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Dáil Éireann díospóireacht -
Thursday, 23 Jul 1953

Vol. 141 No. 3

Committee on Finance. - Motion by the Minister for Finance (Resumed).

I notice that there are now in the House five ex-Ministers of the previous Government—Deputy Mulcahy, Deputy Dillon, Deputy O'Higgins, Deputy Everett and Deputy Keyes— and also a couple of ex-Parliamentary Secretaries. Last night I was trying to get some information from minor members of the Coalition Government as to why, between March, 1948, and March, 1951, they increased the sterling holdings of Government funds and the Central Bank by £43.8 million. I think that is a reasonable question to put to these gentlemen.

Between March, 1948, and March, 1951, the period of the Coalition in office, departmental funds invested in sterling securities went up by £7.1 million and the Central Bank investments in sterling securities went up by £36.7 million. There is now another ex-Minister of the former Government, Deputy MacBride, present in the House, so we have these six gentlemen here who were members of the Governmentunder the xgis of which the sterling assets in the hands of Government funds and the Central Bank increased by £43.8 million. I want to know why. Nobody is jumping to tell me why—none of these six gentlemen.

I thought we were accused of wasting them. Would you turn up your own speeches, where you said we had wasted them all?

I said the sterling holdings of the Government funds and the Central Bank went up.

You are calling yourself a liar.

Other sterling assets decreased but not the sterling holdings of the Government funds and of the Central Bank.

Which you accused us of liquidating. You cannot have it both ways.

Deputy O'Higgins is not going to talk himself out of this. I am quite prepared to sit down for five or ten minutes while one of these gentlemen answers why they did this. After all, for many years they yapped round the country about the sterling holdings that Fianna Fáil kept in the hands of the Central Bank and in the Government funds.

They are still yapping.

They were not out of office a week when they started to yap again round the country, that the reason we were holding to these sterling assets in the Central Bank and the Government funds was that we wanted to give cheap money to Jhon Bull, that we wanted to keep our people idle here and force them over to England, that instead of using these sterling assets to build up our industries we gave them to John Bull, that we sent them off so as to give employment in England to Irishmen who could have been employed here. Is there anyone can deny that that was the line taken by those gentlemen? Everyone is aware of that and I am prepared to sit down here for five or ten minutes so as to get a reasonably straightanswer from any of those gentlemen on this simple question. After all, it is not a new question, it is not something that their minds were turned to for the first time; they have made it the basis of their policy. It has been half the speech of every Fine Gael Deputy and every Labour Deputy; it has been 95 per cent. of the speeches of Deputy MacBride in this House and outside it.

And of the unemployed yesterday outside the gate.

That is right. Of course it was. The unemployed believed the story.

They are well tutored.

Deputy Cowan is proud of them.

Deputy Keyes is perfectly right; it was the speech of 95 per cent. of the people who are unemployed. Why? Because they have been taught by Deputy Dillon, Deputy MacBride, Deputy O'Higgins, Deputy Mulcahy, Deputy Keys and Deputy Everett, all Ministers of the former Government, to believe that the reason they are unemployed is that we have these sterling assets.

They are unemployed because you are in office, and I will prove it when you sit down. That is certain.

That is not answering my question.

I will prove it.

We are here now, not at a street corner——

No, in Dáil Eireann.

——where you can tell the people round about that the reason there is unemployment——

Because you are in office.

——is that we have sterling assets in England——

——held by Government funds and the Central Bank. That is the reason you gave.

The reason is that Fianna Fáil is in office and their policy is to create unemployment.

Deputy Dillon should allow the Minister to proceed.

He asked us to intervene.

The Minister did not ask a question.

Deputy Dillon cannot talk himself out of this.

No; he is going to talk you into it, putting your neck into a halter—and the people will pull it, as soon as they get a chance.

That is what he is trying to get.

Let us do it. Let the people put the halter round our necks.

Give them the chance.

And let them do it, for a good reason.

They did it three times and you will not let them do it now.

The Opposition Deputies —former Ministers—are prepared to yap about everything under the sun but sterling assets. I want that made clear. They have been talking all round the country for the last two years about sterling assets and yet there is not one of them prepared to open his mouth here at the moment and answer me a simple question: "Why, when they were in office, did they increase those sterling assets directly under their control in Government funds and in the Central Bank by £43.8 million?" Is it not a queer world? We are not doing this in secret. Every gentleman on that Press Gallery——

Oh, that is where this is addressed to.

Every gentleman on that Press Gallery——

Where is the Irish Pressrepresentative? Was he warned to be present?

——for the past two years——

The Minister is entitled to be heard and if the ex-Ministers are asked a rhetorical question there is no need for them to intervene. Deputy Dillon, Deputy O'Higgins and other Deputies concerned and mentioned will have an opportunity of speaking and will get fair play, as the Minister is getting.

On a point of order, is there any precedent in our procedure for the Minister, speaking from the Front Bench of the Government, to address the Press Gallery and to notify the representative of his own newspaper that he is now called on to take a verbatim note?

The Minister, as far as I know, did not address the Press Gallery.

I beg your pardon, he did.

No, the Minister did not address the Press Gallery. He is entitled to address the House and should be allowed to do so.

Twist and twist.

The Minister did not address the Press Gallery. He is entitled to address the House and should be allowed to proceed.

I cannot address Deputy Dillon directly.

The Minister should not address members of the Press Gallery directly.

The Chair will have to take very serious notice of interruptions. The Minister is entitledto proceed and should be allowed to do so without interruption.

And I respectfully submit on a point of order not to address the Press Gallery.

The Minister did not address the Press Gallery. He said: "every member of the Press Gallery". That was not an address to the Press Gallery.

Every member of that Press Gallery who has had the misfortune to be sent down the country after Deputy Dillon, Deputy Dr. O'Higgins, Deputy Mulcahy, Deputy Everett, Deputy Keyes and Deputy MacBride in the past couple of years has had to take notes of the speeches made by these gentlemen. Their notes consisted largely of speeches by these gentlemen to the effect that Fianna Fáil wanted to ruin this country——

Hear! hear!

——that Fianna Fáil were keeping the sterling assets in Britain——

The "standing army".

——in order to build up British economy. The young gentleman who was sent here the other day by East Cork was so much impressed by these speeches as to the reason why we were keeping these sterling assets in Britain that he devoted half of his ten-minute speech to the subject of sterling assets and said that the reason Fianna Fáil were preaching that we should build up our sterling assets in Britain was to enable John Bull to oppress the negroes in Africa. That, if you do not mind, is alleged to be the reason why we kept these sterling assets in Britain. Was that the reason why the gentlemen opposite, when they were in Government, voted for increasing them by £43.8 million? Was it to oppress the negroes in Africa? Was it to build up British economy? Was it to build factories to employ Irishmen who were forced out of their own country? If not, what was the reason? I am prepared to sit downhere for five, ten or 15 minutes to listen to an answer to that exact question. Why did they build up our external assets by £43.8 million in the hands of the Government funds and the Central Bank during the three years they were in office?

Sit down and you will be answered quick enough.

They are all as meek and as mute as mice.

Sit down and shut up and you will be answered in a minute.

Not sit down. I will give way. I am prepared to give way.

On a point of order. The Minister says that unless somebody answers him he will assume his argument to be a fact. To that, I wish to say to him that if he will sit down and stop talking we will wipe the floor with him—but we will not intervene in the course of his observations.

I think the House will agree that it would be better if the debate were conducted in the ordinary way of a speech by a Deputy or Minister rather than by question and answer.

Deputies

Hear, hear!

I was prepared, with the Ceann Comhairle's permission, to give way for five, ten or 15 minutes in order that I should be told why these sterling assets in the hands of the Central Bank and Government funds increased by £43.8 million during the Coalition Government's term of office —and nobody jumped up. Deputy MacBride looked down. He looked coy. He looked shy. Deputy Dillon started to raise points of order.

I was looking up a few quotations from speeches by the Minister.

Deputy Dillon is quite prepared to talk down the country where he cannot be answered, but he is afraid to take advantage of my offer to give way for five minutes.

Sit down and stop talking and I will answer you. The Taoiseach can follow me.

The Minister loves this fooling.

You can talk about sterling assets down the country but here you raise points of order when sterling assets are mentioned.

Clatter away now. When you are finished you will be answered.

The Minister is talking to the Vote on Account. One would not know it.

Deputy Dillon cannot get out of it as easily as all that. Lest any of the people behind them might think that I am taking them unawares by asking this question, I want to point out that, a few months after the Coalition Government came into office, I started asking questions about the sterling assets for the benefit of all the members of the House as well as for my own benefit. As reported in columns 2452 and 2453 of Volume 111 of the Official Report, I asked the then Minister for Finance, Deputy McGilligan, if he would state the total amount of British securities held by all the funds controlled by his Department on (a) the 18th February, 1948; and (b) the 18th June, 1948. The Coalition Government assumed office on the 18th February, 1948. Deputy McGilligan was the Minister for Finance in that Government and, before he assumed office in that Government, he used to talk about sterling assets as "waste paper." On numerous occasions he spoke in this House and elsewhere about the "waste paper" in which Fianna Fáil were investing the Irish people's savings. Deputy McGilligan's reply to that question which I asked him was as follows:—

"The figures requested are (a) £45,860,916; (b) £49,614,416."

The House will note that in the first four months of Coalition Government the figure rose from £45,860,916 to £49,614,416. I then put the followingsupplementary question to Deputy McGilligan:—

"Has the Minister, therefore, directed that £4,000,000 more should be invested in what he used to describe as waste paper?"

Deputy McGilligan corrected me and said:—

"£3,750,000. I cannot prevent what is happening."

Then I asked:—

"And that was done at the instance of the Minister for External Affairs?"

The then Minister for External Affairs was Deputy MacBride. Deputy McGilligan replied:—

"We have to follow what is, possibly, a bad precedent, but once lines have been laid it is not possible to go on to new lines in four months."

Deputy McGilligan invested another £3,750,000 in what he used to call "waste paper" and he said that it was not possible to go on to new lines in four months. He carried out an operation which Deputy MacBride and even he himself often referred to as "helping John Bull to build up his army at the expense of Irish economy." But Deputy McGilligan could not change it in four months.

You did not change it in 16 years.

I asked the question within four months of their taking office. What happened afterwards? In March, 1948, the sterling assets in the departmental funds were a mere £49.7 million. In 1949, at the end of the first year of Coalition Government, the assets had increased by nearly £4,000,000 to £53.5 million. In the first four months of Coalition Government the assets had increased by £3,750,000. The Minister could not change it in four months and he did not change it in one year because, in the remaining eight months of that first year, he added additional funds to those which he invested in Britain in the first fourmonths of the Coalition Government. He said he could not do it in four months. What did he do the second year, 1950? By March, 1950, it had gone up again by almost another £3,000,000 to £56.1 million. He could not do it in four months: he did not do it in one year; and he did not do it in two years. What happened in the third year? It went up again to £56.8 million. In fact, in Government funds, he had invested in three years an additional £7.1 million of sterling assets which he used to call waste paper.

What happened in the Central Bank? In March, 1948, when we went out of office, the external holdings of the Central Bank stood at a sum of £43.9 million. I do not know what they were four months after, but, 12 months after these miracle workers took over the reins of Government, the £43.9 million had risen to £49.1 million.

On a point of order, is it in order for the Minister, even though he may be a shadow Taoiseach, to repeat exactly what he said here last night for the second or third time?

Repetition is not in order. If the Minister did, he should not do it now.

Word for word and figure for figure.

I did not mention the parliamentary question last night, nor did I give any details about it. I gave no block total. I know that Deputy Davin does not like to hear this, but he supported Deputy McGilligan in investing Irish funds in —as they called it—British waste paper, and he is going yapping around the country with the rest of them at present saying that the reason we keep them there is to give John Bull cheap money with which to build up his economy and to oppress the negroes.

You are the biggest yapper I ever heard.

In March, 1949—to return to the point which Deputy Davin tried to put me off—the external holdings of the Central Bank stood at £49.1 million. By March, 1950, theyhad gone up to £68.7 million and, by 1951, they had gone up to £80.6 million.

And they were said to have been all frittered away.

Would the Minister give us the figures for 1953?

That is an interesting question. I want to ask Deputy MacBride, who is awfully coy to-day— I cannot get a word out of him——

Will the Minister tell me why his colleague, the Minister for Posts and Telegraphs, said it was high treason to suggest that we should repatriate external assets?

He is as mute as a mouse over there.

Would you answer the question he asked?

I have the floor and I am asking a question. I want to repeat that there are six members of the Coalition Government here——

Answer Deputy MacBride's question.

——who have been going around the country talking about——

Answer Deputy MacBride's question.

You invited him.

You asked for it. Now answer him.

They are going all around the country deafening the people——

You asked for the question. Answer it.

——deafening the people of this country, as I say——

You asked for the question. Answer it now. Do not wriggle.

The Deputy need not——

Do not wriggle—answer Deputy MacBride's question.

The Chair has very little sympathy with interruptions and very little sympathy with members of the House who seek interruptions. I ask both sides of the House to conduct the debate in the ordinary way, by speech and not interruption.

And not to behave like a clown.

There are six members of the Coalition Government in this House who have been going around the country——

On a point of order, that is at least the third time the Minister has repeated that sentence.

He wants it to sink into your thick skull.

I know that Deputies on the opposite benches do not like to be put even a rhetorical question as to why they are so voluble down the country about external assets and will not allow them to be mentioned here.

On a point of order. You have requested, Sir, that the practice of putting rhetorical questions be suspended in the cause of order. I do not think I trespass too far on your indulgence if I say that, so often as this man asks an idiotic rhetorical question, I shall answer it, for he seeks to deceive the people into the belief that silence——

This is a speech.

You asked for silence, Sir, and we gladly bowed to your ruling, but that is not to be used by this man as a device for the purpose of misleading our people. I will nail his ear to the post every time he puts such a question.

The Chair has asked that Deputies will conduct the proceedings in the ordinary way by means of speech. The Chair does not understand that rhetorical questions are used in order to elicit replies—they are used for effect, so far as the Chair understands—and there is, therefore,no reason why rhetorical questions should be answered.

The Minister, in my submission, is deliberately seeking to deceive the House by saying——

That is not a point of order.

It is the Chair's function to decide whether it is or not.

If the Minister asks a rhetorical question, I quite submit to your ruling that no reply is required or permissible, but if, having secured that ruling from you, Sir, the Minister then goes on to say: "I am quite prepared to sit down now and give way if anyone will answer me," that is an attempt to use your ruling for the purpose of misleading the House.

I am asking that that system should be abandoned.

I do not like to be raising unnecessary points of order——

Now the peacemaker has intervened.

The Minister says he is raising a point of order and he is entitled to do so.

The Standing Orders provide that members of the House will be referred to by the term "Deputy" or "Minister," as the case may be. Is it in order, therefore, to refer to the Minister as "this man"?

If that affronts the Minister, I withdraw it immediately and substitute "the Minister for External Affairs."

And apologises to men for the mistake.

It is the first time I have apologised to anybody for calling him a man.

Even that will not draw me on to a line which could quiteeasily be taken in regard to Deputy Dillon. I am on one single question here to-day and I want it to be noted that the former Ministers made no effort—they wanted to run away, to raise points of order, to raise questions as to who was a man and who was not and who fought for the Republic and who did not——

It was the Minister for Finance raised the point as to who was a man.

The Minister has proceeded on that line for quite a long time. I suggest that he should pass from that and deal with the Vote on Account.

He does not know how.

This arose out of the question of the external assets and out of the fact that the newest Deputy in this House thought that he must give us a lecture—it was a very nice lecture, indeed—as to how we should be brief in speaking and that we should only speak about important issues. As a new Deputy who came into the House to represent the people and deal with the great issues in which they took an interest, he proceeded to speak about sterling assets throughout most of his speech. He accused the Government of wanting to build up our external assets in order to help John Bull oppress the negroes in Africa. Deputy Keyes and Deputy Everett asked me a very pertinent question. It was a very civil and nice question and I am prepared to give a very civil and nice answer.

You would not give the answer to Deputy MacBride.

That will not draw me away from answering Deputy Everett in a very nice and civil way.

New style.

He asked how did these sterling assets fare under Fianna Fáil seeing that they were increased by £43.8 million under the Fine Gael Coalition. The fact of the matter is that since March, 1951, the sterlingholdings of the Government funds fell by £15.25 million and the sterling holdings of the Central Bank fell by £9.2 million. Therefore, there was a total reduction in the sterling assets of these two funds of £24.45 million.

There was an increase of £6,000,000 last year. Is not that right?

In reply to Deputy Everett's question, the sterling assets, under Fianna Fáil, fell by practically £24,500,000 instead of increasing by £43.8 million as they did under the Government which he kept in office

The sterling assets are always falling under you.

There is the reply and there is no answer.

Do you remember the speech about the rake's progress?

There is the rake's progress for you. For three years the gentlemen opposite were so much against holding sterling assets in the Government funds that they called them waste paper.

Do you remember the speech that accused us of wasting external assets?

Deputy O'Higgins is beginning to pipe up again. He would not accept my invitation to interrupt my speech when I asked a very simple question about which he appears to know everything when he goes down the country.

I hope the Ceann Comhairle is taking note of this.

I hope Deputy O'Higgins will take an opportunity in his speech of explaining the matter in this House.

You may be sure I will—as soon as the clowning is over.

Might I direct attention to the Chair's ruling that when a Deputy purports to ask a rhetorical question a rhetorical reply is evoked? The Minister has returned to thatthesis in so far as he asked a rhetorical question and was not interrupted by an answer. I say that is an abuse of order. There is a ruling to stop rhetorical questions because they evoke a rhetorical reply. The Chair's ruling is being used by the Minister to mislead the House.

The Chair never attempted to direct a Deputy's method of speaking or a Deputy's method of addressing the House. I simply indicated that rhetorical questions do not require replies and that they were merely used for the sake of effect. I ask Deputies to conduct the proceedings in the ordinary way.

Everybody knows that the object of these long explanations on points of order by Deputy Dillon is that he does not like the subject under discussion. It is the last thing they want to talk about.

Do you hear that?

Deputy Blowick said that this was the first time ever for a second Vote on Account to be taken. There was a second Vote on Account in the year 1928-29.

That is a long time ago.

But it was once before. Deputy Blowick said there was never a second Vote on Account. There was also a second Vote on Account in 1932-33 and 1943-44 so that instead of there never being a second Vote on Account taken it was taken in this House on three occasions before. What is the reason for taking it this time? Simply because the Opposition Deputies think that by turning this House into a bear garden——

What are you doing?

Will you listen to him?

——they can make ordinary democratic Government in this House impossible. They will not be able to do that.

You want to be able to pay a quarter of a million pounds for Tulyar.

As long as we have the——

The vote of Deputy Cowan behind you.

Deputy Dillon was very glad to have Deputy Cowan behind him for three years. As long as we have the confidence of this House we are constitutionally entitled to carry on the Government.

To hang on desperately by your eyebrows.

What did the Deputy say?

To hang on desperately by your eyebrows. That is what I said.

To hang on by Deputy Sheldon's eyebrows.

Deputy O'Higgins, Junior, made exactly the same proposition yesterday, that we were trying to hang on desperately by our eyebrows.

Or by Deputy Sheldon's eyebrows.

By our eyebrows.

But you would not have enough eyebrows to hang on to.

That is what Deputy O'Higgins said, and Deputy Dillon now confirms that we should have got out when we were defeated at a by-election. That was their thesis. We should have got out when we were defeated in the first by-election. During the Cumann na nGaedheal régime the Government were defeated in a by-election but they hung on by their eyebrows as long as they could.

And what eyebrows!

And if they had not eyebrows they would have tried to hangon by any other means that they could hang by. In 1924 there was a by-election in which the Cumann na nGaedheal people were defeated by Deputy Lemass by about two to one, but they hung on until 1927.

Did you come in and raise a point of order?

In 1928 or 1929 they were defeated in Longford-Westmeath. Did they declare a general election? No, they hung on by their eyebrows. They had a by-election in 1931 in North Kildare. They were defeated. Did they declare a general election? No, they hung on by their eyebrows.

By their own eyebrows there is a distinction.

No, they borrowed them.

The Fine Gael Party had in this House somewhere between 40 and 50 seats.

And the Fianna Fáil Party was not there at all.

The Deputy made a mistake and he cannot cover it up by trying to talk more as he usually does. When he makes a mistake he is so voluble he tries to cover it up by continuing to talk and makes about ten more mistakes that he gets away with. The Deputy's point was that it was by Fine Gael's own eyebrows they hung on. In 1924 they hung on by their eyebrows. In 1928 they hung on and in 1929 and in 1931.

And this is the 1953 Vote on Account.

That is exactly what I was going to point out. These gymnastic displays with eyebrows may be very interesting but at the moment I am interested only in the Vote on Account and I suggest it is that which should be considered, and not eyebrows.

This Vote on Account was caused largely by the obstructionist tactics of Fine Gael and it isnecessary to do the public work so that there will not be chaos. This Vote on Account had to be taken so that the various Government services may carry on.

In the Coalition's time, they were defeated at a by-election in East Donegal in 1949, and they hung on until 1951—by their eyebrows.

Oh, get away from eyebrows.

And they were prepared to hang on by their eyebrows.

On a point of order. Might I ask are we discussing eyebrows or the Vote on Account?

I have asked the Minister to discuss the Vote on Account.

Deputy Dillon started this discussion on eyebrows. I know that the Deputy from Mayo——

The Minister should not follow a bad lead; he should discuss the Vote on Account.

I just wanted to mark that through me and through the Chair the Deputy from Mayo has rebuked Deputy Dillon for talking about eyebrows.

Keep the gymnastic display on eyebrows for another time.

Fine Gael did not hang on by their own eyebrows. We have 68 Deputies in this House but after their defeat in the East Donegal election they had only 40 and they are the people who hung on by any support they could get.

The Minister should return to the Vote on Account.

Return? He has not dealt with it yet.

As those were the only two points I proposed to deal with I will conclude by thanking the Opposition for their patient hearing.

I have listened over a long period of years to many silly, stupid and provocative speeches—from the Minister for External Affairs in particular.

The Deputy is very easily provoked.

I cannot understand why a Minister who hopes to be the next Taoiseach if Fianna Fáil survive much longer should engage in the obstructionist tactics that are alleged against his political opponents. I never heard more misrepresentations in a speech from any Minister of any Government since I came into this House, but I propose to deal only with one of the many misrepresentations that were made here last night in particular and again to-day.

Last night he said and he knew he was stating what was untrue——

Well, now, that must not be said. If a person knows what he is saying is untrue it is a lie and the Deputy is accusing the Minister of telling a lie.

It is a lie, but he must not say it in this House?

I did not say it was a lie.

No, but the Deputy said the Minister knew what he said was untrue. The Deputy must withdraw the statement.

Well, in deference to your wishes. I believe the Minister has not yet——

The Deputy should not repeat it.

——lost his memory.

He did not repeat it. He said that the Minister had not lost his memory yet.

The Minister in a speech last night which he more or less repeated to-day—although he did not repeat the statements he made last night—said among a number of things that the only thing the Labour Partyhad done while in the Coalition Government was to increase the price of the National Health Insurance stamp without increasing the benefit. I believe the Minister is young, active and intelligent enough to know that that statement was not in accordance with the facts. The Minister, when he was a Deputy sitting on this side of the House in March, 1951, voted against the social security scheme which passed its Second Reading in spite of his vote and in spite of the vote of his colleagues on the 2nd March, 1951.

Now, that social security scheme which passed its Second Reading in this House by a majority made certain provisions, and on the evening of the 2nd March, after voting against the second reading of that Bill, Deputy Aiken with other colleagues of his went to 13 Lower Mount Street and there gave careful consideration to the contents of the Social Security Bill which had received its Second Reading by a majority on that date. On the following day, Fianna Fáil issued to the Press of this country an official statement from their office at 13 Lower Mount Street giving particulars on the one hand of the proposals contained in the Norton social security scheme and on the other hand of the proposals which Fianna Fáil said they would put into operation if and whenever they again became the Government, or secured a majority in order to enable them to govern in this House and in the country. I do not want to go into details. I do not want to read out what is contained in the daily Press of the 3rd March giving on the one hand the proposals contained in the Norton social security scheme and on the other hand what Fianna Fáil proposed to do if they came back to office. But in any case at the end of the Fianna Fáil statement it says the cost of the proposals—on the one hand they gave their estimate of the cost of the proposals contained in the social security scheme introduced by Deputy Norton and they gave on the other hand the estimated cost of their own proposals. Their scheme included a number of proposals and as a footnote they said there would be no increase in the contributions to provide what they promisedwould be better benefits than those contained in the Norton social security scheme. They also said they would give an increase of £4,600,000 in the benefits and that figure was to be raised by increased taxation. The Minister said last night and yesterday —in all seriousness I suppose and believing it to be true—that the Labour Party while in the Coalition Government—I want to give it exactly—"The only thing the Labour Party had done while in the Coalition Government was to increase the price of the National Health Insurance stamp without increasing benefits". Did the Minister not know that he had voted against the Norton Social Security Bill in this House on 2nd March, 1951? They promised they would provide better benefits at that particular time than what were contained in the Norton social security scheme without any increase in contributions.

What have they done? They came along and cut the death benefits out of the Norton Bill. They modified the maternity benefits and they increased the contributions by 5d. in the case of men and 2d. in the case of women. They made other alterations which were a definite reduction on the benefits provided in the Norton social security scheme. If the Minister expects to be treated seriously in this House he should not make statements which are incorrect.

Was that Bill passed?

Not at all.

You did everything you could by your vote on that particular occasion to prevent that social security scheme from coming into operation. I am dealing with this matter only for the purpose of correcting what was a deliberate misrepresentation of the position and of the attitude of the Labour Party.

