was no Government scheme. There were not any local authority schemes. Men who were in regular employment two years ago are idle for the past sixmonths without any prospect of employment being offered to them.

We have a savage cut in the grants under the Local Authorities (Works) Act. During the term of office of the inter-Party Government sums of £1,250,000, £1,500,000 and even £1,750,000 were made available as free grants to the local authorities for carrying out drainage and land reclamation schemes mainly in the rural areas. Under these schemes, men were employed regularly each year. These grants have been so savagely slashed that they now make no perceptible contribution to the relief of unemployment in the rural areas with the result that large numbers of persons who got employment in useful work of that character now spend their time going to and coming from unemployment exchanges looking for work which they know only too well will not be got.

Government statistics show that between 1951 and 1952 agricultural employment was down by 11,000. Not only have you a drop in the number of persons employed under the Local Authorities (Works) Act, not only have you a drop in the number of persons employed in the rural areas under housing schemes, and not only have you a drop in employment in agriculture but you have no substitute whatever for the serious sag in employment under these three heads.

I have a document which was issued by the Central Statistics Office on 25th June, 1953, and it makes melancholy reading. What does it show? It shows that on the 21st June, 1951, there were 37,000 persons registered as unemployed. By June, 1952, that had risen to 46,400, and by June, 1953, it had risen to 64,800. Will anybody attempt to deny the human misery that is rolled up in these figures? Will anybody attempt to deny that that is not a serious aggravation of the whole employment and unemployment position— a jump of 27,800 in the unemployment figures in two years?

This evening the Minister for Lands said that was due to the fact that 4,000 people came back from England in the last 12 months. The Minister has a short memory. I asked a question in this House on the 11th February,1953. The question was whether the Minister for Social Welfare would state the number of persons claiming unemployment benefit in the month of January, 1948, to 1953, whose last place of employment was Great Britain. The Minister for Social Welfare replied that the available statistics did not contain the information sought by the Deputy. The number of persons, however, on the live register on the last Saturday in January in each of the years referred to, whose last place of employment was stated to have been in Great Britain, was as follows: 31st January, 1948, 4,262; 29th January, 1949, 4,377; 28th January, 1950, 4,843; 27th January, 1951, 4,048; 26th January, 1952, 3,001, and 31st January, 1953, 4,261.

That shows that what the Minister for Lands thought was a phenomenon during the past year has, in fact, been happening quite unknown to the Minister for Lands. Those numbers of people have been coming back every year. I suppose he thought they just came back to see if the Government had gone out of office. The fact remains that these figures supplied by the Minister for Social Welfare show that the people have been coming back every year. On a close examination of the figures it would be seen that more came back when the inter-Party Government was in office than since they left office. So much for the cooked figures supplied by the Minister for Lands this evening.

I waited, while the Taoiseach spoke for an hour, in order to ascertain what was the Government's policy in regard to unemployment. The Taoiseach made a casual reference to it and then skirted off the whole subject and could not be induced apparently to get back to it either. We get a statement like this from the Taoiseach, that employment is improving and the only place where the situation is serious is in relation to building and constructional work and agriculture. How can it be said that employment is improving when, according to the Government's own figures, there are 18,300 more unemployed this month than there were in the same month last year? How can it be said it is improvingwhen you have 27,800 more persons registered as unemployed than you had two years ago? It is taking liberty with the truth to suggest that employment is improving when, in fact, the figures in the documents published by the Government show that unemployment is rising rapidly and that it has risen by 27,000 odd in the past two years. The Taoiseach is indebted to his imagination for his facts, I am afraid.

I wanted to hear whether the Taoiseach had any plans for the relief of unemployment, but he revealed nothing this evening, and when we had a discussion on his Estimate and on an employment motion in this House a short time ago the Taoiseach spoke in an airy-fairy way about the causes of unemployment, how it exists and some pious intentions he had about it, but when you ask him what he is going to do about it he rides off again. You can never tie the Taoiseach down to what the Government's plans are. One time he said he had a plan to solve unemployment. When the Minister for Industry and Commerce, Deputy Lemass, was in opposition in 1932, he also had a plan under which he was going to put every idle man and woman into employment. After looking at the plan, he became so enthralled with it that he said not only would he put every idle man and woman into employment but he was afraid he would have to send to America to bring back the emigrants.

Somebody said to the Minister for External Affairs about the same time: "You know, there are a large number of people unemployed," and the Minister's imperturbable reply to that was: "Well, sure, we will be glad to have them do all the work that Fianna Fáil is going to make available for them." That was in their salad days. The Taoiseach put this on record when speaking as Deputy de Valera on the 2nd December, 1931:

"I have time after time said that, in my belief, the solution of unemployment is easier to find in this country at this moment than it is in any other country facing that problem if we made up our minds to apply the remedy. We have theremedy. It is just a question of organisation and more of a lead from the Government."

That was the Taoiseach's remedy at that time. Deputy Burke has said something. I do not mind his interruption. It would make a cat smile.

Mr. Burke

Tell us what you did with your Emigration Commission.

Mr. Norton

I think you put it to sleep by some method of chloroforming. It certainly has not murmured for the last two years. As I was saying, that was the Taoiseach's recipe in 1931—that at that time there was no difficulty whatever in solving the unemployment problem. I have quite a number of other quotations. Here is another from the Taoiseach:

"I am quite willing to admit that one of the principal things we were elected to do was to try and deal with the unemployment problem. We are quite willing to do it, and to stand or fall by our ability to do that work or not to do it."

That is another of his gems. The Tánaiste was let out the other day and he also said something like that. He said that "the Government was willing to be judged by the test that the number of persons it put to work should be the measure of its success or failure as a Government". We had similar dodges from the Tánaiste before. On the 23rd January, 1940, he went to the Red Bank Restaurant and addressed the South City Cumann of the Fianna Fáil organisation. The report of his speech appears in that unimpeachable journal, the Irish Press, of the 24th January, 1940. The extract provides a painful reminder of what Fianna Fáil Deputies can promise and of how little they perform. On that occasion, the Tánaiste used these words:

"It was necessary to stress the urgency of the problems arising out of unemployment. If it persisted, the economic system could not survive, and if unemployment persisted it did not deserve to survive. There were major defects in their methodsof commercial organisation or in their financial system if they were unable to provide an adequate livelihood for every man willing to work. If, within the limits of the present system, they could not cope with unemployment, then the system must be changed."

These were brave and cheering words uttered by the Tánaiste, but they have not served to diminish our unemployment problem. We still have to-day 27,800 more people unemployed than we had two years ago. The unemployed are still queueing up in larger numbers at the employment exchanges. Hungry men who cannot keep their wives and children now find it necessary to undertake hunger marches through the City of Dublin in order to call attention to the plight which has been theirs for far too long. That is the test that one has to apply against the declaration made by the Tánaiste in 1940 and the frequent statements made by the Government in respect of their capacity to deal with the unemployment problem. This Government have long since forfeited the confidence of the House and the confidence of the people.

Against that bleak outlook, that full and gloomy picture of unrelieved despair so far as the unemployed are concerned, is one bright ray of hope which has emanated from the fertile mind of the Minister for Posts and Telegraphs. He was released on Rathdrum during the recent by-election in Wicklow, and he there made the statement that "there was a great and growing measure of prosperity in the homes of the people to-day." I suggested to him, in a subsequent speech, that he ought to go into the homes of the agricultural workers and of the road workers in the County Wicklow and see whether there was "this great and growing measure of prosperity in the homes of the people."

The Minister for Lands this evening nearly had a fit of apoplexy when speaking with admiration of the increase in the number of new motor-cars that had been bought during the past 12 months or two years. I suggest that has nothing to do with theconditions of life of the ordinary people —the fact that a small group of people can afford to buy new motor-cars or frequently replace old ones, while at the same time you have tens of thousands more people going to the employment exchanges and selling their little goods in the pawn offices because they are without the wherewithal to buy the necessities they require to sustain themselves. I propose to contrast the statement made by the Minister for Posts and Telegraphs with the figures which I have just quoted. The Minister addressed a handful of people at a recent by-election meeting in Fermoy in the course of which he said:

"Every single report on economic progress was favourable. Exports were again increasing. Tillage and the use of scientific farming methods were at last on the upgrade. Industrial production was increasing and the decline in production in certain industries was ending. Business in the towns was sound and increasing, and every kind of entertainment appeared to be well patronised. Ten thousand people had been put into employment at mid-April."

Did anyone ever read such a fanciful picture as that—that business in the towns is sound and increasing? Is there any Fianna Fáil Deputy who will attempt to justify that statement? Everyone knows that the people are worse off now than they were two years ago. Even the Taoiseach's office certifies that there are 18,000 more unemployed people to-day than there were 12 months ago, and 27,000 more unemployed than there were two years ago. Yet, the Minister for Posts and Telegraphs was let loose on Fermoy to say that 10,000 additional people had got work since mid-April, that business in the towns was increasing and that every single report on economic progress was favourable.

The Minister for Posts and Telegraphs used previously select the most gloomy songs from his repertoire to indicate that the country was heading for ruin and bankruptcy, but now apparently he is prepared to put on the jazz of optimism in order to try and deludepeople into the belief that things are humming, and that everyone is perfectly satisfied with conditions as they find them in the country. He went on further to say that everything in 1953 "was showing promise, and that the vast majority of the Irish people were advancing steadily and surely to a time of greater permanent prosperity based on sound principles". They are advancing steadily, but advancing where? To the employment exchanges, 16,000 more than were advancing there last year. That is the permanent prosperity, and these are the sound principles which the Minister for Posts and Telegraphs saw fit to talk of on the eve of the poll to the dull-witted people of Fermoy as he conceived them to be.

I would advise the Minister to have a look at the queues at the employment exchanges, the queues at the North Wall or waiting to get on the mail boat at Dún Laoghaire or to get on the Innisfallenbefore it leaves Cork for Fishguard. I ask him to think of all those people who are travelling over to Britain to get the employment which they cannot get here. That is the kind of advance that is actually taking place, and not the fanciful advance to prosperity which the Minister spoke about as if it were a revelation to him when he addressed a meeting recently in Fermoy. The Minister should go up to the Gardiner Street Employment Exchange or, perhaps, some of the Fianna Fáil Deputies would go there and read the Minister's speech to the people queueing up there, and tell them that his speech represents the real condition of the country. Everybody is advancing to permanent prosperity on sound principles. I venture to suggest that whoever goes down the country with that recital of our economic position will get short shrift from hungry men and women who see no evidence of this prosperity to which the Minister for Posts and Telegraphs refers. Nobody believes that. That is claptrap. The electorate of North-West Dublin did not believe it; the electorate of East Cork did not believe it and the electorate of Wicklow did not believe it. Nobody believes it; it is merely doled out to deceive credulous people on the eve of the poll.

Let us test the Government's record in respect of prices. It is here they probably inflicted the most savage of all attacks on the standard of living of the people. According to the cost-of-living index figures published by the Government, the cost-of-living index figure in February, 1948, was 99; by February, 1951, it was 103; by February, 1952, it was 114; by February, 1953, it had jumped to 123; and by May, 1953, it had jumped to 126—a steady rise all the time. These figures do not take cognisance of the increase in the price of tobacco, cigarettes, beer and of many other commodities which were deliberately excluded by this Government from the cost-of-living essential items index. That is the Government's record on price levels.

