When dealing with this matter last night I pointed out the enormous improvement that has taken place in our agricultural position to-day as compared with 1951. I pointed out that the increase in the value of our exports of cattle alone for the first nine months of this year, as compared with the first nine months of 1951, was roughly £6,000,000 and that the exports of our other agricultural produce amounted to £43,530,000, as compared with £21,125,000 in 1951. The total increase in the value of our agricultural exports was £27,500,000 in two years. That clearly shows the change that has taken place in so far as our agricultural policy is concerned, due to the change of Ministers, and the change of policy has worked out to the improvement of agriculture generally and of the farming community in particular. That gives the lie to those who have argued up to recently that the agricultural community were not doing their share in relation to increasing production.
Vote 3—Department of the Taoiseach (Resumed).
Hear, hear! A Daniel come to judgment!
The total increase in the value of domestic exports was some £30,000,000, and £27,500,000 of that sum represents the increase in the value of agricultural exports. Those figures speak for themselves.
Hear, hear!
That shows that we have now got over and brought back into production again the 52,000 milch cows that vanished out of the country on the declaration by Deputy Dillon of a price of 1/- per gallon for milk. That is one instance. We have now an increase of some 80,000 cattle since 1951. We have 80,000 more to-day in the Twenty-Six Counties than we had when Deputy Dillon was Minister for Agriculture. Clearly there has been an enormous improvement in the numbers of our cattle.
Hear, hear!
I have pointed out that we have not yet got the results due to the improvement brought about in the sowing and harvesting of 98,000 extra acres of wheat. That shows that the Irish farmer has not yet sent wheat up the spout after the peat and beet— God speed the day! Neither have we got the results of the 112,000 extra tons of beet grown this year. Our milk and chocolate crumb industry shows an increase as compared with 1951—a rather extraordinary increase from £2,000,000 in 1951 to £14,000,000 in the first nine months of this year in the exportation of that commodity. These are somewhat extraordinary figures and they prove that in so far as agriculture is concerned Fianna Fáil policy is the correct one.
What about all the men who have left the land?
I have not got the exact figures of the reduction in the import of maize but if Deputies look up the figures they will find that the reduction is a pretty extensive one, foreign maize having been replaced by barley grown by our own farmers. The fact that we have 160,000 more pigs to-day than we had in 1951 proves that the barley is not doing them any harm.
Hear, hear!
Their condition is improving and it must pay the Irish farmer to fatten pigs on Irish barley, despite the arguments advanced by Deputy Dillon and his colleagues some few years ago. These facts speak for themselves and I, for one, am very glad, as far as our agricultural policy is concerned—mark you, it took a lot to do it—to hear the "hear, hears!" from the late Minister for Agriculture because of the improvement brought about by the implementation of our agricultural policy as against his. It says a good deal for that agricultural policy when we have the plaudits of the man who decried it some years ago. A lost sheep is always welcome to the fold.
I am afraid I could not reciprocate with honesty if I knew the lost sheep was the Deputy.
Considering that the Deputy found himself accepted in the fold, fired out into the wilderness, and brought back again into the fold, I think he should reciprocate.
If we keep to the Estimate we will do much better.
It is not so many years ago that the Deputy was evicted from the Fine Gael Party and now he is back again.
Deputy Corry will please keep to the Estimate.
Deputy Corry has some of the sheep too. Some of them were evicted out of his Party and now they are back again in it.
I am dealing with this Estimate as I find it. I would normally welcome any increased grants for the purpose of putting the county roads in order. When one remembers that the bulk of the money received through the medium of taxation for these roads is not used on them but is put to other uses there is undoubtedly a sound argument and a firm argument for an increased grant for roads, particularly after a period of three and a half years when these roads were robbed of some £6,000,000 in grants. That was the amount of the reduction in grants for public roads during the period of office of the inter-Party Government.
I suggest that the general policy as regards roads is a bit overdone, that there is an inclination on the part of the Government to give grants for main roads and not to worry about the road that is used by the ordinary taxpayer.
That is departmental policy and not over-all policy.
I suggest that it is general policy.
The Deputy can suggest, but it is not. It is departmental policy.
Portion of the development grant that comes under this vote is being used to offset that policy.
It is departmental policy as to how the money will be allocated.
I was only going to point out in passing the condition of affairs in Cork, where the number of fatal accidents has been trebled, due to the straightening and widening of roads and where there is a demand for the lighting of the roads to prevent further accidents.
Every Deputy will wish to say the same thing with regard to his own constituency.
I was dealing last night with the position as regards industry and urging that a large portion of the development grant should be used to establish industries. I was suggesting that permanent employment should be provided for our people in industry rather than partial or short-time employment on roads and drainage. I cannot see any reason why a large portion of this money should not be used to extend the steel industry. I have raised this matter by question and in debate in the House from time to time. There is a part of a tin-plate mill that has been lying idle for nine or ten years while we are importing tin, tin plate and tin cans to the value of £2,500,000 per annum. In these circumstances that factory should be put under way with a view to providing permanent employment for a certain number of men instead of spending this money on relief schemes. There is scope for doing that and there is an opportunity to provide such permanent employment.
A number of towns in this country suffered severely in the past by the change-over from a British Government to an Irish Government. It is about time that industries were set up in these towns that would provide permanent employment. I cannot help wondering at the delay there has been in establishing industries. I have made a suggestion here on previous occasions which should be carried out that the so-called Industrial Development Authority, which is blocking the advance of industry in this country, should be got rid of. The sooner it is got rid of the better.
I noticed from a reply to a question by Deputy Desmond yesterday that there has been practically no change in the number of civil servants in this country in recent years. The burden that has been created in this matter is one that the country could very well do without. The figures speak for themselves. As compared with 1939, there has been an increase of some 9,000 civil servants. If a certain number was sufficient to do the work in 1939 the same number should be sufficient to do it now. There is no justification for the extra burden of some £3,000,000 that has been caused by this increase in the number of civil servants. I had hoped, when the matter was dealt with here before, that there would be some change in the Government attitude on this matter. The people of the country have to be careful. Taxes are mounting. The general burden on the taxpayer has mounted. While there has been an increase, as I have shown, in the value of agricultural exports, that money should be put back into providing productive employment for our people in this country.
It is a welcome sound to hear from the benches of Fianna Fáil rejoicing in the increased output of the agricultural industry. The House will have noticed and attach due significance to the fact that when those rejoicings were voiced they related to the increased exports of cattle and the increased exports of agricultural produce—pigs, sheep, beef, mutton, pork, cattle. It is not necessary for me to remind the House that the cattle that were exported in 1952 were born in 1949 and the cattle that were exported in 1953 were born in 1950, and the cattle that will be exported in 1954 were born in the spring of 1951. But I remind the House that that trend of expanding production dates back to 1948 and it is visible in 1949 and in 1950. There will be Deputies in Fianna Fáil who say: "Well, if there was expanding production then, was not it the cattle that were born in 1945, 1946, 1947?" Yes, it was; everyone of them; but, there is this difference: that if Fianna Fáil had remained in office in 1948 they would have got their throatscut, but in 1948, 1949, 1950, 1951, 1952 and 1953 there were no calves' throats cut.
What is the statistical fact? Fianna Fáil was in office from 1931 to 1948. The statistical and inescapable fact is that the average annual loss of calves from death and slaughter during those 18 years was 80,000 calves. There were factories in this country devoted to the business of slaughtering calves, and there was a loud outcry when I closed them down. As a result of a campaign for the elimination of disease in calves, initiated in 1949, and as a result of our closing down the calf factories, the annual mortality of calves in this country was reduced from 80,000 to something in the order of 10,000. Let the House remember that the first 70,000 calves that were born and survived in 1950 were exported this year, and if we estimate their value conservatively at £50 per head it would represent an addition of £3,500,000 sterling per annum to the value of our livestock exports, not for one year but for year after year after year. Well may Deputy Corry rejoice. I welcome that at last in the ranks of Fianna Fáil we have got one voice to proclaim that the performance of the farmers in this country is deserving of high praise.
When did they change their tune? Are people's memories so short that the White Paper of 1951 is forgotten? Do Deputies forget that the financial policy of this Government was founded on the statement in the White Paper of 1951 that the most optimistic forecast could see no contribution being made to the restoration of our balance of payments by an expansion of agricultural exports? Are people's memories so short that they forget that Fianna Fáil campaigned this country on the slogan that the farmers of Ireland were not able to show increased production commensurate with any other agricultural country in Europe? That was their theme, that if we looked at Denmark, Holland or any other agricultural country, they were forging ahead but that our farmers were stuck in the mud.