These terms are creeping into the debate. "Deliberate misrepresentation" suggests that the person against whom the accusation is made knows that it is a misrepresentation. The Deputy must withdraw that remark. "Deliberatemisrepresentation" means that a person makes it with the consent of his will and that therefore it is a lie. The Deputy must withdraw that.

In deference to your wishes, I withdraw, but I cannot conscientiously, from my knowledge of the Minister for External Affairs—his youth, his energy and his readiness to use quotations which suit his case— believe that he has lost his memory to the extent that he could make a misstatement of that kind on serious matters of public policy without knowing that they were misstatements.

These proposals never came into operation. It was a string by which you were led by the nose.

Order! Deputy Davin is entitled to speak without interruption.

The hundreds of unemployed who congregated outside the gates of Leinster House yesterday and the tens of thousands of their brothers and sisters without work in other parts of the country have no use for the nice points which the Minister tried to make in the discussion to-day. Whether we sit on this side or on the other side of the House we ought to try to approach the consideration of the serious crisis which exists in the country from a realistic point of view. I heard a Deputy on my left say last night that the real position confronting the Taoiseach and his colleagues, so far as the people of the country are concerned, is that the Government must either change their financial and economic policy or get out and make room for people who will do so. That is a fair representation of the viewpoint of the people of the country as freely expressed in the recent byelections. I am not one of those Deputies who are extremely anxious for another early general election. I have no hesitation in confessing that and I do not care whether it is the Government of to-day or the Government of to-morrow which solves these serious and pressing problems so long as we find a solution for them. I have fought 14 general elections and one by-election in my own constituency and,both from a physical and financial point of view, I would be fit only for a lunatic asylum if I were looking for another election, but there is every justification for the demand for an immediate change of policy or the introduction of some new policy which will attempt to solve the serious problems confronting the country. If the Government are not in a position to find an earnest solution for these pressing problems, they should in all honesty make room for others who are willing and capable of doing so.

This Vote on Account is bluntly a request to provide the Government with further huge sums of money in order to enable them to implement the financial policy enshrined in the Budget of 1952. That was one of the most disastrous Budgets, in my honest opinion, ever presented to this House. Those who said that not alone in this House but in O'Connell Street and at other meetings down the country at the time the Budget was introduced have lived long enough to realise that their interpretation of the Budget at that time has unfortunately turned out to be only too true. One of the most disastrous aspects of that financial policy for which this money is now required was the decision of the Minister for Finance to increase interest charges on loans, especially public loans. Do we even yet know the effect which that disastrous decision has had and is having on every section of the community, not alone on those who were thrown out of work as a direct result and even in some cases as an indirect result of that decision, but also on those who are tenants of houses built by local authorities all over the State? In my constituency there have been a number of public protests on recent occasions by the tenants of fairly good houses built there by local authorities—protests against the prohibitive rents that are being charged by the local authorities to tenants who are not in a position to pay such rents and who should not be called upon to pay one-third, or in some cases up to 40 per cent., of their weekly earnings by way of rent. Will the Minister for Finance tell us the effect of the increase in interest charges upon rent alone apartaltogether from its disastrous effect on the cost of building houses? Does he not admit—there is no use in denying this further—that this increase in interest charges has practically held up the whole building industry, particularly that side of the building industry where houses were being built for people who were purchasing them on the hire purchase system? The increase in interest charges has practically paralysed the whole building industry. If the Minister is not satisfied on that point he should read the weekly list of building contractors advertised in Stubb's Gazette.

Apart from their effect on the building industry and the unemployment caused, the increased interest charges have had many other disastrous effects that are not yet fully appreciated even by the Taoiseach. I heard the Taoiseach state here recently in the debate on the vote of confidence that he had not heard very much, if anything at all— I cannot quote his exact words and I do not want to be unfair to him—about the restriction of credit. The Taoiseach must be living very far away from some of his constituents, if he has heard nothing in his own constituency, apart from the rest of the country, about the restriction of credit.

Does the Minister for Finance admit there is restriction of credit and, if he does, does he not know the effect of that restriction upon every aspect of business and of private enterprise through which agency a considerable amount of employment is provided as well as through the capital works carried out through the medium of loans provided by the Government? I would not venture to say what percentage, but I would say a very high percentage of the unemployment in this country since the Budget of 1952 has been brought about as a result of the restriction of credit.

As one of the oldest members of this House I want to know if this restriction of credit is taking place without the knowledge of the Government? If it is, then the Government does not know what is taking place in the country. Has the Government any power to deal with the banks and to deal with thisrestriction of credit—a restriction that is taking place to my own knowledge of documents that I have seen in the possession of business people? I am perfectly satisfied that this restriction of credit is operating to the disadvantage of my own constituents and to the disadvantage of genuine business people who want to carry on their business on proper lines and continue to provide employment for the normal number of people.

Will the Minister for Finance answer that question when he is replying to this discussion? Has this Government led by the Taoiseach, Deputy Eamon de Valera, any power over the private banking institutions of this country? Who has the first and last word in fixing the rates of interest? I want to find that out myself for myself and for the people whom I represent. I think it is about time the Minister for Finance, or the Taoiseach, told the House and the country whether or not it is the Government that has the last word in fixing interest charges on loans for private citizens or interest charges on loans for public authorities and for the Government in so far as the Government provides money for local authorities?

They should have the last word but they have not.

I am perfectly satisfied, as one of the oldest Deputies here, that we have all the freedom we want in this part of the country so far as our political economy is concerned. How can any Government led by the present Taoiseach carry out their financial and economic policy if they have not got the sympathy and support of the people who provide the money to enable them to do so? I have suspected for many years past that the private banking institutions here are not giving the help they should be giving to the Government. They did not give the help they should have given to past Governments in order to enable them to carry out their policy. If that is so, what harm is there in the Minister for Finance, or the Taoiseach, telling the country that they have discovered that to be the position and that they now requirewhatever further powers they consider necessary in order to get for the Government of the day whatever money is required to enable the Government to carry out its financial and economic policy?

We are wasting our time here if there is some hidden hand behind the scenes which does not provide the money necessary to enable the Government to carry out its declared policy, the policy upon which it was elected by the people. I want the Minister for Finance to answer a definite and specific question. If he is afraid to give the answer, perhaps the Taoiseach will give it. What is the Government's fundamental financial policy? Does the Government believe that the first charge on production should be a decent livelihood for the producer or, on the other hand, does the Government admit that the first charge on production should be 5 per cent. or 6 per cent. for the moneylender? I want an answer to that question. There is no use in the Taoiseach getting up, as he did here, and delivering in the most polite language possible a homely little lecture to the Labour Party on their policy implying that he was not such an extreme socialist as were the members of the Labour Party.

The question I ask is a fundamental one and, if I have an answer to that question, I shall know then where I stand in so far as the Taoiseach and Fianna Fáil are concerned or in so far as any other Party is concerned. If the first charge on production in this Christian State is supposed to be 5 per cent., 6 per cent. or any higher percentage for the moneylenders then I am much further removed from the Taoiseach than he thinks some of us are, if that is his outlook. The position must be settled once and for all and as soon as the Minister, or the Taoiseach, makes the position clear then we will know where we stand in relation to the Government that is now operating and we will know where we stand in relation to every other Party in this House if they declare in equally plain language their position on the same fundamental question.

I gathered from the Taoiseach in his speech on the motion of "No Confidence"that there is no shortage of money. Will he or his Minister for Finance confirm that? If that is so, will they explain why it is that so many schemes of such a useful nature and with such a high labour content are now lying idle in the pigeon-holes of the Department of Local Government while tens of thousands of able-bodied men are waiting for the work that could be provided if the money was allocated for these schemes?

Would the Deputy give us some particulars of these schemes?

I will do so with great pleasure. Will the Minister for Finance inquire from his colleague, the Minister for Local Government, what is the cost—I know it runs into some millions—of the schemes that are now lying in the pigeon-holes in the Department of Local Government, schemes approved under the Local Authorities (Works) Act, 1949?

Running into millions?

Will he say whether it is his deliberate desire or intention to scrap that Act or, as indicated by the reduction in grants, will he say whether it is their intention to go ahead and operate that Act in the way in which it can be operated, thereby providing employment for additional tens of thousands of able-bodied men in every constituency throughout the country?

The Deputy is avoiding my question: give me particulars of these schemes.

I assure the Government and the Minister for Finance, in particular, that three years ago in the Counties of Laois and Offaly 400 more men were employed by the local authority than are employed there to-day.

If the money was provided for the schemes that are lying idle in the Department of Local Government, and approved by the officials of that Department, the same 400 men who are now idle in the Counties of Laoisand Offaly could be put back into employment of a very useful nature.

Would the Deputy tell the House why it was that the inter-Party Government cut very drastically the allocations for public works and local authority schemes?

I want to tell the Minister for Finance that every grant and every scheme that was sent up by the county manager for the Counties of Laois and Offaly, and approved by the engineers of the Local Government Department, was not alone sanctioned by the Department but the necessary money was allocated during the lifetime of the inter-Party Government. If the Minister has any doubt as to the accuracy of that statement, let him go and make inquiries direct from the Secretary of the Department of Local Government or the county manager of the Counties of Laois and Offaly. Every penny was allocated.

I was on several deputations with the Minister's own colleagues when delay was being complained of; that cause of complaint was removed and the money was allocated. I can assure the Minister that there was no cause for any complaint by any of the Deputies representing Laois-Offaly while the inter-Party Government was in office. Let us be realistic in relation to the matter. Has any advice been tendered to the present Government that the Local Authorities (Works) Act is an Act that should be either gradually scrapped or repealed? Is it the intention of the Taoiseach and his colleagues in Government to continue to operate the schemes under that Act to the benefit not alone of those who are provided with employment under the Act but also to the benefit of the farmer whose lands are drained? Will any Deputy even now —my half-brother, Deputy Davern, can do it if he likes but he will take a considerable risk in doing so—stand up and say: "I stand for the repeal or scrapping of the Local Authorities (Works) Act, 1949"?

I did not stand for thereduction of the road grant by 50 per cent. as Deputy Davin did.

I challenge Deputy Davern to stand up here—I know he is a fearless Deputy—and say whether he is prepared to stand over the scrapping of that Act. He is not going to take that risk because he knows perfectly well that if he went back to South Tipperary and advocated the repeal or the scrapping of the 1949 Act it would have serious consequences for him.

Why did you reduce the road grant?

If no one is prepared to stand for the repeal or gradual elimination of that Act, why not make use of it? It is an Act that has provided useful employment for tens of thousands of people in every county and constituency in this country. What I am suggesting to the Government, I would be prepared to suggest in equally forcible language to any Taoiseach or Government that was sitting on the benches opposite and that had the responsibility of finding a solution for the unemployment problem. I am assured that, so far as the operation of that Act was applied in the two counties in my constituency, the schemes carried out there under it had a labour content of 85 per cent. That is very high labour content. That is a kind of work and activity that you cannot describe as relief schemes. It is the kind of work that should be carried out by a Government that pretends it is anxious to find even a temporary solution for a problem that we are all so interested in.

Why did you reduce the Estimate that was brought in for that Act in 1951?

I was a member of the House when other Deputies advocated, and I agreed with them, the carrying out of work that has a high labour content, work such as the removal of dangerous corners on main, trunk and byroads all over the country. There were many Deputies who supported that proposal at the time and, as I say, I agreed with them. That schemewas put up by officials of the Government at that particular period as being a good useful one. I do not know why it is still lying in the pigeon-holes of the Department. If money is available for the carrying out of useful work of that kind why is the work not started? Of course, if the money is not available I am simply wasting the time of the House, that is if the Minister for Finance will get up and say that there is no money for that kind of work. If he says that I will sit down and say no more, but let him shoulder the responsibility for not being able to provide the money. I am paying him the tribute of thinking that the money is available, and therefore I am making suggestions as to some of the ways and means by which it should and could be used with advantage not only for those who are looking for work but with advantage to the people of the country generally.

The members of this House know quite well that works, such as those carried out under the Works Act, bring a considerable acreage of land into production. That has been the effect of the operation of that Act in parts of the country that I am fairly well acquainted with. I hope that the Minister for Finance will tell the House, when replying, whether it is the purpose and intention of the Government to use the machinery of that Act to implement schemes that are lying probably in hundreds and maybe in thousands in pigeon-holes in the Department of Local Government. I am carrying out the wishes of the two county councils in my constituency when I urge the Taoiseach and his colleagues in the Government to investigate the possibility of making a better use of the machinery of that Act for the purpose of providing additional employment in the rural areas.

I do not want to repeat what has been much better said by a number of previous speakers. All of us, of course, are interested in the provision of more houses. More houses are needed not only by the people in the City of Dublin but by those in the rural areas. On this matter, I cannot speak with the same authority as those Deputies who are members of local authorities, but Iknow it is a fact that a considerable delay takes place between the framing of a housing scheme by a local authority and the starting of work on the building of the houses under the contract system. I have always urged—I do not say that in every case it should be done—that it is a very good thing, from the point of view of creating competition and keeping costs down, to erect houses under the direct labour system wherever, in the opinion of the authorities, the price under the contract system is regarded as excessive. I am sorry to say that the direct labour system has not been adopted to the extent that I would like to see in the two counties in my constituency.

I am prepared to give particulars, if anybody challenges me, with regard to house building schemes carried out under the direct labour system. In the constituency of Laois and Offaly houses that were built under the direct labour system were found to be better and cheaper houses than those built under the contract system. I am assured that, under the contract system in my constituency, building contractors have made profits of between £300 and £400 on houses they built for the local authorities. I suggest that a considerable portion of that profit could be saved for the taxpayers, the ratepayers and the tenants, and that the work done would be equally as good if the houses were built under the direct labour system.

I had sufficient influence about 20 years ago with other people, of course—I am not claiming the whole credit for myself—to get the Local Government Department to sanction as an experiment the carrying out of the housing scheme in a particular town in my constituency under the direct labour system. I asked them to build half the houses under the direct labour system and the other half, in another part of the town, under the contract system. If anybody is anxious to get the facts and the full particulars in regard to these schemes I will give them. The experiment proved this, that the houses built under the direct labour system were built at a much lower cost, butthe main point is that for the past 20 years there has been practically no charge on the local rates for the maintenance of the houses built under the direct labour system while the cost of maintenance of the houses built under the contract system has been excessive.

When you build houses under the direct labour system you eliminate the profit of the middle-man or the building contractor. I am not advocating, and I hope that nobody will think that I am, the elimination entirely of the building contractor. He is a useful citizen of the State and does very useful work; but I am not prepared, as a Deputy, to tolerate, and if I were a member of a local authority I would certainly do all I could to prevent it, a building contractor getting a job where he was getting a profit of £300 or £400 on a house. I would take the risk, and I think there would be very little risk in it, of having the houses built by direct labour. I suggest that the Minister for Finance and the Taoiseach in particular should study the results of house building carried out in this State under different Governments over the last ten, 15 or 20 years under the direct labour system and under the contract system.

I heard Deputy Crotty who, I suppose in the ordinary way, would be regarded as a capitalist as compared to me at any rate, say in this House that the best houses built in Kilkenny by the local authority were those which had been built under the direct labour system. Does any Deputy think that Deputy Crotty, or anyone associated with the business and other circles in which he moves, would advocate the direct labour system were it not for the fact that he was convinced that better and cheaper houses were built under it than under the contract system? Was not that the only reason, and it was a very good business reason, why a man like Deputy Crotty should advocate a continuance of the direct labour system in his constituency rather than the contract system? As I have said, I am not advocating the elimination of the building contractor. If you had thedirect labour system working side by side with the contract system, then you would ensure that the contractor would have to keep an eye on his costs and keep his profits down to the minimum. If, for no other reason, the direct labour system would be useful if it did that.

There is no use in building houses at a prohibitive price in the provincial towns for workers and expect that those workers can afford to pay one-third or 40 per cent. of their weekly wages in rent. Sixty-five per cent. of the total weekly rent of the houses built by the local authorities in some parts of my constituency represents interest on money to moneylenders. These poor moneylenders, who are able to secure 65 per cent. of the rent from these tenants, are getting an additional 1 per cent. from the decent, over-generous Minister for Finance in the Budget that he brought in in 1952 and which has had these disastrous effects on every angle of business.

I know that the Taoiseach is a very busy man. I know he works very hard and very long hours. I do not share his views on every aspect of public policy. He is a hard worker and has devoted his life to the public service of the country. I would appeal to him that it is time to look into this question of using the Local Authorities (Works) Act of 1949 for relieving unemployment that is at a dangerous stage at the moment. It is not a long term policy because, if he uses that Act extensively, without any limit on the money, if he uses it as fully as it could be used with the available unemployed, it would come to an end in the course of a couple of years and you might have to repeat it in another ten years. It is a very useful scheme and if the money is available it should be used for this purpose so that men will not be idle in the rural districts with no alternative but a passport to Britain. Let these men do the job and give them employment that is badly needed.

The same applies to house building. I would ask the Taoiseach to look into that matter because it deserves attention. I have a shrewd suspicion that the engineers are opposed to thedirect labour system. I know why. Does not any common-sense Deputy know the reason? If a house building scheme is in operation in my constituency and is being carried out under the contract system, the engineer goes in once a week or once a month and shakes hands with the contractor and says: "Well done, lad. I will give you a certificate for £10,000 or £20,000." Under the direct labour system, he has to be on the job all the time and has to watch costs and supervise the work. He works harder under the direct labour system than under the contract system and has less time to be on the local golf course if he has to supervise the carrying out of a direct labour scheme as compared with a contract scheme. That is the hidden reason why engineers are opposed to it and are getting their way against direct labour schemes which, in many cases in my constituency, meant better and cheaper houses.

If I am challenged on any of these matters, either privately or publicly, by any Deputy, I will give him evidence to prove that what I am saying is true. I do not want to exaggerate. This is not the place for exaggeration. In present circumstances we are not expected to exaggerate when we put forward our views in the House.

I do not want to take up any further time of the House. I could if I wanted to engage in filibustering tactics. I could, I suppose, attempt to repeat what has been so well done last night and to-day by the Minister for External Affairs. It surprised me to hear the Minister exaggerating— that is a mild word, because I have been warned about the words I should use so far as he is concerned. It surprised me to hear an active, virile looking Minister for External Affairs who, I am sure, hopes to be the next Taoiseach if Fianna Fáil live long enough, grossly exaggerating the position and making a speech of a deliberately provocative character. These are not unparliamentary words. I hope I am not being unfair to the Minister for External Affairs by using these words.

There is a serious situation confrontingthe country at present, more serious than I remember in my 31 years' membership of the House. Personally, I do not care who finds a solution for these problems. I said in the beginning that I am not one of those who are extremely anxious for another general election. So far as a name is concerned, I am not bothering whether it is the name of the Taoiseach to-day or the name of the Taoiseach to-morrow, so long as we find a solution for the serious and pressing problems that undoubtedly confront the country.

I do not want to say anything inside the House or outside the House—I hope I have never done so—which would help to create an agitation or trouble so far as the unemployed people are concerned. It is very easy for people with eloquent tongues to play on the position of people who have been unemployed for a long period. I never like to give a letter to a person which will enable him to get out of this country. I like, if I have the power, to give a letter to a person which will get him a job in this country. I have been often asked and have refused to give a letter to a person to get a job in England which we can find at home by the use of measures of the kind I have indicated to-day. Where is a Deputy representing a rural area who will give a letter to a person to get a sailing ticket for Great Britain if he knows in his heart that a little bit more money to operate the Local Authorities (Works) Act or house building activities will enable him to get a job at useful work in his own country?

That is the position which confronts every one of us whether we sit on this side or the other side of the House. I have to admit that a general election will not bring an immediate solution to this problem. If another Government succeeded the present Government they could not find an immediate solution for the grave problem that confronts the country to-day. If we would talk less about personalities in this House and more about principles and general proposals and face the present serious position in a realistic way and co-operate as far as we possiblycan, forgetting about personalities, at least a temporary solution could be found.

With all the power I have at my command—and I cannot speak with the same vehemence or eloquence as members on the other side of the House—I urge the Taoiseach and his colleagues and every member on every side of the House to agree to find the money that must be found to carry out the schemes that are in the pigeon-holes of the Local Government Department, the Office of Public Works, the Department of Industry and Commerce and many other Departments. It is a damned shame for the whole lot of us and for the Government in particular that hundreds of proposals are lying in Government Departments and cannot be carried out not because they are not useful but because we will not allocate the money to the people who can have these schemes carried out and provide useful employment for our citizens, rather than give them passports to get out to another country.

In listening to the Minister for External Affairs to-day and indeed to the few brief remarks of the Minister for Finance one would scarcely believe that this House was faced with a demand for no less a sum than £30,000,000. The Minister for Finance came in here and slapped down the demand—£30,000,000. He spoke for three minutes—£10,000,000 per minute; no explanation as to the policy of the Government, as to whether there was any determination for retrenchment, whether there was any hope of economy in any direction, but merely a demand in a three minute statement for £30,000,000.

Who was called upon to open the case for the Government presenting such a demand and to defend the Government's policy and the results of the Government's policy? The Government called on Deputy Captain Cowan. There was no member of the Government who had the courage to step out of the funk-hole into which they were all driven in panic since they decided to treat with contemptthe voice and the votes of the people of this country, so they called on Deputy Captain Cowan. In a way they could not have called on a better man. He is a very good man to make a good job out of even a rotten bad case. His experience here and his professional training outside have made him quite competent in that particular direction. But even that Deputy failed completely in his task.

I do not believe there is a man living that could make a success of defending the results of the present Government's policy. They may talk vaguely, as they do, about plans. There never was in the history of the world a Government Party with more plans and less achievement than the present Government. Every time we have an election, the principal spokesman of the Government, the Tánaiste, parades the country and everywhere he goes he has magnificent plans, but the fructification of those plans is just around the corner. Of late he is getting tired of the repetition in his own mind of that particular set of words and he has altered them to the extent of saying that the results and the benefits of those plans are just over the hill. There is always a corner to be turned or a hill to be climbed. But the corner has not been rounded nor the hill reduced in height during the 20 years that Government has been in office— plans, words, plans.

Then we have a demand for money, more money demanded each year, more spending each year; the capacity for spending without any equivalent returns developing according to the ease with which the money is got in. It is very easy to get money if you dig into a sufficient number of pockets. When you go down to the bread cupboard of every person in the country extra money of course comes in, and extra money is easily spent. But what is the result of these two years, with plans just around the corner, plans just over the hill? A figure for unemployment unprecedented and unheard of at any previous time in the records of this State.

Except in 1948.

Possibly February, 1948.

Therefore, you have the figure of 90,000 unemployed, never equalled except in the last year they were the Government, according to the Minister for Finance. A figure of 90,000 unemployed, never more human beings on the ships carrying our people abroad, a weight of taxation unequalled and unprecedented either in peace or war, ratepayers everywhere staggering and groaning under the demands and the increasing demands for rates. We have such a situation brought about that the Taoiseach himself, the head of that Government which is making these demands on the people, states that the load of taxation is such that the people of this country are staggering under it and that not even one extra penny can be imposed on the unfortunate people.

When the Taoiseach points out that the people are just staggering under the load of taxation, his jaunty little Minister for Finance waddles in here, throws down a demand for £30,000,000, stands in a perpendicular position for three minutes and then scoots. The next representative of the Government we have is the Minister for External Affairs. He comes in here last night and, in a fashion which has become typical and characteristic of the individual, he sprays the Dáil with insolence, venom and offensiveness for a considerable period of time.

The delicacy of the Deputy is well known.

We have that studied insolence and offensiveness that has become characteristic of the man. But there is a technique in all that. While he is doing that he is keeping away from discussing the results of the Government's policy; he is keeping away from discussing this Vote on Account, this demand for £30,000,000. He is putting in time but evading the issue. To-day he comes in here again and we have an hour of buffoonery. But during the whole of that hour not one period of fiveminutes was devoted to the Vote on Account and not one second to the state of the country, with unemployment, high taxation, and people leaving the land in sheer despair. Even when he was invited to discuss such matters or to pay some attention to them, we had the dumb, determined refusal and just an agile bit of sidestepping back again to clowning and buffooning. Are the Government proud of that? Is the Taoiseach proud of that? Does he think that that is proper behaviour for a Government Minister making a demand on the country for a further instalment of £30,000,000 out of a sum which he himself says has the people staggering under the load?

The people are entitled to some explanation as to why this is required and why no economies can be effected. We have the Minister for External Affairs putting in an hour talking about the increase in sterling assets when the previous Government was in office. Even that brought a blush to the face of the Minister for Finance, and it is very hard to make him blush, because the Minister for Finance remembers what the Minister for External Affairs forgot, that for 12 months after the change of Government the popular tune on every Fianna Fáil platform was the manner in which their predecessors had dissipated sterling assets.

It was Marshall dollars you dissipated.

Deputies who could not spell the word "sterling" were making speeches about it, so much so that in a speech in Cork I said they were all instructed on the one theme and the bulk of them did not know the difference between sterling assets and a new type of artichoke. They were all talking of the manner in which we had squandered the sterling assets. Now the charge against us is that sterling assets grew during that period. I mention that to show the inconsistency of the people opposite.

I suppose it would not be in order to correct the blatant misrepresentation of the Deputy.What we did allege was that they had squandered the Marshall Aid dollars.

And the sterling assets.

We will not quibble about the word "allege." I am talking about what you said, not alleged. In the Minister's own speech—if he wants his own words—what he said was that they had managed this country without reimposing the taxes on beer and tobacco. There is no allegation about that. What the Taoiseach said in his manifesto was that they would run the country better than we did and without reducing the food subsidies. There is no allegation about that. That is the printed word and the other is the spoken word.

Deputy Cowan, as I said, was put up to make the case for the Government. What was his case? He said we always had unemployment and that apparently we always will have it. There is the case for a Government that time and again has stated that they would clear off unemployment, that there was no country in the whole world in which it was easier to cure unemployment. They reached a figure never previously reached and their principal spokesman, Deputy Cowan, says:—

"You will always have unemployment; it will go up and it will go down but you will always have it."