Listen to what the Government promised the people and compare the promise in this field, too, with the performance. In 1951, the Fianna Fáil Government issued what was described as a 17-point programme. I do not want to weary the House by going through the whole 17 points. It is sufficient for my purpose if I quote one, that was the declaration in which they said that it was Fianna Fáil policy "to maintain food subsidies, to control the price of essential foodstuffs and the operation of an efficient system of price regulation for all necessary commodities." Since that declaration was made in 1951 about 160 price control Orders which were operated during the inter-Party Government period of office have been cancelled. The main purpose of the cancellation was to permit the prices of these commodities to rise still further.

We were told in this declaration of policy that it was the aim of Fianna Fáil to maintain the food subsidies, but last year the food subsidies were savagely slashed. As a result of the slashing of the food subsidies last year the people were compelled to pay substantially higher prices for their essential commodities as compared with the prices which were in operation when the inter-Party Government were in office. When we were in office you could buy butter at 2/8 a lb.; now you pay 4/2 and it is an offence to buy Irish butter in the capital city ofDublin, or in Bray. The two-pound loaf was then 6¼d.; it is now 9¼d.; tea was 2/8 a lb.; it is now 5/- a lb.; sugar was then 4d. a lb.; it is now 7d. a lb.; flour was then 2/8 a stone; it is now 4/6 a stone. Bear in mind that these are the increases directly attributable to the slashing of the subsidies only, but a look at the general cost-of-living index figure shows that there has been an increase in the price of meat, bacon, milk, tobacco, beer, cigarettes, and a large number of other commodities.

In the face of this prosperity which the Taoiseach talked about and in face of the satisfactory position which the Minister for Lands purported to discover in the course of his speech this evening, the most we can give the old age pensioners to compensate them for that savage increase in that long list of commodities which impact so heavily on the people of such slender resources as old age pensioners is 1/6 per week. A sum of 1/6 per week or 2½d. per day is the most we can give our old age pensioners, 160,000 of them, notwithstanding all the stability and prosperity in which the Taoiseach and the Minister for Lands took such consolation this evening.

Mr. Morrissey

It is exactly the amount of the increase in a pound of butter.

Mr. Burke

You did not give them a whole lot.

Mr. Norton

They were much better off when we were in office than they are now, and they will be better off as soon as this motion is beaten.

Mr. Burke

Tell us what you are going to give.

Mr. Norton

We told the people in North-West Dublin, in Wicklow and in East Cork.

Dr. Hillery

Tell us what you would do about prices.

An Leas-Cheann Comhairle

Deputy Norton should be allowed to speak.

Dr. Hillery

Are you going to reduce the price of meat?

Mr. Norton

You sat there silently while many commodities increased in price and you voted for every one of them.

Dr. Hillery

Are you going to reduce the price of meat?

Mr. Norton

When we get rid of this Government the possibilities before the country will be infinite.

An Leas-Cheann Comhairle

Deputy Hillery should cease interrupting.

Mr. Norton

In face of this substantial rise in prices and this shameful treatment of old age pensioners, 2½d. a day compensation, with the £ to-day worth only 9/- in terms of 1939 purchasing power, giving them that miserable pittance to sustain them against this savage attack on their standard of living, is it any wonder the Government cannot win by-elections? Is it any wonder the people have forfeited any faith they ever had in this Government?

The Minister for Lands was not in his best mood in interpreting figures, and he had an incursion into the figures for employment in housing. He purported to get some consolation from whatever figures somebody put into his hands before he came into the House this evening. Of course, the facts are completely contrary to what was stated by the Minister. In reply to a question in this House by Deputy MacBride, column 456, Volume 139 of the Official Debates of 2nd June, 1953, the Taoiseach was asked to state:

"The total number employed in local authority building works in the State at the end of each quarter in 1950, 1951 and 1952, and at the end of March, 1953."

He supplied this answer:

"In 1950, on the last day of the quarter, there were 12,955 employed by local authorities in the country. Let us forget for the moment about private building. We are dealing with local authorities. For 1951 the figure was 11,085; in 1952 it was 11,128, and in the first quarter of 1953 it was 7,305. It dropped from12,900 in March, 1950, to 7,300 in 1953."

Yet the Minister for Lands comes in this evening seeking to give the House the impression that there were more people than ever employed in building houses, but, in fact, according to those figures there were 5,500 less employed in building houses for local authorities.

There has, of course, been a serious sag in the house-building programme throughout the country. That is not denied. There is a document here published by the Central Statistics Office which purports to be an analysis of the live register at mid-April, 1953. Let the Taoiseach's document speak for itself. In this it is stated that there has been a substantial increase—over 6,000—in the last 12 months in the number of additional building and construction workers signing on at the labour exchange, notwithstanding the discovery by the Minister for Lands this evening that the number of persons employed on house-building was increasing substantially.

Clearly, this is due to the dear money policy pursued by the Government and by the Minister for Finance. We were told during the year by the Minister that it was necessary to pay 5 per cent. on a loan for national purposes. He was not anxious to spoil the ship, as he said, for a ha'porth of tar and he offered the investing public a 5 per cent. interest on a loan which he borrowed from them at a rate of interest substantially higher than need have been paid at that time and, as a result of not spoiling the ship for what he described as the ha'porth of tar, over 6,000 additional building and constructional workers have been sent to the employment exchanges. Why? Because a large number of persons cannot now afford to borrow money for house-building purposes because of the high interest charges, because a substantial number of private builders who went into building houses for private sale now find they cannot sell the houses, because a number of local authorities are now concerned as to the wisdom of building further houses because of the high rents which willhave to be charged in consequence of the higher price which they will have to pay in interest for the moneys borrowed for house-building activities.

If the Minister for Lands doubts the truth of what I say, let him go to any building trade union with headquarters in the city. Every single one of these unions to-day have their unemployed registers packed with persons who were in regular and decent employment two years ago. I have here a trade union publication which analyses the number of unemployed building trade workers in Dublin. It says that on the 1st July, 1951, taking four trades only, there were 221 unemployed building craftsmen. By January, 1953, that had gone up to 1,112. Further on it is stated that for every unemployed builder's labourer in 1951, there are now ten unemployed builders' labourers.

Anybody who is familiar with the situation in the City of Dublin knows that that is no exaggeration. All you have to do is to talk to private builders and they will tell you that so far as they are concerned they are finished with private building, they are going to cut down substantially on private building in future because they realise it is impossible to sell the houses which they have built.

Now, Sir, we could tot up. The Government's record in respect of prices has been one of driving the cost of living higher than it has ever been in living memory. We have an unemployment situation that has gravely deteriorated in the past two years. We have industrial production falling. We have employment in agriculture falling. We have a fall in house building and we have got generally a feeling of insecurity, a feeling of depression, a feeling of caginess, a feeling that nobody knows to-day what will happen to-morrow or next month. All that is producing a feeling of general insecurity and general uneasiness.

This situation, of course, has been brought about by the Government's austerity policy. We were told in 1951, with delightful unison, by the banks, by the Central Bank and by the Government,that we were eating too much, that we were consuming too much and that we were living beyond our means. The Minister for Finance staggered off with grief to the Gresham Hotel and, from a well-furnished table, announced, with tears in his eyes and a gulp in his throat, that the financial position was on the verge of desperation and it seemed to be only a matter of minutes until the whole nation would be engulfed in an abyss of bankruptcy. We were told then, too, over the well-appointed table, that the people of the country were eating too much and consuming too much and were living beyond their means. This exhortation to economise was delivered from the well-appointed table of the Gresham Hotel.

This Government, of course, has been operating the policy of the Central Bank. The Taoiseach has denied that and the Tánaiste has denied that, but we can examine the recommendations made to the Government by the Central Bank, we can see then what the Government have done on those recommendations and we can see also the points at which these two approaches converge.

The policy of the Central Bank is a policy of deflation. The Central Bank has one ambition in life and that is to maintain the crazy economic policy of investing our assets in Britain as some of the directors of the Central Bank are satisfied that the moment we cease to invest our sterling assets in Britain and repatriate them in the development of our own land and industry, this country is bound to collapse financially.

Look at the report of this Central Bank. I do not think any document ever ravaged a nation's economy more than this blue book of despair issued by the Central Bank. Let us quote from the report. At paragraph 17, page 13, we find these words—I need not quote the paragraph at length:

"In view of the unusually favourable state of employment for a considerable time past there is the less need at present for the artificial stimuli provided by such a programme especially as prevailing high costs cause it to encroach rapidly onresources which may be badly needed at a later time when conditions afford more justification for this expedient."

So, the Central Bank says, in view of the unusually favourable state of employment, do not provide so much money for public works. This may have no connection with the Government's subsequent attitude but, after that report was issued, the Government slashed viciously the grants made to the local authorities under the Local Authorities (Works) Act and thousands of people who had got employment under the inter-Party Government with grants issued under the Local Authorities (Works) Act are not getting that employment to-day. Instead, they are being sent to the labour exchange to draw a pittance there while valuable national work that should be done and could be done under the Local Authorities (Works) Act remains undone.

The Government did not accept the policy of the Central Bank but the Government does the same thing as the Central Bank advocates.

Here is another gem. This had no connection with the withdrawal of the subsidies. Deputies will note that. Do not allege that this was responsible for the withdrawal of the subsidies. Deputies will stagger towards the light when I finish the quotation. The Central Bank says:

"Subsidies are not only a heavy burden on the Budget but also constitute a disguised addition to purchasing power as the money saved through getting the subsidised article at a reduced price is set free for other expenditure. They can have a twofold adverse effect on the balance of payments by promoting excessive demand for the subsidised articles whether imported or domestic but exportable and by facilitating additional demand for unsubsidised articles. The effect of the subsidy may of course be modified to some extent by an associated system of rationing and some of the disadvantages of a subsidy may be obviated by a more severe ration scheme. Reduction or removal of subsidieswould, however, bring several advantages in relieving the Budget and allaying inflation and remedy a distorting influence in the price structure. It is true that removal of subsidy might tend somewhat to increase the cost of living but some inconvenience——

note "inconvenience."

——in this respect must be weighed against the compensating gains including specially the reduction of consumption."

The Central Bank's advice is that subsidies are concealed subsidisation of wages. Said the Central Bank—the thing to do is to slash them. There would be some inconvenience, says the Central Bank, but there will be compensating gains including the reduction of consumption. You lift the prices high and the people cannot reach for the commodities and, therefore, they have to do without them, said the Central Bank. The Government, of course, repudiated the policy of the Central Bank—repudiated it orally in this House—but the Government did the very thing which the Central Bank recommended and it has reached the same conclusion as the Central Bank desired, namely, cut down on consumption, increase the prices and, therefore, the people must buy less and we can export more and build up sterling assets in Britain. That is the alpha and the omega of the financial mentality of the Central Bank.

Mr. MacBride

"Keep a good healthy unemployment pool."

Mr. Norton

I will come to that.

Mr. Hickey

That is worth considering.

Mr. Hilliard

This is the Central Bank report.

Mr. Norton

I do not mind Deputy Hilliard being annoyed at this. This is not Fianna Fáil policy; it is Central Bank policy, but you have thrown your policy overboard and you have adopted the Central Bank's policy.

Mr. Hilliard

Tell us how.

Mr. Norton

I am speaking about the steps the Central Bank recom-mended——

Mr. Hilliard

Against subsidies.