I said then that our farmers were doing a better job than the farmers in any country in Europe and, startingwith a greater handicap than any other agricultural country in the world, they were going ahead at a rate that reflected credit upon them and that held high hope for the economy of this country.
Who was right? Show me a country in the whole of Europe that can show an expansion of agricultural production and exports commensurate with the expansion that our farmers can show over the last five years. Remember where our farmers started from. In April, 1948, there were less cattle in Ireland than at any time in the 20th century, less sheep, less pigs and the land was in a state of greater dereliction than at any time since the Famine of 1847. That is where our farmers started and they caught up on and surpassed every agricultural community in the world at a time when, by their own election, they determined to withdraw from the international butter market by stipulating for prices for milk that made Irish butter unsaleable in any competitive market in the world.
I ask this House to reflect on two fundamental economic facts because if they are lost sight of or if they are incorrectly interpreted, as certain as we are in this House, this country will go down to economic ruin. They are two perfectly simple facts. One is that the agricultural industry of this country must export or this nation will die. Every industry, every economic activity in this country depends on our ability to export agricultural produce profitably, and if that power should ever perish in our people the standard of living of every creature in Ireland, whether he be a trade unionist, a civil servant, a doctor, a lawyer, or anybody else, even a farmer, will sink down to subsistence level. In the last analysis every citizen depends for his standard of living on the land and the people who live and get their living on the land. If they make a profit, the whole community will prosper. If they are driven back by losses to subsistence farming, the whole community's standard of living must sink down to that of a pauper.
We tried the experiment of compulsory wheat. We tried the experimentof forcing the farmers, whether they wanted to or not, to grow a crop. I told the Government of that day that they would get nowhere with compulsion, that compulsion meant a steady diminution of yield and there was only one way of getting production from farmers, that was to take steps to make the product of their labour profitable for the producer.
You can get as much wheat as you like grown in this country if you pay 80/- per barrel. You will have a surplus of wheat. You will have out of next year's crop an exportable surplus of wheat from this country—that is as certain as we are in this House— and we will join the French who are paying their farmers 39/- per cwt. for wheat and are hawking their flour in the City of London at 25/- per cwt., and are unable to get anyone to buy it. We will be doing exactly the same but that is our own business. If we want to grow wheat in any quantity, we can grow it by paying a price for it. You will never get a crop in any satisfactory way by trying to compel farmers to grow it because the net result of it will be that you will get a steadily diminishing return per acre on the land both in quantity and in quality.
Fix a price that makes it remunerative to produce wheat and you will get as much wheat as you want but that production of wheat does not matter a damn to the fundamental economy of this country. You can produce wheat, butter, sugar in this country at any price you like to mention; it becomes purely a question of what our people are prepared to pay for it or what the Exchequer is prepared to pour into it by way of subsidy but it has no economic significance whatever, except in so far as it represents a charge on the public purse. The only thing that matters is profit and the amount of commodities that can be exported at a profit to the man who produces them. It has become clear to everybody now, though it used not to be so clear to the Fianna Fáil Party, that profitable production consists of live stock and live-stock products.
Here is a warning, the first fundamental economic fact, that I ask Deputies to grasp and to remember. Profit for a farmer is not primarily a question of price. Profit for a farmer is the difference between the price he can get for his finished product and what it costs him to produce it. We are back in a world where we do not control the price available for our agricultural exports any longer. We have got to go out and seek the best price we can get. I want to warn Oireachtas Eireann that when we are out looking for markets for our farmers, for pigs and pig products in competition with the Danes who have all the maize they want at £22 per ton, our farmers cannot profitably compete with them if they have to pay £32 per ton for the same maize. I warn this House that, whatever codology is talked here, there is no escaping the fact that there is no degree of efficiency, no degree of industry, no degree of skill which will enable any small farmer to offset the handicap of having to pay £10 per ton more for the raw material of the pig industry than his competitors in his principal market.
There is a rough approximate calculation that it takes 8 cwt. of meal to rear a pig from the point of conception to the point of slaughter. If we have to pay 10/- per cwt. more for our feeding stuffs as compared with what our competitors have to pay for the same feeding stuffs, on every pig we produce the small farmer of this country has to give up £4 per pig. £4 per pig! Think of what that means. If you keep a sow and she produces ten bonhams at a litter, the first thing that happens is that you lose £40 before you make a penny. If a man is struggling to get two litters in 12 months, if he has a pretty good sow and is a careful farmer and can bring ten pigs out of each litter to maturity, can you conceive an Irish Parliament laying on that man the obligation to forgo £80 of his profit before he can even enter the market with his competitor? Then he has got to be sure that the factory that processes his pig is going to put his pig, in the form of pork or bacon, on the market in as good a condition as the Danish factoryor he will have to take another cut because of this, be sure; the bacon factory or the slaughterers are only going to pay the farmer what the end product realises on the export market, less the processor's margin of profit, less the trade unionist's rate for slaughtering the pig.
All these charges represent a reduction in the profits that ultimately go back to the farmer. He has lost £80 on two litters of pigs. He has got to meet his competitor in London and he has just to hope in God that the processor who put his product on the London market will treat it as well as the Danish processor treats the Danish pig. If he does, the Irish farmer in Mayo, Sligo, Donegal, Clare, Kerry or West Cork is going to get £80 less for the two litters of his sow than the farmer who lives ten miles outside Copenhagen. It is not that the Danes have some power or that the British have some power to frustrate us, because we grasped the British under the 1951 trade agreement whereby we linked our price for pork and pigs, not to the Danish price but to the price payable to the British farmers. Our farmers' loss is due to nothing that the Danes do or that the British have power to do. It is due solely, entirely and exclusively to what our own Government does to our own people.
Think of what we are doing. The claim is that you must keep the price of maize at 32/- per cwt. so that the farmer who has a surplus of barley that he does not want to use himself can sell it at a profit. We are to get the profit for that farmer who sowed so much barley that he cannot consume it on his own holding, not out of the Exchequer, not out of the British consumer but out of the small farmer who breeds pigs in Donegal, Sligo, Mayo, Galway, Clare, Kerry and West Cork. Is there anybody in this House left with a capacity for saeva indignatioagainst the exploitation of the small people, for whom we stand trustee, by the powerful and the well-to-do? I see small farmers growing their couple of acres of barley and potatoes and feeding their pigs. But in the industry theremay be a man who has used up his own patch of land to produce all that he can, and he goes out to buy more feeding stuff so as to expand his output. He then comes up against the fact that his own Government taxes him to the tune of £4 per pig the moment he goes to buy the raw materials to expand his production. I want to ask this question: is there a factory in Ireland, in Dublin, Cork, Limerick, Galway, Waterford or any other city which finds itself confronted with a demand that it will pay for its raw materials 10/- per cwt. more than its competitors and which must try to export at a profit at the same time? There is not a factory in Ireland that would not close its doors and sack its employees without hesitation if any such demand was made upon it.
I remember that we were not 12 months in office when a factory not 100 miles from this city presented the Government with an ultimatum some three weeks before Christmas that they would lock their doors and put every man working in the factory on the streets if they did not get the tariff on their commodity raised by 50 per cent. When they were asked to pause and allow an examination of their application to be made, the answer was: "There will be no pause; they are all under notice and we will shut down on Saturday." I often regret that we did not harden our hearts and deal with that situation, but we did not want to see the men turned out on the eve of Christmas and we gave way. I would have taken over that factory and taught them that they had a responsibility to the men who worked in it as well as to their own pockets. But the one thing they were determined on was that if their profit was not provided for there would be no work and there would be no production, and it never dawned on any one to say: "Your duty is to tighten your belt, lower your standard of living, sell your Chrysler car and go around in a Ford Anglia." They would have laughed at him. Their answer was: "No profits, no work."
That is private enterprise.
The Deputy remembers the case to which I refer.
That is the privilege of private enterprise.
Not if I had the handling of it. It is a privilege by which the tariff racketeers put a charge on the farmers. What I object to is this. If you want to run rackets of that kind, at least exempt the raw materials of the agricultural industry from their depredations. I believe that if we had the right to operate the agricultural industry in this country without an increased cost on its raw materials thrust down upon it, we could carry them all. But I am warning this House that if the raw materials of the agricultural industry are to be perenially enhanced in price and our farmers are required to sell competitively in a foreign market, we are walking head on into disaster.