Why should we always have unemployment? We will only have it always if we always have Fianna Fáil. Why was unemployment practically gone and why did it come back two years ago? What creates unemployment?—restricted credit, shortage of money, high taxes and high rates. If any Government in any country takes the last halfpenny out of the people's pockets so that, according to the head of the Government, they are staggering under the load of taxation, there is no money left for spending; there is no money left for house building; there is none left for employment or for reconstruction of houses. The credit of the individual is not good when hislast halfpenny has been taken from him.

All this unemployment began, remember, two and a half years ago when the present Government took office. When they knew they could not better the work of their predecessors their only hope was to slander the name of their predecessors. They toured the country saying we were living on borrowed money; we dissipated the sterling assets; we were spending too freely and borrowing too much. Now to steady the old boat we must have a régime of austerity where the people have less to spend. They withdrew the subsidies, increased taxes and restricted credit. They made money dear and employment dried up. Now that the hunger marchers are shouting at the gates we have the usual remedy, the talk about plans, plans. Hungry people cannot eat plans. Committees and plans, that is the cure but as well as talking about plans and setting up committees they stroll back here with a demand in a three-minute statement for £30,000,000. Both the Minister and the principal spokesman for the Government, Deputy Captain Cowan, explained in a rather laboured way, apparently suffering from the irritation resulting from a guilty conscience, that the Government had a legal and a constitutional right to hang on. Nobody ever disputed the legal or the constitutional right to hang on——

Hear, hear!

——but what we did dispute was the morality of hanging on. You can hang on as long as you have a majority of one here but is that the democratic road? When the voters in by-elections in different provinces, one in the city and two in rural areas, call on you with a thunderous and clamorous voice to get out, do you think the answer is to come in here to secure a vote of confidence from the Fianna Fáil Party and act on your legal and constitutional right to hang on?

Was that the spirit of democracy that the Taoiseach believed in in the winter of 1947? He had a bigger majority in the House then; he had a comfortable majority. There were three by-elections and there was a possibility that thepeople might turn against him. What was his theme in County Dublin, in Tipperary and in Waterford? What were the speeches he made and what was the special message that he sent on the eve of polling to the electors in each of these three constituencies? The gist of all that was that if the Government was weakened by the votes of the people in by-elections, if the votes of the people at by-elections showed a falling away and a loss of confidence in the Government, there was no honourable course open to a democratic Government but to dissolve and refer the election of a Government to the people.

That is a new version of it.

We all know the Taoiseach is a master of ambiguity and he never makes a statement but there is a backdoor emergency exit through which he can escape. Therefore, I did not come in without being armed with records of the Taoiseach's statements because I know if I did not produce the newspaper at the time I was speaking he would take it for granted I had not got it.

Hear, hear!

Might I say, as a further precaution against another interruption, that the only paper I have taken them from is the Irish Pressbecause if I made the quotations from any other paper I would be told they were inaccurate?

I am glad you read it.

I want to quote his own statements.

Deputy O'Higgins, Junior, gave it all to us before.

That is what made you so bilious.

The O'Higgins's are very economical.

You are going to get it again until you obey the people.

Like Kitty O'Shea.

I will not follow the Minister in these paths.

These personalities must cease.

I must ask the Chair if it can put an end to these personal references by the Minister for Finance which he uses regularly in the House. If they were followed the Minister might learn a few things about himself.

The Deputy need not hold himself up as a figure of public rectitude.

Will the Chair take action with regard to the Minister?

We know nothing about Deputy MacBride.

Order, order! There should be no personalities

Will the Minister withdraw?

There is nothing to withdraw.

Deputy Dr. O'Higgins.

However, he is simply keeping in step with the other Minister here. To return to some quotations——

I hope that the Deputy has references.

Does the Taoiseach object because he does not like to hear what I am going to say?

I do not object at all. I only want to explain that I do not want him to come in without references for the quotations.

You did not think I had the quotations?

I did not know if you had them or not. I did not think that you had them anyway.

Very well; here are the quotations. In the winter of 1947, the 12th October, speaking at Waterford, the Taoiseach said:—

"If you want a change of Government then there will be sense in voting against the Government because you will indicate quite clearly that you want a change of Government."

Speaking at Tipperary, one week later, he said:—

"If a Government were weakened it was not able to do its work properly and if weakened by the by-elections the question must be settled by a general election. He thought the people would agree with him that that was right."

Further, speaking at Dún Laoghaire on the 27th October, he said:—

"If there was a want of confidence in the people, a want of confidence, it would be absolutely necessary to have a general election so that the people could say whether they wanted a change of Government or not."

Then in a message to the people of the three constituencies on the eve of the poll:—

"To weaken the Government unless it were intended to set it aside would be foolish. Were the Government to be weakened by the by-elections it would in the national interest have to be set right by reference to the people in a general election."

That was the headline in the winter of 1947. That was the headline when Fianna Fáil considered that they were still strong enough to scramble back. That headline is completely departed from when Fianna Fáil know absolutely that if they poke their noses out of the hidey-hole this time, never again will they sit on that side of the House. That is the reason why democratic principles have completely changed. That is the reason why the path of honour has got a crooked bend in the middle of it and that they are going in the same direction now by going in the opposite direction.

Was not 1947 the year before you became a Republican?

I can tell the Minister that I was a Republican the week he missed the train to join the British.

You were never a Republican or anybody belonging to you. You were killing Parnell. Were you Republican then?

Might I inquire was that a good Republican train which the Minister missed?

(Interruptions.)

Order, order! The discussion must be confined to the general results of Government policy.

General results of Government policy. Whether it is appreciated on all sides here it is certainly appreciated by the people outside. The general result is to be seen, as Deputy Dr. ffrench-O'Carroll said at a corporation meeting, by looking out of the window and seeing the unemployed in their thousands, by going around the homes of the people seeing the last food in the larders, seeing the worried, anxious, pinched faces of women trying to fill their baskets for the week's provisions with money inadequate to do so, when the loaf of bread and the pound of butter alone give no change out of a 5/- bit. Then it is time for the general public to say: "It is time for a change of Government." It is either a case of no change out of the £ or a change of Government up here. Clearly, emphatically and on every occasion over the last 12 months, the people have roared at you: "Get out, get out and give somebody else a chance, Get out, you are no longer wanted here." And your answer to that is to ramble in here, take three minutes to look for another £30,000,000 from the people, and then tell them in defiance that you are going to hang on because you have a constitutional and a legal right to hang on. Shame!

We will agree that it is rather difficult to listen with patience to a speech of the type delivered just now, but nothing from Fine Gael is out of the way. We would indeed be very surprised if we heardanything else from them. The only thing I say to Deputy Dr. O'Higgins is that his memory is very short and his love for the workers and the unemployed has very recently become a sort of canker with him. I wonder when he was Minister in the old Fine Gael Government when they told the workers they could fall dead of starvation, what did they mean by that?

Mr. O'Higgins

Will you quote?

I quoted it before.

Mr. O'Higgins

That is a complete slander.

That was their attitude.

Mr. O'Higgins

Quote it.

Quote, quote.

Order, order! Deputy Davern must be allowed to speak.

They stated that it was not the duty of the Government to provide work for the unemployed, and that was a very few years ago, and men died of hunger and women died of hunger and men were driven into the asylums, the mental homes of this country, because of the policy of Deputy Dr. O'Higgins and the rest of the gang who were then Ministers with him. Things have changed since and with the Fianna Fáil Government coming into power our people appreciated and fully realised what the workers went through during that ten years of the Fine Gael Government. You did not have unemployment assistance at all and when a man was starving he had to go to the home assistance officer with his hat in his hand begging for a few shillings to try to keep body and soul together. The cap-lifting age is gone. We abolished that in 1932 and 1933. It is many years since we abolished it the same way as we abolished many of the evils that we took over from the old Fine Gael Government.

Mr. O'Higgins

You scrambled to the right side of the ditch.

You scrambled to theright side of the ditch when you got to be legal adviser to the Post Office.

Mr. O'Higgins

I would like to know, Sir, if the Deputy is permitted to go back to the days of the civil war?

I might say something which I would not like to be tempted to say.

Mr. O'Higgins

I ask the Chair to keep the Deputy in order.

The Chair will keep the Deputy and every other Deputy in order.

Mr. O'Higgins

I hope so.

Deputy O'Higgins should not interrupt the speaker.

Mr. O'Higgins

On a point of order, I am asking you to rule, is the Deputy out of order when he is referring to matters now 20 years old?

What is 20 years old? The appointment to the G.P.O. was not 20 years old.

Mr. O'Higgins

1922 is more than 20 years ago.

The Deputy's father has been referring for years——

The Deputy is entitled to compare one administration with another.

Mr. O'Higgins

That is a ruling, that it is in order for Deputies to refer to these matters, as a comparison?

It has been done. Most Deputies have done it.

Mr. O'Higgins

Then that applies to other Deputies also?

The Deputy must allow Deputy Davern to make his speech without interruption.

Mr. O'Higgins

In accordance with the rules.

The Deputies oppositehave been trying to inject poison of a dangerous nature not alone into this House but into the people outside this House. It is all very fine for Deputy O'Higgins to have a pleasant smile——

Mr. O'Higgins

Do not hit me, with the baby in my arms.

——but when he gets a little of his own medicine he does not like to take it. I have heard speeches from many of the Opposition here and, with the exception of the speech delivered by Deputy Davin in which I believe he was perfectly honest, there was not even one word uttered that would in any way help to relieve one unemployed man. Not even one suggestion was made that could in any way be interpreted as doing this country one iota of good.

Mr. O'Higgins

Except for you to get out.

We have: "Get out, get out." We have come to the "get out" end of it. That is the war cry of Fine Gael, knowing as they do, when urging this "get out" business, telling the people there is to be a general election in the next month or two or that there should be a general election and that we are not democrats, that these are statements which are doing infinite harm to the country, creating instability and creating unemployment. For the past two years they have been at it, urging the people not to till their land. The former Minister for Agriculture never encouraged one acre more of tillage when he was a Minister and tillage became practically unknown in some parts of the country as a result of that unfortunate policy of Deputy Dillon.

Is the Deputy serious?

Deputy Dillon consigned agriculture to a limbo, almost a hell, and we have a difficult job to redeem it now. We have to try to persuade the people that unless the land of Ireland is cultivated and worked we are bound to have more and more unemployment. The peoplegoing off the land, as they did in those three years, flocking into the cities already overloaded—that is the cause of much of the unemployment. Worse than that, they now continue with their dual purpose voices, telling us that it is not a democratic thing to remain in this House unless you have the permission and the votes of Fine Gael. What on earth are we coming to?

Mr. O'Higgins

We only require you to have the support of the people.

We are not going to go back again——

Mr. O'Higgins

I know that.

——to the terrible years of destitution that prevailed prior to the advent of a Fianna Fáil Government. When I see some of the Fine Gael people shedding crocodile tears about housing, let me remind them that they never built even one house in rural Ireland during their period of ten years of office.

We repaired a whole lot—and well you know it.

Not even one house did you build in rural Ireland and the houses that were built under that régime had to be let at such an exorbitant rent that it was beyond the reach of ordinary working men to accept the tenancy.

Mr. O'Higgins

We did not blow up any bridges.

My only regret about the bridges is that a few like Deputy O'Higgins were not on top of them. I offer no apologies for the bridges.

That is a nice statement to make.

That is the apology I give for the bridges. Will Deputy Seán MacBride apologise for the bridges? Tell that to Deputy MacBride.

On a point of order, surely there should be agreement not to start the civil war over again in this House.

Oh! Was not theDeputy trying to get a little capital out of national records yesterday?

What is that a reference to?

Look at the Order Paper and you will see.

The worst feature is that speech after speech is directed to create instability in the country and to try if at all possible to force the people's mind away from giving this Government the confidence that it so richly deserves. We have heard speakers opposite—Deputy O'Sullivan, I think—talking about the high cost of living. I ask the Fine Gael people do they stand for a reduction in the price of milk? Will they tell that to the dairy farmers of Cork? Are they going back to Deputy Dillon's price of 1/- a gallon? Do they stand for a reduction in the price of wheat or the price of beet?

If they do, then let them tell the people of rural Ireland that they want them to go back to the old days when people were hawking samples round the country, like mendicants from door to door trying to get a price; and when, incidentally, the farm workers had to work for 12/-or 15/- a week and had to bring up their families on that meagre sum. If they desire that we should continue to import butter from Australia or Denmark, that we should continue to import sugar from Formosa or other countries, and that we should obtain our full requirements of wheat from outside the country, then instead of criticising the price of bread, butter and sugar they should go down the country and tell the farmers and farm workers that they are going to reduce the prices of these commodities if they get in and give 1/- a gallon for milk, and so on.

We are not going to do that, but we are not going to export Irish sugar and import foreign sugar.

You cannot have it both ways.

That is what this Government is doing.

You criticise taxation and at the same time urge expenditure. You cannot have it both ways.

You can. There are many other uses for milk.

You can? That is a new one to me.

You can give a substantial increase in the price of milk without increasing the price to the consumer—by adjustment.

I heard Deputy Davin say, and I want to contradict him, that the position in regard to unemployment now is the worst for 30 years. That is not so. Deputy Davin has been a member of this House for 30 years and if he puts on his considering cap as every honest Deputy ought to do, he will withdraw that statement and say that the régime of the old Cumann na nGaedheal Government was the worst since the famine days.

Ask Deputy Dr. Browne to withdraw that statement. He made it here on the vote of confidence.

I gave Deputy O'Sullivan his job to do, not to be coming in here preaching one thing and going down to the farmers and farm workers in Cork and preaching another. If he does that, he will be doing a good day's work for the country. We want a little more honesty in Irish public life. If we got more honesty, more upright and outspoken statements and more constructive criticism, if the Opposition have such a thing, it would be welcome; but we deplore the sabotage statements that have come from the Fine Gael Benches.

What are the sabotage statements?

It has been stated again that there were more people employed on the roads during the three and a half years of the inter-Party Government. I wonder how can anybody explain away the reduction in the roadgrants during that period. In the South Riding of County Tipperary alone, there was a reduction of £222,000 in the very first year in respect of the grant to which they were entitled. The Coalition Government reduced the road estimate by that sum, and on that basis, Tipperary South lost almost £700,000 in the three and a half years of the Coalition régime. If the rates in my constituency are high and if the roads remained in a bad state of repair we must naturally put the blame for it on the people who are responsible— and they are the disciples of Fine Gael sitting on the opposite side of the House.

I beg of you not to make statements of a kind which are detrimental to the nation's economy. We have had a hard task in this country in the past 35 years. Does anybody seriously think that it is being made easier by making grossly false or exaggerated statements? We hear the same old parrot cry all the time but never one constructive idea. I am sure that the dreadful enmity which the Fine Gael Party have shown us is not due to any personal animosity and, therefore, we must try to find a motive for it. The motive is very obvious. We redeemed this country from the financial chaos to which three and a half years of Coalition Government had brought it. Because we have redeemed the country, we are experiencing this terrible antagonism from the Opposition. Let me tell the Deputies opposite that they will have a general election——

Deputies

Hear, hear!

Not before the recess.

——in May, 1957, so sit over there quietly, like good children, and continue to be educated by the people from these benches. If you do that then, maybe in ten or 15 years' time, you will be capable of taking over the reins of Government.

The new Taoiseach.

Certainly I would compare favourably with the Taoiseachwhom Deputy Davin put into power. I would know a bullet from a hobbyhorse and that is more than Deputy Costello would.

We will agree to differ on that.

What has the difference between a bullet and a hobby-horse to do with the Vote on Account?

The Opposition are trying to blow hot and cold. They are trying to tell people, in effect, that they can have omelettes without cracking egg shells. That is not so.

You took that expression from Deputy Dillon.

Nobody ever took Deputy Dillon seriously except, unfortunately, some of the tillage farmers who got out of tillage during his term of office as Minister for Agriculture. My advice to Deputy Dillon and to Deputy Seán Collins is to go and have Deputy Dillon's belfry examined, even by a chiropodist. She might find a corn where his brain should be.

I do not really blame so much Deputy Davern——

He speaks more in sorrow than in anger.

——or some other Deputies of the Fianna Fáil Party for using language which should not be used in this House and for seeking to play on civil war bitterness.

It is time Deputy MacBride stopped preaching.

They would not do it unless they felt they were being encouraged by more responsible men, such as the Taoiseach, the Minister for Finance and the Minister for External Affairs. True, it is seldom that the Taoiseach himself ever indulges in direct personal invectives based on the civil war but it is equally true to say that the Taoiseach sits in this House smiling and grinning broadly when these invectives and attempts to revivepast bitternesses are made and obviously encourages them by his attitude. I do not think that that is a thing that the Taoiseach should do.

We want no lectures from that quarter. We want no lectures from you.

I am not going to be silenced by the Parliamentary Secretary to the Taoiseach or by anybody else.

Leave off that game. We do not want that. The Deputy who is talking is one of the worst at that game and has been all his life.

Will the Parliamentary Secretary to the Taoiseach conduct himself—the watchdog of the Taoiseach?

I am proud to be the watchdog of that man.

Do not make a fool of yourself.

Presumably, the Parliamentary Secretary to the Taoiseach would not behave in that manner unless he knew that it pleased his leader.

Had Deputy MacBride not better come off it? We know that he is a humbug.

I will say what I have to say in this House——

That would be very unusual.

——and I will not be intimidated by the Taoiseach, the Minister for Finance or by the shouts of the henchman behind.

Pensioner! We know the pensioner all right. Listen to the man who travelled this country talking about Ministers' pensions. When the opportunity arose, he was the first to take advantage of it himself. He has it now. We know who the pensioner is. That is a contemptible remark from a contemptible person.

The word "pensioner" was not used by Deputy MacBride. He used the word "henchman".

The word which Deputy MacBride used was not "pensioner."

Perhaps Deputy MacBride might now be allowed to continue his speech, without further interruptions.

Is it in order for the Parliamentary Secretary to the Taoiseach to state in this House that something was "a contemptible remark by a contemptible person?"

That is a mild observation.

I withdraw it, if there is any doubt about it.

Now perhaps we could hear Deputy MacBride on the Vote on Account.

I have listened on numerous occasions in this House to personal attacks being made by members of the Government Party. I respectfully submit that a number of personal attacks have been made in the course of this debate—attacks to which I, as an ordinary member of this House, am entitled to take exception.

The Deputy should refer to such attacks at the time they are made. He cannot debate them now.

The Deputy would have been unruly if he had done so.

Is the Deputy speaking as a Deputy or as a lay preacher?

On a point of order. There must be some order in the House. Surely to God, the Chair is not going to rule that a Deputy speaking in the House may not discuss contributions to the debate that have just taken place?

The Chair has not so ruled.

I understood the Chair to say that, unless we interrupt aspeaker when he is making an observation to which we take exception, no further reference can be made to it.

Can the Chair tell us whether the running fire of remarks being made by the Minister for Finance are going on the record?

The Chair cannot know that.

It should not be allowed.

This House is being asked to vote a sum of over £30,000,000.

Is it in order for Deputy MacBride to make an unprovoked attack on me and to say that I used certain unparliamentary language in this House? He did not even qualify it by saying that that statement was extracted from me through the provocation of Deputy O'Higgins. Unlike Deputy MacBride, I do not make any apologies for anything that I do.

This House is at present discussing a Vote on Account of some £30,000,000. Part of the money which the House is being asked to vote is to defray the cost of the administration by different Ministers of the Government and I am entitled, in dealing with this Vote on Account, to deal with the conduct of these Ministers in this House as I have witnessed it. I have witnessed a number of personal attacks made by the Minister for Finance on different members of the House. I have also read—I was not present—of attacks made by the Minister for External Affairs on other members of the House. I do not think that is the way in which any responsible Minister should behave and I do not think the Taoiseach should give that type of conduct tacit approval. Having said that, let me pass to the problems with which this House has to deal at present.

The main and gravest problem the House has to deal with is the question of unemployment. There has been arising and mounting tide of unemployment in the course of the past two years. At first, the attitude of the Government was to deny the existence of such a problem, to deny that there was increasing unemployment and to throw in all kinds of reasons as to why there was the existing unemployment. Then, we were told that unemployment was going down, because seasonal unemployment goes down by reason of the operation of employment period Orders. Attempts were even made to use figures which were not really fairly representative of the position. Now, at last, the Government have been forced into a position in which they have to face up to the fact that the country is confronted by a serious crisis, as a result of their own policy.

Unemployment does not grow of itself; it is not caused by a change in the weather; and it is not caused by a change in the seasons. It is the definite result of the economic policy pursued by the Government. There are two main causes of the unemployment position and they have been repeated of ten enough from this side in the course of the past two years. The first was the restriction in the purchasing power of the people which was caused deliberately by the Government in its implementation of the Central Bank policy. The Central Bank advised a reduction in the purchasing power of the people and advised achieving that objective by the removal of the subsidies, the imposition of additional taxation and the restriction of credits. The Government, step by step, implemented that policy, while, at the same time, pretending they were not doing it, pretending they had no responsibility for the Central Bank. Step by step, every single recommendation made by the Central Bank was implemented, and implemented with the results which the Central Bank warned the Government would be achieved, namely, the creation of unemployment.

One of the most potent factors in the creation of the present situation was the restriction of credits. Again here, we were faced with denials that there was any restriction of credit. Then we were told that, if there wasrestriction of credits, it was not due to any wish on the part of the Government. I challenged the Taoiseach, time after time, on that question. He first denied that there was any such thing as restriction of credit. Then he said he did not know, that he had not seen recent figures, but did not believe there was any such thing. Other Ministers said that the Government had no responsibility for it. Now, at last, we have the facts. We know that bank credits were reduced in the course of the year by some £4,500,000 and it can no longer be denied that bank credits were reduced; but we had the Minister for Posts and Telegraphs coming to the House on last Tuesday and saying that, if there had been a restriction of credits, it was in no wise due to anything the Government had said or done and was not part of their policy. That, of course, does not bear examination. The Central Bank advised rigorous credit restrictions. The Government never disowned that policy, although it was invited to do so on numerous occasions.

We have several times made it quite clear that we had nothing to do with it and did not believe in it.

The Taoiseach says that several times he made it quite clear that the Government had nothing to do with it. With what—the Central Bank report?

With the restriction of credit.

I invited the Taoiseach specifically on a number of occasions to state that it was the Government's policy that credits should not be restricted.

And I did state that.

I am afraid the Taoiseach will not be able to refer me to any statement to that effect.

Not at the moment, certainly.

At any time—there is plenty of time. Presumably, theTaoiseach is going to speak on this Vote on Account. Let me remind the Taoiseach, however, of what his own Minister for Finance said.

I quoted my predecessor.

At column 1899 of the Dáil Debates of 18th July, 1951, the Minister for Finance said:—

"Private and public spending are causing congestion that can be relieved only by a reduction of one or the other."

What does that mean, if it does not mean credit restrictions? He went on:—

"Credit facilities are encouraging outlay on less essential goods; money incomes of all kinds are being raised irrespective of increases in output."

Either words in the English language have some meaning or they have not. What other meaning can be taken out of this statement than that it is the desire of the Government to see a restriction of credit policy pursued by the banks. No other meaning can be taken from it, and the Taoiseach knows that full well. When these statements are taken in conjunction with the declaration of the Central Bank that "rigorous restriction of bank credit for non-essential and less urgent purposes is now imperative," it is obvious that these amounted to a direction to the commercial banks to reduce credits.

We had also in the Budget statement of the Minister for Finance on 2nd April, 1952, certain declarations which were obviously also intended to indicate that it was the policy and the desire of the Government that credit should be reduced. At column 1119, the Minister in the course of his Budget statement on 2nd April, 1952, said:—

"Advances in incomes in recent years have been accompanied by disproportionate increases in consumption. This is one of the more unhealthy features of our situation and a clear appreciation of its significance is essential."

"Advance in incomes in recent years have been accompanied by disproportionate increases in consumption." Reduced income and a reduction in the amount of money available was the policy to remedy that situation. That is the advice of the Minister for Finance of the present Government to the commercial banks and other different financial interests in the country. The inevitable results of that policy have been pointed out repeatedly in this House but because it was pointed out by Deputies on this side of the House the Government did not pay any attention to it. Their ears and eyes were closed to the warnings. But they got the same warnings from their own financial advisers. They got these warnings from the Central Bank, who did not put a tooth in it; they considered that certain measures should be taken to remedy what they described as "unusually favourable conditions of employment in the country." Those steps were taken. The "unusually favourable conditions of employment" have now been remedied and the Government can congratulate itself on having achieved at least that purpose. The governor and members of the Central Bank can also congratulate themselves on having reached that objective. The Government were repeatedly asked to dissociate themselves from that policy. They did not do so.

In dealing with the economic problems of the country, one of the difficulties is to find out exactly what the Government's policy is. I had thought until very recently that the main charge the Government was making against the inter-Party Government was that the inter-Party Government had in some ways dissipated the external assets of this country. In the course of practically every by-election that has been held in the last three or four years the Taoiseach has made a standard speech about sterling assets— a standard speech which usually appears in the Irish Pressunder the banner headline: “The country is in danger”. The Taoiseach in that standard speech proceeds to say that the sterling assets “have now dwindled down to £120,000,000.” I have hadnumerous controversies with the Taoiseach about that speech. He made it again in the recent by-elections and he made it before.

I pointed out that the figure £120,000,000 was a misleading one and that the total amount of our external assets was over £500,000,000. That did not prevent the Taoiseach from repeating the same speech at the next by-election.

You left out a very important word which I put in—"net".

I know the Taoiseach's capabilities of putting in a quibbling word.

The word "net" is not a quibbling word, I am sure.

When you talk of the investments of a person, a bank, a business firm or a country, you talk of their investments.

When you talk of a man's assets and liabilities together you talk of net.