Mr. Norton

Put that on record. You will find another opportunity of continuing the conversation. Take the recommendation of the Central Bank on wages:—

"In view of the situation described above, the present levels of income and consumption are excessive in relation to other facts of the economy and, therefore, require adjustment if progressive deterioration of the value of money is to be avoided. A fortiori, the stage has been passed where further wage increases to any general extent can be justified pending actual improvement of production of the requisite type. Some of the required adjustment should be obtainable from increased voluntary saving but, in the absence of any assurance of sufficiently large and early results from this expedient, recourse to the budgetary and fiscal remedies already indicated is called for.”

In other words, they cannot cut the wages but you must get it out of their pockets some way so the best way is to increase prices and, therefore, if they get an increase in wages their wages are of less use. You can rifle their pockets and that is another way to get the wages low and that is what was done in the Budget of last year and maintained in this year's Budget. Then we are told on page 16 of the report of the bank:—

"Rigorous restriction of bank credit for non-essential and less urgent purposes is now imperative if the banks are to be in a position to afford reasonable accommodation in those directions which are most in accord with the public interest. Resort to bank accommodation in cases where a public issue is feasible is plainly undesirable."

Since that report was written, bank interest rates have increased substantially. People now pay much more for their loans, their accommodation frombanks, than they previously paid. It is harder to get a loan, as everybody knows, and the result is that money which might be put into circulation on schemes of development or extension of business or industries has been retarded by the policy of increasing bank interest and by the policy of stepping down bank accommodation even for worth-while enterprises. Quite clearly, the policy of the Central Bank is that it believes deflation is the remedy for all our economic ills, and the Government believes the same, but, of course, it does not agree with the Central Bank. The report was issued.

We said at the time that this report would mean more unemployment. It meant 27,000 more unemployed in the last two years. We said that the removal of subsidies would mean an increase in prices and a fall in consumption so far as the ordinary people were concerned. It has meant that. We said that cutting consumption would lead to a fall in employment in shops and factories producing consumable goods. The unemployment figures show that that result has been brought about. We said that restriction of capital expenditure would mean curtailment of housing and drainage, and drainage has been the first and the worst to suffer by the slashing of the grants under the Local Authorities (Works) Act. We said it would mean more taxation. So it did. Look at last year's Budget continued in this year's Budget. We said it would mean reduction in the real wages of workers. So it has. We said it would lead to great emigration. You have only to look at the ports and get conclusive proof of that. All these hardships have been brought about by pursuit of the baneful and reactionary policies advocated by the Central Bank, and unfortunately adopted by the Government in its attitude during the past two years. This policy of building up our external assets in Britain is a policy which is completely at variance with the early policy of the Fianna Fáil Party. I could quote for hours in this House speeches made by Front Bench members of the present Government deploring the fact that we invested our sterling assets in England and saying,as I have said all down through the years, that when we sent our capital over we were compelled in fact to send our human population after it. I could quote speeches from the Minister for Finance, from the Tánaiste and the Taoiseach all saying that this policy of keeping our money in Britain where it was at the whim of every economic and political wind that blew was an insane policy so far as this country was concerned and that the sensible policy was to repatriate that money and invest it in Irish factories and Irish land and every kind of enterprise that gave employment for our people and an opportunity for national prosperity.

Mr. Burke

I would like to know what you did about it. You were in for three years.

Mr. Norton

We were trying to deal with it. You were in for 16 years and you completely changed your policy. You can go back to it. That was a policy of repatriating our assets, putting them in Irish factories, Irish land and everything to build up the Irish nation; but the Central Bank's policy is to keep your money in Britain. You are told that you cannot get stability unless you lend money to another country at 1½ per cent. while we borrow from the banks at 5 and 6 per cent. to build houses, for building factories, for lending the farmers to stock and fertilise the land. This policy of building up our assets—what has it given us? It has given us mass unemployment, it has given hopeless under-capitalisation of land, it has given us inadequate industrial development and a policy which, when we export the money, compels us to export the human beings to follow the money, because a policy of starving our own industry and our own land has caused the compulsory export of our own manhood and womanhood to find employment that is denied them here by the policy of investing our sterling assets in Britain. What we have to do on a motion like this, in particular, is to make up our minds whether we are going to say of the Government that it has the confidence of this House or it has not. I do not think that this Government hasa policy in which anybody has any faith whatever. I do not believe that even members of the Fianna Fáil Party have any confidence in the policy pursued by the Government for the past two years. I do not believe that they are satisfied that it is taking them anywhere. I believe that they are dispirited, frustrated in the pursuit of a policy dissimilar to the Fianna Fáil policy that we were told of in this House in 1932 and 1933. I used to like Fianna Fáil policy then. I thought that there was vigour in it and a hope of national regeneration in it.

The policy of the Fianna Fáil Party to-day is indistinguishable from the policy set out in this blue book of despair issued by the Central Bank. What we have to ask ourselves on a motion of this kind is whether we are going to follow weakly a policy which has given us increased unemployment, increased emigration, industrial underdevelopment and agriculture stagnation. We have to ask and answer the question whether we are satisfied that the only refuge for the men and women of Ireland is to send them to the labour exchange, that the only alternative is the right to join the emigrant ship to escape from the hardship of the Irish employment exchange.

If that situation is allowed to continue—in my view it has gone on far too long—it must in the end lead to national decay and complete frustration of all the hopes for which our people strove so manfully and so nobly, to secure the right to order their own Irish lives in their own Irish way. This policy must be disappointing to everyone who privately examines his conscience to see whether he is satisfied with the direction and speed of the national advance. I do not think the conscience of any single member of the Fianna Fáil Party alive to the facts to-day could pretend to be satisfied with the policy this Government is pursuing.

This Government does not command the confidence of the people; it never commanded the confidence of the people since the last election. The people never elected this Government and they have certainly paid dearly for having the luxury of a Fianna Fáil Governmentin office without a mandate and kept in office by people merely because they themselves are afraid to face the electorate. This trick of a vote of confidence will deceive nobody. The motion looks more like a telegram— there are nine words in it under the heading: "Vote of Confidence"—as a decoy put before the Dáil to deceive the people into believing that the Taoiseach has the confidence of the Dáil. He has not the confidence of the House and this House cannot give him confidence, because in the manner in which it is constructed to-day the only people who can give the Taoiseach confidence are the electorate.

Having regard to his old enthusiasm and his old flair for consulting the people, in the days when he believed in an annual Parliament, I cannot understand why the Taoiseach is so reluctant to go back to the people. In present circumstances, with the figures of three by-elections before him, the Taoiseach cannot be enthusiastic to go back to the people, as he knows what is coming to his Party. After the by-elections, one can understand his reluctance to trust the judgment of the people, knowing how decisively the people have spoken in recent by-elections. At the same time, the Taoiseach must have respect for Parliamentary Government and must acknowledge that a respect for the people's supremacy leaves the Government with no other choice but to go to the people. In all decency, I suggest, therefore, the Government should go back to the only authority from which they can get a mandate. Reluctance to do that or fear of the people's anger or wrath is not a justification for withholding their right to withdraw or renew the mandate which can come only from the people. It would be indecent for this Government to cling to office any longer—as clinging they are, in the face of the results of the last three by-elections. It is better, it is healthier, it is cleaner and purer for our parliamentary and public life, that the Government should go back to the people and say: "This is my stewardship; there is my account of it; now decide who is to rule the destinies ofthe nation for the next five years." It would be indecent to cling on. The only thing that would be more indecent would be to carry this vote of confidence here by the support of the Government Party and of a few so-called Independents. Those Independents have no authority to give the Government any vote of confidence. As the Minister for Defence knows, some of them will be a political wreckage on a political shore as soon as the people get an opportunity of expressing their views on them.

Minister for Defence (Mr. Traynor)

Deputy Norton has just stated that he used to like or admire the Fianna Fáil Party and the Fianna Fáil policy. Well, the Party and the policy are unchanged; I am afraid it is the Deputy who has changed and not Fianna Fáil. He should examine his conscience and find out why he changed, what brought about that change? Having done that, he may not be so enthusiastic in defence of the Party of which he is now a member—I refer to the Coalition Party, which to my mind is a weird and wonderful thing, as it can trim its sails to any particular wind that blows. I have a very distinct recollection over the years of the Fine Gael criticism of the Taoiseach for going to the people. Then the Taoiseach was putting the nation to the expense of having unnecessary elections. Now they have trimmed their sails to meet a different wind and the charge now is that we will not go to the people.

There are 147 representatives in this House, every one of them elected by the people. They had to go before the people in some form or other and declare what they stood for. Having made their declaration they were elected and I take it that they still represent the people and the views which they may have put before the people. Deputy Norton and the Leader of the Opposition have been endeavouring to make a case against any Independent Deputy exercising the right to vote and to use his own intelligence in any direction which he decides. That extraordinary state of affairs arises, no doubt, from the desire of the Opposition to intimidate those Deputies from taking the action whichthey might be inclined to take. As far as the Government is concerned, we do not know what action these gentlemen will take. We have not approached them and do not intend to approach them. They are Independent Deputies with a perfect right to utilise that independence in any way they desire.

Deputy Norton was very caustic in his criticism of Deputy Cogan and went so far as to say that he represented nobody. Surely he represents someone, just like any of the Independent Deputies supporting Fine Gael or Labour or some of the other groups. He is as fully fledged a member of this House as Deputy Alfred Byrne, for instance, who calls himself an Independent representative.

I was very forcibly reminded to-day, when the Leader of the Opposition was talking, of a statement made by the late Bernard Shaw in reference to some pronouncement that was made by a British Prime Minister. When the late Bernard Shaw was asked his opinion on that weighty pronouncement he described it as "mere barrister's claptrap". I was very forcibly reminded of that remark to-day while the Leader of the Opposition was speaking—the more so, because he endeavoured to feed us forcibly with statistics which he garnered to suit his own purpose. When he charged the Taoiseach with not making reference to something to which he thought the Taoiseach should have referred, Deputy Costello was just emphasising the fact that he himself did not refer to one very emphatic piece of statistical data to which he might reasonably have referred and that is to the fact that, in the election to which he was referring—the election of 1951—the Government Party received no less than 68 seats whilst the Party which Deputy Costello represents received a mere 40. I think that that was a pretty emphatic representation of what the public believed and thought of the two Parties concerned.

I am satisfied that the almost hysterical demand for a general election that is emanating, in the main, from the Fine Gael Party and which has now been taken up by the Labour Party, is just a desire to cash in on a situation which they believe to be favourable tothemselves. Surely there is nothing wrong in asking this House for a vote of confidence if the Opposition—the united Opposition — go around the country telling the people that this Government no longer represent the views of the people.

Surely the elected representatives of this House represent the people. If they represent the people, surely they are the ones to be met and asked to decide that issue. If we do not represent the people, surely the Deputies in this House—the elected representatives of the people—will tell us in no uncertain language, whether we do or do not represent them. I cannot see any more democratic and speedy way in which we can get that decision than the method which has been adopted. It has been adopted, not as a device but merely as a test, to find out, through the people who are elected to this House, whether or not we represent the people. If we do not represent the people in that respect, then it is a simple thing to defeat us and an election will follow forthwith.