There is no use telling me that if you increase the price of netted wire, if you increase the price of barbed wire, if you increase the price of timber, if you increase the price of cement, if you increase the price of feeding stuffs, if you increase the price of fertilisers, that that has no effect on the agricultural industry. Think for a moment of the camel's back. You can lay on straw by straw by straw and the camel staggers on, but when you lay on the last straw and the camel falls, it is not only the camel who dies in the desert but the man who is riding it dies with it. As sure as we are in this House, the whole Irish nation is riding through a dangerous desert on the back of the agricultural camel, and it would be well for those who depend on the camel's survival that they should see in time the peril of continuing to raise these costs.
I was reading an oration delivered by the Tánaiste recently. The brazen-faced audacity of that man fills me with awe. He took upon himself to deliver a lecture to agriculture to remember that the days of the feather-bed were over. My God; feather-bed ! Think of all the crazy structures that man has been responsible for erecting in this country, not on afeather-bed, but on a feather mountain, and if you take one feather out of the mountain the whole structure he has put up will come cracking round his ears. Think of the agressive insults of some of the tariff racketeers in this country, who demand not only a 90 per cent. tariff but a quota so as to ensure that if anybody resists their demand, if any consumer hesitates to pay their maximum demand he will be brought face to face with the fact that he will either pay their demand and like it or do without, because our own Government will say that no more than a certain limited quantity of that commodity is permitted into the country. If the consumer is not prepared to pay the racketeers' price for the substitute he will blooming well do without it, and then I am told that agriculture should get off its feather-bed.
Agriculture is carrying about 40 feather-beds on its back and on top of each feather-bed is reclining a stout industrialist and, not infrequently, he is riding round the feather-bed in a Chrysler or Rolls Royce to show how independent he is. Agriculture is told by the Tánaiste, the patron of these gentlemen, that it must get off the feather-bed. We are told that the Minister for Agriculture is going to open negotiations with the British Government for a new trade agreement in January and he is going to London to discuss with the British Government prices for Irish agricultural produce with a notification from the Deputy Prime Minister of Ireland that agriculture is on a feather-bed and it is time for them to wake up and get off it. What will he say in London when that obiter dictumis produced and he is asked to face reality and to realise that his own far-seeing colleague discerned the fact that his predecessor, Deputy Dillon, put them on a feather-bed and it is damn well time to wake from Deputy Dillon's feather-bed and face the hard realities referred to by the Tánaiste, Deputy Lemass? It is nearly as stimulating as the Taoiseach was on the eve of the National Loan when he said that he was going to run a national loan every 12 months.
At 5 per cent.
I wonder how many people in the Department of Industry and Commerce or how many of the people who frequent that Department would care to join with us on our feather-bed? There is not an industrialist in this country who would not die of starvation in six months on the feather-bed to which the Tánaiste, Deputy Lemass, referred. There is not a small farmer in Ireland who would not retire in affluence after five years in trading under the conditions which the most minor industrialist habitually enjoys at the expense of the farmers at the present time.
Let us have no more talk about the agricultural community living on a feather-bed. The previous Government got for the farmers of this country from the British Ministry of Food no more than they were entitled to, and it was no feather-bed. If Fianna Fáil has any idea in its mind that it is a feather-bed, they had better wake up to the facts of life. If they claim that the small farmers are to go back to the level of peasants, they ought to remember the advice I gave Mr. Webb, the British Minister of Food: "You will get no more cheap food from Ireland; if you reduce the price you are prepared to pay, you will get no eggs from Ireland." If this Government proceeds on the assumption that they can continue to whittle away the margin of profit available to farmers on their production, by raising their costs of production steadily, they are going to wake up one day, when it is to late, to the fact that the land of this country has gone over to subsistence farming and there will be no surplus margin for the trade unionist, the industrialist, the public servant or the professional man to live out of. And remember, if that happens twice in our time, it will take much better men than anybody in this House to put it right. That is a very grave thing to realise.
Since this Government came in, consider what has been done. We put prices of essential feeding stuffs anything from £6 to £10 a ton higher than anything our competitors in the British market have to pay. We put a tax on fertilisers. We raised thetax on a tractor drawing milk to the creamery from £6 10s. to £36 per annum. We are about to pass a Bill through the House which will levy a further £100,000 on the rates chargeable on land. We are going to increase the rates by at least 2/- and it may be 5/- per £ per annum in respect of the Health Act. All that expense has to be met out of agricultural production on the land and out of the profit. We all know by experience of compulsory wheat that there is only one way to get production out of the land and that is to make it profitable. Surely it is time we woke up to the fact that, if we make every branch of agriculture unprofitable the whole thing will dry up, with consequential disaster for this country.
Do you remember the time you were told the method of resolving our balance of trade difficulties was a reduction of imports? That is when it was fashionable to say nothing could be hoped for from an expansion of exports. Have any of you looked at the trade returns? Deputy MacEntee, I rejoice to understand, is rapidly returning to his full and normal health and we may expect to see him active in the public arena again at an early date. Most of us in the House appreciate that, after the hard knocks which are given and taken in this House, underneath we entertain for one another a warm solicitude. Deputy MacEntee stated publicly that by reducing domestic consumption he hoped to redress the balance of trade by reducing imports. He, accordingly, formulated a proposition that our people were eating too much and living too well. He raised the price of all foodstuffs and most commodities our people consume, so that they would be able to afford less and thus cut down imports. He then proceeded to point to the trade returns and say: "Behold! Imports have gone down." He hoped that nobody would discover that one of the reasons for the decline in the volume of imports was that the stockpile, the existence of which he vigorously denied, was being used up. His colleague, the Tánaiste, proceeded to produce the stockpile as his alibi for the unemployment that was beginning to manifest itself and the alibi for theunemployment was the stockpile: "There can be no production until we have used up all that we have here." So Fianna Fáil used up the stockpile.
Now look at the trade returns. Domestic—total imports: June, 1952, £11.45 million; June, 1953, £14.46 million; July, 1952, £12.62 million; July, 1953, £15.61 million; August, 1952, £9.88 million; August, 1953, £13.07 million; September, 1952, £11.89 million; September, 1953, £13.40 million; October, 1952, £15.05 million; October, 1953, £18.44 million. The stockpiles are gone and the imports are now running from 20 to 30 per cent. in excess of what they were last year when the stockpiles were under process of consumption. What would have happened to us already if the dismal forecast of the 1951 White Paper had not been belied by the events?
The 1951 White Paper could see no hope of any early contribution by exports to the solution of the balance of payments problem. But what is happening? The domestic exports were: May, 1952, £7.17 million; May, 1953, £9.14 million; June, 1952, £8.13 million; June, 1953, £9.18 million; July, 1952, £7.88 million; July, 1953, £9.86 million; August, 1952, £8.50 million; August, 1953, £9.57 million; September, 1952, £9.43 million; September, 1953, £11.27 million; October, 1952, £9.06 million; October, 1953, £10.40 million.
By the end of this year our exports will have attained the total of £105,000,000 sterling. Ask yourselves what they were in 1947? Ask yourselves, if the trend in 1947 in our exports had continued, where would we be to-day? On our beam-end. Ask yourselves what is going to happen if the present trend in import prices and volume continues. Remember this. Import prices have been steadily falling. Look at the volume of imports. The increase in June over last year is 33 per cent. in volume; the increase in July is 30 per cent.; in August, about 40 per cent.; in September— speaking now in terms of volume—it is from 4.14 to 4.71. Look at the increase in the volume of exports in every oneof the months, beginning in June: June, from £3.12 to £3.60 million; July, from £2.71 to £3.41 million; August, from £2.83 to £3.15 million; September, from £3.16 to £3.78 million. What would have happened to us if the increase in our agricultural exports had not redressed the balance of our increased imports and in addition— and lots of people forget this—replaced £4,000,000 worth of exotic exports represented by sweetened fat and minced meat—which disappeared completely— and the gap left there by it had to be filled before our agricultural exports showed anything upwards on the previous year on the total figure.
I am asking this House to face this problem. Either we make it an absolute economic rule of this State that no fiduciary measures by the executive and no legislation of this House will operate to increase the cost of agricultural industry or we shall all perish. I add, as an addendum to that, that if that rule be accepted and the same agricultural policy is pursued in the future, we have here in this country the prospect of a better living—I am saying "a better living"—I am not saying a richer living or a more remunerative living, but a better living for our population than is available in any country in the world—and I include the U.S.A. Denmark, Holland, or any place else you like to name.