I wish the Taoiseach would look into this matter seriously. I never know whether the Taoiseach pretends not to understand a point in regard to financial matters or whether he misunderstands it. I wish the Taoiseach would investigate the methods of computation of this net figure he quotes. If the Taoiseach likes I can give him now the actual figures in regard to the external assets.

I got them from a more reliable source than the Deputy.

I wish you would use them. My sources are derived from the statistics provided by the Government. I have no sources other than those I can obtain in the House by asking questions. I find it difficult to reconcile the Taoiseach's figures with those given in replies to questions in this House.

If an Englishman invests £1,000,000 in this country should this country have £1,000,000 of its own invested in England to safeguard that gentleman?

You did not do a whole lot about it for three and a half years.

I should like the Taoiseach to pay some attention to this and get it looked into. I understand that one of the liabilities charged against the sterling assets of this country by the Department of Finance consists of all the property and assets held by the commercial banks whose headquarters are outside this country. Likewise, all the assets and property of the different commercial companies whose headquarters are situated outside the Twenty-Six Counties are also charged against our external assets. I think that is a misleading basis of computation. I hope that the Taoiseach's annoyance will not preclude him from having it looked into. I think it is worth getting looked into.

Hear, hear!

On the latest figures available from Government sources, the total sterling assets of this country amounted to over £500,000,000. I did not intend discussing sterling assets in that context to-day? I mentioned it several times before. What I want to ascertain is what exactly is the charge which the Government levels against the inter-Party Government. Judging by the Taoiseach's speeches at election times, the charge used to be that we squandered the sterling assets of this country and that we reduced them to the danger point and that we had only £120,000,000 left. In the speeches made during election time, the Taoiseach referred to the assets dwindling down to £120,000,000. Could that have any other meaning but to suggest that the danger point had been reached and that the inter-Party Government had so squandered the assets that the country was now in danger?

Apart from the Taoiseach's speeches at election time we have a number of speeches like that of the Minister for Finance. The Minister for Finance, speaking on the 21st May, 1952, as recorded at column 2163 of the Official Report, said:—

"The Coalition during their threeyears of office reduced our net external assets by almost £150,000,000".

The Minister for External Affairs said we did not. You cannot have it both ways. Let us know what is the charge. Did we or did we not decrease them? Did we squander them or not? Has the Taoiseach been wasting his breath making speeches saying that we had squandered them? I was dealing with the point that was made.

We will deal with it, too.

Fair enough.

Dealing with this question in his speech in the Dáil on the 21st May, 1952, at column 2163, the Minister for Finance said that: "The Coalition during their three years in office reduced our sterling assets by almost £150,000,000". And then he goes on—"not only did the Coalition Government squander our net external assets but they have further impaired our economic independence by loading us with foreign debt—at the instance, let this be borne in mind, of a foreign Power".

That is the charge against us, that we squandered external assets and that we put the country in pawn to a foreign power. Indeed, these charges were made not merely by the Taoiseach and by the Minister for Finance but by many other Ministers as well. I am sure Deputies will remember the speech made by the Minister for Posts and Telegraphs in January, 1952, in which he said that, "the controllable part of our external assets was a standing army of occupation in England and it was treachery to the national cause to suggest that that army should be brought home"—treachery to the national cause to repatriate external assets.

The House will also remember the speeches made at the Fianna Fáil Árd Fheis, where the Minister said: "It was putting him to the pin of his collar"—I am quoting his words—"to maintain our currency on a parity basis with the British pound sterling", because the position was so serious because the inter-Party Governmenthad squandered so much of the sterling assets of this country. Now, to-day, I do not know whether the Minister for External Affairs was reflecting a change of policy which is a general change of policy on the part of the whole Government or whether he was speaking off the cuff on his own behalf, but it would appear that the charge against us was not that we squandered external assets but that we had unduly increased them. It was somewhat of a contradiction. It caused me rather to wonder why a change of attitude had taken place. Is it by any chance that the Government are contemplating repatriating external assets or contemplating the possibility of using external assets for capital development schemes or contemplating using them for the purpose of balancing their budget? I do not know, but there must surely be some cause for the sudden change of policy that seems to have taken place in the course of this debate. Possibly the Taoiseach will enlighten us when he is speaking on these matters.

Many indications have been given that the Government proposes to make money available for relief schemes. I welcome that, but I think it is a pity that money has to be wasted now on relief schemes when the employment position could have been maintained by not pursuing a deflationary policy. Relief schemes always involve a waste. They are wasteful in their nature, but I welcome the provision of any relief schemes that will relieve the unemployment position that exists in this country to-day. But I hope that apart from relief schemes the Government will realise that some more fundamental changes will have to be made in our approach to our economic problems and that one of the first essentials is to countermand the order for the restriction of credit which the Government virtually gave in 1951 or 1952.

That is not true, of course.

It is not untrue. I will quote again for the Taoiseach— I wish he would take it down, as Ithink the Taoiseach is able to delude himself into thinking that when he says a thing is untrue, it is untrue— a statement made by his own Minister for Finance in this House:—

"Private and public spending are causing congestion that can be relieved only by a reduction of one or the other. Credit facilities are encouraging outlay on less essential goods; money incomes of all kinds are being raised irrespective of increases in output."

"Credit facilities are encouraging outlay." If that is not an advice to the banks to restrict credit I do not know what it is. That statement of policy taken in conjunction with the much blunter declaration of the Central Bank that: "Rigorous restriction of bank credit for non-essential and less urgent purposes is now imperative." It can only have been taken by the banks or by any reasonable person as a clear indication that it was the Government's wish and desire that credit should be restricted. Indeed, too, the Taoiseach will recall that I drew his attention to a circular which was sent out by the Department of Finance quoting the O.O.E.C., "Country Studies," which had been drafted on Department of Finance material, boasting of the fact that there had been a 2 per cent. restriction of credit.

I drew the Taoiseach's attention to that circular at the time. He said he had not seen it and was not aware of credit restriction. Now he is aware of it and of the statements made by his Ministers. If he was not aware of it before, he is now. Will he now get up in this House and say it is the desire and the policy of the Government that the banks should relax credit restrictions. Unless he does so, naturally credit restrictions are going to continue. Is he prepared to make that statement? He can alter the employment situation extremely rapidly if he does. I suggest it is a far less wasteful way of dealing with unemployment than by the provision of relief schemes, though I agree relief schemes have to be provided because the situation is so bad.

Arising from the provision of relief schemes, I would like to mention one other matter. In reply to a question in the Dáil a few days ago, I extracted the information that it was proposed to build, apparently, a new military base for jet planes at Baldonnel and to spend about £600,000 on it. The Taoiseach had mentioned some works at Baldonnel but it was only in the course of a reply to a question that it emerged it was the intention to build this jet air base at Baldonnel or to build runways capable of taking jet planes. I think it is a pity that the House was not given an opportunity of discussing that when the Estimate for the Department of Defence was before the House. I want to make it quite clear that there may be a case for having jet planes. There may be a case for having a base capable of taking jet planes, but I think the House might be given an opportunity of discussing it and of discussing whether Baldonnel is the best place for such a base. It would have occurred to me that if we were to have a military airfield capable of taking jet planes that Galway might have been better, or that Cork might have been better. There may be good reason—I am not prepared to criticise or oppose the Government's policy in the matter until we have had an opportunity of discussing it—for constructing these runways at Baldonnel. But it does appear prima facieto be somewhat shortsighted to construct a military airfield of that nature so close to the existing civil airport at Collinstown.

The Deputy will understand, of course, that this Vote on Account is not itemised.

We do know that this Vote includes a certain provision for the Department of Defence.

I think the Deputy had better wait until the particular Estimate for the Department comes before us because the provision is not itemised in this Vote.

I presume some of this money will be used for that purpose.

That wouldenlarge the scope of the debate considerably. We are dealing with general matters on this Vote.

May I conclude on that matter by saying that I hope the House will get a fuller opportunity of discussing this matter? I think it should have been mentioned when the Estimate for the Department of Defence was before the House.

This is not for jet planes.

The Minister for Defence said it was.

It is for jet planes and other planes, but primarily for other planes.

Perhaps we can discuss whether it should be in Dublin, in Galway or in Donegal.

I do not think the Deputy should proceed along that line.

I shall not pursue it further. I hope that, apart from relaxing the restrictions on credit, the Taoiseach will consider the implementation of a policy which is likely to increase the purchasing power of the people. The Government policy of keeping wages down despite the increase in the cost of living is part and parcel of the policy of reducing the purchasing power of the people. I do not see how the unemployment position can be remedied so long as you maintain a reduced purchasing power. The immediate cause of the unemployment position was the reduction in the purchasing power of the people brought about by the restriction of credit, the removal of the food subsidies and the imposition of additional taxation. So long as we seek to keep wages down in relation to prices, so long will conditions of unemployment continue. You may relieve the situation temporarily by relief schemes of one kind or another, but if a permanent solution is to be arrived at there will have to be a more fundamental approach to it than the Government appear to have adopted so far.

There are many other matters towhich I would like to refer but I have already dealt with a number of them in other debates. Let me say this in regard to the question of sterling assets. The Minister for External Affairs made what he thought was a very clever speech to-day, pointing out that the sterling assets of the Central Bank and of certain Government Departments had increased in 1951. Of course they had increased, but the Taoiseach, the Minister for Finance and the Minister for External Affairs know perfectly well what was the cause of that increase. They know perfectly well that the increase was of a temporary nature caused by the deposit of the Marshall Aid Funds in the Central Bank. The Minister knows that that is no real argument to use against the demand that we should utilise more of these assets for development at home. In my view, the lack of development from which this country suffers, the chronic unemployment and the emigration from which we suffer, were due to the mistakes in economic policy pursued since this State was set up. That policy was pursued by the Cumann na nGaedheal Government originally, and it was carried on by the Fianna Fáil Government.

In practice, it was not carried on to the same extent by the inter-Party Government. The fundamental approach to our economic problem in the past proceeded on the assumption that we should export our surplus moneys and invest them abroad instead of utilising them for development at home. So long as that policy is continued, we cannot hope to develop the country as it should be developed. The sooner the two major Parties in this House—I seem to be excluding the Labour Party but I thought it might be easier for the two major Parties to reach agreement on this question— face the situation and decide that our whole approach to the financial and economic problems of this nation has to be changed, the better.

Hear, hear!

I know that so far as the Labour Party and ourselves areconcerned we see eye to eye on that. I think that the Fine Gael Party has made considerable progress in that direction. Fianna Fáil seems to be the only Party that is dragging its feet on that question now but I think Fianna Fáil should march in that direction. I hope that a new approach will be made by the two major Parties in this House. I would prefer to see a matter of that kind considered carefully by either a national Government or if needs be—if the Taoiseach does not want to have anything to do with a national Government—by an all-Party committee of this House to see if we can approach this question purely with a desire to develop the country and with a desire to remedy the unemployment position which is weakening the country politically and nationally as well as economically.

It is very easy for speakers on the Opposition side to misrepresent facts to-day but the same speakers who are now so fluent in misrepresenting facts and trying to gull the people of Ireland in an endeavour to cover up their own mismanagement were not so successful in their efforts when they had the opportunity to remedy all the grievances of which they complain to-day. They tell the people of the country now: "If you put us back again everything in the garden will be lovely." They pretend that there was nothing worthwhile done in this country except during the three and a half years of the period of office of the inter-Party Government.

May I point out to the learned gentlemen on the opposite benches that if it were a fact that all this great work was carried out during their three and a half years in office, we should be living in Utopia now and that all our economic ills should have been cured long ago? Their sole desire is to misrepresent the policy of the Fianna Fáil Party. They want to get that Party out of office so that they will have another opportunity of putting the country in the same position as it occupied when they left office—a position in which our people would have to beg from some other Power instead of standing on their own feet.I will take County Dublin to show some of the results of the policy implemented by the inter-Party Government. Last night my colleague referred to the factories in County Dublin. In 1951 the factories in County Dublin were practically closed down. Why? Because of the mismanagement of the inter-Party Government with their stockpiling of the finished article instead of importing the basic raw materials. The effects of that policy are still being felt. Apparently their aim was to provide employment for the foreign worker rather than for their own people at home. Men in public positions, some of them representatives here, will grasp at any opportunity to pillory the Government, a Government that has done everything it possibly could do to develop the country and provide employment for our people. We have never left a stone unturned. We gave every encouragement to our industrialists and our agriculturists. We gave them the maximum protection. We provided them with the necessary finances.

The present Minister for Industry and Commerce is the best friend the workers of this country ever had. He has been responsible for putting thousands into productive employment. His work was retarded through the advent of the inter-Party Government and the short-sighted policy they pursued. Certain projects then on the stocks were scrapped by that Government. Why? Because they had been conceived by Fianna Fáil and for that reason the inter-Party Government were prejudiced. The machine tool factory project at Inchicore was one of the first to come under the hammer. I wonder what Deputy Hickey has to say about that.

I would prefer if the Deputy dealt with the matter in a proper, serious, practical way.

That is only one of a number of projects that were scrapped. The Fianna Fáil Government had arranged in 1947 to carry out certain mineral development. That went by the board when the inter-Party Government came into power. In orderto encourage industrial development here the Minister for Industry and Commerce, as well as providing all the protection necessary, introduced an insurance scheme to give our manufacturers the maximum coverage on the export market for their surplus products. The Minister never failed to do his job. He tried to create all the employment he could; he is doing that again to-day and he will continue to do it so long as he remains Minister for Industry and Commerce. He has played more than a man's part in developing industry and providing employment thereby.

Can the same be said of other Ministers for Industry and Commerce? Did they not try to kill the industries we established? Any country that wishes to progress must develop internally both from the industrial and the agricultural point of view. The only way in which a country can become really self-supporting is by producing enough to meet the needs of its own people and an exportable surplus. That is the economic policy of every successful nation.

When we returned to office in 1951 there was a slump. The warehouses, the factories and the shops were full because of the stockpiling that had taken place. We are still feeling the effects of that slump.

The Opposition Parties have referred to our airfields. Do responsible members of the Opposition believe we should have no airfields at all? Is that their policy? Do they think we should be by-passed by the Great Powers?

The Great Powers? Is this the reason for the jet aircraft?

Do not misconstrue my statement. The Deputy is an adept at that. We must move with the other civilised nations of the world. We must keep in touch. Apparently the Opposition believe we should not have airfields or aeroplanes. If that is their mentality the country will never progress. Do they not want the country to progress? Within our own resources, we should try to do the things we think desirable in order to retain our place amongst the civilised nations of the world. I now propose to deal with thequestion of agriculture. We have on the opposite benches Deputy Dillon, who was Minister for Agriculture during the inter-Party Government. On many an occasion during the three and a half years that we were in opposition I had to speak to him on behalf of the tillage farmers of the County Dublin, the fruit growers, the tomato growers and others. Deputy Dillon, who was then Minister, said that I was only concerned with vested interests. He always trotted out statements about the people in George's Street or in Dominick Street.

No. I used to trot out the Balbriggan widow and ask you her name and where I could find her but you never told me.

Deputy Dillon, of course, is back again at his usual personalities.

No, that is true.

He tried that on before when I mentioned about that lady having a lot of oats on her hands.

And when I asked you where she was and where I could find her you never told me, and I still do not know.

If the Deputies could get back to the Vote on Account it would be more interesting than any widow.

The Balbriggan widow is the most elusive lady who ever lived.

I will deal with Deputy Dillon now.

Deal with the widow.

The Deputy is not going to put me off by any of his statements in that regard. During the time of the inter-Party Government I had to deal one night on the Adjournment with Deputy Dillon when he was Minister for Agriculture. I had to point out to him that he had advised the farmers of the County Dublin not to grow wheat in 1948 but to grow oats. They did grow the oats, but when the crop came in they found that there was no storage for it.

Will you tell me something about this good lady that I could never find?

On that occasion I read a number of letters for the House on which Deputy Dillon hung his coat afterwards. I told him that, as a result of his advice, of his wrong advice I should have said, the tillage farmers in the County Dublin had changed from the growing of wheat to the growing of oats, and that when the crop came in they, as well as the poor widows, could find no market for the oats.

When he went to America we provided a market for it while he was away.

The only point I want to make is that he tried to slander me by saying that I was concerned only in vested interests—that I was only interested in the poor widow—while the fact is that my only interest was in the tillage farmers in the County Dublin.

So was I, but I could never find her.

I gave the Deputy at the time the names of the bachelors and the widows and of the old men, too, who had suffered as a result of his policy.

Would the Deputy relate all this to the Vote on Account?

I am replying to the allegations which have been made by the honourable Deputy on the other side of the House.

The Deputy might now pass on to the Vote on Account.

That, however, was the advice which Deputy Dillon gave to the tillage farmers in the County Dublin. In 1950 he trotted in here and, holding out his arms, said that he was going to import maize meal and various other things. We had Deputy MacBride and other Deputies on that side talking this evening about theunemployed. When you have a mentality in the Cabinet of any Government, of being more concerned about bringing in manufactured goods that we should be able to produce at home, is it any wonder that the tillage farmers in the County Dublin did not know how they stood when they saw the results of following the advice given to them by Deputy Dillon? Deputy Dillon was not long in disillusioning them as well as every other farmer throughout the country.

What about the quantity of meal that your Government left which had to be sold for animal feeding, with the balance of it walking out?

What about the 10,000 tons that Deputy Dillon sold to Germany?

In 1950 the tillage farmers in the Twenty-Six Counties decided that they would get out of tillage as fast as they could.

Will the Deputy excuse me? There is a motion on the Order Paper for £30,000,000 in the Vote on Account by the present Government. I cannot relate what the Deputy is talking about to the Vote on Account.

May I say this with all due respect? Since I came into the House I have heard other speakers trying, by every means in their power, to point out to the House that it is our policy that was responsible for having the country as it is to-day. They have tried to misrepresent the facts. I am only trying to answer some of the points that were made, to show the mistakes that were made in the case of the agricultural industry during the period of the inter-Party Government and, as a result of which, thousands of people lost their employment then. I am only trying to cite particular cases where that situation was brought about.

Is it not true that Deputy Ó Briain passed a note to the Parliamentary Secretary to say thatthey wanted this talked out and to get. Deputies up to talk?

No, it is not. We do not mind if we have to remain here until the middle of September. The Deputy wants, of course, to go away to the Riviera.

I saw the note being passed. We would make a nice pair going to the Riviera, the Parliamentary Secretary and myself.

I am sorry if anything I have said hurts Deputy Dillon.

Not at all.

I would be long sorry to hurt his feelings.

Hear, hear!

I want to say this, that Deputy Dillon during his time in office succeeded in putting hundreds of agricultural workers out of employment. When he was Minister, and when I spoke to him in this House about the tomato growing, the fruit growing and other things that we had started to produce here, he said that I was concerned only with vested interests. His policy destroyed all these things. It destroyed the trend of a natural development amongst our tillage farmers. Instead of giving them advice and encouragement, and all the help possible, he started to blame them for a number of our ills. Naturally, when they found that they could not have confidence in the advice which was given to them by the Minister, our farmers got completely out of tillage. As a result, we found ourselves purchasing from other countries agricultural products produced, mainly, by foreign labour. Another result of that policy was that we had a big adverse trade balance here. If that had gone on for another year under the inter-Party Government, we would not have had one milch cow in Ireland. The dairy farmers at that time had been so discouraged and so badly treated that they were getting out of milch cows as fast as they could. Now, as a result of the policy of the present Minister for Agriculture, we aregetting back into butter production again. Those who support the inter-Party policy talk about the plans they have on the shelves if ever they get into office again.

I suggest that they have no plans to take off the shelves because they have no policy. Fianna Fáil had a hard job to do in 1952 and I want the people to realise that.

Message to the people of Ireland.

The people of Ireland know that the decision taken by this Party in the 1952 Budget which is now accused of restricting credit and doing all these other things was taken because we had to do a very hard job. It is no harm to repeat what I have said three times before in this House, that we had to put the interests of this and future generations before the interests of our own Party in trying to restore the country's financial position to the position in which we left in it 1948. Deputy Lemass, when he spoke on the Opposition side of the House when we were defeated in 1948, said to the inter-Party Government: "We have given you over the country in a sound financial position. I hope that when you are giving it back to us you will give it back in the same way". That was not done. A dishonest Budget was introduced by the inter-Party Government. They failed to balance their Budget in 1951. They brought in a dishonest Budget and they left us a legacy that we have had to carry. In dealing with the problems created by that Budget we had to put the interests of Ireland before the interests of our Party.

You did not balance it this year.

It was a very hard thing for any political Party to take the step that Fianna Fáil had to take. They took it because they wanted the country to be economically sound and to stand on its own feet and not to have to beg crumbs from any foreign Power. When you get loans from great Powers or when you get a loan in private life you are under an obligation. It isvery little to have political freedom in the Twenty-Six Counties if we have not economic freedom. We are slowly and gradually restoring economic freedom to the country by the policy we adopted. By that policy we are bringing the country, slowly but surely, back to prosperity.

I want the people to realise the serious step we had to take at that time. When we are all gone, some future historian will pay a compliment to the Fianna Fáil Party for taking that stand and for their effort to make the country economically free again.

I deplore the despicable politics being played by ex-Ministers of the inter-Party Government and the encouragement they are trying to give to unfortunate people who have no employment at the present time. I am deeply concerned for every section of our people. I am deeply concerned for the unemployed. We are doing our best to see that they will get employment. We have made the maximum stand both in the industrial field and in the agricultural field to give employment. By public works schemes and everything else we are trying to create employment. Yet people try to mislead some of these people and use them for their own political ends.

I am interested in people in all walks of life. Fianna Fáil are deeply concerned with all sections of the people. By social welfare schemes we are trying to be fair to every section of the people. If this Party has a leaning towards any section, it is towards the weaker section. We feel that, as a result of our policy, the people have confidence in us and will back us. We feel that the people will be very delighted that we have taken the stand that we have taken and will take, honestly and sincerely.

We will not barter the economic freedom of this country for any expediency. Expediency may be adopted in the political field for some political kudos but we in Fianna Fáil will not adopt it. If we are defeated for honesty and sincerity of purpose in the economic and political field, we can never be charged with dishonesty. If we get an opportunity to carry out our economic policy we will, pleaseGod, see all our people working and happy.

Is it not a striking fruit of two years' Fianna Fáil administration that we have procured in Dáil Éireann unanimity on one fact and that is that never at any time were relief works more urgently needed? Is it not true that on every side of the House there is agreement on that proposition to-day? Have not we travelled a long road in two years, when you throw back your mind to the fact that in the spring of 1951 the inter-Party Government was derided by the then Opposition for having inprovidently created so much employment that the wage structure was becoming unmanageable?

I was recently discussing with a Fianna Fáil employer of labour the problems which were created by the Fianna Fáil policy with which the State is grappling now, and he stopped me to say that he did not agree that our difficulties were created by anything Fianna Fáil had done because he believed that they were due in the last analysis to the unhealthy position of overemployment that the Government of which I was a member had created before we went out of office and that it was his experience that in the circumstances obtaining in the spring of 1951 it was becoming progressively more difficult to control labour, there was such a shortage of unemployed and that, in his judgement, the situation was very much healthier to-day and it was easier to talk to the men.

I ask Dáil Éireann to cast their mind back to the genesis of the situation with which we are grappling now. Is it or is it not true that a White Paper was introduced into this House for the purpose of convincing the Oireachtas and the country of the urgent necessity for a deflationary economic policy? Is it or is it not true that that was followed by a Budget in 1952 designed to establish deflation? Is it or is it not true, as Deputy MacBride described to-day, that the Minister for Finance in the Fianna Fáil Government stated in Dáil Éireann that private and public spending are causing congestion that can be relieved only by a reduction of one or theother, that credit facilities are encouraging outlay on less essential goods? Bearing these words in mind, is it not true that Fianna Fáil then claimed that we were about to expand public spending? In that context, are not these words an express direction to the banks to restrict credit, and was not the Government an approving party to the increase in the bank rate in this country?

Taking all the impact of the Budget of 1952, taking all the impact of the steady campaign of denigration of the credit of this country that was operated by the Tánaiste, Deputy Lemass, and the Minister for Finance, Deputy MacEntee, in 1951 and 1952, all that was relatively insignificant compared to the impact on the economic position of this country by the increase in the bank rate. When you add to that the approach by the Minister for Finance on behalf of our Government to the money market for a national loan at 5 per cent., when Jamaica was borrowing at 4½ per cent., when commercial firms in Great Britain were having their debenture issues oversubscribed 15 times at 4½ per cent., and the consequential increase in the cost of moneys borrowed by local authorities and by everybody else who was concerned for the creation of employment in this country, are we unjust if we say that the unemployment with which we are confronted now, and which evokes in this House agreement as to the necessity for relief works, is the responsibility of Fianna Fáil?

There is no use in some well-intentioned Deputies protesting that we must not look back, but that our duty is to look forward and to come forward with co-operative suggestions for the resolution of the difficulties which at present confront us. The only way of correcting the problems which confront us at the present time, if we intend to correct them permanently, is to look back at the policy which created them and correct that policy. Relief works now, we are all agreed, are necessary in order to provide bread for hungry men. But there is no use in this country embarking on a system of floundering from one crisis of unemployment into another in the hope that freshdoses of relief works will lay each emergency as it arises. Such a policy is suicidal. We must provide relief works now because our neighbours are willing to earn their living in their own country and we have not the means to enable them to do so; but the time purchased by that device of relief works must be used so to reorient the economy of this country as to render unnecessary in future the provision of relief works for the employment of our people.

That is one of the fundamental things that divide the Fine Gael Party from the Fianna Fáil Party. In 18 years of Fianna Fáil administration they have always looked upon the employable elements of our community as a problem, a sword of Damocles hanging over their heads. The three years' administration of the inter-Party Government was founded on the proposition that every unemployed pair of hands in Ireland presented an invaluable opportunity for developing our own country, with the result that the policies we operated put these hands to work to the point, as Fianna Fáil said, of overemployment. But it was employment in our own country which, with astonishing rapidity, produced results.