I will not deny that the by-elections which took place in Wicklow and Cork, and which resulted in victories for Fine Gael, were not of some concern to us: of course, they were. At the same time, we, like Deputy McGilligan, were certain beforehand that we could not win those elections. Some weeks before the by-elections took place, Deputy McGilligan made the pronouncement that Fine Gael would win the two seats. I think that that statement caused a considerable amount of annoyance in Labour circles. However, they had to take what was coming to them. The fact of the matter is that, under the system of proportional representation, we could not in any circumstances have won either one or the other of these by-elections. Bearing that fact in mind— and the Opposition are as fully aware of that fact as we are—I call this present campaign dishonest inasmuch as the Opposition are trying to make something out of the results of these by-elections which was already there, which was known to be there and which could not be altered. While that could be regarded as a victory for theFine Gael Party, it certainly could not be regarded as a victory for the Labour Party who were, if I might put it so, grievously maltreated by Fine Gael in the course of that election. For Labour, it was a Pyrrhic victory— a victory which, perhaps, will go some way towards the destruction of their own Party.

I think it is dishonest of Deputy Norton to talk about the unemployment situation. It is astonishing to me that Deputy Norton, who for three and a half years was the second in command of the Coalition Government, should talk about the unemployment situation which exists at the present time. Especially do I feel that, in view of the fact that he was a member of a Government which deliberately destroyed one industry that might have provided quite a large amount of employment if it had been allowed to proceed: I refer to the transatlantic air company which was known as Air Linte.

That company would not only have provided a large amount of employment for people in rural areas but it would have provided them with a skilled craft. It would have provided the children of the fathers and mothers of the Counties Limerick and Clare with the ways and means whereby they could become skilled craftsmen. Not only would it have provided that employment for the people of this country but it would have provided the ways and means by which dollars could be earned for this country. That company was in existence. It had carried out trial flights across the Atlantic. There had been quite a large amount of bookings for these trips. Had that company been in continuous existence since its establishment, there can be little doubt but that, by now, it would have developed to the extent that it would be employing hundreds of persons.

Deputy Norton talks about a "blue book of despair". His whole speech was a blue speech of despair. I can hardly imagine that the people of this country will be able to recognise themselves from the description whichDeputy Norton gave of them. It would not be unfair to say that the impression which Deputy Norton's speech gave was that we are bordering on famine, that the nation is on the verge of destruction and that there is little hope for the nation unless this Government is got rid of——

Mr. Hickey

He conveyed no such thing.

Mr. Traynor

——a Government which, to his own knowledge, and what he said he at one time admired, have produced all the things that have provided ways and means for the workers of this country, including very many amenities such as holidays with pay, unemployment pay and so forth.

Then there was the case of the chassis factory which was another example of the type of hypocrisy that emanates from the benches opposite. They talk about the unemployed workers and yet, when the means of giving employment to people is being provided, because the industry is established by the Fianna Fáil Governmene they destroy it for nothing but purely political reasons. That factory, which would have initially provided work for 100 people and, if it were operating now, would probably be providing work for 400 or 500 people, was destroyed overnight. Some of the machinery purchased to operate that factory was sold before the cases in which it was contained were even opened. Members of the Opposition who talk about unemployment ought to be ashamed of themselves when they remember the manner in which they dealt with these various attempts to provide employment for the people.

As to the turf industry, what did the Coalition Government do to produce a single extra sod of turf during the period in which they were in office? They did more to "down" the industry than to help it. The same thing could be said of the cement factories. For the three and a half years during which the Coalition Government were in office the management of the cement factories were appealing to be allowed to carry out extensions to the factories. It was not until the Fianna Fáil Government returned to office thatthese extensions were permitted. Had they been permitted when the expansion was required there would have been quite an amount of employment found for workers and it would not have been necessary to import the large quantity of cement imported during that period. The position has now been reversed. The requirements of this country at the present time are being provided by these factories as a result of these extensions.

The same thing can be said of Irish Shipping, Ltd. As far as Irish Shipping, Ltd., was concerned, during the three and a half years of the Coalition Government it might have as well been a foreign-run company instead of being a company which was started during a period of emergency when, without its help, it would have been impossible to have continued a number of industries in this country. Its operations were carried on by a number of secondhand vessels which were purchased during that period and, so effective was the management of that company, they were eventually able to act as their own insurers and were in the position of being able to hand over a large sum of money to an Irish Insurance company to carry on that work—money which would have left this country were it not for the foresight displayed by the management of the company. That company, which was so completely ignored by the then Coalition Government, is to-day a flourishing company providing work for a large number of people, a much larger number that was initially employed and, with its further development on account of the number of extra ships which have been ordered, it will probably employ 700 or 800 or even 1,000 workers. That is the type of industry that was completely and entirely ignored by the Coalition Government.

We have been denounced from all sides for our long-sightedness in endeavouring to make plans for providing better accommodation for the workers in the Civil Service. The provision of a new building for the Legislature and other things were considered. Plans were thought out and, if some of these schemes had beenallowed to develop instead of being denounced by members of the Opposition as a spendthrift policy, the unemployment which they are complaining about to-day possibly would not exist. These are some of the schemes which I certainly hope will eventuate in the near future. They will eventuate if we continue in office. I have a suspicion that the great fear in the minds of the Opposition is that time is on our side and that the sooner we are got out of office the better for themselves. Eventually, the people will be called upon to judge the merits of the various Parties and the people, no doubt, will get the Government which they deserve.

I think I could say the same thing about agriculture as I have said about other industries. The acreage under tillage decreased during the period of office of the Coalition Government by something like 600,000 acres. I suggest that these 600,000 acres that should have been under tillage would have employed a considerable number of workers, workers who probably, because of the fact that they were not being tilled, were compelled to emigrate.

Deputy Norton was at great pains to point out the number of valuable things which they left behind them when going out of office. He very guardedly decided that he would say nothing about one of the things which they left behind them, that there was an emigration figure of almost 30,000 a year. If the unemployment figures during the three years of the Coalition were not as high as they are to-day, it is reasonable to assume that they were not so high by reason of the fact that there was that continuous outflow of the workers of this country during that period.

There is another point. When Deputy Norton was describing the wonderful period that existed during the period of the Coalition in office, he did not refer to the fact that they had the Marshall millions behind them to spend as they did spend them. I am very certain that when they come back—if they do come back—they will not have these Marshall millions to use, and that their only source of findingmoney will be the same source that this Government has to find its money from.

General MacEoin

Your Government made sure we didn't have them. You spent them damn quick.

Mr. Traynor

I will suggest to the Deputy that he, as well as other members of the Coalition, is placing a nice little rod in pickle for himself and for the other members of his Party and Parties by reason of the line which they are taking at the present time. They are trying to cash in on all the various difficulties of one kind or another which exist. They are trying to suggest that the retrospective sum of money that should be paid to the Civil Service would be paid if they were in office. Well, it remains to be seen whether they will pay that retrospective sum or not. But, however, they appear to me to be creating the impression that that is what they are going to do.

It may be a very useful election device. It may pay dividends, but it will certainly put this State in Queer Street if some of the other devices they are talking about are to be honoured. I have a suspicion that there was a suggestion also that the subsidies are going to be restored. That will be a nice little rod in pickle for you, Deputies.

Mr. Hickey

Would not it be a good idea to know what we are all going to do from now on?

Mr. Traynor

That is what you are telling us you are going to do. It remains to be seen whether you will do it or not. You may get votes as a result of saying it, but whether you will be able to do it in the circumstances without the Marshall millions is another question.

There was a suggestion that there was going to be a reduction in incometax. As far as I can see, we are going to live in a new El Dorado if all these promises are going to be honoured.

I have a very distinct recollection of Deputy Morrissey, when he was a Deputy, telling this House in all seriousness—andI am sure he believed it at the time he was making the statement—that there was no reason in the wide world why the unemployment situation could not be ended in 24 hours. He made that statement and, as I say, he might perhaps have made it in his innocence of the difficulties which existed. I think he retractted it at a later stage when he was a Minister and admitted that it was not quite so easy. At that time there were 70,000 unemployed, or so Deputy Morrissey told us, and he could see no reason in the wide world why that situation could not be relieved. He did not relieve it to any extent.

Nor was emigration stopped. I have just mentioned a moment ago that the average number of people leaving this country during the three and a half years of office of the Coalition Government averaged something around about 25,000 to 30,000 people. That was a difficulty which the then Government was unable to cope with any more than they were able to cope with the unemployment situation, but nevertheless, when they went out of office they told people then, as they are telling them now, that these tasks were easy of solution, and no doubt quite a large number of people believed that another Party such as was represented by the speakers of that time might find it possible to do some of these things. They have had their experience and I think the general experience is that it would not be possible to do it.

I just want to quote, a Cheann Comhairle, a paragraph from the Evening Heraldof June 22nd, and it deals with the results of the elections. TheEvening Heraldis the organ of the Coalition Government and, naturally, it is up to them to lead the way and give the slogan for the Party members what to say. In the course of that leader they referred to the fact that the present Government of the Republic of Ireland was kept in power by the support of Deputies Browne, Cogan, Cowan, ffrench-O'Carroll and Sheldon, not one of whom was elected on the basis that he would support, through thick and thin, the Fianna Fáil administration. I do not know what the writer of that article wasthinking of at all. I do not know what he means by “support them through thick and thin” because Independent Deputies are not pledged to support any Party as far as my knowledge goes, and anyhow, he must not have been aware of the fact that the following Independent Deputies— Deputies Byrne and Byrne, McQuillan, Fagan, Flanagan, Dillon, Sheldon, Finucane and Lehane all voted for Mr. Costello in the 1951 election for the Taoiseach. Surely, if there was nothing wrong in these individuals voting then for Mr. Costello there cannot be anything wrong in their voting—if they do vote—for this motion. But, apparently, what was right in 1951, when they were supporting the Coalition Taoiseach, is wrong if they support a Fianna Fáil Taoiseach.

I cannot see the force of that reasoning at all. We have either to be honest in dealing with this situation or to act as hypocrites. My own impression is that any Independent Deputy, who acts as an Independent, has a right to use his own intelligence in the same way as members of the various Parties have a right to use their intelligence. Deputy Norton emphasised the fact that the 69 members of the Fianna Fáil Party will troop, as he described it, into the Division Lobbies whether they like it or not. Surely I could repeat that statement in respect to the Fine Gael Party, the Labour Party, the Clann na Talmhan Party or the Clann na. Poblachta Party? Surely every one of the members of these Parties will vote in what they believe is the right way. If they do, I take it there is no big stick behind them compelling them to do so any more than there will be behind the Fianna Fáil Party.

Mr. Donnellan

That is not what was said.

Mr. Traynor

There is such a thing as Party loyalty and nobody knows that better than Deputy Donnellan. If there is such a thing as Party loyalty, surely it is the duty of a member of a Party, whatever the circumstances or however difficult it may be, to come in here and cast his vote. We, of the Fianna Fáil Party, will marshal ourforces to the fullest strength of the Party because we believe in our cause. We believe that the policy of the Fianna Fáil Party is the best to safeguard the interests of the people of the nation. It is because we believe that that we shall come in here to vote on this motion in the greatest strength possible.

Deputy Norton sneered at the fact that we were going to bring in members here by hook or by crook, that we would bring them in here on stretchers to vote, and he seemed to resent that. I say that any individual who is capable of coming in should come in here and cast his vote.