I have no desire to see our people adopt the standard of living acceptable to the Danes or the Dutch. I have no comment or adverse criticism at all to make about it except to say that I would be a damn sight happier as a farmer in rural Ireland than I would be as a farmer in Jutland or in Holland. Let the Danes and the Dutch have any kind of life they want, but if any man in our country wants to swop our way of living with that of the Danes or the Dutch then I think he is just crazy. Our method of life and our system of living is much preferable to that obtaining in the U.S.A. Others may disagree with that statement. That is why a great many people go to America although they have perfectly comfortable homes here in Ireland. They want to go. I have no complaint about it. In our day, the Leas-Cheann Comhairleand I went to the U.S.A. and we came back again. Plenty of others stay there and they have as much right to stay there as the Leas-Cheann Comhairle and I had to come back. Is it not madness to throw away that potentiality for the want of thought? I wonder if it is for the want of thought or whether it is some crazy malice.
Let me draw the Taoiseach's attention to a very strange transaction. The Taoiseach may remember that while we were in office I formulated the parish plan. The purpose of the parish plan was to bring within easy reach of every farmer in Ireland the most modern technical training available for the exploitation of the land. That plan was contemptuously rejected by Fianna Fáil. Yet, last week, I saw that the Minister for Agriculture and the Minister for Education went down to Boherbue and announced that one of the greatest revolutions in agricultural practice in this country was the making of agricultural instruction of a high degree of efficiency immediately available to approximately a thousand farmers supplying Boherbue creamery. If the Minister for Education and the Minister for Agriculture consider that the greatest boon that could be conferred on the farmers in the Boherbue creamery supply area is to have brought within their reach the parish plan formulated by our Administration three years ago, why will the Taoiseach not tell his Minister for Agriculture to take out of the file in the Department of Agriculture the scheme that was formulated and that is ready for operation to-morrow?
Why was it not put through?
I will tell you. It was one of the most damnable things ever done. I got the 27 instructors appointed. I was ready to take over South Tipperary, Longford and West-meath. A brat organised a strike because the salary scales available to agricultural instructors could not be fixed until there was a general realignment of the scales payable to all public servants. The Appointments Commissioners appointed the men. When the fellows went down to gettheir warrants of appointment there were pickets outside, operated and run by a brat who was himself in a good job and is still in it. That is the reason. It took me 12 months to circumnavigate that conspiracy, smash it and get back under way again. Then, and only then, was the plan to go forward. Then we went out of office and our successors said the whole scheme was a fraud. All I am asking is that we do for the three parishes in every part of Ireland what the Minister for Education say is eminently desirable in Boherbue. I agree with them 100 per cent. I would be delighted to see my successor acquiring all the kudos of the groundwork I did in that regard. The maps are there, the counties are divided up into parishes, the whole administration is devised. Even the officer technically qualified to administer the plan is there in the Department, I believe, with nothing to do at present. He is there for that purpose—to run the particular kind of instruction and technical services identical with those envisaged for the Boherbue creamery administration area.
I quite agree with the Minister for Education and the Minister for Agriculture. The key to increased production is not compulsion, not telling the farmers where to get off but putting within their reach, for those who want it, access to the best methods and to the best information and providing the link with the Department of Agriculture which will bring the farmer on his land into contact with the admirable schemes made available by the Department of Agriculture but which it is extremely difficult to get the farmers to bring into operation on their own holdings partially because they do not know about them and partially because they have nobody in the locality to explain them to them. Do Deputies realise this astonishing fact? When I wanted to communicate to the farmers of this country the value and the urgent need for the use of phenothiazine and hexachloroethane, I had no means of contacting them except by sending out ½d. postcards.
I sent out about 250,000 halfpenny postcards because there was no otherway in which I could communicate directly with our farmers. I had to get the postman to bring a postcard to their homes and to drop it in their letter-box—a postcard explaining the value of these two things. The Minister for Agriculture has no direct contact of any sort, kind or description with the farmers of this country. If he wants to communicate with any farmer on any particular problem he must detach a member of his staff and send him down the country with a special assignment. The Minister for Agriculture has no means of making direct contact with the farmers of the country at all.
In my judgment, the Taoiseach is daft about most things but, in regard to matters of education, he is usually pretty rational. It is a source of constant surprise to me. On this matter of agricultural education, I assure him, he could with great advantage employ himself and the Minister for Agriculture and the Minister for Education. If he will urge them to extend to other areas of the country exactly what is being done in Boherbue, he will make a greater contribution to agricultural production than anything else done in the 16 years of his first administration and the two years of his second.
I want to refer now to what I regard as the second fundamental economic fact in our lives. It is not how much money the Irish Government think it expedient to borrow at any time that matters so much. What really matters is what they spend the money which they borrow upon. We can borrow money with great advantage and spend it on the capital development of this country, in the confident anticipation that our expanding national income derived from increased production will carry the burden without the slightest difficulty, if we spend the money right; but if we borrow money and fritter it away, we can cripple the country, or if we admit the principle that the moneylenders of this country have the right to hold the community up to ransom for 5 per cent. interest on the money they require for national development.
Remember that the acting-Minister for Finance has laid it down that the sole reason we elected to pay 5 per cent. on the National Loan was that the Irish Government thought it was a good thing to give any investor in that National Loan an attractive return on his money. That is his own testimony repeated and emphasised. What does that mean? That policy resulted in the past two years in this phenomenon that a young man who got married in 1949 and borrowed money from a local authority under the Small Dwellings (Acquisition) Act wherewith to build a house for himself and the family he hoped to raise, who bought the land, built the house and went into possession was told: "You will have to pay 22/6 per week for 30 years and then the house is yours," while his brother, three years later, who bought an identical piece of land side by side, who borrowed from the same local authority and who built the very same house, subject to this consideration, that the cost of building materials had come down in the meantime, was told, on going into that house, that he would have to pay 32/6 per week over the same period of years.
Who in this House does not know that hundreds of such fellows gave up hope of building their houses and joined the queue of people asking the municipality to build houses for them, with two consequences? The first was that on every house not built under the Small Dwellings Act the municipal authority and the Government lost £500, because it cost the municipal authority and the Government £500 more to provide a municipal house for rent for that man than it would have cost them to help him build a house for himself. The other consequence is that a friend of mine living with his wife and two children, one an infant of about four months and the other two and a half years, in a single tenement room in Dublin is told, when he asks for a house, that they cannot even consider his case for another 18 months because of the queue of people who are living six and five in a room who must be provided for before they can attend to him.
Can anything be dafter in a sane community? Can anything be dafter when we have money, raw materials, idle men, condemned to the labour exchange or to emigration, and fellows wanting to get married and to build their own houses, than to say: "No, we will not let you. We are going to lend £62,000,000 sterling to the British Government so that their citizens can build houses at 2 per cent., but if you want to borrow money, you must pay 6 per cent."? Is that not daft? The British Government have before Parliament now a Bill identical with the Bill which Deputy Keyes brought in here when he was Minister for Local Government, providing that, if a man can put down £100, the British Government will either advance the money to him to build his house or will indemnify the building society who are prepared to advance only 80 per cent. of the valuer's value of the house. The British Government say: "Give him the balance, and, if he puts down £100, you carry the risk of 80 per cent. of your valuer's valuation and we will indemnify you for the differential. We want to provide that young men earning weekly wages who have a reasonable prospect of being able to pay the rent and who put down £100 are certain to get the necessary finance at a price they can afford to pay to build their houses."
That is in a country where building is most rigorously controlled because there is a shortage of workers, a shortage of materials and a shortage of money—they are borrowing money from us—but here in our country where there is a surplus of materials and of money—we are lending it to Great Britain—and a surplus of unemployed men who are emigrating to Great Britain to build houses for the British people, we say: "No, not less than 6 per cent., and, if that means 32/- per week which you cannot afford to pay, go and live in a tenement room."
Here, however, is the most remarkable miracle of all. Look around the House at Deputies on every side. There is not one who wants that, except the Minister for Finance and the acting-Minister for Finance, one of whom isignorant and the other silly. Not one average common sense Deputy who lives amongst his neighbours, either in Fianna Fáil, Fine Gael, Labour or any other Party in the House, wants that; but there is a kind of mysterious enclave into which the common people must not intrude and at the portals of which Deputy Aiken and Deputy MacEntee stand like Gog and Magog, except that one is a big Gog and the other a little Magog, saying: "Let none of you enter here where angels fear to tread, and we are the angels. Keep out—you must not discuss these matters."
There are a few angels in Foster Place.
There is no power in this Republic superior to Oireachtas Éireann.
They are superior.
No; let us get this clear. I am sick of hearing people say that civil servants do this and central banks do that. Civil servants do nothing but what we tell them to do. Central banks take instructions from this House and there is no power in this country strong enough to challenge this House, if the Executive has the intelligence and the courage to oppose it.