Can you quote any member of the Fianna Fáil Party for making that statement about overemployment? I challenge you to give that quotation from anyone.

I think all Deputies of the Fianna Fáil Party believed it. That is one of the great mistakes into which they have suffered themselves to be misled. Perhaps some of them did not understand where they were being misled. But I ask Deputies of the Fianna Fáil Party, who are in good faith in this matter, what did they think their own Minister for Finance was up to when he introduced the Budget of 1952, when he sanctioned the increase in the bank rate, when he increased the interest costs on all loans to local authorities, and when he increased the borrowing rate of this country from 3½ per cent. to 5 per cent.? What doDeputies on the Fianna Fáil side think was the purpose which he had in mind? Did they not know that his purpose was to reverse what he called the inflationary trend?

We told the Fianna Fáil Deputies at that time that the first consequence of deflation is the creation of a pool of unemployment. We tried to warn the Fianna Fáil Deputies that, in our peculiar circumstances, that would not manifest itself at once as obviously as it did in other countries, because a great number of our unemployed would emigrate to Great Britain and it was only when the situation became extremely grave that you got, in addition to those who fied in emigration, a considerable number left workless at home, and that at that stage it might be a matter of the greatest difficulty to correct the trend that had been inaugurated. Surely Deputies of the Fianna Fáil Party remember our saying that. They did not believe it.

I give some of them credit for honestly believing we were wrong and that we were misrepresenting what their Minister hoped to do. I can sympathise with them in making that mistake but now that the consequences are here before us, now that they have asked the House to agree with them —and we have to agree—that relief works must be instantly inaugurated, surely there must dawn in the minds of some of these Deputies an inkling of the fact that what we told them was about to happen has, in fact, come to pass.

It would be a disaster at this eleventh hour if the Deputies of the Fianna Fáil Party are themselves unable to understand the consequences of the things they have been induced to do. Some day they will realise how dreadful a thing they have done. They have persuaded a great many young men in this city that an Irish Government considers itself justified in looking on some of its neighbours as expendable, expendable in the sense that it was economically desirable to make them unemployed. That bitter resentment is in their mind—let me say at once, a resentment that I myself would feelwere I in their position—and there have been found individuals to avail of their distress most grievously to mislead them. I believe there are communist influences which, were they able, would gladly exploit the distress which to our eternal shame an Irish Government inflicted on our own people.

I loathe and detest the very name of communism. I despise and detest their unscrupulous agents who would exploit the misfortune of decent neighbours of ours in this country to mislead them. But I am in this difficulty that I know it is true that three months ago the Government was protesting that there was no unemployment, and I am humiliated and ashamed to confess that what suddenly brought the Government of this country into this House in an atmosphere of emergency calling on us all to lend a hand was the fact that the exasperated unemployed in Dublin sat down on O'Connell Bridge and refused to get up. I think the people who gave them the advice so to sit and so to march are not their friends. I believe that some of those people—and I think it is time it was openly said—have as their ultimate objective to bring our neighbours into physical conflict with the representatives of the law. I believe the men who lead those men to-day desire nothing but to see their blood shed on the streets of Dublin to supply publicity to a cause that none of our neighbours desire to serve.

I indict Fianna Fáil for having created a situation in which the young men of this city have been reduced to a state of exasperation for which I cannot find it in my heart to blame them, which has permitted them to become instruments in the hands of men who care nothing for the welfare of our neighbours and less for the integrity of our country. These same influences have tried again and again and again to mislead our people. They have never succeeded before.

Are you becoming afraid now after you have driven it so far?

Driven what so far? Does the Deputy dare to challengeanything I say. I have said that Fianna Fáil have delivered these men into the hands of bad leaders and they have created a situation in which I find it extremely difficult to give the right answer. How can we escape from the facts? No argument in this House, no appeal from the benches would stop Fianna Fáil. Remember that for two years we have implored the present Government to stop a policy designed to create unemployment here. Every warning we gave, every appeal we made, was brushed aside, and we have reached the humiliating position that men under bad leadership can get results in a fortnight that the whole Opposition of Dáil Éireann have been unable to produce in two years. That is one of the worst crimes Fianna Fáil has ever perpretrated against our country and generations may yet have to pay for the obscurantism and the stubborn blindness of the Party that is responsible for the problem with which we have to deal at the present time.

The trouble is that if Fianna Fáil cannot read the record as it is to-day, I wonder will they be able to understand developments as they unfold themselves in the immediate future. It is because I doubt that capacity, not because I want to have any part in clearing up the truly desperate situation that Fianna Fáil has now created, that I would like to see a general election. I want to say with great deliberation that no sane man who understands the full implications of the present situation could conceivably desire to undertake ministerial responsibility now or at any foreseeable time in the future.

That is why you ran away from it in 1951? We did not put you out by our votes?

No, it was Deputy Cowan, Deputy Cogan, Deputy Browne and the rest of the busted flush. What I am asking Deputy Beegan to think of now is the situation which he himself conceives as grave enough to require the institution of immediate relief work. I want him to ask himself the question: what made reliefworks necessary? He knows they were not necessary two years ago. Surely the Deputies of the Party responsible for this country for the last two years must ask the question: why are they necessary now? What has brought that about?

The campaign of Fine Gael.

The campaign of Fine Gael?

Certainly, there are many unemployed men who have been offered employment and have not taken it.

I do not know why, but the labour exchanges have been asked for workers and where did they come from? They came from Birmingham and from Manchester.

Now is not this interesting? The tune now is at this time that there is not any unemployment.

They had to get men from Birmingham and Manchester and I will prove that on very good authority.

What is one to do? What is one to say to people who lined up under bad leadership and you say to them: "There is available in your own Parliament the means of exposing your grievances and of getting an appropriate remedy for it" if he replies to you "but the man in charge of the Board of Works says we are not there. There are not any unemployed to see."

I am not saying that.

He says that the only unemployed in this country are the men coming from Birmingham and Manchester.

I am saying that there are unemployed people in this country who have not accepted offers of work and that is well known, and that menhave come over from Birmingham and Manchester and have taken up work.

Now this is most helpful. These men are mad. These men are stark, staring mad. Their self-evident solution is that there are not any unemployed. The whole thing is an illusion.

I am not saying that. Do not carry on that misrepresentation at all.

Deputy Killilea and Deputy Beegan say now that the problem is that there are a vast number of men who will not take work, and the Taoiseach, the Tánaiste and the Minister for Finance say that an emergency is upon us and we must provide relief works all over Ireland. Who is right? Which is the policy that Fianna Fáil proposes to follow? Do Deputy Killilea and Deputy Beegan speak for the Party or do the Taoiseach, the Tánaiste and the Minister for Finance?

Schemes of capital development are not relief works.

Bord na Móna are trying to get workers.

Well, the workers will not work on turf at £4 10s. a week. You do not expect them to work for that.

They will not take jobs that are offered to them.

They were told not to work by the Labour Party.

I thought that all Parties in the House were agreed that relief work was necessary. It now appears that Fianna Fáil believe that they are not necessary.

You closed down the Turf Board.

Schemes of capital development are not relief works.

The Deputy must be allowed to make his speech without interruption.

Deputy Dillon should not be misrepresenting us.

That may be so, but the Deputy should be allowed to speak without interruption.

Think well of what I have said to-day and think well of the responsibility that Fianna Fáil's own obscurantism has brought upon us, for so surely as to-morrow's sun rises the Fianna Fáil Party will have to answer for what they have done to the country some day, and if they do not understand now the nature of their own act they will get a shock such as no political Party in this country ever got before.

What a hope. That is a very old wish that was never fulfilled.

I want to say a word in reference to a speech made by Deputy Colm Gallagher, and I make the reference because I believe that Deputy Gallagher spoke bona fideof things that he believed to be true, and he explained to the House that one of the reasons that he stood over what Fianna Fáil have done in the last two years was that he sympathised with the Minister for Finance, who had come in and found the whole floor littered with bills and no money to pay for them. I want to reiterate most emphatically again that when the present Government took office in the spring of 1951, there were no unpaid bills awaiting them, but there was close on £30,000,000 sterling of the Marshall Aid Loan Counterpart Fund——

Unfortunately no sterling assets.

Yes, sir.

——lying on the desk of the Minister for Finance to do with it precisely what he thought best to do.

You have told us that so often that you will soon believe it yourself.

Does the Deputy doubt it?

Undoubtedly.

Very well. I am very much obliged to the Deputy for that.

We are all ears now. Take your time.

I want to read to him what the Minister for Finance said and remember he is his Minister for Finance. I refer to column 1001.

Do not believe it.

Every line.

Will the Deputy give us the volume?

Oh, yes. At column 1001 of Volume 140, No. 6, July 9th, 1953, we find the following:—

"Mr. MacEntee: The position when we took office in the middle of July, 1951, was that there had already disappeared out of the Loan Counterpart Fund over £18,000,000 worth——"

Mr. Dillon: And £24,000,000 remained.

Mr. MacEntee: ——and, as the Deputy has reminded me, there remained £24,000,000."

The report continues:—

"Mr. Dillon: Have the Deputies opposite got a note of that?

Mr. MacEntee: Yes. The point is this. Every penny of that £24,000,000 had already been hypothecated by the commitments which our predecessors entered into."

Is it now agreed that £24,000,000 was there?

Read on word for word for the Deputies behind you.

I am going to read it all. Is it now agreed that there was £24,000,000 there?

Read on word by word for the Deputies behind you.

Is it now agreed that there was £24,000,000 there? Is it?Is that agreed? The report continues:

"Mr. MacEntee: That is the point. These obligations, these debts, these commitments which we inherited——"

Mr. Dillon: There were no debts.

Mr. MacEntee: I can assure the Deputy that there were. These commitments, these obligations, these contracts which we inherited were of such magnitude that before six months were out the whole of the £24,000,000 had to be expended in meeting the obligations of our predecessors."

Now remember, observe the word "debt" is never used. It continues:—

"Here is how they were met. There was a cash deficit on the 1951 Budget on 3lst December of at least £5,000,000.

Mr. Dillon: There was none.

Mr. MacEntee: There was spent on voted capital services £6.3 million. There was advanced to the E.S.B., to enable them to carry out plans that had been projected and that were actually in the course of implementation when we took office, £6.4 million."

Was not that a sound project on which to spend the money?

Now it is all gone.

Was it not?

No one is disputing that.

Was it a debt?

It was lent.

Was it a debt?

You say the money was there. That says it was spent.

Yes, it was; but we had said to the country and to our successors: "You ought to spend this on developing electricity supply in Ireland"; and the incoming Government said: "Yes". We agreed it ought to be spent on this capital purpose ofdeveloping electricity. We both agreed upon it and £6,000,000 was spent.

You said it was there. Now you are telling us where it went.

They could not have advanced it to the E.S.B. if it were not there.

You said it was there.

We did—and you advanced it to the E.S.B. The quotation continues:—

"There was advanced to the Local Loans Fund £6.3 millions."

The Coalition had committed us to that.

Did the Fianna Fáil Government advance to the Local Loans Fund £6.3 millions to enable people to borrow money to build their own houses? They did or they did not. Deputy MacEntee says they did. If they did, it must have been there. They could not have advanced it if they had not got it.

What were the capital commitments of the 1951 Budget?

Deputy Dillon should be allowed to make his speech.

The quotation continues:—

"There was advanced to Bord na Móna £860,000."

The question I want to ask is: "Did Fianna Fáil advance £860,000 to Bord na Móna or did they not?" If they did, it must have been there. They could not have advanced it otherwise. Is not that so? So it seems to me. They advanced to Telephone Capital £1,600,000. Did they so do?

That was also a commitment of the Coalition.

Was it a commitment the Deputy deplores?

It was a commitment of the Coalition.

It could not have been left to us when you had it already spent.

No, no, no. The money was there. We had told the Parliament and the country we were going to develop the bogs, we were going to build houses, we were going to extend rural electrification. we were going to reclaim land and to help in telephone extension. It was quite open to our successors when they came into office to say: "We will not develop bogs, or build houses, or extend telephones. "They did not say that; they came in and said: "Yes, we will do that." And all they had to do was to put their hand out and there was the money on the desk, to lend out. Deputies will remember that we said to the Minister for Finance: "Do not take that money; go for a national loan at 3½ per cent.; use what you borrow from our own people for these capital purposes and if you want a part of this £24,000,000 you can add it to what you borrow from our own people and keep the rest in reserve." The Minister for Finance refused to do that. He spent all this money that we left there. In the following year he had to go for a loan and when he had to go for a loan the moneylender produced the hot tongs and they said: "There is 5 per cent. on the brand now; it used to be only 3½, so long as you had £24,000,000 to fall back on."

That was invested in England at 1½ per cent.

They said: "Now that you have not got sixpence to get along with, there is 5 per cent. on the hot tongs and when you put out your nose we are going to put `5 per cent.' on both nostrils"—and they did. I would not mind if just the two sides of Deputy MacEntee's nose were decorated with the figure "5" but that meant, because his nose bore the numeral "5", that everyone who wanted to build his own house, when he went to borrow from the local authority discovered that they had a hot tongs, too, and they put 6 per cent. on it, when you translated that down to individuals. You found the man who built a house under the inter-Party Government for the occupation of himself and his family could redeemthe cost at 22/- a week; but his next door neighbour who went to build the same house in the same municipal or rural area to set up a similar family next door, discovered that under the new dispensation what his neighbour could get for 22/- was going to cost him 34/-. When they found it was 34/- a week, dozens of young men so circumstanced made up their minds that they could not afford 34/-. They went to the small builders who were building houses for them to buy, under the Small Dwellings Acquisition Acts, and told them they could not take them. Those small builders, to my knowledge, put their houses on the market and could not sell them—and the banks sold them up. I know two small builders who two years ago employed five men; and the two small builders and the five men who worked for them are all drawing unemployment assistance to-day at the same exchange. That is the difference between our policy and the policy of Fianna Fáil.

I dare swear that in amongst the the men misled in the streets of Dublin you will find quite a number of small contractors, linked to-day in those demonstrations with the chaps whom they employed five years ago; and I ask Fianna Fáil to-night: "Are you proud of that performance?" Was it better to have them working building houses for our neighbours than to be holding them at bay from the gates of our own Parliament with the promise of relief measures?

We all have long memories in this country, Sir, and I do not want to revive them to-night; but with present to my mind the memories that all of us have, I say deliberately that Fianna Fáil has done no greater injury to this country than to create a situation in which 2,000 of our neighbours could accept the leadership of some of the gentlemen who profess to represent organised labour in the street riots that they have sought to precipitate. Maybe it is not popular for me to say it, but I say it to my own neighbours in this city where I was born: let them not misunderstand those who profess solicitude for them to-day. So certainly as I am in this House, I am convinced that the main purpose of those who pretend to befriend them is to spilltheir blood in the streets of their own capital city. I pray to God that that foul purpose will not be encompassed and that the men will still believe that there are elements in this House and influence in this House to put right what is wrong quicker than, and better than, those who do not belong to them could ever hope to do. I pray that we can carry conviction out beyond this House to the men, that those who are their neighbours and amongst whom they were born are infinitely more interested to see them in the enjoyment of their full rights in their own country than fly-by-nights who care nothing for them and who are using them for a base, ulterior motive at the present time. God forgive Fianna Fáil for giving these people the chance to do what they appear so successfully to be doing now.

I say the Minister for Finance and his colleague, the Minister for Posts and Telegraphs, are mad when they return to the theme that our people are eating too much, drinking too much and smoking too much. Can you imagine, in the atmosphere in which we are living, that the Minister for Finance would rush to send a letter to the public Press to say that it is illusory to speak of anyone in this country suffering any economic pressure at present, when 3,000,000 are spending £60,000,000 a year on drink and tobacco? He conveniently wipes out of his consideration any consumption by tourists and also exports. Any member of this House who is a member for a Border constituency knows well the dimensions of the export trade in more than one of these commodities. But there is a passionate desire to prove, common sense notwithstanding, which is at the bottom of all that Fianna Fáil have done in the past two years, that our people are getting too big for their hats, that they are aspiring to live too well and that it is the duty of a realistic Irish Government to get them back down into the dust where they belong. What has happened to Fianna Fáil? What has happened to any Party of this House that arrogates to itself the traditional task of the oppressors of our people and that was to tell them to get back inthe dirt where they belong? Ought we not be proud if we can create a situation in this country whereby our people aspire to and succeed in attaining to a higher standard of life than they had before? Why is it that Fianna Fáil get into a panic at the thought that our people are enjoying amenities remotely analogous to those which are the average experience of the people of Great Britain or continental countries? The inter-Party Government's aim and object was to expand and develop exports so that the exports from the land of Ireland would amply pay for what the free desire of our people, in the enjoyment of a decent standard of life, would import.

Were we wrong in that? We saw no evil in a growing volume of imports if they were met by a growing volume of exports. On the contrary, we said that, by that barometer, the standard of our people's living is rising and that is something we glory in. We want to raise it still further. We want to see the volume of exports constantly expanding, with a corresponding expansion on the import side—for that is the sure barometer of the standard of living of any people in any country in the world. Were we wrong in that?

And the standard of living is still rising.

Does Deputy Beegan honestly believe that the standard of living of our people has gone up in the past two years? Does he believe that?

Certainly, I believe it has.

You are daft.

It certainly has not gone down.

You are clean daft. Pause a moment and think. Take an ordinary working man to-day who pays 4/2 a lb. for butter which, under the inter-Party Government, he was getting for 2/8; who pays 2/- a stone more for flour, 2d. a lb. more for sugar——

He is getting flour.

——who is paying 3/- a lb. more for tea——

And no work for many of them.

——and who has no higher wages, or perhaps no wages at all.

Which is more likely.

Does Deputy Beegan believe that the standard of living of such a man has gone up? Upon my word, I am sometimes consternated by the mentality that the Fianna Fáil Party itself reveals. I think they just do not know. I think they do not know because they will not look, and I think the reason they will not look is that they are afraid to look.

If our living costs are so very high here, what is the explanation for the smuggling that is alleged to take place across the Border? Why is it alleged that thousands of cigarettes are being smuggled across the Border?

There are children in County Wicklow who, since the Fianna Fáil Budget of 1952, have not been able to get enough bread to eat because their parents could not pay the high price for it.

Does Deputy Beegan rebut that the cost of living is rising in Ireland and that the standard of living of most of our people is going down by adducing as a proof that this-key is going across the Border? What relation has the smuggling of whiskey to Northern Ireland to the standard of living of a man, his wife and four children in Dublin City or in South Cork?

It is much cheaper here than in the North.

There are only three Fianna Fáil Deputies in the House at the moment—Deputy Beegan from Galway, Deputy Walsh from Louth and Deputy M. O'Reilly from Meath.

You hunted them out.

Deputy Larry Walsh of Drogheda knows the people of Drogheda.

I am the mayor.

Well, I ask him to take Deputy Beegan aside and tell him whether, in Deputy Larry Walsh's judgment, the Standard of living of the ordinary working people of Drogheda has gone up in the past two years.

It has gone up very considerably.

The Deputy thinks they are better off now——

On margarine?

——than they were two years ago and that the increased cost of their weekly food bill has caused them no reduction in their standard of living?

There are corresponding increases in allowances also. You have forgotten that.

Can Deputy Walsh explain the £20,000,000 worth of increased agricultural exports?

Deputy Larry Walsh was born and reared in Drogheda. He knows the people in his own town. He goes on record here as saying that the standard of living of the working people in Drogheda has gone up in the past two years.

Definitely.

Deputy Walsh says that the people of Drogheda are better off to-day than they were two years ago. The last time Deputy Walsh and myself had an exchange in this House half the people of Drogheda used to follow him around mewing like a cat. I do not know what they will do the next time.

Just wait and see.

I respect a loyal old wheel horse like that who says: "Whatever it may cost me when I get home, I will stick to the chief when he wants me". I like loyalty. It is agood quality in any man, but it is a poor consolation to those who depend on Deputy Walsh's voice to defend their interests in this House.

Our town was never better off since it was first established than it has been since 1932.

I am talking about 1951.

Have you a biscuit factory in Drogheda?

You never had so many smugglers.

We never had so many employed in the town of Drogheda as we have had since 1932.

smuggling.

I should like to say this to the Labour Party. I remember a time when the trade unions in Drogheda had not sufficient income to pay the secretary of the union. He had to be paid from headquarters in Dublin. That was pre-1932. That is not the case to-day, thanks to Fianna Fáil.

Order! If Deputy Walsh cannot cease interrupting I will have to ask him to leave the House.

Deputies

Ah, no.

With great deference, I must say that I am afraid I gave Deputy Walsh provocation, and if I caused him to be disturbed I accept full responsibility and offer my apologies.

He means well.

I am sorry Deputy Gallagher is not here now, because I want to direct the attention of the House to a very important fact. Every week, there is published in Iris Oifigiúilthe Exchequer returns. The last item on the revenue side is described as “sundry receipts”. Deputy Sweetman had the curiosity to putdown a question asking of what these “sundry receipts” consisted. He discovered that the sundry receipts in 1953, between the 1st April and the 11th July—I would ask Fianna Fáil Deputies to listen to this—were £1,300,000 higher than they were in 1952.

There are only three members of the Fianna Fáil Party present in the House now.

They are a host.

Three honest men.

The first interesting item is that the interest on Exchequer advances is up by £400,000; the second interesting feature is that the Central Bank payment to the Exchequer on foot of surplus income is up from £100,000 to £200,000; but the next is, I think, the most dramatic figure of all. I notice that I have a new recruit, Deputy Cunningham from Donegal. Does he remember being told that the inter-Party Government squandered the Marshall Aid funds, that they dissipated them? Deputy Walsh, the Mayor of Drogheda, remembers it. I have now actually recruited the Minisfor Finance and I should like him to enlarge on this when he comes to wind up the debate. The third item in the sundry receipts in 1952 was nil, which means nothing, Deputy, and, in 1953, the third item amounted to £568,075. I should be very grateful to Deputy Walsh if he would take the Minister for Finance aside and ask him to explain this description of that receipt from the Exchequer—"Payment from the American Loan Counterpart Fund to cover interest on dollar borrowing."

It is robbing Peter to pay Paul—that is all it is.

Where did it come from? Where did a sum of £568,075 come from, when there was nothing there? Remember that that is not the remnant of a fund. That is the first drawing on a growing accumulation of money and it is drawing of sterling which the minister has found possible to convert into dollars. Is that not true? Deputy Walsh was sent down toDrogheda to tell the people that the money was all gone and nothing but debts left all about the floor.

The decent, innocent man went down and staked the honour and the reputation of the Mayor of Drogheda on that proposition. Is it beginning to dawn on him now that that little man took him for a ride, that he made a fool of him and was guilty of the last treason to friendship of sending Deputy Walsh down to his own neighbours who trusted him and took it on his word because he gave his word that what he said was true? They are now beginning to find out that the whole thing was a dirty fraud, that Deputy Walsh had been taken in by the Minister for Finance, on whose testimony he depended, and had been used to mislead his own neighbours who gladly took his unsubstantiated word for whatever he chose to tell them.

If Deputy Walsh doubts a word of what I say, let him draw the Minister for Finance aside in some private place and ask him ihis question: in what were the Counterpart Funds of the Marshall Aid Counterpart Fund invested by him and by his predecessor? Let him ask him what income is derived from these investments and, lastly, what are the annual charges by way of interest which he has to meet and what is the annual income from interest which that Loan Counterpart Fund, upon which he now begins to draw, receives. The only thing that will astonish Deputy Walsh is this, that, when we went borrowing from ourselves, we could pay only 3½ per cent. interest, but when we went borrowing from the moneylenders, we paid 5 per cent. I want to ask Deputy Walsh this revolutionary question: how long does he think it right that our people should be required to pay through their own Government 6 1/4 per cent. for the money wherewith to finance the building of houses for themselves and their families at the same time as we have on permanent loan to the British Government over £60,000,000 sterling at 1 1/4 per cent.?

That is the fundamental question.

Will Deputy Walshanswer that question to his satisfaction or the satisfaction of anybody else? Everything I have got is invested in this country. If this country went down in the morning, I and those belonging to me, would be penniless paupers and I have been accustomed all my life to a certain modicum of comfort. I do not think anyone could conceivably believe that I was indifferent to the stability of the community on which I depend for my very existence and for the existence of my family. I want to go on deliberate record here as saying that no Minister for Finance of this country can conceivably justify to this Legislature any future borrowing on behalf of our people for essential capital services at 5 per cent. to the moneylender, while we are lending ten times as much to another Government at 1 1/4 per cent.

We were all taught to judge a tree by its fruit. We were taught as children and as men that a bad tree cannot bear good fruit, but that a good tree in all human probability will. Our policy in this country was to borrow our people's savings and invest them in our people and in the land they lived on. I will make no apology for trespassing on the time of this House to tell again the fruit of that policy, for I am proud of it, and we had only three short years in which to operate. In these three years. I ask the House to remember that we increased the exports of this country from £39,000,000 per annum to £101,000.000 per annum.

Of that, agricultural exports represented approximately £30,000,000 in 1947 and £75,000,000 in 1952. I want this House to remember that when we took office there were fewer live stock on the land of Ireland than at any time in the previous half century.

And they calved after you left.

They did not, but listen to the record expressed not in terms of estimates but in terms of exports made, paid for and used to raise the standard of living of our people. Cattle in all forms exported in 1948 amounted to 405,000 head and to 523,000 head in 1949.

They were all born before you came.

Granted, but they were not slaughtered when I did come in. That is the difference. There is no use in the poor cow having a calf if the Minister for Agriculture is going round with a razor. One of the fundamentals of our policy was to use razors in this country for shaving human beings and leave the calves alone except in so far as the skins of the dead ones were used to strop the razors to shave the farmers. Eighty thousand calves per annum were buried every year that Fianna Fáil was in office and in 1951 the total mortality of calves in Ireland was reduced to 12,000 from 80,000.