What I particularly object to is that a responsible paper like the Evening Heraldshould give publicity to the statement that the elected representatives of the people because they have to take a line opposite to the viewpoint of that paper, are acting in a dishonourable manner, acting solely to safeguard their jobs. I think it is deplorable that various newspapers in this country are writing down this Legislature, sneering at it, and sneering at its members. I think it is an unfortunate state of affairs that that should be so. When all is said and done, this is the Legislature elected by the people to make their laws and however fitted or ill-fitted we may be to carry out these duties, at least we do our work to the best of our ability. I do not believe there is any Deputy who would act in a dishonourable manner in respect to the tasks which have been entrusted to him. I think it deplorable that suggestions should be made that Deputies are voting, not for a principle, but to hold on to their jobs. Such suggestions are a disgrace to journalism and the sooner we get away from them the better.

As I have said, this motion is one which can only be decided by the members of this House. If the decision is favourable to the Government, the Government will, no doubt, carry on as they will be entitled to. If the decision should not be favourable, there can be no doubt that there will be an election. I am hoping that the common sense of Deputies will lead them to support this motion, that they willgive a vote to the Taoiseach that will enable him to continue to carry out the policy of the Government for which he is responsible, a policy which we believe is in the best interests of the public and which will be carried on until such time as the House decides that that policy is one which the majority of the members can no longer support.

When that day comes, I think I can say with confidence that this Government will not remain a moment longer in office. The suggestion that we are clinging to office for some dishonourable purpose is completely and entirely at variance with the facts. We shall remain in office, and without clinging to it, until such time as the Government is defeated in this House on some piece of legislation of some importance to the people of the nation. As I said a few moments ago, when that day comes we shall clear out.

Mr. Donnellan

In the debate this evening, two Ministers, the Minister for Defence and the Minister for Lands, were inclined to give us quotations from statements of statesmen and other people. The Minister for Lands gave us a quotation from, I think, the British Prime Minister and the Minister for Defence gave us a quotation from George Bernard Shaw. I hope, Sir, that you will not take it ill of me if I give a quotation. I shall give the quotation first and I shall allow Deputies to come to their own conclusion as to who was the author. The quotation is from a statement made in the year 1932:—

"On any occasion that I want to know what the Irish people require, I need only look into my own heart."

That was Deputy de Valera in 1932. Times must have changed very much from that occasion away back in 1932 when in the rush of a general election, the present Taoiseach said that all he needed to know what the Irish people wanted was to look into his own heart. In moving the motion this evening— a very strange one, the first of its kind that ever came before this House—I think that if he was inclined to look into the hearts of the Irish people orinto his own heart the effort must have failed him. I think he was inclined to look rather into the hearts of a few Independent Deputies. If he does, he will find the outlook there very dark and very bleak indeed.

The Minister made a reference to an article which had appeared in the Evening Herald.What theEvening Heraldwanted to point out, I presume, was the fact that some of the Independents it mentioned were elected by inter-Party votes and elected to support the inter-Party Government. That was what it tried to point out and I am quite sure the Minister for Defence is not so dull as not to realise fully what theEvening Heraldmeant by that statement. So far as Clann na Talmhan are concerned, we propose to vote wholeheartedly against the motion because we believe that this House should be an exact representation of the country, that it should be the voice of the people, and it is our view that, as constituted at present, it does not represent the voice of the people. I do not want to throw water on a drowning rat—far from me to do anything like that——

Mr. Davern

You would find it cold.

Mr. Donnellan

I have waited for six hours for an opportunity to speak and I did not interrupt any speaker before me. If an Independent Deputy like Deputy Cogan intends to vote for this motion, when the people of his constituency only very recently voted solidly no confidence in this Government, how can the Taoiseach or any Minister argue that such a vote represents the voice of the people? It certainly does not. It is not my purpose to be too hard on Deputy Cogan. It would not be fair, because his position is a terrible one, but in him we have an example of a Deputy elected as a supporter of the inter-Party Government who came in here and opposed that Government and supported a Fianna Fáil Coalition Government. The people of his constituency got an opportunity to pass judgment on that Government and they gave their answer. How then can the Taoiseach say that a vote on Thursdaynight by a House which contains even one member of that type is the voice of the people?

So far as the present Government are concerned, they did not get into power two years ago by the votes of the majority of the people. In the last general election, the votes of the majority of the people were for a return of the inter-Party Government, but Fianna Fáil got into power through the action of the combination which they despised the outgoing Government for getting in with. The only difference was that in the 1948 Election, there was no inter-Party. Why was there an inter-Party Government afterwards? Because the people voted solidly for it. Whether Fine Gael, Labour, Clann na Poblachta or Clann na Talmhan liked it or not, the people wanted it. They had to get it and they got it. They found that Government so good that in the last general election, the majority of the people voted for its return; but because some Deputies who were returned here by inter-Party votes voted for them, the present Fianna Fáil Coalition Government was returned to power. They never had authority from the majority of the people and they have not got it to-day. They have no right to say that if they get a miscroscopic majority of one or two on Thursday night, they are entitled to hang on. They are not entitled to hang on, because the people of Wicklow, of East Cork and of Dublin North-West have given their answer.

It may be said by Government supporters that they won two of the three previous by-elections in North Mayo, Waterford and Limerick. That is correct, but do Deputies know what happened?

Mr. Cunningham

Tell us.

Mr. Donnellan

I will tell you and I will give you a quotation. Deputy Kennedy, a Parliamentary Secretary, said in Belmullet, when challenged by the people of North Mayo as to whether the Government proposed to remove the subsidies, answered: "Do not believe a bit of that", although some days before the members of theFianna Fáil Party had walked into the Lobby in favour of their abolition on the following 1st July. It was not in operation at the time of these by-elections and the people were gulled by that sort of stuff. If the Government won the North Mayo seat on that occasion, they won it through deception of that type. I hope Deputy Flanagan representing South Mayo will swallow that.

One would expect that speakers for the Government would give some reasons why Deputies should vote for this motion. It is my intention to give reasons, and many of them, why no Deputy should support it. I start off by giving 88,800 reasons. I give, first, the 64,800 unemployed and then the 24,000 who left the country during the past 12 months. These figures add up to 88,800 human reasons why no Deputy should vote for the motion. As Deputy Norton has pointed out, we have people to-day marching through the streets and shouting: "We want work." We see this House guarded by extra Gardaí so as to keep the workers of Dublin City away from it. Surely Fianna Fáil Deputies must realise that there is something wrong. The like of that never happened before. Why is is happening now and what has caused it? That is what I should like the next speaker from the Government Benches to explain.

There have been changes since 1947. I remember three by-elections in 1947. the first occasion on which Deputy MacBride was elected to this House. Of these three by-elections, Fianna Fáil lost two, but they still had a majority of eight. Immediately they rushed into a general election. Here they are to-day, without a majority, hoping against hope that some Independents, like Deputy Cogan, who worries about his own seat, may vote for them. It does not matter what the result will be here to-morrow or on Thursday evening. The Government is bound to dissolve. It is bound to go to the people. Any Government that thinks it can carry on in the teeth of opposition from the majority of the people is making a damnable mistake.

I think this is the most dangerous motion that was ever brought beforethis House. Dangerous is the only word to describe it because this was the kind of game that Stalin played away back in the early days of Communism in Russia. This was the game that Mussolini played in Italy. This is the game that will destroy the very roots of democracy. This is the game that aims at complete dictatorship. I believe that the Fianna Fáil-Coalition Government would wish to hold power forever and never go before the people.

Never in the history of this country has there been a greater number of unemployed than there is at the present time. The Taoiseach appears to think it is nothing. He appears to think it is something that will pass. He has plans. All my life I have been hearing of those plans. Plans, plans, plans and still more plans. He says: "We will turn the corner." For the last 20 years I have been hearing about our turning the corner. Obviously we will never get around it so long as the present Government lasts. There seems to be a heavy fog around the corner. The only hope of clearing away that fog is by having a general election. Not alone will that clear away the fog but it will clear away the Fianna Fáil-Coalition Government.

The Fianna Fáil Government pretends that it has authority. It has no authority. The majority of the voters is not behind it. Its authority has been growing less since the General Election in 1948. The Minister for Defence said that Fine Gael won the two by-elections. Fine Gael did not win the two by-elections. The inter-Party won them. Of course I know the game; it is to drive a wedge between Fine Gael, Clann na Poblachta, Labour and Clann na Talmhan. The present Government can do its damnedest. Irrespective of whether Fine Gael likes it, Labour likes it, Clann na Poblachta likes it, or Clann na Talmhan, the people have been imbued with the inter-Party spirit. They want inter-Party Government and that Government will come, as it came in 1948, despite Fianna Fáil. The game is to drive a wedge.

The Taoiseach had a comment tomake on the result of the by-elections. He said there was no significant change. In two years the Government Party lost 4,445 first preference votes in Wicklow. They lost 6,000 first preference votes in Dublin North-West. No significant change! A very remarkable change in two years. Dublin North-West, Cork East and Wicklow are very different areas with a very different outlook, but the answer was the same in all cases. The answer was: a change of Government.

Fianna Fáil at the moment is like a drowning man clutching at a straw. They are trying to hang on for another week, another month or another two months. Not so very long ago I appealed to the Taoiseach not to hold the by-elections. I told him he was bound to be beaten. He took a chance. Does the Fianna Fáil Government remember the famous 17 points? That was a big list that gladdened my heart. The Government introduced the Undeveloped Areas Act. I am glad the Parliamentary Secretary, Deputy Bartley, is here listening to me now. I remember a meeting of Galway County Council where a discussion took place in relation to the sites for new factories in Galway under that Act. There was a place called South Park, and I think it was the chairman who suggested that that would be an ideal place for a factory. Someone else said it was too near the city and the smoke from the chimneys would spoil the view of the city for the tourists. Smoke! We have 3,000 unemployed in Galway at the moment and there is not even the smoke of a cigarette to spoil the view. Tobacco is too dear. Instead of the smoke having increased it has disappeared. There is no smoke-screen now, and the people are no longer blind.

We hear a good deal about production. I am glad the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Finance is here listening to me now. I represent the farmers. One million acres of land in this country are subject to flooding every year. The first step towards increased production is to remedy that flooding. Fianna Fáil introduced the Arterial Drainage Act in 1944. I give them credit for it. Devil a ha'porth didthey ever do about it. During the three years in which the inter-Party Government was in office in each year we started an arterial drainage scheme.

I used to be taunted by the then Opposition with whistle blowing; all I did was to blow a whistle. Damn the whistle they have blown in the last two years. The Taoiseach talked about increased production but the people on the land are being given no opportunity for increasing production. It is Government policy or at least it should be Government policy. Since the present Fianna Fáil Coalition has got in there will be no additional arterial drainage schemes started in this country. There is one such scheme left but I shall deal with that on another occasion if this present Government is in power and the particular Estimate is being discussed. At all events, there was one scheme left prepared to work and it should have started but no start has yet been made. The whistle went. It is like the smoke of the factories in Galway City but the air was never as clear in Galway City as it is now. It is much clearer than the atmosphere inside this House to-night.

The present Fianna Fáil Coalition make me laugh. I listened to Deputy Derrig, Minister for Lands, speaking. According to him, Labour were all wrong, Clann na Poblachta were all wrong, Clann na Talmhan were all wrong and Fine Gael were all wrong. There is no one right except Fianna Fáil. It is not possible for anyone else to be right. It reminds me of the story in connection with the woman who had an only son. Being an only son, he was spoiled. This young man joined the British Army and he was due to march along a certain street with some troops. The mother was in the house and watched from the window. The name of this young man was Jackeen. By and by a few thousand troops passed by the window but Jackeen was not in step. The woman exclaimed: "Oh, good God, they are all out of step except Jackeen." Fianna Fáil reminds me of Jackeen. Everybody is wrong except Fianna Fáil.