That is the point.
Let us put the cap where it fits. There is no use denouncing the Central Bank for doing its job, the Department of Finance for doing its job or the bureaucrats for doing their job. They will do what the law requires them to do. We make the law and the Government of this country propose to us the laws that can be made. Do Deputies think that if I brought in a law to-morrow requiring what Deputy Keyes tried to achieve, that any man with £100 would be able to build his house at the rent he could afford to pay, I should be likely to get it passed Who would block it? The Government would block it.
Who fixes the interest charges?
Did you not hear Deputy Aiken, the acting-Minister for Finance, say from the opposite benches three days ago that he fixed the interest charges?
He does not do it.
Wait a moment. I want to tell Deputy Davin that in this case it was he who did it. The Government did it.
The unknown warrior.
No, no, no. There are no ghosts to dominate this House. That is a fact I know because when some people started waving ghostly garments when we were in this House we said: "Look boys, come up in your lounge suits and throw off the white sheets and we will tell you what you have got to do and if you will not do it we will go to Oireachtas Éireann and ask it to make you do it." They took off their white sheets and proved to be most public spirited citizens who said: "Your mind is made up, Minister, and we will do it." There is no mystery about that. This is the sovereign Parliament of this Republic and there is no power in the world superior to it in this country.
The Bank of England.
No, sir. Let us get that out of our minds. The Minister has made a perfectly clear declaration that it is Government policy and that they fixed the rate of interest.
They agreed to it.
They did not. You had a silly, vain little man as Minister for Finance who wanted to present himself to the country as a pillar of orthodoxy greater than the crisis that confronted him. He sold that gag to the Fianna Fáil Government who knows as much about public finance as my foot. It was only when they were in it up to their necks that it suddenly dawned on them they were travelling a ruinous and iniquitous path. Why did they swallow it? Here is something which I think is shocking and wicked. I believe the Taoiseach was party to it. I think he committed a crime. I think he did allthat as part of their dirty campaign of trying to denigrate the work we did. I think they did all that in order to provide circumstantial evidence for the allegations they were making that we had crippled the national finances and had been recklessly spending the assets of the nation. In order to lend verisimilitude to that slander they made an announcement.
First of all, let us remember the story. They said they would not have enough money to pay civil servants at the end of the year and that they dare not float a loan in the autumn of 1951, as Deputy McGilligan had declared his intention of doing. Actually, while he was going out of office he converted a 5 per cent. loan to a 3½ per cent. basis. He got two-thirds to three-quarters of the total loan converted. The following autumn his successor said he dare not seek a loan and he spent in five months £24,000,000 in cash that we left for him out of the American Loan Counterpart Fund.
He did not thank you.
He said we left him in debt until we nailed that to the desk. In the autumn of 1952 he went to the country and borrowed money at 5 per cent. and the loan has ever since stood at a premium. The consequence of that decision which Deputy Aiken said from these benches three days ago was taken freely by the Government was to throw thousands of men into the ranks of the unemployed builders' labourers, thousands as emigrants to Great Britain and it prevented hundreds of people from building houses who would otherwise have built them. It drove a number of small contractors themselves into the ranks of the unemployed. I met a small contractor——
There are many such.
——registering at the labour exchange with six labourers who had been working for him. He was now bankrupt and had to seek a job himself, and all that because Deputy Aiken, the acting-Minister for Finance, said they determined it was a good thing and that if people were going to lend the Government moneythey should get a good rate of interest on it.
They are afraid to tell the truth.
I do not think so. I think that was all done for one diabolical purpose, that of denigrating their predecessors in office. We were told the Local Authorities (Works) Act had spent its usefulness and that money was not going to be provided by this means for improvements. There was no more work to be done. Does Deputy Davin remember that?
A national development fund is to be established by statute if you please. We are planning to borrow £43,000,000 this year for capital works but we had to pass a Bill to borrow £5,000,000. We know what that is for—the two by-elections. Remember the biscuit factory in Ballina? "Vote for Deputy Calleary and you will all eat chocolate biscuits in Ballina. Vote for Deputy Lahiffe and you will all be making frills in Loughrea. Vote for whoever they are going to put up in Cork and Louth and there is £5,000,000 of good public money." Can you picture them licking their chops already as to how that is going to be spent but in case there should be any doubt about it the Tánaiste has taken up the theme already?
He says that he is going to borrow £1,000,000 from the Development Fund for the roads. Is it necessary to pass a Bill to establish a development fund to get £5,000,000 in order to borrow £1,000,000 for the roads? There is £500,000 for urban and rural improvements schemes so that Dundalk and Drogheda can be catered for with the right hand and Dunleer, Louth and Ardee can be catered for with the left hand. And in case anybody should be overlooked there is a further sum for minor drainage works. Under what statute? The Local Authorities (Works) Act.
Revived!
Did those minor drains cease to carry water since 1951? We heard of the chosen people coming to the shores of the Red Sea, the waters of which rolled back and they walkeddry-footed across it. Was there a miracle performed on the minor drains of Louth from 1951 to the eve of the Louth election? Were they all dried up at source until the by-election began? Why was it deemed expedient to stop the Local Authorities (Works) Act two years ago and borrow £500,000 to start it again to-day? Is not that good substantial evidence of malice? Was it not stopped because they wanted to represent the thing as being ineffective and unprofitable? Why have they slowed down the land project?
It has not been slowed down.
What was their first great executive act in respect of the land project when they came into office? I am told, though I have never seen it, that Deputy Thomas Walsh so far degraded himself—I am going to state his further title though he ought to be ashamed of this gesture as a Minister—as Minister for Agriculture as to make an executive Order under some statute with a long title changing the name of the land project. Can you believe that? An Order has been made, sealed with the Minister for Agriculture's official seal, signed by Thomas Walsh, Minister for Agriculture, changing the name of the land project. That was his first contribution to the work. His second contribution was to announce that he wanted to sell the machinery; and the third contribution, to announce that the whole project in Connemara was a fraud and that he proposed to wind it up. And he made a bold bid to wind it up until the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Agriculture, Deputy Bartley, came up from Connemara and said: "My life would not be worth an hour's purchase if you stopped the project in Connemara," and I am sure Deputy Duignan had a word in season to say, too, about it. But whatever was said by either of them the project is going ahead in Connemara.
The Taoiseach may be told that work under the land project is not being damped down. Would he be surprised to hear—for I would be glad to send him the letter if he would—that a farmer who put in his application to have his land drained in County Waterford on the first day the project was made to apply to that county received a letter within the last couple of months telling him that although the pipes had been piled on his land two years ago, as certain outlets required to be cleared before the land could be suitably drained and the limitations of public finance forbade the undertaking of the clearing of these outlets in this year, the work on his farm had not been undertaken heretofore and could not be contemplated until next year, three and a half years after he had put in his first application? Remember, probably one of the reasons why the outlets could not be cleared was that you suspended the Local Authorities (Works) Act with which the land project was interlocked and working closely. The Waterford County Council would have cleared these outlets and all these works on the various farmers' places could have been undertaken once these outlets had been cleared but you wound up the Local Authorities (Works) Act.
We did not.
All you did was to put it in suspension like Mahomet's coffin.
The Local Authorities (Works) Act was not stopped.
The Taoiseach ought to open his mind and his ears to the facts. You are now proceeding to borrow money from this pseudo development fund to recommence operations under the Local Authorities (Works) Act.
They were never closed.
You will at least admit it was very materially cut down.
Because of the principle which the Deputy was pressing some time ago, that the purpose for which money was being spent was the most important thing.
Certainly. Could any purpose be more important than the clearing of outlets to enable land in the area to be drained?
Yes, if it was applied for that purpose.
If it was not, why are you going to make it available again?
To see if there are any works that would be economic in the proper sense.
Of course they are. The engineers are not fools.
The engineers' business was not to find out whether it was economic.
Do not put up fraud schemes.
They stopped the scheme because they said all the economic plans were exhausted. Everything that could be done effectively had been done.
The scheme was not stopped.
It was virtually stopped.
It depends on what the Deputy means by that.
It was very substantially reduced. Will the Taoiseach accept that? I draw his attention to the fact that the land project was held up, very probably as a result of that reduction.
The figures show quite the opposite.
Figures are not everything, are they?
The amount of land reclaimed, the amount of money spent, are these no indications?