It is true, as Deputy Allen says, that all these cattle were not born when we came into office but by the mercy of God's Providence and the inter-Party Government they were allowed to live. Four hundred and five thousand of the survivors of the holocaust of the years before went out in 1948; 523,000 went out in 1949; 591,000 went out in 1950 and 642,000 went out in 1951.

And so did Fine Gael.

And 739,000 went out in 1952.

And are going out still.

When you add to this the astonishing fact that over the same period the stock of cattle on the land increased from 3,900,000 to 4,300,000 you see the initial results of a policy which did more to rehabilitate the economy of this country than was done by anything else which any Government took on. We borrowed the people's money to rehabilitate the land. In 1951 directly and indirectly the land project in Ireland employed 10,000 men and the work of every single one of those men was designed not to confer benefit on our people for a year but for a generation. Every field in Ireland where the land project worked will show the result of that work when everyone in Oireachtas Eireann to-day is dead, buried and forgotten.

Was that good work? Was that public money well spent? Will anyone say that the man whose work will leave a track on the land of Ireland three generations hence was doing relief work? He was doing the best work that any man could undertake in this country and we borrowed money to pay for it. I say that every penny we borrowed, every penny we intended to borrow and every penny we intend to borrow for that purpose will be well spent in employing our people on the only thing that matters in the last analysis in Ireland—the land.

I shall not read about—I have done so once before—the steady increase that manifested itself in every branch of production from the land. I shall not remind the House unduly that the Minister for Finance recorded that he founded his policy in 1952 on the proposition that there was no hope or prospect of agricultural exports substantially relieving the balance of payments situation. I now declare that almost alone the expansion of agricultural exports from this country has resolved in totothe whole problem of our balance of payments as we confidently foretold. Compare that fruit I have described over three short years of our policy with 18 years plus two of Fianna Fáil.

Yes, 16 years, plus two. It felt like 90. I lived through it all. Look at the devastation on the land that was there when we took over. Look now at the quasi riots in the streets of Dublin. Yes, that is the word. Let us not burk at it. That is the gravest thing that has happened as far as my memory goes. Is there a single Deputy of Fianna Fáil who does not feel a sense of guilt for what he has done? They were warned but they did it in spite of all the warnings they got. I do not think I speak too strongly when I say that for what has transpired in this city in the last six weeks posterity will curse the name of Fianna Fáil.

I conclude by saying I am as sure to-day as ever I was that the resources of this country courageously exploited and prudently employed are sufficientto provide for our people in their own country not wealth or affluence but comfort, security and dignity in their own homes. I say to those who are inclined to believe that their best friends are outside the Legislature of this country that they are being Misled. There is the means, there is the will and there is the way to correct their undoubted grievances through the medium of their own sovereign Parliament, and anyone who advises them to look to other means for relief is not concerned for their interests but is concerned for some base ulterior motive which can only harm those who are now being used for it.

I say, lastly, if Fianna Fáil have grown too timid to use the resources of this country for the welfare of our people, if they have grown too tired, too frightened, or confused, there is a constitutional way to resolve that dilemma. Come to the country. The people will not do wrong. They will either send Fianna Fáil back here rehabilitated, or they will dismiss them. I will accept either verdict; but in God's name, look for that verdict before your follies have done damage to Ireland that no successor will be able to repair.

I propose to accept the advice of the Deputy from East Cork. I will be brief in my remarks. I want to indicate at the outset that I am not going to support the Vote on Account because in so doing I would be associating myself with the implication of— in some manner—endorsing the policy of the Government who are seeking the vote, and of the Government Departments whose Estimates are not wet dealt with. That policy has been vigorously described by previous speakers and has brought undue misery to the country. I have only to suggest that it was not, or should not have been, done by one man. The operations of the people who have framed that policy, starting with the Taoiseach and the Minister for Finance and the members of the Cabinet generally—whatever about the members of the Fianna Fáil Party—I believe they definitely and deliberately sought to bring about what has happened. There may be some wonderment at theresult of their actions, because in sowing the wind they did not expect to reap the whirlwind which has swept over the country.

But they were determinedly setting themselves to reduce employment. That cannot be denied. Statements we have had from the Taoiseach himself, on a number of occasions, notably at the Fianna Fáil Ard Fheis two years ago, confirm that. Speaking at the Ard Fheis he said—referring to the land project, which had been started by Deputy Dillon—that that was like taking money from the banks in London where it was earning small interest and utilising it for the purpose of ploughing the rocks into the sea at Connemara. He dismissed that project with those rather sneering remarks, which I thought came very ill from the Leader of this country, particularly having regard to the part of the country to which he was referring. I believe that an effort made—particularly in Connemara—to restore even six or seven acres of ground to the people who had been scratching among the rocks for generations and to enable them to till it—would be better than transferring them to the Midlands or to the South of Ireland to the big farms. It would be doing something to preserve and concentrate the Gaeltacht which we hear so much about. The Taoiseach indicated that it was not by any means a worthy or a suitable object for which to transfer the bank balances in London—this ill-planned scheme of ploughing the rocks into the sea at Connemara.

He also mentioned later that we should tighten our belts, eat less, and restore those balances frittered away by the dissolute inter-Party Government. Bank balances seem to be the be-all and end-all, but surely those who decided that policy of the present Government must have been aware of the results that would follow from it. If we were to tighten our belts and eat less, we were going to create unemployment and put more people out of employment.

The Taoiseach also stated that wages were catching up with prices as if that was some kind of offence which should not happen at all. We, of the Labourmovement working directly for the working-class interests, have always been struggling to try to get parity between prices and wages but we always found ourselves trailing slowly up the ladder. The prices got a flying start and we never caught up with them. We have not caught up with them now. Prices seem to have the happy knack of eluding the worker who is trying to get a decent standard of life.

We have had references here to the standard of life of our people, and while I hold with previous speakers that we have not reached the standard of life to which we are entitled, I wonder if the members of the Government and the members of the Fianna Fáil Party assert with Mr. Walsh from Drogheda that we have improved our standard of life to the extent that there is no cause for the complaint. I have to disagree completely and totally with that. The facts stand out for themselves. Our people who tried to ensure that the workers would reach some measure of comfort and get a decent standard of life and keep money circulating here, were doing a good job for the nation in trying to prevent the emigration that was taking place, to prevent people going over as a bodyguard to mind those pounds we are sending out to be lodged in the banks in England. Approximately £15,000,000 has been sent over in the past 12 months and I would like to know the number of men who went with that £15,000,000, because we have no record to tell us how many are going out. We could be told rather glibly this evening that the ranks of the unemployed at our labour exchanges to-day are swelled by workers returning from England. I wonder does anybody believe that? Deputy Beegan, who was supported by Deputy Killilea, stated to-night that the men were returning from London, Birmingham and Manchester——

There was no such statement made. Quote him properly if you quote him at all.

Deputy Beegan said they were swelling the ranks at the labour exchanges.

He made an entirely different statement.

He may have said they were coming back to work, but they are going also and with a vengeance. There are agents working through the country still as they were in the bad old days and sending men not alone to England but to Canada. One big agency is organising workers to bring them to Toronto.

Every week.

This, of course, was one of the solutions that must have been in mind when we were told about tightening our belts, eating less and restoring the bank balances. I think it is clear to everybody except to those too blind to see it, that the policy of the Government since they came back into office is a policy of sinking this country down to the lowest level it ever had to endure.

Deputy Burke of Dublin Was speaking here an hour or two ago and indicated clearly the abysmal gulf between Fianna Fáil front benchers and their back benchers. He talked as if he was on a beautiful green. To use his own words, everything was lovely in the garden. He said that the Minister for Industry and Commerce had made a great job of work of everything to which he put his hand. I am not making any reflections on the Tánaiste—a very able and competent statesman—or making any reflection on any Minister or any individual Department, but I am making a set on the overriding policy which governed those Ministers and prevented them from doing their job in the interests of the country. The net results of their efforts have been reflected in the Local Government Department and in every Department of State. The housing question, on which money was being utilised, surely could not be shelved as not being desirable project. We had need for housing going back for 100 years. Our people had been used to cabins or mud hovels and the cities had their slums. We had the problem of 110,000 houses to be built according to a medical survey of the country. That projectwas got down to, and accelerated to the highest pitch, and building operatives were geared up to the extent that they produced 1,000 houses per month.

We did more than that.

There was no fear that we were going to have the job finished very quickly. Between the houses and the hospitals there was ten or 15 years' complete employment for all building operatives in this country staring them straight in the face—guaranteed employment. Whatever truth may be in the story about men coming back from England now they came back then. That progress has been shattered. Building has receded; a recession has taken place both in public building and in private building.

Private building is practically non estat present owing to the high cost of money as has been explained by other speakers. We do know that in every constituency private building has practically come to an end and builders cannot sell the houses they have already built. Men who hitherto were inclined to take advantage both of the Government grants and county council and corporation loans for the purpose of acquiring new houses are not availing of these facilities now because their weekly outgoings would be beyond their capacity to bear. What a contrast that all is to the condition of affairs which prevailed when everybody concerned set to work with energy and enthusiasm to promote the housing drive, until Fianna Fáil brought their blighting hand to bear on the situation in 1951?

The cost of living, following the withdrawal of the subsidies, has, of course, caused very serious reactions amongst the people, poor and semi-poor. It is not even the destitute poor who are badly hit; working class families and fairly well off families have felt the very severe effect of the withdrawal of the food subsidies. They are now called upon to pay 4/2 per lb-for butter but notwithstanding the fact that they are compelled to purchase lesser amounts and that some of them have been driven to buyingcheaper substitutes, we are told by some Fianna Fáil back benchers that the standard of living of the people in Drogheda has gone up in the last three years. That is another of the dreams of Deputy Walsh and Deputy Burke. Deputy Burke thinks that everything in the garden is lovely and that there Can be nothing wrong so long as Fianna Fáil is at the helm.

The allegation has also been made against our unemployed that they refused to take work and that they refused to go to the Bord na Móna bogs. Whilst we have had visible demonstrations from massed battalions in Dublin of the unemployment which prevails in this city, unemployment is not confined to Dublin. We have pro rataunemployment throughout the country. We do not have these demonstrations in the country, but none the less we have unemployment stalking through the land, and that has been contributed to in no small measure by Government policy. The Local Authorities (Works) Act, which was designed specifically to give employment in rural areas and to be worked in conjunction with the land drainage project, so that there would be an out-fall in the proper places to take the water off the land, has in part been suspended. A good deal of work had already been done in that direction by the construction of slips or culverts and by attention to road subsidences in various places. All that work was done with the aid of a free grant from the Government without any cost to the rates. It gave employment to men in rural areas and ensured that the money expended on the land project would be utilised to the best advantage. Yet, the Minister for Posts and Telegraphs in particular, has denounced that scheme bell, book and candle on a number of occasions. Speaking at Ballymahon he said that: “This scandalous waste of public funds must be stopped.” Grants under the Local Authorities (Works) Act have been reduced to one-sixth of the amount paid by the inter-Party. Government. They have not been cut off completely but for all the work that can be done with the amount of money now provided, it would be almost justas well if they were. Schemes approved of by the various county engineers and submitted to the Department of Local Government are still lying there, and some of those which had got approval from the Department have been knocked off owing, we are told, to financial stress. The policy of unemployment is apparently to have its way.

As I said, the Government have sown the wind and we can expect them to reap the whirlwind. If the Government now decides to bring in relief schemes it will not be because of any arguments advanced in this Dáil. It will be purely because of the force and the stress of the demonstrations which have taken place in Dublin. These people, by their parades through the streets, have focussed the attention alike of the citizens and of visitors from other countries to the conditions which prevail, not alone in Dublin but throughout the country, and they have succeeded in bringing to the Government some realisation of the hardships they are enduring. We are inclined to face the sufferings of these people with smugness and complacency. Apart from the suggestions that have been made by previous speakers as to the motive of these demonstrations, I do not know that there is any ulterior motive or any leadership from outside behind them, but the unemployed of the City of Dublin are undoubtedly entitled to demonstrate and to protest their right as citizens to get employment here. It is the first function of any Government to provide employment for its employable citizens. Our available money resources could not be used in a better way. Whether money is to be provided by way of internal loans or by Marshall Aid it could not be better employed than in putting people to useful work throughout the country. There are schemes in plenty and they are only awaiting attention.

As I said earlier, we had references to some of our people being slackers. I resent that strongly. Our workers are looking for work and they are prepared to work. They proved that during the European war when our people went from this country in hundreds ofthousands and were prepared to work under showers of German shells and bombs. They were not afraid to work under those conditions in England when work was denied them at home. The Wages Standstill Order was then in operation and the Taoiseach said that he could not allow organised workers to get any increase in wages that would give them an unfair purchasing power for commodities in a limited and diminishing market. Yet these men were entitled to go to England and to send back any money they earned to this country. England in all her trouble never refused to avail of the efforts of the Irish workers. They were welcome to go to work in England and to send back all their spare cash to their wives and families here, but evidently that was not considered as creating any unfair purchasing power on a limited commodity market.

Evidently the moral in those days was that people who could find work in England should be exported to keep down the figures for unemployment here. I say these men and women showed no hesitation in going over to England to make a living for themselves and for their families, a living denied to them at home. That they were willing and prepared to work at home if work was provided for them, is shown by the fact that they went to England where they had to work under the almost impossible conditions of German bombing and shelling.

We know that in some areas at present Bord na Móna has closed down certain bogs. Dublin men may not be 100 per cent. suitable for work on bogs, but if they do go to work on a bog the conditions under which they have to work are by no means attractive. A wage of £4 10s. a week, with £2 stopped for board and lodging, leaves them with only £2 1Os. for themselves. It is said that they can earn more by the piece-work system, but men who have gone on to piece-work are being constantly shifted from it and put on a low weekly wage. Before we condemn such workers as slackers, we should at least inquire into the conditions under which they are asked to work and promises should not be held out to them if there is no intention of keeping these promises.

I am not going to delay the House very much longer because as I say, any statements we make in this House are not going to influence the Government in their policy. They will be influenced only by circumstances, not by fair argument in this House, but at least it must now be evident that the policy which they have pursued up to the present has brought the country to the position in which it is to-day. It cannot be alleged that that policy was operated in ignorance of existing conditions.

They must have been aware of what they were doing. Whether their motive was for spite, to injure the inter-Party Government, irrespective of what ruin that brought in its train, they sowed these seeds of desolation and destruction. They have reaped the whirlwind and I repeat now the appeal made by other Deputies: before they sink the ship they ought to get out or else change their policy to a common-sense, constructive policy, and get away from the slavish regard for English bank balances built up by our internal assets, apart from external assets, in order to give us a happy and contented Irish nation, happy contented Irish workmen engaged in building Irish homes for themselves to enable them to marry in happiness and prosperity. That will not come, however, so long as Fianna Fáil sticks to the policy that has characterised them since they came in again to office in 1951.

It is very interesting to hear one's policy interpreted by one's opponents. One looks at the interpretation in a vain effort to recognise the policy for what it is. I have been listening to Deputy Keyes now for a little while and, having listened to him, one would imagine that ours was not a Party that did more for the workers of this country than did Deputy Keyes and his Party; and to-day we represent more of the workers in this country than does Deputy Keyes or his Party.

The standstill Order!

From the beginning we have striven to create conditions here which would enable our people tostay at home and find useful employment in their own country. All through, that has been the basis of our policy.

And the workers realise it.

Why have you failed?

Wait and see. What is this policy about which Deputy Keyes has been talking to-night? There were three fundamental points in that policy. The first part of that policy was that we should balance current expenditure by current revenue. Do Deputy Keyes and his friends stand for that or do they not? Do the former Ministers, now occupying the Opposition Front Bench, stand for that? Does Fine Gael stand for that? On the assumption that in 1952 there was a deficit of £15,000,000, will the Opposition say now that in order to bridge the gap there should not be the necessary tax impositions? Remember, it is only through taxation the money could be found to meet that deficit.

There was £40,000,000 in 1947.

The easy way out is to put one's head in the sand and pretend the deficit does not exist, pretend there is a surplus of £10,000,000 and allege that we are imposing £10,000,000 unnecessary taxation on the people. Deputies talk about the subsidies and the reduction in the amount of the subsidies. Had we not reduced the subsidies we would have had to find another £4,000,000 odd. It is true that we reduced the subsidies but, in order to offset that reduction, we gave compensatory allowances in other directions. When we first introduced subsidies the Labour Party tried to pretend that the subsidies were of no use: the taxation that would have to be raised to meet the subsidies was the important thing. Now, one cannot have it both ways. No human being can have it both ways. No Government can have it both ways.

We had a deficit and we had to meet that deficit. I challenge anybody to say that that particular item of our policy was not right. I challenge anyoneto say that it was wrong for us to seek to balance current expenditure by current revenue. Instead of having this surplus of £10,000,000 for which it was alleged we were imposing unnecessary taxation, in the end it turned out that even the taxation we imposed was not sufficient to bring about a balance. Deputy O'Higgins referred to this £30,000,000 that we are now seeking in order to carry on the services necessary for our people; he said that that sum was introduced in three minutes. When that money was being asked for in the first instance, a full explanation was given. Was there any Deputy in the House who, when Estimates were introduced, came forward and asked that they should be reduced? The Opposition wants to have it both ways. On the one hand the Labour Party wants further expenditure and an increase in certain allowances and benefits; on the other hand, the friends with whom they combine want to have it the other way. The Opposition cannot have it both ways.

You are giving it to the bankers.

The bankers are always the scapegoats for people who have not got the courage to face up to a particular situation. I am giving the House hard facts. If the Opposition does not want to accept them, they should let the country know what their position is. They should tell the people they do not accept them. Let Fine Gael tell the country they do not accept them.

We told them in Wicklow.

You did not. You had again the two voices there— Deputy Davin, on the one hand, and Deputy O'Higgins on the other. Take the speeches that were made here and compare them and ponder on these two diametrically opposite viewpoints expressed by people who believe, or appear to believe, they could combine and stand over some policy in opposition to the policy of the present Government.That is one point of our policy. That is one aspect that is worthy of study.

We in Fianna Fáil have a policy. We stand over that policy and there will be no change in so far as we can prevent a change. So long as we are the Government here we will try to balance current expenditure by current revenue. If we fail to do that over a reasonable period of time, then we will admit that we have failed in one of the fundamental tasks of government. Wherever that task has been shirked in any country in the world, disaster has followed. That is point No. 1. That is our policy, to balance current expenditure by current revenue and not anybody else's policy.

Profits to the moneylenders.

The Deputy has a grand scapegoat. Those who think the people do not understand will try every misstatement and every piece of stupid reasoning.

Answer it.

The answer is that that is the first point in our policy and I challenge the Opposition to say whether or not they stand for that.

We do not.

What is the alternative? Let us hear the alternative.

Find work for the people.

Stay a while. I will come to that in due course. As to the next point in our policy. so far as capital expenditure was concerned it was we who initiated the idea of utilising the resources of our own country for State capital purposes. We never objected to the use of State capital or the resources of our own country by the State for productive purposes.

We hear a good deal about works under the Local Authorities (Works) Act. It is claimed that these are productice. It would be interesting to find out the extent to which they have been productive and the extent towhich they brought back any return for the moneys expended. We have never, at any time, objected to the use of the resources of the country for productive purposes.

That has been a fundamental part of the policy of Fianna Fáil from the day on which it was founded and we have consistently pursued that arm. Time and time again we have stated here that so long as productive projects are reasonably economic in their nature, there never was and never will be, so far as we are concerned, any difficulty in finding money to finance them. But we went further than that. We said that there were certain projects which were not economically productive in the ordinary sense, projects that made for the well-being of our people in a variety of ways. Housing was one of them. We were always ready to engage in housing and we always found the money necessary for housing. The entire housing programme that has been carried out in this country was and is based on Acts passed during the Fianna Fáil administration.

Deputy Keyes spoke about the progress in housing that was made during the régime of the Coalition Government. We have always admitted that that was the one part of their programme in which they showed any ability and all they did was to put into operation the schemes they found already in existence. They were handed over a working concern in full operation. The proof of that lies in the fact that in the year before the war broke out we had built more houses here than had been built by anybody who preceded us, and since we returned we have the next two highest figures. More work has been done in the last two years in relation to housing than was done during the régime of the Coalition Government.

When were those houses started?

The Taoiseach cannot have it both ways.

There was about the same in the machine when we took over again in 1951 as there was when the Coalition Government assumedoffice. That is an incontrovertible fact.

It is nonsense.

I have studied it. I have seen that that is true. In the first year after coming back into office we increased operations. Now housing, like many other things, is limited in its scope. If one makes an intensive effort and employs a large number of people on a particular scheme, in time one comes to the end of that scheme. That is happening now in parts of the country and the task that the local authorities in those areas saw before them in 1947 has almost reached completion. The completion of that task will leave a problem behind it of providing constructive work for those who were engaged in building houses. We will not be faced with that problem in Dublin for some time, because we have yet some eight or ten years' building programme ahead of us here.

There was a hold-up in Dublin, not because of any action by the Government but because there was some difficulty affecting some 8,000 or 10,000 houses in connection with the carrying out of a main drainage scheme on the north side of the city. Everything that we could do to stimulate house building, as far as local authorities are concerned, we have done. There has been talk about the rate of interest. The Government have endeavoured to minimise any effect that could have on local authorities by increasing grants and so on.

As far as housing is concerned, we have a record which Will never be beaten, in my opinion, in this country, because probably there never will be a situation again in which there will be such a crying need for houses as there was when we took over the problem of dealing with the housing situation. We have, then, the second part of our policy, the use of the resources of this country, first, for economically productive purposes and, secondly, to the extent to which we can reasonably go, for amenity and other purposes. Is there anything obscurantist, as someone has said, about that? Is it notcommon sense? The point is that you have to organise to get these works done. Very often you have to find out the projects that, on the one hand, are productive and, on the other hand, are of the other sort, and you have to achieve a fair proportion between them. The private individual, no mere than the State, can spend too much of his income or resources in beautifying his estate. If he wants himself and his family to continue in a reasonable state of comfort he will have to see that there is productive work being done and, side by side with it, that only a fair proportion of his resources are used for non-productive purposes.

I ask anyone here: Who objects to that programme? What is wrong about it? Let us see what is wrong about it. Where is there a case in which there has been clearly productive work that we have not done, or in which we have not been ready to use the national resources in doing it? Where is there a project of an amenity character that is reasonable, having regard to our resources, that we have failed to try to carry out?

The Works Act.

I have looked into the land projects, and one of the things that horrified me was to find that there was £70 an acre or so paid for reclaiming land which, in a few years' time, will probably be producing only rushes.

The average was £8 an acre.

I am talking about one case. I say that we have not abandoned the Local Authorities (Works) Act, nor have we abandoned the land project as it is called.

You scrapped it.

We did not. It was we who started the whole idea of reclaiming land and improving land. We started it in our early years, and we did more, and are now doing more, of that work than was done by the Coalition Government. The point is that we are trying to use common sense, that we are trying, in regard toall these things, to use the nation's money in such a way that it will give reasonable results. I have already said in regard to the Local Authorities (Works) Act, that the Coalition had already cut down the grant for it by £500,000 before we came into office. One of the reasons is that when a project is started there are certain things which it will be desirable to get done and, naturally, these will be done first. That has happened in a number of cases. The cream has been skimmed off, and the schemes that were reasonably useful have been dealt with. Wherever it can be shown that work is reasonably useful, it has not been the policy of our Government to deny money for that purpose.

There is another point. There is more money being spent on the roads and more employment being given on the roads now than in the time of the Coalition. There is far more money being spent on the roads which will give the same sort of employment as that which was given in the case of the Local Authorities (Works) Act.

What is the labour content?

Labour content? I can get any amount of labour content by digging a hole and filling it up again. What we want to do is to try and get the maximum labour content in works that are useful and productive. When the Labour Party are talking about these things they take care to put in the word "productive," but when we try to search for productive work we are asked what is the labour content as if that was the only thing that mattered. We have to try to get work that will be reasonably productive.

The second point in our programme is the use of our resources—the financial and natural resources of the country. Who was it that developed the bogs? Who was it that, in the main developed the rivers of this country? Was it not our Party, just as it was our Party that built the vast majority of the houses in the country? What is the use of talking to us as if we were people who had no interestwhatever in the development of the country or in the people of the country? It is all talk from some of those benches, and nothing more. We have done more than talk; we have done work and have got results, too, and we are going to get more results. We had a situation facing us and we met it in the proper way. As a consequence of it, we have a new situation. We did settle one thing, in the main, that is the meeting of current expenditure by current revenue. We have been developing the resources and the productivity of the country, and, in addition to that, we have succeeded in bringing about a reasonable balance in our international payments account.

And more unemployment?

In the year when we came back into office, the adverse balance was £61,000,000 odd. We had not the opportunity of dealing with it then, but the moment we got the opportunity we took measures to do so. Things could have happened in spite of us which might have given different results, but happily we secured a situation in which the deficit in our balance of payments now is one that we need not regard in the same way as the £30,000,000 was regarded by the former Taoiseach when he was in office. It was a matter of the deepest concern when it was only £30,000.000. When we came in, and found that it was £61.6 million, and expressed our concern, it was regarded by him as a trifling matter then. We had the same sort of attitude from him when we were told that we were putting on £10.000,000 more in taxation than was necessary to meet our commitments.

I have indicated what has been the basis of Government policy. It is now suggested that that policy was dictated by the Central Bank. Did the Central Bank need to dictate to us and tell us that, as far as the country is concerned, we must balance current expenditure by current revenue? We knew that before the Central Bank was set up. We knew that as one of the fundamental things that must bedealt with. As a matter of fact, some of the people in the Central Bank and who were on the Banking Commission found fault with us when we had a development programme away back in 1932 and 1933.