Now the people are wrong and that is where the danger comes in. The people are now wrong and they shouldnot be consulted because we know what their verdict will be. The job is to prevent the people from being consulted. The steps the Taoiseach and the Government are taking or are attempting to take will make no difference. How could there be confidence in the Government? Among every section of the community, the farmers, workers, business people, and professional people, the one cry is: "We must get a change of Government". Is the Taoiseach going to put the people in the same position as he has put the unemployed? The unemployed are to-day marching with placards on which are inscribed the words: "We want work". Does the Government want to send the people around with placards bearing the inscription: "We want an election". Surely they are not going to drive the people to that extreme. To do so would be a dangerous thing. It would mean the end of democracy once and for all and it would leave the House without any respect whatever.

I demand that the Taoiseach, regardless whether this vote is a majority one or not, do not wait for it. It does not make a damn bit of difference whether or not he gets the majority. The people outside are the bosses. If Deputies think they can stay in this House against the will of the majority they are making the damnedest mistake of their lives. I appeal to the Taoiseach to dissolve the Dáil and go to the country. Does he think he can hang on by a slender majority? I do not believe he will get it. He could not hang on to a tiny majority. I appeal to him not to wait for this vote no matter how it goes. The people do not mind whether there is a large vote for or against the motion on Thursday night. The people demand a general election. For the sake of the good name of the people of the country and for the sake of the existence of democracy, I appeal to the Taoiseach to call for a general election.

Mr. Cosgrave

The motion which was introduced this afternoon by the Taoiseach is unusual not merely because it is the first time that such amotion was introduced but because of the speech which the Taoiseach made in introducing it. He spoke for 45 minutes and during the whole course of that speech he never once mentioned the results of the recent by-elections. One would have thought that the motion was introduced in an atmosphere entirely different from the circumstances in which the country finds itself at present.

The recent by-elections, following the result in North-West Dublin, can only be regarded as an emphatic repudiation of the economic policy of the present Government. That emphatic repudiation, following the defeat in North-West Dublin, requires some analysis and consideration. When the North-West Dublin result took place, Fianna Fáil spokesmen attributed the decision in North-West Dublin to a combination of two factors. They alleged that because the successful candidate was the son of Alderman Alfred Byrne and brother of the deceased Deputy he secured the sympathy of a great number of the electorate. In addition to that suggestion, they asserted that because there was an adverse decision in North-West Dublin it was peculiar to an urban constituency, that the rising unemployment and the rising cost of living had affected more severely people living in urban areas than those residing in rural constituencies. They alleged, asserted and claimed during the months that followed that North-West Dublin was peculiar to itself. Since then, two elections have taken place in two typically rural constituencies. Again, it is important that the people should recognise what has not been so far mentioned in the course of this debate by Government spokesmen but which was confidently asserted in public in some places but more often in private and by canvassers on behalf of Fianna Fáil.

During the course of these by-elections they came to the conclusion that they could not win Wicklow and would attribute the loss there to the split in the Fianna Fáil Party. The circumstance which occurred at theFianna Fáil convention was a good alibi to put across to the people if they were defeated in Wicklow. They concentrated great energies and considerable forces on East Cork where they had what was commonly accepted as a strong candidate. It was the confident belief in Fianna Fáil circles that they would win East Cork, and if the inter-Party candidate was successful in Wicklow at any rate the status quowould be maintained.

People in other constituencies may not be familiar with the terrific effort that the Fianna Fáil Party put in in these two constituencies. Not merely were Ministers and Parliamentary Secretaries present at meetings in each constituency but in every locality and district there was a Fianna Fáil Deputy or a Fianna Fáil Senator and in some cases both were quartered there. I think I should say that they were liberally endowed to meet with any eventualities. These people, in collaboration with outside assistants, operated for the entire three weeks of the campaign and they worked in the efficient way in which the Fianna Fáil organisation can work. In particular, when the Taoiseach was billed to speak in any locality, bus-loads and car-loads were brought in from other constituencies to swell the crowds to make it appear to the people in these constituencies that they had a vast concourse of people to support the Fianna Fáil Party policy. The bands played and the flags waved and, as far as it was possible to do it, a big demonstration was staged.

It was not possible to whip up the same enthusiasm for other Ministers. Some Ministers were left severely alone but, as far as the Taoiseach was concerned and wherever it was possible, a big election atmosphere was produced. The only feature that was not mentioned in the Irish Pressreports was the fact that a number of people who had the temerity to interrupt, or even ask a simple question at the Taoiseach's meeting in Bray, were removed from the audience. They were not allowed even to ask a simple question. However, these manufactured demonstrations, the whipped-up enthusiasm of the combined forces of the members of theGovernment and of the Deputies and Senators quartered in the constituencies failed to bring off the result that was anticipated.

Leaving aside the peculiar situation that Fianna Fáil were prepared to make a case concerning Wicklow, in East Cork they met with a resounding defeat. Even if the total Fianna Fáil vote was added together in Wicklow, and even if added to that were the votes which they had lost between 1951 and 1953, they would still not have been successful in securing the Wicklow seat. Then the results had to be explained. The Taoiseach issued a little statement in which he said that "there was no significant change.""Under proportional representation" which has, of course, ever been a bugbear to Fianna Fáil, he said, "they could not expect to win a majority in these two constituencies. They were both three-seat constituencies, and that it was very difficult for a single Party to secure a majority." There were a few other remarks to support the case that was made, and then there was silence until this motion was put down.

It is, I think, pertinent to recall the circumstances in which previous by-elections took place in 1947. In the autumn of that year, three by-elections took place in what were then described by the Taoiseach as three typical constituencies. They were not widely separated areas—Waterford, Tipperary and County Dublin. In two of those constituencies Fianna Fáil were defeated. They retained the seat in Waterford. Earlier, during the course of the by-elections the Taoiseach had made a number of speeches which I will quote in a moment in which he referred to what would happen if they were defeated in them.

After the result of the three by-elections held in the autumn of that year had been declared a statement was issued by the Taoiseach from Government Buildings. It was published in the Irish Presson the 1st November, 1947. The statement was:—

"The Dáil is to be dissolved as soon as practicable and a general election held early next year, theTaoiseach announced in Government Buildings last night. Mr. de Valera's decision was made known in the following statement:—

A Government whose position has been weakened and might be questioned could not hope to deal effectively with the conditions which may confront the country in the coming year.

An opportunity must be given to the people to indicate their will and to give their judgment. I think it right, therefore, that I should seek a dissolution of the present Dáil as soon as practicable. Everyone should, accordingly, expect that a general election will be held early next year."

The latter phrase has a familiar ring because it is as definite as the Taoiseach generally is. However, the Irish Pressin a leading article on the same date said:—

"In a speech which he delivered in Tipperary, last Sunday week, the Taoiseach said that if the Government were weakened by the result of the by-elections, there would be no course left open but to settle the question by a general election. In two of the three by-elections which have taken place the Government candidates have been defeated, and, as a result, a general election will be held early in the New Year...

Under the circumstances, the Government have arrived at the only possible decision. This is a democratic country and it is for the people to say how and by whom they will be ruled."

In the following general election, the Taoiseach made a number of speeches in different parts of the country. I will take here a speech which he made at Cahirciveen on the 19th January, 1948, in which he said:—

"Some people wondered why, since we could have stayed in office for another year and a half, this election is now about to take place.

The reason is this—the time is too critical for a Government to be in office, except it is a strong Government.

A Government is strong only if it has a majority in Parliament, because with our system, the Government depends on the majority it has in Parliament. It is a weak Government if it has not a strong majority.

It is not strong merely because it has a parliamentary majority. If it can be suggested that the Government is not supported by the people, then a Government by that very fact is a weak Government—if, after these elections, the finger can be pointed at us, and it is said in the Dáil: ‘You have a majority of 12 or 14 over the other Parties, but the people are not behind you—you have not the majority of the people.' You know that the Opposition would talk in that way and would be encouraged in their efforts by the fact that that charge could be made.

We are determined that that charge cannot be made, and if we are to continue as a Government we would have to have a majority in Parliament; be able to show that that majority was reasonably given to us, and that the people were behind us as well as the majority in Parliament."

Would it be unfair to suggest that expediency is the guide in the present circumstances and that the Government and those who have supported them are afraid to face the electorate? They are cowering behind the majority that it is hoped to secure from those who were elected not to support Fianna Fáil. They are afraid to face the electorate and to put their policy to the test, and are going back on the statement of the Taoiseach in which he said: "We are determined that that charge cannot be made, and if we are to continue as a Government we would have to have a majority in Parliament; be able to show that that majority was reasonably given to us and that the people were behind us as well as the majority in Parliament".

That was not the Taoiseach's only speech. He spoke at Tuam on the 27th January, 1948, where he said:—

"The recent by-elections seemed to indicate that people might notsupport them as they had done before. If that were so, he said, they would be a weak Government, and it would be better that they should get out. If they wanted to have progress, they must have a Government that was strong, supported by the people and thus assured of its position."

In the Irish Independentof 21st January, 1948, the Taoiseach is reported as saying at Dingle:—

"Instead of remaining in office for another year and a half as they could have done, they decided to hold a general election, because they believed that a weak Government could not properly serve this country, and the by-elections had weakened them as a Government. It would be pointed out to them during the next year and a half while they had a majority they had not a majority of the people supporting them."

During the three by-elections which had preceded the general election he spoke at Tipperary on the 19th October, 1947, and said:—

"If a Government were weakened, it was not able to do its work properly, and if the Government were weakened by the result of the by-elections, there would be nothing for it but to settle the question by a general election. Mr. de Valera said that he thought that the people would agree with him that that was right."

Speaking in a message addressed to the electorate of counties Dublin, Tipperary and Waterford, the Taoiseach said on 24th October, 1947:—

"To weaken the Government at a time like the present, unless it were intended completely to set it aside would be obviously foolish. A Government weakened by defeats in a group of typical by-elections could not hope to do its work effectively or even successfully to carry on. Were the Government to be weakened by the present by-elections, the position would be such that it would, in the national interest, have to be set right immediately by reference to the people in a general election."

I do not think it is necessary to quote further examples of the extraordinary change which has come over the present Government and over the Taoiseach since the general election campaign of 1948 and the by-election campaign of the previous October and November. Great changes have occurred for the worse as far as the position of the people is concerned since the election of the Fianna Fáil Government in June of 1951. When Fianna Fáil failed to secure a majority of the elected representatives at that time they were desirous of securing the necessary votes to have them elected to office, and although it was to some extent demeaning for a Party that sought—I have other references here— on numerous occasions an overall majority, the desire to secure election to office overcame their reluctance to secure the extra votes essential to get a majority in Parliament. They published a 17 point programme and, in that programme, inducements were held out because of the various aspects of that policy that might appeal to Deputies from different parts of the country.