Yes, they are. Perhaps the Taoiseach would send for those responsible for the project and ask them how many applications they have filed with which they could have dealt if they had not been told to stop. Perhaps he would ask the Deputies of hisown Party to tell him how many representations they have had from their own constituents about applications to have land drained which are outstanding for over three years. I put it to him—unless there is a very different rule obtaining in his Government from that which obtained in the Government of which I was a member —if the attention of the then Taoiseach was drawn to the fact that applications were waiting for three years to have the benefit of the scheme which was supposed to be administered by my Department, I think Deputy Costello would have inquired from me, as Minister for Agriculture: "How is it that the people who applied three years ago to benefit under a scheme administered by your Department can write to me and enclose a letter from officers of your Department to say that the work cannot be contemplated for another 12 months, although you, as Minister for Agriculture, authorised the deposit of drainage pipes on their holdings three years ago?"
In the face of those facts will anybody deny that the project was slowed down? I think you did these things for no other purpose than to denigrate your predecessors. That was a criminal wrong. That exceeds the bounds of decent politics. You have no right to leave people in tenement rooms; you have no right to deny a farmer the opportunity of having his land rehabilitated in order to lend verisimilitude to the slander you wish to promulgate that your predecessors dissipated the national resources.
I could speak on many things but I would like to focus the attention of the House on these two fundamentals if I could: if you go on raising the cost of production in the agricultural industry you will destroy us all. If you continue on the principle that it is right to pay 5 per cent. or 4¾ per cent. for money borrowed to develop our own country while you are lending it to Great Britain at 2 per cent. you are defeating the best interests of our people; and as an addendum to that if you borrow money and then spend it to buy votes in by-elections you will ruin thiscountry irretrievably. You charged us, when we were in office, with dissipating the resources of this nation, and you said that when you came into office you found debts without the wherewithal to pay them. We demonstrated that there were no debts, but that there was £24,000,000 of cash money.
And a greater amount of debts or commitments to be met.
Observe the old war horse how he skips from debts to commitments. That is a jump we made you take in Wicklow—off the debts, on to commitments. Yes, you found millions of pounds worth of commitments that we proudly and confidently made, resolutely determined to fulfil them to the last farthing. Show me a single one of them that you brought into this House to cancel. There is a challenge. This is the Taoiseach's Estimate, and I glory in the fact that when he came into office in 1951 he found millions of pounds worth of commitments into which we had proudly and resolutely entered in the name of the Irish people. Show me a single one of them that Fianna Fáil brought into this House to cancel.
I will give now a catalogue of the commitments that we found when we went into office, that we brought into Dáil Éireann and said: "There is a commitment that our predecessors entered into and we are now going before the people to cancel it; we are not going through with it." We found a plan to buy Constellations and to operate them. That was a commitment that we brought into this House and we cancelled it. We said that we would not keep that commitment.
And you sold the Constellations.
Yes, and we invested the money in houses and hospitals, in the rehabilitation of the land and in the employment of our own people rather than in flying high-heeled actresses across the Atlantic. Who says that we did wrong?
Were they not there before you came in?
Deputy Killilea has now been brought in to cause a riot, but there will be no riot. You will see Deputy Corry rambling in in a few minutes, and others coming in, too, but let them riot amongst themselves outside. Let us have this catalogue of commitments, one after the other. There was another commitment that we found when we came into office. C.I.E. was building a bus station, and it was going to cost them, was it £3,000,000? We got notice from C.I.E. that they had no money to buy coal to run the engines. We wanted to know what they were going to buy the coal for. We said there was no use in having a bus station if they had no buses to run into it, and that they ought to buy oil for the buses. We bought the bus station, and we planned to take the civil servants out of Árus Brugha and put them into the bus station. We said that we could evacuate the Castle and so dispose of Fianna Fáil commitment No. 2. There was another commitment. There was a plan to spend £9,000,000 on Dublin Castle. In connection with it, there was a beautiful model which had cost £1,500 to make.
It did not.
how much did it cost?
Will the Deputy make some attempt to be accurate when speaking?
When we came in that model was there. It took up the whole of the table in the ante-room to the room where the Government met. It was so big that there was not room on the table to write a halfpenny postcard. The plan was to spend £9,000,000 on the Castle. That was commitment No. 2. We came into Dáil Éireann and we cancelled that. We said that it could wait until we saw how many civil servants we could evacuate from the Castle, from Árus Brugha and from 17 other buildings in the city. We said that, when we had evacuated the College of Science and had provided alternative accommodation for UniversityCollege outside the city, there would be much more accommodation for civil servants, and that we were not going to spend £9,000,000 on Dublin Castle. We cancelled that commitment. We told C.I.E. that we would take over the bus station. If we had not taken it over it would never have been built, because C.I.E. had not the money to pay for the slates, the glass or the cement to cover the steel girders that had been put up. Deputy Norton took it over, paid for it and made it available for the Department of Social Welfare. That was commitment No. 3. These were the commitments that we brought into Dáil Éireann and cancelled them.
We had debts of £10,500,000 which our predecessors had left us and which Deputy McGilligan had to repay out of the £12,000,000 which he raised by way of a public loan in the autumn of 1948. We paid them. Then we had coal sailing up the Liffey to us in boat-loads. We did our level best to cancel that commitment. In connection with it we were told: "No, that is a contract and there is Government signature to that contract." Deputy MacEoin used to be interviewed every now and then and asked when was the commission going to be paid on that contract. We did our best to turn back the boats which were coming up with African coal. We found that we could not turn them back, and we had to pile the coal in the Phoenix Park, where it poisoned the ducks in the President's pond, and, having buried the ducks, we had to pay commission on the blooming coal. Then we found that we could get no one to burn it. It was African coal.
There was another commitment which we tried to cancel. Some Deputies may have forgotten this one. When we came into office logs were coming into the Park at the rate of 200 tons a day, or was it 1,000 tons a day?
Why not make it 1,000,000?
The Taoiseach can check the figures, but everyone knew that the State was losing a very large sum on every ton of logs that was coming in. Was there an impending fuelshortage in the city at that time? Was there the danger that grates in humble homes would go without supplies? There was a certificate from the Department of Supplies to the effect that there were enough logs in the Phoenix Park to furnish a prospective demand for logs in the City of Dublin for the next ten years, and that it was then a problem of extreme complexity to know where they would put the blooming logs. We asked: "Well, if that is so, why do the logs keep coming in?" We discovered that a decision had been taken to stop the logs on the eve of the by-elections in 1947. And then somebody said: "Oh my God, such a time to stop the logs coming in! Let them come!" And they got such a shock in the two by-elections that they forgot all about the logs and they kept coming in, like the dip candles in Windsor. It was like the time that George III ordered that 1 lb. of dip candles be delivered to Windsor in 1750 and they kept coming in. The dip candles were forgotten about until 1847 when Prince Albert discovered that they were still being delivered. Similarly they forgot here that the logs were coming in, from where they were coming and where they were going.
We stopped the logs. That was a commitment of Fianna Fáil, and we came into Dáil Éireann and told Dáil Éireann that it was a commitment of Fianna Fáil which we proposed to terminate. That is the way to deal with commitments. Let me ask this question of the Taoiseach who says he found commitments from our Government when he came into office—I have catalogued for him a tithe of the commitments we found when we came into office and had to cancel—let him catalogue for me one single commitment that he found in the whole of the Government that he thought it prudent or right to cancel when he came into office? There was not one. There was not one that he dared to cancel. He discovered on examination that every one of them was good for Ireland and the Irish people.
Mr. de Valera
Our attitude was not the attitude of the Deputy.
To what?
Mr. de Valera
I will have my opportunity.
The Taoiseach is a very orderly Deputy as a rule except when he shakes down that lock in front of his brow and then he is liable to become skittish. Well, it is no thinner than my own. If he wants to make Delphic interjections I cannot complain, but I do not know what he means when he says his attitude was not the same as mine. I regard him as the greatest curse and affliction that ever came upon the Irish race and I would regard it as catastrophic if he and I had the same attitude or if we thought alike. The fact that he is the greatest curse and affliction of the Irish people does not alter the fact that he is a very agreeable man with whom to spend an evening. Apart from that I would not expect to find him thinking as I do but I do not know to what particular aspect of our activities he refers when he makes that observation.
My purpose is to prove that he found no debt when he came into office but that he found £24,000,000 of cash in the Loan Counterpart Fund and £6,250,000 of cash in the Grant Counterpart Fund and that he has the £6,250,000 of cash still and accrued interest thereon, and instead of going for a loan in the autumn of 1951 he elected to spend the £24,000,000 in cash that we left there as a reserve fund and postponed his borrowing to the autumn of 1952 when he negotiated it at 5 per cent. with the consequences I have described.