We did not need anybody to tell us to do these things. It is ridiculous to suggest that we were deliberately going out to produce unemployment in the country. You will not quote even the Central Bank's report fairly. The Central Bank's report said that the unusually favourable — or whatever word they used in conjunction with the word favourable—position of employment meant that the special State measures that have to be operated in times where there is heavy unemployment, were not necessary at the time. That is what they said and now that is being twisted.

Was that right?

That is what they said.

Was that right?

That has been twisted by unscrupulous people——

Was that right?

——to try to make it appear that the Central Bank were deliberately recommending unemployment. Every honest mind will recognise what it meant.

And is that Government policy?

The Central Bank meant that the situation was such that the special measures which are necessary in times of heavy unemployment, that is, State capital investment of a certain kind on certain public works, were not necessary.

And now we have the result.

Do not mind what we have.

If there is a house on fire——

The house is on fire now.

——and if the fire brigade is brought in, you do not want to be a prophet to know that some of the books will be wet.

The house is on fire now.

Do not cut the hose.

The fact is that the policy we followed had a basis which none of you over there have the audacity even to stand up and say was wrong.

Of course it was wrong.

It was not wrong. The Deputy says it was wrong. He has not said what he would do instead or what his Party had done.

I spent half an hour telling you.

He has not a Party. He does not speak for anyone. Speak with your own voice and do not speak for people who have different voices. The position with regard to our policy is that we have pursued that policy. There was a situation, as I pointed out, when I was speaking here some time ago, that followed the beginning of the Korean war, when there was a frenzied laying-up of stocks. Just as, when there is a tremendous effort in one direction, you lay up stocks or complete any task in a hurry, there is a new situation that will follow that, the fact that there was this urge to buy, to get in goods of all sorts, meant that you had stocking-up. It meant, consequently, that the needs of the community in that respect were, to a large extent, met, and, therefore, particularly in the circumstances that prevailed when these stocks had been bought at practically famine prices, there was a revolt on the part of the buyers; they held back. That, of course, meant that the shopkeeper was no longer busy, that transport services were no longer busy, that the factories were no longer busy producing and you had a period of slackness. The present situation is largely due to that. Wehad an example, for instance, in the textile industry until it was corrected by putting a stop on further imports and protecting the industries and trying to get the workers back at work in them.

However, the fact is that we have a situation in which there is unemployment. I did not at any time say that an unemployment situation is one which a Government should ignore. Whenever the Government has said anything about it, they have not said that it should be ignored. Because there have been demonstrations one would imagine that anything like that never happened before. I pointed out that, in February last, if you take account of the extra people on the register because of the Social Welfare Act, the figure was less in fact than it had been at the same time in February, 1949, when the live register total was over 84,000. We had the register examined at February last and as a result we knew that it contained close on 10,000 who were there because the Social Welfare Act had been passed. If you took, from the register figure, that number, the balance would be less than the figure at February, 1949. I do not want to say that even this figure, smaller though it was, was not serious. I only want to get the truth about it. I regard it as a serious matter. I said it was a matter giving serious concern to the Government. It has given concern to the Government, and the Government has been active in regard to the matter. There has been a rapid diminution, a bigger diminution from the unemployment peak of this year than there has been from the peak in the previous year or a number of other years. But, again, I do not want to say that we are complacent about it. I think it would be quite wrong to be complacent about it. Unemployment is not an easy thing to cure. It is by no means easy to cure.

It is easy to correct.

It is not easy to cure. You have the natural fact that labour is not mobile. We had some questions about the bogs. A young man may be expected to take up workon the bog but a married man here with a family might find it very difficult to go down to accept work of that sort. He might in fact be a man who had not been accustomed to manual labour at all. It is extremely difficult in a complex society to find suitable work for every class of individual who at one time or another might become unemployed. That has been recognised and that is the fundamental reason why an effort is made by the community to meet the needs of such a person temporarily during such temporary periods of unemployment.

There is a fair number of the present unemployed who could usefully be employed on constructive work. We recognise that, Back in 1933 and 1934. we were looking ahead for a pool of public works to have during a period of possible recession. What was the attitude of the Opposition? They said that we were extravagant, that we were trying to house the Dublin civil servants in Palaces. That is what was said about our having planned to have such a pool of public works such as in connection with Dublin Castle. Now we have taken certain steps in order to try to get constructive works going which will employ a number of those who are capable of work of that sort.

Again, I say, not every one of the unemployed can be put at work of that kind, but there is a certain section of them that can. We have been doing everything in our power to get things going so that these people will be employed in constructive work of various kinds.

I have said many times in talking about the general policy of the Government that our principal and fundamental aim is to try to create conditions which will give employment, create conditions which will mean that in industry, agriculture, and so on, there will be opportunities for earning a livelihood and doing useful economic work. That has been the fundamental point of our policy the whole time, and we have never, in regard to that policy, been hesitant to use the resources of the country for that purpose—never.

There has been talk about capital investment, capital development. Why,we have more money provided this year, much more, than was provided during any year of the Coalition for capital purposes.

It is in the banks.

Five per cent.

People who talk like that are just parrots who repeat parrot cries. They do not want to listen to reason. There is nothing one can do to convince them. I would be wasting my breath if I were to try to talk to people of that sort. The position is that we have a higher capital development programme this year than at any time during the period in which the Coalition were in office. It may be necessary even to extend that to meet the present conditions. If there is a crisis, if I have money in the bank and I am ill and need medical treatment no matter how much I may regret using my resources for a purpose like that, I will use them because it is fundamentally necessary to do so. We approach the resources of the nation in the same way. If there is a critical situation, just as if there was a war, we would be ready to use our resources to bring about a cure of that.

I have said that we have taken some measures and that we have provided for capital development and useful constructive works. The Castle scheme, which is an economic scheme from the State point of view, is being revived so as to give employment. It was stopped in 1948. In our opinion, it should not have been stopped. That is being revived. It will take some time to get it going. It cannot be done overnight. You can say, "Let it be done", but there is a certain time lag between the time you say, "Let it be done" and its being done. A certain interval of time has to elapse.

Another project referred to was the project of hard runways on the Baldonnel Aerodrome. That was a project which was considered originally both from the Army point of view and from the commercial point of view. It was felt that an alternative aerodrome in Dublin would be useful. It might be regarded as a necessity, but in any case it was highly useful. That projectwill be of a useful character in comparison with digging a hole and filling it up again. That project will give a certain amount of employment and is going to be continued.

We told the various Departments that where there were useful constructive works on hands these constructive works should be expedited and put in hand to give employment with the least possible delay. If there were other works contemplated, we asked them to send these forward for immediate consideration and for an early decision. That is being done. There were other projects which, for one reason or another, had been deferred. We told the Departments to have these projects re-examined immediately to see whether they were of a type that should or should not be carried out. We indicated that these things would be done. We have tried to expedite the building of houses in Dublin. In answer to a question here I have indicated the extent to which these projects are going ahead gradually. It cannot be done overnight but gradually the unemployment problem which showed itself in a serious light about the beginning of this year, is being dealt with. It is being done on a thoroughly sound basis because we have seen to it that the foundation is sound in regard to meeting our expenses and living within our means in the ordinary way.

There has been talk about people tightening their belts. The fact was that in the year 1951 we were actually using up more than we were producing. If you use up any more than you are producing then in a certain time, unless your resources are unlimited, you will come to grief and the people will suffer severely. We felt that the proper thing was to bring about a balance as quickly as possible, and it has been done. The position now is that everything we can do must be done to promote production, which is the basis of everything. If you have not production, you will not have social services, you will not have the standard of living that you desire.

We pointed out that one of the mostpromising fields in which to increase production was the field of agriculture and that it was a field which would give very rapid and good results if it were properly cultivated. One of the essential things was to see to it that the necessary ground limestone was available. We did everything we could do to encourage private enterprise to do that. Some members of the Labour Party may say: "You should have produced it directly by the State." There may be a case made for that where private enterprise is not meeting its responsibilities, so to speak, in the matter. But we have not done that because we wanted to try and encourage private enterprise to provide that instead of having it produced by the State.

This debate has been an unreal debate. Instead of coming to close quarters, as you would expect, it has been the sort of long-range fire which you have at cross-roads debates.

A Deputy

Propaganda.

It has been propaganda for the most part.

What about your own?

There has been no attempt to get down close to the problems which it is necessary to solve. Of course, you will have people who can wave a magic wand and then everything is right! You can say: "Fly away, Peter, fly away, Paul; come back, Peter, come back, Paul."

It has been suggested that all our external assets should be invested here. You know very well that they are not dealt with in that way.(Interruptions.)The Minister for External Affairs was pointing out—great care was taken to prevent him from making his point—that although it was a sin for external assets to increase if we were in office, it was not a sin if they increased when our opponents were in office.

When we were in office it was wrong.

It was not. It will be said that these increases took placebecause it was better to invest the Marshall Aid money in that way rather than to leave it idle here. If there was something fundamentally wrong in principle which made this course particularly difficult, the money need not have been sent out; it could have been preserved here, but this was not done. I am not finding fault with the previous Government for doing what they did in this respect, and neither did the Minister for External Affairs, but he pointed out the inconsistency of people who talked like that and who, when in office, did the very thing which they say was a sin when we did it.

With regard to these external assets, the figures that I have given have been challenged. It is a very easy thing to look only at one side of an account. We would all be happy if we could look only at the credit side and pay no attention to the debit side. When I spoke of £120,000,000 as regards our assets abroad, I always referred to them as net assets. Surely anybody who has any knowledge of accounts knows that the word "net" has significance. There was no quibbling about the word "net". The word "net" means the balance between your liabilities and your assets. If you take the external liabilities and the external assets and you subtract one from the other, you get a figure of £120,000,000. That is the figure which shows what your real external resources are. If we have external liabilities it means that money has to be taken out of the country every year in one form or another to meet the charges on them. These are external liabilities and they have to be met. The amount which you have left represents your real net reserve. If you look at the account and see on the one hand the assets and on the other hand the liabilities, that tells you where you stand, not the total gross amount of your assets. If I am given a legacy of a couple of thousand pounds and if that legacy involves paying £3,000, I do not think much of it, because instead of being given a benefit I have got a net debt of £1,000.

That is Victorian economics.

It is the economics which Deputy Davin uses in his own home. There is nothing Victorian about that. The other thing is used as a smoke screen. Another one of the charges made is that we are responsible for the tightening of credit. We are not responsible for any tightening of credit.

Banking is a business. Bankers are dealing with a commodity which is money.

A commodity?

It is fundamentally a commodity and has all the characteristics of a commodity.

That is a fundamental error.

When it comes into use it is the equivalent in exchange of a commodity. It has all the characteristics of a third or intermediate commodity.

It should be dealt with as a commodity.

lf the Deputy's theories were useful, right or fundamentally sound, there is not a nation in the world which would not be happy to-day.

Deputies

Hear, hear!

The Deputy only intervenes with those parrot statements. He never stands up and argues a case fully. The position with regard to our assets is that they were reduced to £120,000,000, as a result of a succession of heavy deficits in our balance of payments. They increased largely during the war period when we could not get certain goods. The moment the war was over we started to use them and the additions that were made have been exhausted.

Can we as a nation afford to blind ourselves to a problem and to a fact which other nations have to bear in mind, namely, that if they want to preserve their position so as to be able at any time to meet either a particularcrisis or to meet special changes in external trade, they must have some sum of money available which will protect them against such a situation?

Mr. P.J. O'Sullivan

Devalued money.

Devalued money? Why did you not stop it when you were in office? We have, in this island, a population of about 4,333,000. We occupy a relatively small area on the surface of the earth. The United States is about 100 times bigger than we are. Our country represents roughly the size of Lake Superior on the map of the United States. If you take the British Commonwealth or Empire, whatever it is now called, which covers a vast area of the earth and which possesses natural resources of all sorts, is it to be thought that we here, a small country, can succeed in doing things that they are not able to do in regard to matters of that kind? We are influenced by external factors. Take the cost of living, for instance. There are two chief factors in it. On the one hand, there is the external factor in relation to wholesale prices of raw materials, and so on, the index of which is about 300; and, on the other hand, it is calculated that about 40 per cent. of our personal expenditure is attributable to things that come from outside.

You say that now. You said the reverse in 1951.

I did not. I looked up some of the statements which I made and which have been referred to to-day—anybody who reads what I said and sees the misrepresentation made to-day, knows that it is misrepresentation.

Every member of Fianna Fáil said that.

Of course the Deputy will try to revive the old charge that I have never made a statement in regard to which there was not some back door by which to escape. When I am making statements I try to make them with the qualifications necessary to make them true because most statements,in order to be accurate, have to be qualified.

Deputies

Hear, hear!

That is true. You cannot make absolute statements if you want to tell the truth. It is only those who have no regard for the real truth who can make these absolute statements such as those I have heard during some of this debate. Most of them are not true. I said about 40 per cent. of our personal expenditure is spent on imports, on what comes from outside sources. Therefore, if the prices of raw materials or of the finished goods that come in from outside are raised, it follows of necessity that prices will go up here. Similarly if you pay increased agricultural prices the same thing will happen. We know it is necessary to pay these prices in order to get the produce. Of course, the tactics of the Opposition are that when they are talking to the people in the towns they will refer to the increase in the price of butter and when they are talking to the farmers they will tell them of the low price of milk.

If you are going to give the farmers the price which will induce them to supply the milk, of necessity that price goes on to the commodity sold unless it is subsidised. If you subsidise it you must tax tobacco and other items to pay for the subsidies. We did that in 1947.

You said you would do it again.

What we said was that we did not propose to reduce the subsidy. That was true at the time. We did not realise at that time we would be up against a deficit of £15,000,000 and that the alternative was either to reduce these subsidies or to add another £5,000,000 or £6,000,000 to our already heavy bill of taxation.

Deputies

Hear, hear.

It was not our wish to reduce the subsidies, but we had to do it. We did not want to do it any more than any other democratic Government would. We had to face the situation of having either to reduce subsidies or to increase taxation. Itwas a very unwelcome choice we had to make, but we made it in what We regarded as the best interests of the country. We will find that these people who talk about this question will not come in and tell the people that they will, without taxation—because that is the point—restore subsidies. I will bet they will not do it. They will get some excuse for putting it in abeyance when they come into office, if they ever do.

A Deputy

You said you would not withdraw the subsidies.

We had no intention at that time of doing it. We are accused of having that as part of our policy. It was forced upon us by the cruel necessity that confronted us of having to bridge a gap of £15,000,000, and we had to do that by increasing taxation or by reducing the subsidies.

It was one of your 17 points.

We reduced the subsidies and we have to face the consequences. When an election comes there will not be such crowing as we hear now from the opposite benches.

You told us that before.

We have fought you many a time before and have beaten you.

Deputies

Hear, hear.

(Interruptions.)

The choice of the battlefield is in my hands. I will choose the one I think will be the best. I have much too long experience to play your game for you. You were not in any hurry to go to the country. When Fine Gael came into office as a Government they were supported by people who told the electorate they were not going to enter into such a combination as they entered into.

Mr. O'Higgins

As Deputy Cowan.

That Coalition in 1948 was as much against democraticpractices as any could be. I do not intend, simply because you now think it would be a suitable time for you——

Mr. O'Higgins

Any time is suitable.

It was not that way when you were over here. We can go to the country any time. We are as big a Party as we were before.

Mr. O'Higgins

We challenge you to try it.

When I choose.

Mr. O'Higgins

Try it.

How many of you want an election? Hands up.

Deputies

We all want it.

Mr. O'Higgins

You are a gang of political poltroons.

The Taoiseach is entitled to make his speech without interruption.

Mr. O'Higgins

He has made a challenge to us.

(Interruptions.)

The Taoiseach is entitled to he heard without interruption.

Mr. O'Higgins

He is entitled to dissolve the Dáil.

Every other Deputy has been heard without interruption.

Mr. O'Higgins

Come on with that challenge.

Indeed, that challenge is there, and when the right time comes——

A Deputy

You are afraid.

I will choose. I am not a baby to be affected by a dare, not by any means. As long as I have the right of saying whether there will or will not be a dissolution I will see to it that the dissolution is at the time that I think is best for the country, and I have always thought that it was best for the country when it was best for this Party, because I believe thatthis Party is the Party which is working in the country's best interest.

In other words, your Party cannot be wrong. We know now.

We will see you all again in good time and you will not be so happy, perhaps, when it is over. We propose to go through with our programme. The hardest, bitterest part of our work, thank God, is done. We have the foundation laid, and on that foundation we mean to go ahead and to bring about as good conditions in this country as there were before the war.

No heat of argument or no stimulated reverie of the Fianna Fáil Benches can for a moment change the unfortunate situation that we must face up to in the course of this debate. I do not propose to follow lines of either personal invective or cheap politics. We are here to-night to tell the Government what the real situation in the country is and I am going to answer the Taoiseach's challenge and put on the records of this House positive works ready for immediate action that the Government can put into being to-morrow to alleviate the position in West Cork if they are so disposed. It is a significant thing, standing here as a young man, to find that we have the extraordinary situation returned in this country, in 1953, under 20 years, virtually, of a Fianna Fáil Government, that this country is back to the situation of the famine years, where there was nothing for unemployment but Government relief schemes. Let us face the reality. Let the stupid little fop of a Minister for Finance snigger and laugh if he likes, but the situation is rankling from one end of the country to the other. In point of fact, now a situation has arisen where the Government say that relief schemes can meet an emergency situation. This is a poor tribute, not only to Fianna Fáil but to native Government here for 30 odd years that we have a situation where, instead of having a progressive plan that was going to improve the economy of the country and gradually envelop more and morepeople in employment, that we are an this divided state where we hear sneering gibes and hints and talk rather than getting down to the reality of trying to get a way to keep in work, to keep in decent comfort Irishmen and Irishwomen as worthy of our consideration as any of us in this House. I am sick and tired of looking to a past instead of building on a present and ensuring a future.

I am coming into this House to-night to make a plea, not on the basis of any Party membership, but on behalf of a generation that has in its day a right to maintenance and sustenance in its own country, and to try and direct the Government's mind to the fact that even though they may be the generation that is passing on, having given worthy service to this country, that they have got to face the reality of the present and the fact that if something is not done rapidly and courageously, we are going to find this country denied initially of the basic, fundamental essential necsssary to it—the manhood of its young men and the energy and trust of the young men and young women of this country who will not be here if something is not done to arrest the instability, the unemployment and the lack of security that now exists at home. One cannot blame the Government exclusively for what has happened. It is true that stupidity and blunders may have caused a recession in trade and a restriction of credit that is the atmosphere and breeding ground of the ills that we are now suffering from. The Taoiseach or the Minister may say that the Government have not control over the credit situation, but it is true, I believe, that a Government has some control over the situation of credit. If they have not, then I say this, that we have not any freedom in this country at all. If they cannot control that situation then we are, in fact, only legislating in name here while the iron grip of control of our a hole economic fabric is held somwhere else. I do not believe that that situation exists, but I do believe this and I am saying it quite seriously to the Taoiseach, that if something is not done forthwith in this country to ensure that hunger, unrest and unemployment rapidly wanethe Taoiseach may find himself with a situation that may lead to consequences far more far-reaching than we would like to envisage here.

We hear talk about schemes having to be brought to fruition. I am glad that the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Finance is here because I do not believe that there is any Department of State that abounds with more schemes technically complete, ready for going into action, than his Department. I want to tell the Taoiseach, who is listening to me now, that if he wants to keep young boys and girls at home in West Cork, which I have the honour to represent, there is the pier at Castletownbere falling to pices, which wants to be fixed up at once. There was a slipway built there by the Board of Works and they admitted afterwards that they did not know where they had built it. It was built for purposes which it did not serve. Go into Schull, where we have the nucleus of a revival of Irish fishing under way. They are crying out there for a breakwater year after year. The Taoiseach, as long as he has been Taoiseach and while he was in Opposition has heard me striving over five years to get that work commenced. The plans are there, the blue-prints are there, the engineers are there. There is employment there for 80, 90 or 200 people in the peninsula that stretches from Ballydehob to Goleen. God knows it is a hard, beautiful part of the country in which to grub a living. I tell the Taoiseach that if he will say so in the morning work could be given there to people that is not going to last them only one night. It will last a considerable number of years; not only in ensuring a safe resting place for boats that Irish money is being put into but for the safety of the craft that we are using to develop that industry.

These are instances of what is necessary in the islands that abound about West Cork. It is not so long ago since the Taoiseach took a corvette to go around to see them. He knows himself that in those islands where you have dwindling populations and rising unemployment there is an unlimited number of schemes for little harbour developments and amenitiesthat have to be added to the lives of the people down there that can be immediately put into operation. I say to the Taoiseach if he is in earnest that we people come here representing constituencies such as that to make an earnest appeal for the survival of our areas, not alone for employment in them but for the hope of survival for the people who have worked so hard for so long in those áiteanna iargcúlta.

We come here to make a plea for those people who played as big a part in establishing this very institution in which we now meet, we voice our views on their behalf, and I say to the Taoiseach if he is in earnest about employment schemes—not throwing any blame individually on anybody for what has arisen—that they should go into my constituency and put into operation any amount of those works. If that is done, there will not be 400 odd people on the unemployed register in Castletownbere, as I was told last week, nor 200 odd in Dunmanway, 200 in Clonakilty and 500 in Skibbereen. That is a very poor tribute of an Irish Government to a part of Ireland that certainly cannot be challenged on the sacrifice it made that Dáil Éireann having been established might persist and come into the existence that it now has.

We talk too glibly in this House and refer too often in the most scurrilous way to forbears or connections of forbears of this House. It would be better for us all here, as I said some time ago in this Dáil when talking on the Republic of Ireland Bill, to appreciate the worth of individuals in their effort for this State and, having appreciated it, to try to build on the foundations we have, rather than constantly recall something that most of us never knew of and do that with a bitterness that this generation should not be asked to perpetuate. When I come into this House as a young man to talk on the problems of to-day, I want the Government to realise that most of the people who are hungry in Dublin City and throughout the length and breadth of Ireland to-day are not worried about the rights and wrongs of 35 years ago, but about the immediate present and how they are going to exist in the State as it now it.

I will pay a tribute—and I always have, irrespective of the side of the House I was on—to anybody who did his part manfully and well in the formative days of the State. But we cannot live on that glory and put people into employment on that glory. We have need of a practical economic policy to meet the difficulties of to-day. Let the Taoiseach take this responsibility and let the Minister for Finance take it effectively, that his very financial policy must of itself beget some of the conditions we have to-day. You cannot have increased taxation to the level that it becomes a complete burden on the people, a nauseating unsustainable burden, without having the situation arise of increased costs of all essential foods. You could have, as we did have, the "Up Dev." with: "Up tea, up bread, up butter, up sugar, up milk, up beer, up tobacco, up cigarettes and all the rest. We had, with the same catch-cry retricted credit and a rapid growth of unemployment. That is the seed that was sown in the economic policy brought in here, in a hair shirt austerity vein, by the Minister for Finance in 1952. For that the Government is responsible.

You may not want a general election: that is a matter that is within the Taoiseach's own purview at the moment; but if you do not want a general election at least you must take cognisance of the message that is being sent by the people to the Government, that they do not approve of their present economic policy. I am a bit like Deputy Davin in this. If the Taoiseach recants his economic stupidities and gets down to the job and helps to solve the problems of the immediate present, I think he will he given credit for that, no matter whether we agree fundamentally with the policy of his Party or not. We do know this, that they have tried an economic policy on this country and the country has in a positive, effective and repeated way said they do not want it.

Now, the Government can do either of two things. One of them theTaoiseach has indicated to us to-night quite clearly in his speech. Let me Say this, in sincerity: it was a pleasant thing to see the Taoiseach back to his old vitality and virility in the course of his heated discourse here to-night; it was a good thing to see him back in energetic vein. Maybe it portends a reasonable drive by the Taoiseach himself now to make the Government meet the problems they are not meeting. We are glad to see that. Let me say this to the Taoiseach. that the answer to the immediate present goes deeper than relief schemes. It is appalling that the situation is that we must force the Government, or try to force the Government, to put into effect immediately relief schemes to give employment to the people throughout the length and breadth of Dublin and throughout rural Ireland.

Let the Taoiseach take this message from me. He can rant as much as he likes about the balance of payments and sterling assets. I am quite sure the Minister for Finance, when he gets the chance next week of replying to this debate, will rant and rave about, Marshall Aid and a lot of other things; but to the unemployed man, whether he is in Werburgh Street Exchange or Lower Gardiner Street Exchange, or Clonakilty or Skibbereen or Castletownbere or elsewhere, sterling assets and balance of payments are damned poor consolation to his empty belly. It is time we in this House realised that when we are talking here about the level of the balance of payments or the repatriation of assets, we are dawdling and wasting time, while in fact the very basis of all that, the primary factor in production, the very manpower and woman-power of this country is drifting as it never drifted before from the land of Ireland.

The Taoiseach made reference to the fact that we are only a small island. We have had a significant experience recently. If we study the census of population and the various statistical documents issued to us by the Central Statistics Office, we get a reasonable photograph of the situation that is arising in the country—a dwindling marriage rate, a dwindling population and increasing emigration.

What is the remedy? The remedy is not going to be found in the invective and counter-invective of ex-Ministers, or Ministers against each other here. The answer is to be found in some kind of cohesive, constructive plan that is going to envelop people, gradually assimilate them into industrial employment or agricultural employment that is of practical and permanent duration. There is no good in suggesting relief schemes as anything other than a temporary alleviation. The Government has to get down to the problem that I have pressed, not only on this Government, but on the last one, of getting established in this country, in their full solid foundation, industries that are germane to the country. I have said here before that it is pathetic to me—and I am quite sure it is pathetic to my colleague from Donegal, Deputy O'Donnell—that we have an excuse for a fishing industry left in Ireland, when he can gaze out, and I can gaze out in West Cork, on the trawling fleets of every nation in the world fishing under their initial expense and overhead expense off the coast of Ireland, to enhance and enrich the coffers of their own countries in the enhancement of the catches they bring home to the fishing of their own lands, while we here toil and labour without any conception of what the real national wealth of that fishing industry could be to us.