The most significant point in that programme was point 15, under which it was stated that it was part of the Fianna Fáil programme to control the prices of essential foodstuffs by an efficient system of price control and to maintain the food subsidies. In the Budget of last year, which has been reenacted and continued by the Budget introduced this year, we can examine how effect was given to that policy, how that undertaking was broken, how that solemnly pledged programme, published after the election, carefully drafted by the Fianna Fáil Party and announced after the Party had failed to secure a majority was disregarded and how the non-implementation of that programme affected the people. The 2-lb. loaf has increased from 6½d. to 9¼d.; tea has increased from 2/8 per lb., to 5/- and 5/6; sugar has increased from 4½d. to 7d. per lb.; butter has increased from 2/10 per lb. to 4/2. Although the Government are able to import the well-known yellow butter at 3/4 per lb., buying 2,000,000 lb. of it this year from New Zealand—by departmental regulation, Irish creamerybutter was until recently not available in Dublin, Dún Laoghaire or Bray—the public are obliged to pay the price of 4/2 for the privilege of eating it.

In recent months it has been a repeated claim by the Tánaiste that the cost of living either appeared to be stabilised or was stabilised. It depends on the mood of confidence which the members of the Government feel. They say it appears to be stabilised if they are not very confident. If they are more confident they say that it is stabilised. That statement was first made about three months ago, about the time that the February cost-of-living index was published. There had been a fall over a period of months in the import prices of many commodities and the Government assumed that price stability was in sight or had been reached. That allegation was repeated on a number of occasions during the intervening three months and in particular during the recent by-elections. However, some weeks ago the May cost-of-living index was published. That index figure clearly showed that there had been a rise of no less than three points between February of this year and May of this year. After that figure was compiled, we had the additional half-penny on the pound of sugar and an additional charge on cheese. I do not know whether stability has one meaning for members of the Fianna Fáil Party and another meaning for the ordinary people but to suggest that stability has been reached and that there is an appearance of stability as far as the cost of living is concerned is to refuse to face facts.

I have here some particulars of the alteration that has occurred in the official cost-of-living index figure between the election of the present Government two years ago and the last published figure. It shows that there was a rise of 20 points in the intervening period, a rise of over 13 per cent., a rise that does not measure or take into account the indirect taxes, the taxes that were criticised by the then Opposition when the inter-Party Government made some slight changes in certain Post Office charges. It was alleged that this was indirect taxation for which there was no authority, thatnot merely was it taxation but it was indirect taxation of which no account was taken.

Since that cost-of-living index figure does not take into account these other charges, it might be well to recount some of them. Post Office charges— letters, telegrams, telephones, have all increased. The ordinary letter has increased by ½d. At the same time we have seen an increase in wireless licences and an increase in driving licences. Every commodity that could be taxed directly, such as food, bread, tea, sugar, butter, all have shown a substantial rise to the detriment of and bringing added burdens on, every section of the community. But side by side with that rise in direct taxation, a rise in income-tax, a rise in the tax on beer, on tobacco there has been an indirect rise in taxation through Post Office charges, driving licences, wireless licences; there has been a substantial increase in motor taxation; a substantial and continuous rise in rates.

It is no harm to bring before the House a circular which was issued on the 20th May of this year to the local authorities. I need not read the whole of it. It refers to the relief of rates on agricultural land. It was addressed to each county secretary. It says:—

"I am directed by the Minister for Local Government to state that it is proposed to submit legislative proposals to the Oireachtas to amend and extend the rates on Agricultural Land (Relief) Act so as to vary the system of distribution of the agricultural grant for the current year."

The last sentence says:—

"Demand notes in respect of the year 1953-54 may be prepared on the basis of reliefs being provided on the foregoing basis."

It is well to examine what the reliefs would amount to. I have here some particulars as it affects the Dublin County Council. The staff of the council prepared a memo which was presented to the members of the council and which showed under a certainnumber of headings the alterations. The first example is a land valuation of £50 and in the number of men employed, two. In 1953-54, on the old system, the total relief included a primary grant of £17 17s., an employment grant of £13 and a supplementary grant of £18 18s. 6d., making a total of £39 15s. 6d. Under the new system the primary allowance would be the same, £17 17s., employment allowance, £26 and the supplementary grant, nil. In that case there would be the difference between £39 15s. 6d. and £43 17s. When you go on to consider a land valuation of a higher level you find that in the case of a land valuation of £50, number of men employed nil, on the old system the primary allowance would be £17 17s., the employment allowance would be nil and the supplementary allowance would be £8 18s. 6d., making a total of £26 15s. 6d. Under the new system the primary allowance would be £17 17s. and the employment and supplementary allowances would be nil. In the case of a land valuation of £137 10s., number of men employed, two, under the old system the total would amount to £65 16s. 2d. Under the new system it would be £43 17s.

That alteration in the basis on which the agricultural relief grant would be operated would involve the ratepayers of this country in an additional charge estimated between £250,000 and £500,000. I think the best estimate is a sum of about £350,000.

Since the issue of that circular, for which there was no statutory authority and which on its face is bad administration because it purports to anticipate legislation which had not yet been introduced into the House, the agricultural community will have imposed on them an added burden of anything between £250,000 and £500,000. That circular, incidentally, placed the obligation on the local authorities by means of the phrase: "demand notes in respect of the year 1953-54 may be prepared on the basis of relief being provided on the foregoing basis". That, of course, was referred to during the course of the by-election. A second circular, I understand, was issued. I have not yet received a copy of it but I am informedthat it is back-pedalling the proposal which was announced in the first circular.

In the past we have heard much about bargaining, we have heard much about the behind-the-scenes discussions which take place between members of the inter-Party groups, which is not supposed to have occurred so far as Fianna Fáil are concerned. It is, however, significant that one of the Deputies who has consistently supported Fianna Fáil during the last two years put down a motion about this. Whether the motion has had the effect of producing another circular from the Custom House or not is a matter for speculation.

The position so far as this Government is concerned is that they are clinging on like limpets to office, clinging on in defiance of the expressed will of the people in two constituencies recently and in a third, taking the constituency of North-West Dublin, last winter.

These three constituencies were the first constituencies that were afforded an opportunity of expressing their views on the economic policy of the present Government as enunciated and implemented in the Budget of 1952. Although the by-elections in North Mayo, Waterford and Limerick occurred this time last year, approximately, the full impact of the Budget had not taken place. The reduction in food subsidies, the substantial rise in the cost of essential commodities, the added burdens placed on every section of the community, the imposts which I have referred to and which have added severely to the burdens on every section of the community but particularly those sections that are worst off, had not taken effect and had not been felt; they were only anticipated. But, since that Budget was enacted and implemented and since the full effect of it took place we have had three by-elections.

As Deputy Costello pointed out, the by-elections in these constituencies reflect almost identically the number of votes cast and compare with the number of votes cast during the General Election of 1951. The clear conclusion that must be drawn from thoseand from an examination of the figures is that the people have emphatically, as far as they have been afforded an opportunity, rejected the economic policy of the present Government. It is significant that the only other elections which were in the offing were the local elections, and Fianna Fáil throttled the electorate by the passage of the recent measure to prevent the local electorate from expressing their views on the policy of the Government as applied to local affairs.

A good deal of time was spent during the course of these by-elections and even since by Fianna Fáil spokesmen in an effort to drive a wedge between the various inter-Party groups. It is about time they dropped that type of propaganda. It does not work. It did not work in the recent by-elections. It did not work in North-West Dublin. In fact, anyone who was present at the count during those elections was struck by the significant fact that a person who voted No. 1 for a Fine Gael or a Labour or a Clann na Poblachta candidate, carried on his preferences over the other inter-Party groups. The vast majority of the electors who voted No. 1 for any of these particular Parties carried on his or her preferences over the other groups. A most significant factor besides the emphatic repudiation of Fianna Fáil in the recent by-elections was the extraordinary solidarity of the inter-Party vote. Any attempt to drive a wedge between the various groups has so far not been successful and it will be even less successful in the future. I noticed a belated attempt has even been made by anonymous letters obviously compiled in Upper Mount Street for circulation in the Evening Mail,letters without any signature, just anom de plume,from people alleged to be worried about the future of the Labour Party. The future of the Labour Party does not depend on Fianna Fáil spokesmen or scribes and they need not worry about their welfare any more than they need worry about ours. All these efforts to obscure the emphatic decision which was given by the people cannot prevent the people understanding and appreciating the extraordinary decision, a decisionextraordinary in its emphasis, extraordinary in the clear way in which it refutes and repudiates the economic policy of the present Government.

The Minister for Defence spoke here some time ago and he expressed concern about the type of journalism that was carried on by papers opposed to the Government not to mention—or did he mention?—the journalism carried on by the Irish Press,which people sometimes forget is a Party organ supported and maintained and directed by Fianna Fáil Deputies and Fianna Fáil appointees. Very often a paper is the subject of controversy or a leader writer may be a subject of dicussion and a reference may be made to it, and it is sometimes suggested that because an article is written in a certain way it gets wide circulaton but it is forgotten that the article is written by a single individual and may only express his view. However true that may be in the case of any newspaper, as far as theIrish Pressis concerned this is a kept organ, supported, directed by Fianna Fáil Deputies at certain times and by Fianna Fáil Senators, and it reflects their view and the Fianna Fáil view. Despite the extensive resources of the Fianna Fáil Party, despite the resources of that newspaper and the support of another newspaper during the recent by-elections——

An Leas-Cheann Comhairle

Surely, Deputy, the Irish Presscannot be discussed on this motion.

Mr. Cosgrave

The Minister for Defence recently—some half an hour or so—discussed here at length with the permission of the House and of the Ceann Comhairle an article in the Evening Herald.

An Leas-Cheann Comhairle

The Government is not responsible for the utterances of the Irish Press.

Mr. Cosgrave

I take it that Opposition Deputies are entitled to the same liberty as the Minister was to discuss the article in the Evening Herald.

An Leas-Cheann Comhairle

That is a hypothetical question that I cannotanswer. I am just dealing with a point as it has arisen.

Mr. Cosgrave

I put it to you, Sir, that if the Minister is entitled to refer to an article in one paper I am entitled to refer to articles in another. The position is, at any rate, that the present Government employed every resource that was available to them in these by-elections. Anyone who has campaigned during the course of the by-elections knows that they were fighting, as they recognised they were fighting, for their political existence, that the Fianna Fáil Party stood to lose everything and that their one hope was pinned on victory in East Cork, and a defeat which could be explained away in Wicklow so that the status quocould be maintained. Deputies who were listening, Fianna Fáil Deputies and others on this side of the House, know that that was the campaign, recognised that that was the story that was being spread about, which was so effectively spread that many articles appeared in the papers to suggest that although it appeared at one time as though the Government would not win Cork it now looked as though they might. The emphatic repudiation of the Government in the East Cork and Wicklow by-elections reflects the public opinion of Government policy.

We have referred here during the course of this debate to a number of aspects of it. The members of the Government who have spoken, and the Tánaiste during a series of speeches during the election and in one or two speeches since, referred to the plans of the Government as plans for the future—projects that are going to be put into operation, schemes that are to be started, jobs to be provided. I put down a question here to try to ascertain from him in respect of a number of projects to be extended or developed and some of them initiated in the course of the last two years what the actual position was and where they were and how many jobs had been provided. I got a vague answer.

In a speech in, I think it was Jury's Hotel, the Tánaiste said that it was hoped initially to provide work on these for 1,000 persons and eventuallyfor 2,000. There were a total of 65 projects and I think 20 others that had been extended. I put down a question here to get the facts and could not be told except in a vague way what they were or where the work had been provided and the additional employment had been given, where people who were unemployed had been put into work, where the large numbers in the City of Dublin signing on at the labour exchanges could get work, where the new jobs were. We can get promises, we can get plans, we can get schemes but they could not get the work. What the people of this city and this country want to hear about are not the plans, not the schemes, not the programme, not the promises of the future. They want to test the policy on the only effective test, on the results; and the results during the last two years have been a substantial rise in the cost of living, a substantial rise in unemployment.