So I ask him to grasp a simple fundamental economic fact that it is not the quantity of money spent that matters but how we spent it and on what terms we borrowed it. I want to make a clear distinction between a commercial loan on the one hand and Government borrowing for national development on the other. I want to ask this question in Dáil Eireann with fullest deliberation: where is the Deputy or the Minister who will get up to argue with me that it is right and proper, prudent and conservative for the British Government or the United States Government to borrow£600,000,000,000 sterling free of interest to purchase guns and ammunition and the machines of war, all of which are to be dissipated in smoke leaving no asset after them but victory (God bless the mark), and that it is criminal, reckless, revolutionary and Bolshevik to borrow money on similar terms to house your own people, to rehabilitate your own land, to hospitalise your own sick and to increase your own national income?
I do not understand how that case can be made. I do not understand how it is prudent or right to require the municipality of Dublin to pay 5 per cent. to an insurance company on a loan of 20 years' duration to house the people of our city while we lend £63,000,000 to the British Treasury at less than 2 per cent. I do not see why it is right that the Government of this sovereign Republic should of its own volition elect to pay 5 per cent. to the moneylenders for money we require for the benefit of our own country while we lend three times as much to the British Government at 2 per cent.
Why did you pay 4½ per cent. for £40,000,000 to America?
I am not aware that we paid 4½ per cent. I understand that the rate of interest on the Marshall Loan was 2½ per cent. with five years free of interest and I would like to remind the Deputy that when his Party took office in 1951 if they did not approve of that transaction, there was £24,000,000 in cash which he could have carried round to the American Embassy and taken £24,000,000 at least off the account.
It was invested by the——
No. There was £24,000,000 there in cash in the Central Bank which could be drawn upon at a moment's notice by the Minister for Finance. I do not say that he had £24,000,000 in sovereigns banked up against the corner of the wall.
Or in dollars.
But if the Deputy wanted to pay £24,000,000 back to the American Ambassador there wasnothing to stop him. Do not let us forget that within three months of the Government coming into office they were providing all the dollars that the mincemeat manufacturers required for the purchase of raisins and prunes. Now if we could get dollars to buy raisins and prunes, were not dollars available to liquidate the £24,000,000 that we wanted to pay back to America?
The money was invested in the Central Bank.
I want to make this clear. I know the Deputy is slow of comprehension. Suppose these five sheets of paper were bank notes and each one represented a £1 note. There were 5,000,000 times as many bank notes as there are sheets of paper there.
Stick to that; you gave it to the Central Bank.
Now, if the Deputy had earned £500,000 every year since he was born, that was the amount that was lying in the Central Bank. If the Deputy were Minister for Finance and wanted to do so, he could have gone down in a cab and loaded the £24,000,000 into the cab, whipped up his horse and driven round to No. 10 Merrion Square and taken it in his own hands and given it to the ambassador. If he wanted to give him dollars, he could have gone to the Minister for Finance and said: "Instead of buying prunes and raisins to make into mincemeat to send to Great Britain, buy dollars."
You bought mouth-organs with it.
Wait a moment. Buy dollars so that I can deliver my carload of dollars to No. 10 Merrion Square. But you did not do that.
Why did you borrow them to buy mouth-organs?
They spent those dollars in five months.
The Deputy did not answer.
I am glad the Deputy has asked a question for I am always pleased to undertake the education of Fianna Fáil Deputies. He wants to know why we borrowed dollars from America. I will tell him. I am glad the Deputy is so anxious to learn. We had plenty of money.
At what percentage?
The Deputy wanted, first of all, to know why we borrowed the dollars. Is not that so?
Yes.
Now the Deputy will hear why, whether he likes it or not. The Deputy has probably heard of the European Payments Union.
Yes, I did hear about it.
Very well. He knows that in 1948 the European Payments Union was in dire distress for want of dollars. In fact, they were buying more from the United States than they were selling to the United States and they had no dollars wherewith to pay. The Deputy knew that. He also knew that his Government had made an arrangement to become a member of the Sterling Pool in 1932 or 1933 after Great Britain and the United States went off the gold standard. Did the Deputy know that?
We were always a member of the Sterling Pool.
There was no Sterling Pool before that.
Yes, we were in the Sterling Pool.
Can the Deputy tell me when it was formed? It was not formed until 1933. We joined it and we had access to the dollars we required. In 1948 Great Britain had no dollars. That was the position.
They had sufficient until you got in.
The Deputy cannot say that my arrival knocked all the dollars out of the British Treasury. Itachieved many remarkable things, but that was not one of them.
You made arrangements that we would not draw on the British Sterling Pool for dollars.
Deputy Allen must allow Deputy Dillon to speak. He must cease these unseemly interruptions.
Does the Deputy want to know on what they were spent? They were spent on petrol because we did not want the Deputy travelling up and down to and from County Wexford on a bicycle. They were spent on rubber. They were spent on oil because we felt the Deputy might like to lubricate the wheels of a cart he might be using for fear they would screech going along the road.
It is a pity the Deputy had not some lubrication.
I do not require it. There was a variety of commodities that we could not get anywhere else except in America, and we, therefore, wanted dollars. We told the American Government we were prepared to take advantage of dollars for the purchase of these things on the clear understanding that when the terms of the loan provided that we should repay them we could not give any undertaking in the year after that we would have any dollars, but we would certainly have sterling; and the Americans replied: "Is not that our headache? If we are prepared to lend the dollars and prepared to take the risk that you will only have sterling wherewith to repay them, why should you worry about that?" We said: "That is all right," and we borrowed the dollars we required.
What happened? It is as well for Deputy Allen to understand this. We wanted petrol. A petrol importer purchased a tanker of petrol at Baltimore and he had to pay for that petrol in dollars. He came to his own Government and his own Government lent him the dollars. He took those dollars and paid them to the oil company at Baltimore and the oil company then released the tanker. When the tankersailed up the Liffey he sold its contents to garages all over the country and when the garages paid him for the petrol he came around to the Department of Finance and he paid into the Department the sterling equivalent of the dollars he had been lent. That sterling was put into the Central Bank to have it there ready wherewith to repay the American Government when the debt fell due in respect of the Marshall Aid Loan. Now, does the Deputy understand that? There was never one penny net debt due by the Irish Government to the United States Government. For every dollar we borrowed we had the dollar equivalent in sterling sitting in the Central Bank, there available to be drawn out to pay the Americans.
You got rid of all the dollars anyhow.
The Deputy is quite mistaken. I know the Deputy will find difficulty in grasping that. But our forecast was right, because now the instalments are falling due and the Minister for Finance has no difficulty to-day in getting all the dollars he wants to pay every instalment as it falls due. When he seeks the wherewithal to pay the instalment, the money wherewith to purchase the dollars to pay that instalment is there in the Central Bank to his credit. There is not a penny net debt—not one penny—and we had every dollar there on interest for five years. £48,000,000! Remember, if that money had been borrowed on the same terms as those upon which the Minister for Finance borrows we would have had to pay £12,500,000 in interest on it over the period for which we actually had it free of interest from the Americans. Now, does Deputy Allen say that was a bad bargain?
You spent all the dollars. You left no dollars after you.
Our problem is that we have too many dollars at the present time. That is our problem. Our problem is that we do not want all the commodities from the United States for which we have dollars available forpurchase. We would be entitled to draw more dollars from the Sterling Pool than we are actually drawing, if we wanted them. Our problem is to put up a case for keeping our claim on the Sterling Pool alive. Is it not time that Deputies in the Fianna Fáil Party opened their eyes?
You got rid of £48,000,000 worth of dollars in a year and a half.
Did we not get value for that expenditure? Remember, the Government did not spend a penny of it. Every penny of it was spent by businessmen who used it to import commodies that were necessary and that our people wanted. Is not that what money is for? Would the Deputy have preferred to have put it in a stocking? We used it to buy crawler tractors and machinery to develop our land. We used it to provide the commodities that our people wanted. Was that wrong? We thought it was right. We thought it was a good thing to do. Now the Deputy finds that there is money in the Central Bank wherewith to buy the dollars that are in abundant supply to pay every instalment that falls due, and there has never been the slightest embarrassment or difficulty in meeting these instalments as they fall due. The Deputy has discovered two years too late that the whole business was a mare's nest, that he was made a fool of and sent down the country to prophesy that the country was going bankrupt. But it did not go bankrupt. He was sent down to tell the people that the farmers were lazy and indolent and incapable of expanding agricultural production and that there was no prospect of expanding agricultural production or of doing anything to redress the balance of payments; this year he has discovered that our exports have gone up to £105,000,000. It is not the sins the Deputy and his Party has committed that matter. It is the sins they have in contemplation. It is not too late to redeem his often perjured soul. If the Deputy looks back on the litany of destruction the Government have wrought on this country over the last 20 years——
Oh, more-more than that.