Has the Government come to grips with the problem of planning at all progressively for a future? Has the Government—and I mean not only the Government of to-day, but Governments before it—come to grips with the problem of stepping up the production of Irish land in the way it could be stepped up? Is the way to step up production in Irish farms the way this Government has elected to take? Is the making more difficult of credit facilities for the farmer, the impact of increased costs in every direction of his cost of production, a stimulation to further production? Is the present economic plan of the Government— that puts, as described by the Taoiseach himself, a crushing burden of taxation on the people—the type ofplan to stimulate a drive for production in Irish farms?

Is this driving of a wedge between town and country, as we have seen the Government try to do in recent by-elections, a way of producing balanced and stabilised economy at home? I am talking on the basis of the situation as it is to-day. Whoever is responsible for it, the situation to-day is that we have an abnormally high figure of unemployed. There is no doubt whatever but that we have one of the highest figures ever, since-the Famine, for emigration, and we have an even worse feature than that creeping into the economy of the country. We have people who were in employment here trying to find an alternative country to which to take their wives and children because they cannot see any future in their own country. I will readily agree that that cannot completely be the Government's fault, but nevertheless it is a situation that exists, and what are we, who purport to be the legislators and the guiding power of this country, going to do about it? The problem goes deeper than we can hope to solve by relief schemes. It is on that basis that I want to address my remarks generally to-night. We have to restore confidence in the people in this country. We have got to get rid of this cult which is growing up throughout the-length and breadth of Ireland and that is making the people shun politics. A situation is arising in this country whereby young people are not taking the interest they should in the development of their own land and are not making an effort to get into the scheme of development of their own land.

Rather are they more eager to get some profession or some kind of a qualification and to get out of their own land. That is a cancer that this country cannot stand for too long. But when to that cancer are added the three serious difficulties already adverted to, we have a situation in which the Government must take deliberate and serious action. I believe that, with a bit of goodwill in this House, as distinct from thrust and parry, and with the willingness of thisHouse to form a united front in an effort to meet the immediate emergency problem, we have the resources and the credit to enable us to surmount our immediate difficulties. But the Government must produce—and if this Government cannot, it must give way to one that can—some kind of an economic structure that is practical for this country, that shows a progressive development and that can be preached to our people as something that ensures a future not only for those ripening in age, as many members of this House are, but for those coming behind and for generations to come.

We have had too much talk in this House for too long about individual failures to do this or to do that. While we all come here and criticise each other for what has been done, and for what has not been done, we allow— apparently willy-nilly—the denudation of our own land to take place. It is little credit to any of us—and I am saying this with a full sense of responsibility—that, after 30 odd years of enjoying the fruits of sacrifice which was so honestly made in this country, we have not been able to establish a State in which the young people can have hope and are eager to stay and work in. It becomes more appalling to us all when we realise full well that no reason except lack of initiative and lack of drive within the Governments of this country has caused such a situation to arise. We have the grandest hit of country in the world here. We have some of the finest people, technically, that the world can produce. We have the solid basis of our own people that never wilted and that, generation after generation, have proved their worth and their love for their own land.

What are the obstacles?

The main obstacle that exists here is the one I referred to at the opening of my speech and that is that it appears from what the Taoiseach said to us to-night that we are a Government in name but not the Government of our economic destiny because somebody else dictates ourmoney policy and our rates of interest. I am not going to stand here and say that the fiscal problem is one that can immediately be solved by breaking the sterling link. It involves more difficulties than that. The difficulties are becoming greater as the years progress. However, it does involve this: some day, and somehow, somebody in charge of an Irish Government—if he wants to plan a, practical economy for the Irish people—will have to take in hand and in rein the control of that particular facet of our economy.

Is it not appalling to realise, as was mentioned here this evening by Deputy Davin, that for houses which we are building to house possibly the most worthy of all classes in this country, the hardworking artisan, farm labourer or worker——

The real producers.

——we have to repay virtually 65 per cent. of the money that is charged by way of continuous rent in perpetuity on that house to moneylenders, bankers or whatever name you wish to put upon them. Only by coming face to face with the stark realism that exists to-day can we appreciate how essential it is for this country to have some positive control over credit and credit rates. It is quite true that you may, in theory, make the case which was made by the Taoiseach that money can be classed no better than a commodity but if we want to go into the analysis of money and the credit fiction of the world, it would take very little to topple that theory completely. Therefore, why should we be so frightened and afraid to grasp this problem of our monetary control when we know that we still have in this country all that made any wealth accumulated possible? We have the strength of the right arm of the Irish people and the soil that generation upon generation so proudly and earnestly helped to cultivate and protect.

It is the basis of real wealth.

It is easy, in the heat of a discussion like this, to fire, as have been fired across this House, variouspolitical darts apropos of 20 or 30 years ago. During the course of this day, thanks to disorderly interruptions by the Minister for Finance and by various people on my side of the House, and to disorderly provocation by the Minister for External Affairs. we have fought everything, including the civil war, and even things that occurred prior to it.

A Cheann Comhairle, would it not be a good thing if you gave the Deputy a halo because, apparently, he did not interrupt all day?

I would hate to take a halo from the hands of the little Minister for Finance, because I would be as sceptical of that as the Minister is in his present mood. The Minister for Finance has to realise that, even with all his cynicism and the type of sneer he can affect—and most of the Minister's "codology" here is affectation—I am trying to deal with a problem that exists, not only for the Government to-day but for every responsible Deputy and every responsible person thinking of the future of the country. The Taoiseach will readily agree with me that if we cannot keep our Irishmen and women at home, we will not have the basis on which to build any future Ireland, because they are the essential unit in production.

What is the answer to employment on the land? I will tell the Taoiseach, but I know the Taoiseach will not carry it out because, as I have already explained, he has not got in his power the real control to enable him to carry it out. The Irish farmer and farm labourer, given co-operation and help, are the finest production units this country ever had. They carried this country through many dark and bitter days of trial and tribulation, and what the small farmer and his men helping him need to-day is the wherewithal to get the necessary fertiliser, equipment and seed which will give the harvest which the Taoiseach seeks. Irish land can produce not only 50 per cent., but 100 and 200 per cent. more than it produces to-day, but that can be done only if there is made available to the farmer the equipment and the aids to the rehabilitationof this land which he needs at a price within his capacity to pay.

Speaking in my presence, the Taoiseach has said that fertiliser is a good investment for the farmer. If it is, let me answer the Taoiseach by saying that it is a better investment for an Irish Government seeking that increased production to ensure that the farmer haa readily available to him, by way of credit or reduction of cost, the fertiliser he needs to give us that added production. We must get more and more goods in the main from the land of this country in order to get back our standard of living. We cannot afford to get a better standard of life for our people than they can earn for us and the direction in which we can get the most rapid and ready increase in production is not in industry, no matter what the Minister for Industry and Commerce may think.

Industry is something that needs careful planning. It needs technical skill in its development and needs to be very solidly grounded in reality. It must not be of the mushroom type we experience to-day. The employment capacity of some of the new industries alleged by the Government is nil, while the profit capacity for its many foreign directors is immense. In the land of Ireland, in the small farms of Ireland, as the Taoaiseach, representing the constituency of Clare, knows full well, there is an industry which is starved of the essentials for production.

I hear Deputy Cogan prating about credit for farmers and about facilities for farmers. If this Government are in earnest—and the most important unit, the unit of its very existence, is Deputy Cogan—with regard to increased production in agriculture, the time has come when the resources of the country should be used where they will give the best return and create an atmosphere of solidarity and security at home by making available to the farmer the new equipment he needs, the fertiliser and seeds he needs and everything else he needs, to make his holding more productive. The money and the means must be made available as rapidly as possible and that is where one of the most serious difficulties arises.

There was a time when there was pride in the families of rural Ireland in their succession in their holdings, but now the farmers, with three or four sons at home, find it impossible to persuade any of the boys to succeed them in the holding. The young men do not want that type of drudgery and hardship and the answer to that problem is to make equipment and money for improvement readily available to these people. I am sounding a deliberate note of warning that, unless we can stabilise the continuity of the small farmer and the succession of their sons in the small-holdings of IreIand, we are going to have to deal in the very near future with an infinitely greater problem than the problem which may arise from the exigencies of immediate circumstances.

The general overall pattern of our economy has broken down. It has broken down from two different impacts. The first was undoubtedly the impact of the stupidity of the present Government's economy axe. The second is that the Government, screaming in seven or eight different voices for increased production, have put the entire means of securing that increased production out of the reach of the very people they want to provide that increased production. There is no excuse or no justification for the situation which the Government's economic policy, as portrayed in the Budget of 1952, brought about. Even if the situation were bad—and the Taoiseach suggests in his defence that it was—or even worse than he said it was, it was indeed an irresponsible Government which rushed to cure that ill too quickly, because it was obvious to a man of the Taoiseach's long experience in the public service of the country that such an action must bring in its wake exactly what it has brought. That action could not bring anything but the ills so eagerly sought by the Victorian theory of the Central Bank.

Fianna Fáil painted the situation as bad, but to-day we do not know what they are trying to paint. At one stage, they tell us that we put the country in pawn and to-day the Minister forExternal Affairs tried to prove that the greatest sin of the Coalition Government was that we allowed our external assets to increase. There will always be tweedledum and tweedledee and we never have an unequivocal statement from the Taoiseach himself. We have that situation rampant to-day.

The Taoiseach made a reference which rather amused me, to one thing being said in the town and another in the country. I had the pleasure of following some of the Taoiseach's senior Ministers and junior Ministers around East Cork, and I was staggered by the different chat in the towns and in the country. I had only one story to tell. I told the people you were no good. I believe you are no good. They had 40 other stories to tell. I still believe that the only way in which the Government can deal with the present situation is for them to rid themselves of the hair-shirt policy of the Minister for Finance.

The Taoiseach spoke glibly to-night about people in a certain type of employment who could not be readily put on the bogs. The Taoiseach must realise that his very action ensured the unemployment of thousands of the very people that he could not find employment for to-day. His bludgeoning of the wine and spirit retail trade put one out of every three men in that trade out of employment. His activity with regard to the distilling industry has closed some of the smaller distilleries, and that is bound to have its effect in the reduction of the staff of the bigger distilleries.

He was never in two places at the one time like you were.

I was never a furlong behind in a mayoral election. We have a Government who do not even come to grips with the problem of unemployment in the city of the vociferous mayor. I think little of his unseemly interjections. We are here to try and find work for workless people. We are here to try and give hope to people who have abandoned hope. We are here to find security for people in this country who are feeling insecurity for the first time. When the LordMayor of Cork interrupted me, I was dealing with the direct consequences of the effect of the increased taxes on the wine and spirit trade.

We have the biggest firm this country boasts of trying to induce people to retire earlier. It is experiencing unemployment of a serious nature for the first time in its history. That firm is the firm of Messers. Guinness. We have got to take note of these things. We have got to realise that the stranglehold has to be taken off industry if there is going to be any expansion of employment. We have got to realise that if things are inevitably to cost more the people who have to buy them will have to be given increased earning capacity with which to meet these increased charges or the Government will have to take some positive action to reduce the cost of essential commodities to put them within the reach of the pay packets of those who will have to meet the increased expense.

We can boast of certain achievements but if we want to hold on to those achievements we will have to get down immediately to the task of keeping in gainful employment the young men and women at home in Ireland. I say to the Taoiseach that he will have no difficulty regarding the immediate problem with practically every rural constituency in Ireland because over the years various Deputies of every Party have been pressing for local major and minor building schemes that are of practical value to the areas concerned. Those can be put into operation if the Taoiseach is in earnest.

I will give the Taoiseach credit for being in earnest. If the Taoiseach is in earnest, I think he can put into operation many of these schemes around the coastal areas and the fishing ports. Indeed, he can put many schemes into operation in Cork harbour that will serve as a palliative for the Lord Mayor of Cork and a relief for some of his problems.

The Taoiseach can do these things and bring about an immediate relief, but he and his Government will have to face the problem of getting more and more people into employment that shows a progressive potential for thefuture. We have got to tackle the problem of keeping young people at work not in centralised areas in Ireland but in diffused areas throughout the country. Big as is the disease of emigration, the drift from rural Ireland to the cities and in the main into the City of Dublin is bigger. It may well be that that drift itself aggravates the unemployment situation in Dublin. A way has to be found not only to deal with the immediate problem but to ensure that as employment on these various schemes of capital development wanes there will be an alternative type of industry and development in rural Ireland that will gradually absorb the unemployed as they become unemployed.

I was glad to hear the Taoiseach refer to the bogs of Ireland. I think that there are immense national fuel resources on the bogs. An immense labour content could be employed on the bogs. I am not afraid to say, no matter who dislikes it, that if it were within my province, I would compel, if necessary, every Irish home and institution to take a certain quantity of turf every year if that ensured that decent young Irish boys would be kept at home in gainful employment on the bogs. However, we have got to go further than that. We have got to ensure that the present generation, those aged from 18 to 20 years, will get back a sense of pride in their own country and a desire to stay at home to work and develop their own country. I do not exaggerate—and there are plenty of people in the House who know I am not exaggerating—when I say that the present generation may be described as being highly sceptical of all politicians and of politics. My attitude is that in the present situation the Government can take two steps to ameliorate the position.

They can, first of all, immediately put into effect substantial schemes as already referred to by various speakers, and some which were referred to by the Taoiseach himself. They can immediately recant this economic folly of over taxation. It may be that the Taoiseach would say to me: where are you going to find the money to do that? To my mind there are certain adjustments in theload of taxation that might take the heaviest burden off the most affected sections. As well as that I do think that some Government will have to face the curbing of administration expenses. The amount of money that is spent unproductively in the Supply and Services account in the general balance sheet of this country is inordinately high as compared with the amount of money actually put into productive work in the State.

These are big problems. I am not going to suggest that you can wave a wand to solve them, but I think it is going to take an immense amount of serious thought and hard work to evolve plans that can give hope for the future to the Ireland of to-day, and that it is going to take a very large earnest of goodwill by way of tax alleviation on the part of the Government to establish or regain any type of confidence from the Irish people. The Government has an extremely difficult task. It has not got the confidence of the people, but it has all the ailments of the present situation around its neck. The Taoiseach has said that he will choose the time and the ground to fight a general election. If he cannot find himself in the situation of being able to grapple witn the immediate serious problems of to-day, I would earnestly say to him as a man who has spent his whole life in the service of this country: go back to the people and seek their opinion; place, the problems and difficulties of the situation before the people and let them send back whatever Government they desire to continue with the problem of building an economic future for this country.

We have had too much bitterness and too much hate, too much dissension on unessential things, and I think it is time that the Irish people were given an opportunity of selecting a Government or a Dáil that would deal with the immediate problems of the present, hoping to ensure a future rather than waste time, as much of the time of many Dáils has been wasted in personal invective and hate about things that happened years ago that may have had rights andwrongs on both sides but were better left to the people of the days gone by. Let us build to-day for the Ireland of to-morrow, and let us ensure when building that the foundations are worthy of the sacrifice which made the First Dáil and the continuance of the First Dáil possible.

I think there is no person in this House, no matter on what side he sits, who will attempt in any way to minimise the importance of the subject under discussion to-night. I think further, from what I have heard with the exception of the last speaker—that there was very little contribution made to the solution of our problems, and those people throughout the country who were waiting for some assurance that their grievances and hardships will be remedied will find very little consolation from reading the papers tomorrow.

Nobody, I think, on the Government side has dared to suggest that the demand of £150,000,000 in taxation is a reasonable one. How that money has to be found or how it will be found nobody has suggested here, but that the money must be found to keep this State going is a fact, and not that alone, but to that £150,000,000 we must add practically £13,500,000 in local taxation, a colossal figure for 3,000,000 people to find for running the State for 12 months. It may be suggested that the question of local taxation should not be linked with the question of central taxation, but I want to point out to the members of the Government that their action contributed very largely to the demand of £13,500,000 in local taxation. The withdrawal of the subsidies imposed burdens on county councils and other local bodies in the upkeep of institutions in every county. The increase in wages justly demanded as a result of the increase in the cost of household commodities put a further burden on the local rates, and those two factors combined are, in the main, responsible for the very heavy increase in local rates this year. It has been said by different people that the only way wre can meet this expenditure is by increased production, and when we talk of increasedproduction we can only think of agricultural production. But can those who work on farms, whether as farmers or labourers, themselves be expected to increase production so long as the burden of overhead expenses is being inereased year by year? Some people speak of production and they are thinking of tillage, and tillage only, but I think one of the most important factors in our production here is the improvement of our grasslands to provide more live stock. If we look at our trade returns we will see that it is on the export of live stock that we practically depend here to preserve our balance of trade.

I said, when speaking on the former Vote on Account, that high national expenditure in itself was not an evil. The Minister for Finance either misunderstood or misrepresented that statement and he suggested that I called for increased taxation. I say again, with all the emphasis I can command, that high expenditure in itself is not an evil or leading to national disaster provided money raised in taxation is used in a productive manner. But unfortunately the vast amount of £150,000,000 contributed by the people of this country will not be spent productively but will be spent largely, as the last speaker said, mainly on administration, and the people who are called on to produce the money to carry out our social services schemes are getting no appreciation or return from this Government.

I said on a former occasion here that I thought it politically and economically foolish that the Government should reduce the grants under the Local Authorities (Works) Act. Schemes promoted as a result of these grants provided rural employment to a very high degree and at the same time vastly improved the land of this country. The Government say to-day that they have increased the grants for the land project work but, as I said on a former occasion, that money will not be needed for the simple reason that the reduced grants available under the Local Authorities (Works) Act will mean that there will be a corresponding reduction in the number of main outfalls which can bemade and the land project cannot be operated without first opening the main outfalls, as would happen if a sufficient number of grants were made available under the Local Authorities (Works) Act. The sale of the machinery provided for the land project scheme has created disemployment in my county and in a number of other counties. It is no excuse for the Government to say that more money is being provided for the land project because the report of the inspectors of the Department of Agriculture who have to examine the different applications for work under the land project in practically every case is to the effect: "We cannot carry out this work until the county council make the outfall". It is sheer absurdity, indeed a species of political myopia, for the Department of Local Government to reduce the grants by a further 50 per cent., seeing that the operation of the land project is impossible unless work is first carried out under the Local Authorities (Works) Act.

In every emergency an appeal is made to the farming community that farmers must produce more, that the agricultural output must increase or we cannot maintain our social services. It must be remembered that the cost of living for the farmer has gone up for the last two years. In other walks of life the increase in the cost of living has been offset by increased wages, but for the man self-employed on his land, there is nothing to meet the increased cost of living. Still, the farmers are told that they must find this £101,500,000. It is they, and the alone, must find it and the Taoiseach and members of the Government know that just as well as I do.

I made an appeal here last year that assistance should be given to the farming community for the purchase of fertilisers because, in that way without any great effort, you can automatically increase by at least 25 or 30 per cent. the output from our land. When I mentioned it, the Tánaiste—he seemed to lose his patience or his nerve—told me to stop talking about it, that there would be no provision for assistance in the purchase of fertilisers. Does any man who ever worked an acre ofland not know that output would be considerably increased if we had sufficient fertilisers to apply to the land? The only reason why fertilisers are not applied to the degree to which they should be applied is that the farmers cannot afford to pay for them. Every farmer realises the vast improvement in his land that could be brought about by the use of artificial fertilisers. He knows that he could feed more live stock, increase his grain output and the yield of his root crops and potato crops. He knows that he could increase the yield from his farm in every form if he could apply sufficient fertilisers, but his financial position does not permit him to do so. I suppose it will be possible for this country to maintain its social services as long as the price of live stock remains high. Fortunately, or unforfortunately, whichever way we look at it, world conditions at present indicate that the price of live stock will remain high for some considerable time to come, but I have no hesitation in prophesying that if there is a sudden drop in the price of live stock our social services will crash.

I have heard some references here to live-stock farmers in certain parts of the country. One would imagine to listen to some of the speakers that these people have not contributed their share to the national income. Live-stock production and live-stock exports are a very important factor in Irish agriculture. I think that, taken on the whole, from the point of view of employment and national income, the store cattle trade of this country forms the most important part of our agricultural industry. For that reason, I should like if some member of the Government would indicate why under the recent agreement, second-grade cattle only are allowed to be exported to the Continent. I should like to know whether that was done at the instigation of the British Government or on the suggestion of some member I of the Irish Government, because I think anybody engaged in the cattle trade will agree that in years past in the Dublin market continental buyers often left British buyers standing and gave a far higher price for stock.

Yes, stores. I can see the position arising that if only second-grade cattle are allowed to be sent to the Continent, the British will have the pick of the market, and it cannot be expected that continental buyers will pay for second-grade cattle the same price as the British pay for grade A cattle. I do not want to suggest anything that would be detrimental to the development of the carcase meat industry. I realise its potential economic value, but I say that if we are to build up the carcase meat industry at the expense of our store cattle trade, I would be very much opposed to it. A system operated in this country for a long time whereby farmers on the inferior land raised cattle until they were one and a half or two years old and then sold them to farmers on the better land in Leinster at a reasonably economic price. After being fed for some time on the fattening lands in Leinster, the cattle were exported as fat cattle. That was a system which operated very satisfactorily, and I do not think anybody in Leinster or Connaught could find any complaint against it.

What does the Deputy mean by that?

There were grounds for complaint on many occasions.

I am afraid the Deputy is not very familiar with this question.

Deputy Finan might continue.

I want to emphasise again—and I say it in no critical or carping spirit—that any action by a Government in this country that would undermine or be detrimental to the store cattle trade would be against the best interests of the Irish farmer.

You are not suggesting that the Government has done anything in that way in the recent trade agreement?

I have pointed out that in the recent trade agreement the export of cattle to the Continent is restricted to second-class grade or grade B.

You had a different story some minutes ago.

If the Parliamentary Secretary asks any man who attends the Dublin market who were the better buyers over the past three or four years in that market at certain seasons he will be told that the continental buyers often left the British standing. The continental buyers bought the best beef at the best price. That cannot happen now because the continental buyers will not be so foolish as to give a higher price for second-grade cattle than the British give for first-grade cattle.

Would the Deputy quote the article in the agreement which provides for that?

There is a copy in the Library.

The Deputy should be able to produce his authority.

I will produce it later.

Get the 1948 Trade Agreement as well.

I do not think it would serve any useful purpose if I were to compare one document with another. What I am saying, I am saying in the interests of the farming community. Was it on the suggestion of a member of this Government, or at the suggestion of a member of the British Government that that change was made?

What change?

The change to which I have referred.

What change?

There was no restriction put as to the grading of cattle.

There was in the 1948 agreement.

Deputy Finan is talking about grading.

And under that agreement we were not permitted to export more than 25 per cent. first-grade cattle, or, of the lowest, 50 per cent.

And cows and bulls were included.

I have not a copy of the agreement with me but, even if the Minister is right, that does not after the situation in the least. Two wrongs can never make a right.

The wrong that was committed by Deputy James Dillon apparently does not count; it is a virtue.

I condemned it for the very same reason. I hold no brief for Deputy Dillon as Minister for Agriculture any more than I do for the present Minister. Neither will I take sides as between one and the other. I am not trying to misrepresent the situation.

I think the Deputy will find if he reads the 1948 agreement that what we say is correct.

If it is in it it should not be in it. It is in this agreement, and I say it should not be in it.

That is what the Deputy has to find out.

Will the Deputy agree that the new trade agreement is a much improved document as, compared with the 1948 agreement? There is an improvement to the extent of 15 per cent. in regard to first-grade cattle and, in addition to that, there is the free export of bulls and cows without restriction.

Furthermore, it was not possible to make it without the 1948 agreement.

Perhaps Deputy Finan would be allowed to make his speech.

I hold that no one should tamper with our store cattle industry. It is an industry in relation to which no action should be taken either nowor in the future by any member of this House which would in any way endanger the store cattle trade. If I thought for a moment that the development of the carcass meat industry would do away with the store cattle industry——

How could it do away with it?

Of course it could. Everybody knows that.

Enlighten our ignorance.

We export store cattle to Britain and that is a very important trade.

You send some of them to Meath for fattening

I do not consider that export. If we were to turn over to the carcass meat trade entirely we would not have an export trade in store cattle.

We would send out more fat cattle.

We would fatten your stores and give a better price for them.

The situation could easily develop in the way in which the situation developed in relation to the bacon factories when the poor unfortunate farmer could only sell to one man in the district.

Is it cattle or bacon the Deputy is talking about?

I suggest to Deputy Blaney that he could leave this matter to people who are better acquainted with the subject than he is.

I would if I could recognise them in this House.

That is the Deputy's own fault. I submit that the agreement is liable to injure the store cattle trade.With regard to unemployment, I believe that if the local Authorities (Works) Act was fully implemented rural employment would become available. I do not suggest the rural unemployment problem is as serious as it is in the city, but there are pockets of unemployment throughout the country. County councils, in order to conserve money for the winter periods when more pecple are normally out of work, are slowing down on their activities.

They have been told to hurry up. They have been told to put schemes forward.

And they have more money.

I am glad that has been mentioned because last week I rang the Department of Local Government asking for sanction for three or four schemes in order to relieve the unemploy ment position and the reply I got was that they were holding the money over for the winter period.

If the Deputy will give me a copy of that reply I will look into the matter.

It was a telephone communication. I pointed out to the gentleman that that was an absurd suggestion because £1 spent on drainage in the summer months gives a better return than £10 spent on drainage in the winter months. In winter the drains are flooded and one cannot get near either the drains or the rivers. If the money is spent now there will be a better return and at the same time there will be some relief of the unemployment situation. I think any reasonable man with any knowledge of drainage must appreciate that winter time is not the time to spend either public or private funds on drainage.

Progress reported; Committee to sit again.
The Dáil adjourned at 10.30 p.m. until 10.30 a.m. on Friday, 24th July, 1953.
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