The last speech that was made for the Government, made, I think, by the Taoiseach, said that in recent months there had been a fall in the numbers unemployed, that unemployment was showing a reduction between, say, March of this year and the present month, and he said that there was something like 10,000 less persons on the unemployment register. That is undoubtedly a fact but this is a time of the year when there is normally a seasonal reduction in the number unemployed. If Fianna Fáil wish to claim credit for that reduction, if they wish to claim credit for the appearance of stability in the cost of living but which in reality has shown a rise since February of this year of three points and which shows a rise over the last two years of over 20 points, nobody will be anxious to share the glory of that achievement with them. They are free to accept it alone and free to take whatever glory is reflected in it; but the people who have been obliged to emigrate, the people who have been forced to seek work in Britain or work abroad, the people who are signing on in the labour exchanges in Dublin, Dun Laoghaire, Bray or any other of the exchanges throughout the country are not interested in hearing about the plans and schemes and programmes orprospective work in the future. They want work now. They want a policy now. They want schemes and plans put into operation now which will give them work and give an effective reply to the clamant demand throughout every county and every city and town of the country.

It is significant that although we have heard of these plans and we have heard during the course of this debate reference to proposals which will be put into operation, reference to schemes and some reference to the the policy of the Fianna Fáil Government in the past, the results which have been proved by events over the last two years may be summarised under a few headings. Taxation has increased to such an extent that the Taoiseach himself admits that the country is staggering under it. All that Fianna Fáil can say is: "We are not going to increase it further, we have increased it to such an extent in the last two years by impositions on beer, on spirits, by reduction in the food subsidies, by increases in Post Office charges, by increases in motor taxation, by adding increases in respect of driving licences and wireless licences, by increases direct and indirect, that the only undertaking we will give now is that we will not, and cannot raise it further." That promise was followed by a further increase in the price of sugar and in the price of cheese. They are two comparatively small items in the melancholy litany of events.

The Government regretted, as we all regretted, the large numbers of unemployed. The published figures quoted by Deputy Norton show a substantial increase in the number of unemployed in the house-building and constructional-work groups. Whatever the causes are, they have not been analysed or if they have been analysed no effective remedy has been provided. Similarly in respect of the Local Authorities (Works) Act the grants have been cut and large numbers who were formerly employed have no longer the work available which was provided in the rural areas in drainage work and in the cleaning of rivers. That work was part of the whole drainage scheme to provide a system underwhich it would be possible to drain land and make the available land more fertile.

In the case of the housing programme, the increase in the interest rate last October has had a catastrophic effect on private building. I was speaking yesterday to a builder who is a member of the Builders' Federation and who was one of a deputation who interviewed some Deputies during the past few months. He said only one thing: "Our business is finished". I do not think he was exaggerating or that he was peculiar in that assertion: I believe it was typical of the situation in private building. The interest charges imposed, by the alteration in the interest rate from 3½ to 5½ or 5¾ per cent., has placed added burdens on a section of the community who were endeavouring to provide houses for themselves out of their own resources, by means of the Small Dwellings (Acquisition) Act loans or by means of loans from building societies and insurance companies. People in the community who have already felt the impact of high taxation, people who are generally described as the white collar section, people who work hard and who are anxious to provide out of their own resources as far as possible the requirements of themselves and their families, people who are not catered for by State schemes which provide for those lower down in the income groups—these people were obliged, where they accepted loans since October last, to bear substantially increased interest rates.

That comes at a time when two other authorities—the E.S.B. in the North and a local authority in England, the Birmingham City Corporation—were able to get money at a lower rate of interest. It is significant that two authorities without anything like the same credit as the State here has, two comparatively small authorities when compared with the resources of this State, were able to secure money at a lower rate of interest. This whole aspect of the economic and financial policy of the present Government has meant additional hardship, additional burdens and additional problems. Insome cases it has meant the postponement or even the abandonment of the hope of many sections of the community of getting a home of their own.

Coupled with that substantial rise in the burdens placed on these people by the increase in the cost of living. by the increase in the rate of interest and by the increase in the rate of direct or indirect taxation, we have the business recession and slump. I remember here some two and a half years ago, or nearly three years ago, when I had the responsibility of moving the Second Reading of the Supplies and Services Bill. It followed the outbreak of the Korean war in June of that year. In August, September or October, the late autumn and early winter, prices showed an upward trend. It was asserted then—and the facts then and since have proved it— that that was due to external causes, to the efforts of Governments and peoples elsewhere as well as here to stockpile, to buy in in anticipation of rising prices. That view has been reemphasised by the Taoiseach in the course of his speech here this evening. When it was made at that time, probably because the war had only occurred, it was refuted and denied. Some people were not prepared to accept it then. The Korean war has long since receded into the background as far as rising prices are concerned. During the last nine or 12 months, since last August or September, import prices have shown a downward tendency. During that period, and particularly during the period between February and May of this year, the published figures show a substantial increase in the cost of living. That increase has followed the earlier increases by the withdrawal in some cases, and the reduction in other cases, of the food subsidies. Whatever the lower-paid sections of the community received has not compensated them for that substantial rise in prices.

Some sections received increases in wages, by means of applications to the Labour Court or by negotiated wage adjustments. In the case of public servants—civil servants, Gardaí, Army personnel and so on—a tribunal was set up, an award was published and arecommendation was made. The Government's attitude on that award was to defer payment until April of this year, although the arbitrator recommended that the award be made from November last, about the time when the matter was decided. We had one approach in that way in regard to civil servants. Private employers in business were obliged to give their workers increases in wages—and their workers were entitled to them and did get them—from the date on which the negotiations took place or the award was made, according to the machinery applicable in the particular case.

We now turn to probably the worst off section of the community. This time last year when the Budget became operative and increased the prices of essential foodstuffs, the old age pensioners received an increase of 1/6 a week. That 1/6 was supposed to meet the increases that I have referred to in respect of the increase in the price of the 2 lb. loaf from 6½d. to 9¼d., in respect of tea from 2/8 per lb. to 5/-or 5/6, in respect of sugar from 4½d. to 7d., in respect of butter from 2/10 to 4/2. I may add that, in respect of the recent increases in the prices both of butter and sugar, no alleviation, no improvement of any sort has been provided for the old age pensioners and the widows and orphans on the figures fixed last year when the first increase took place.

With regard to the official index figure, it is pertinent to recall that when that index figure was altered in August or September, 1947, the then Government excluded from it beer, which up to then, was taken into account. Since that date, the increases in respect of beer, tobacco and spirits are no longer included. Although there have been increases in the prices of beer, stout, spirits and tobacco, these increases, these added burdens, these impositions on the people have not been included in the cost-of-living index figure.

I said earlier that during the course of the general election campaign of 1948, the Taoiseach made a number of speeches. He referred to the fact that during the previous by-election the electors had voted against the Fianna Fáil Party and that they had suffereda defeat. At a Fianna Fáil meeting in Waterford on the 12th October, 1947, the Taoiseach said:—

"You know that in a series of by-elections like these, the results must inevitably mean either a strengthening or weakening of the Government. You are to ask yourselves which do you want...

It is quite clear that it would be stupid to weaken the Government if you want the Government to do its work, and to continue it....

If you want something different; if you want a change of Government, then, of course, there will be sense in voting against the Government candidate, because then you will indicate quite clearly that you want a change of Government....

I assure you that if the people in these by-elections give such an indication we shall understand it."

That extract is taken from a report which appeared in the Irish Presson the 13th October, 1947. Speaking at Crumlin Cross on the 27th October, 1947, the Taoiseach said:—

"It is your right to say whether you want us or not. If you want us, give us strength to do our job, and if you do not want us, get rid of us."

That extract is taken from the Irish Pressof the 27th October, 1947. Later, at Cahirciveen, County Kerry, on the 19th January, 1948, the Taoiseach said:—

"A Government is strong only if it has a majority in Parliament, because with our system, the Government depends on the majority it has in Parliament. It is a weak Government if it has not a strong majority.

It is not strong merely because it has a parliamentary majority. If it can be suggested that a Government is not supported by the people, then a Government by that very fact is a weak Government—if, after these elections, a finger can be pointed at us, and it is said in the Dáil: "You have a majority of 12 or 14 over the other Parties, but the people are not behind you—you have not the majority of the people. You know that the Opposition would talk inthat way, and would be encouraged in their efforts by the fact that that charge could be made.

We are determined that that charge cannot be made, and if we are to continue as a Government we would have to have a majority in Parliament; be able to show that that majority was reasonably given to us and that the people were behind us as well as the majority in Parliament."

That is an extract from a report in the Irish Pressof the 20th January, 1948. That speech appears to me to fit the situation of the recent by-elections. During the by-elections in 1947, three seats were contested. Fianna Fáil won one and lost two. During the recent by-elections two seats were contested of which Fianna Fáil won neither. I do not know whether the arguments that were used during the course of the by-elections in 1947 and during the course of the General Election of 1948 have any validity now. It is interesting to speculate on what has occurred in the meantime. It is generally assumed that when this Government was elected, and when it was seeking to secure the votes necessary to give it a parliamentary majority, an undertaking was given which has been reiterated since in a series of speeches.

During the recent by-election, when the Tánaiste probably thought to himself: "I had better forestall criticism," he stated that no matter what the result of the by-elections might be, so long as the Government had a majority in the Dáil, however small, they would continue with their programme. Apparently he forgot that, in 1948, the Taoiseach, referring to a Government, said:—

"It is not strong merely because it has a parliamentary majority. If it can be suggested that a Government is not supported by the people, then a Government by that very fact is a weak Government—if, after these elections, a finger can be pointed at us, and it is said in the Dáil: ‘You have a majority of 12 or 14 over the other Parties, but the people are not behind you—youhave not the majority of the people...'

We are determined that that charge cannot be made, and if we are to continue as a Government we would have to have a majority in Parliament; be able to show that that majority was reasonably given to us, and that the people were behind us as well as the majority in Parliament."

The view then was that a Government was weak when it had lost two out of three by-elections—at a time when the Taoiseach could count on a majority of 12 or 14 over all the other Parties combined in this House. It would be interesting to know the present position of a Government which has not a majority except by the assistance of Deputies who are not members of the Fianna Fáil Party.

I have never cast any aspersions at a Deputy who votes, if he wants to vote, for the present Government, whether or not he was elected to do so. The only constituency in which a by-election occurred, and in which a Deputy who was not elected as a Fianna Fáil Deputy has supported the present Government, is wicklow. In Wicklow, as well as the candidates standing for the political Parties, an Independent candidate, Miss Bobbett, stood for election and claimed to represent and to have the support of the farmers' organisation. One of Miss Bobbett's sponsors was the Independent Deputy who has supported the present Government. The most significant feature of the votes cast for Miss Bobbett was that the majority of them transferred to the inter-Party candidate. With the exception of a few votes which went to the Fianna Fáil candidate, and probably a number which were not transferable, the outstanding fact—as it was of all the votes cast during that election—is the amazing solidarity and the emphatic indication of the people in voting for the inter-Party group as an alternative. I move the adjournment of the debate.

Debate adjourned.

The Dáil adjourned at 10.30 p.m. until 10.30 a.m. on Wednesday, 1st July, 1953.