——the Deputy must lose a night's sleep every now and again. But it is not what has been done that matters. It is what will be done that matters. The Deputy and his Party can do either of two things: he can turn over a new leaf, or get out. I do not give a hoot which. But, in the name of our people and of our country, do one or the other quickly because, if you do not, it may become utterly impossible to retrieve the disaster you have brought upon us.
I am glad that Deputy Allen reminded Deputy Dillon that it is rather a pity he had not in mind these excellent financial principles about which he has discoursed to us so long and so volubly, not to say tediously, when he and his colleagues were entering into their commitments for the borrowing of £48,000,000 in dollars, to which reference has been made. Deputy Dillon spent a good part of his time twitting the Minister for Finance because he had the temerity to say that if we are to pay interest, let it be 5 per cent. or whatever it may be, it is better that our people should secure the benefit of that interest than the foreigner in Wall Street or Lombard Street or wherever he may be.
Away back in 1935 Deputy Dillon warned us against the dreadful fate of countries like Newfoundland that had to go borrowing with their hats in their hands. During the course of our term of office we have seen what happened to New Zealand, one of the most prosperous countries on the face of the earth from the agricultural point of view. We have seen New Zealand and Australia in dire straits because they were unable to get their affairs in proper order and had to borrow in London to carry on their trade and economy.
I thank Deputy Dillon for his kind good wishes to my colleague, the Minister for Finance. If he had been here I am sure he would have reminded Deputy Dillon of what he stated in this House on the 19th March, 1953— column 808:
"Now, one of the very substantial items in the bill which the countrywill have to vote next year will be the sum of £1,200,000 to be paid as interest on the Marshall Aid Loan. As I have said before, if that loan had been raised in this country and the interest were to be paid free of tax as the interest on the Marshall Aid Loan is being paid free of tax it would have represented an interest rate of all but 5 per cent."
That is the interest—£1,200,000. The question has been frequently asked in this House, where are the assets, where is the production as a result of the transactions in connection with that loan which will enable that interest of £1,200,000 per year to be cleared? Remember that in 1956 not merely the interest but the principal on all these millions of dollars will have to be repaid, not in sterling but in dollars.
Living in this fantastic fairy world where Deputy Dillon believes dollars can be had for the asking, does he believe that the Irish people are fools, that they are completely devoid of intelligence, that they do not understand that the great British Empire was brought almost to bankruptcy early in 1952? Deputy Dillon and his leader—if he is his leader—Deputy Costello, have been trying to persuade us that we in this country are very badly off, that we are in a terrible plight, due entirely to the misdeeds and diabolical machinations of the present Government whose only interest and object in political life, apparently, is to discredit their predecessors even though by so doing they are injuring the interests of the country. We will fight Deputy Dillon and beat Deputy Dillon in any constituency, as we have fought and beaten his colleagues and himself in many an election on that question. We can leave it to the Irish people to decide whether the leader of this Party and his colleagues are honest or not in the policy that they have put before the people and in the steps they have taken to right the situation, steps that they considered necessary since they came into office.
Would you declare the election now?
We will declare the election when it is necessary. When Deputy Costello came into office he went to the trouble of assuring the Irish people that he did not want elections, that elections were very expensive and costly, were upsetting to the trade of the country and created a great deal of uncertainty. So long as the Government have a majority in this House and so long as they have not gone beyond the normal term of office it is a question entirely for them as to when they will go to the country.
It is a perfectly scandalous state of affairs that a Deputy, a former Minister of a Government, should try to pour odium on the Minister for Finance because he paid those who invested in the recent Irish National Loans the interest which was necessary in order to raise the money. Deputy Davin may laugh. Deputy Davin should read the newspapers and compare what the Australian Government had to pay recently for a loan of a much smaller amount of money, in London, with what we paid here. They were not successful in rasing the finances they were looking for. If Deputy Davin looks at the terms of the New Zealand loan he will see that they compare very favourably with the terms that we gave.
We were not borrowing in London.
We have no apology to offer. If it would not be wearying the House too much I would quote the learned Senator Dr. George O'Brien, Professor of Political Economy in University College, Dublin whom Deputy McGilligan as Minister for Finance, called to his aid. If Dr. O'Brien was satisfied with a policy and passed it as suitable then, of course, it was to be taken as absolutely A.1. Senator Dr. O'Brien has recently given us certain facts to ponder. He certainly has suggested that we ought to pay our people or whoever we can get to invest in our national capital development sufficient to enable us to raise the necessary funds. I do not know what the alternative to that may be. May I remind Deputy Davin, who is very fond of interrupting when these financial questionsare under discussion, that when his friends over in Britain had charge of the affairs of that country they were forced under Sir Stafford Cripps to bring in large Budget surpluses amounting over a period of years to over £2,500,000,000 in order to finance capital expenditure? You either have to finance it as they did through Budget surpluses or you have to raise it by way of loans, and in order to raise the necessary funds you have to pay the price that the borrower considers reasonable having regard to the competition which you will meet in the money market.
Why did you reduce the interest on the last loan?
Our people have not been an experienced people in this matter of investment. We have very many millions of pounds on deposit in our banks, unfortunately. I wish that our people, and particularly our farmers, would invest that money in home enterprise——
Hear, hear!
——let it be either State capital projects or private undertakings, but I would remind my friends on the other side that their adviser Dr. O'Brien has suggested— and I think his words merit careful consideration—that the credit of the country is an asset of great value indeed. Like many another thing when your money or your credit is good you do not value it, but the moment your credit goes, the moment your assets disappear and you are reduced to the position of making the very best terms you can with the foreign lender in order to try and secure funds from him at almost any cost to get you out of your difficulties, you will then realise the value of having your finances in order and your credit sound.
We have been reminded and advised over and over again by foreign experts who have studied our position in regard to our international trade and in comparison with the affairs of other countries to look, for example, to Switzerland. How did Switzerland getinto the position that a country like Australia goes to her to borrow money, that she is in the position that her currency is the hardest in the world, and that it can look the American dollar, even, in the face? Has it attained that position by deficit budgeting, by not paying its way, or by establishing a name for itself in the world as a nation which will live up to its undertakings, which will see that its budget is balanced, that its currency does not depreciate, that its credit is unquestioned, and will take all necessary steps to see that its financial position is maintained in a sound condition?
We have not that tradition. We have to build it up, and the first task is to try to induce our own people first to buy Irish goods and, secondly, to invest their savings in Irish enterprise. Deputy Davin does not understand that even nationalised undertakings, even in socialist countries, must secure the necessary savings either through taxation, through contributions from the working population, or through loans, let them be forced loans or voluntary loans. Capital investment projects of the type that he would like and that we all would like to see brought into operation entail very heavy expenditure and the funds necessary are large for this country.
It has been pointed out that they come to about £39,000,000 during the present year apart from the £5,000,000 which the Government is to provide annually for the National Development Fund. That money has to be raised and has to be paid for, and it is not in the same category as industrial investment used to be, what is called equity investment, where the investor took the risk. He saw what he considered was a good proposition and put his money into that proposition. If it succeeded and he got a good profit, well and good. If through unexpected circumstances or competition or something else occurring he was not able to reap the profit he had anticipated and in fact he suffered a loss he had to put up with that. Under the system of State capital investment the charges on the CentralFund are very heavy. They are about £2,000,000 larger in amount this year than they were last year. All of that money is going to pay the charges on capital that has to be raised. Deputy Davin and his friends are in the happy position that they can criticise and be wise after the event. Whichever way the cat jumps and whatever way the story goes we may be sure they will have criticisms. The Government after full consideration of all the circumstances in their negotiations with the banks in order to raise the funds that were necessary considered that the payment of the interest at the rate mentioned was necessary, and that is all there is to it. We are a Government of collective responsibility, and it is just nonsensical to pretend that the Minister for Finance is doing something or carrying out some policy with which his colleagues are not in agreement. In budgetary matters or in financial matters, while the responsibility rests mainly on his shoulders, undoubtedly he naturally takes into consultation and takes advice with his colleagues.
And the unknown warriors in College Green.
There are no unknown warriors in College Green.
There are in Foster Place.
There is an effort being made to set up a mythical bogeyman, a kind of a cockshot or Aunt Sally. The money in the Irish banks is the money of the Irish people, whether they be farmers or workers or business people. It is their money, and it is nonsense for Deputy Dillon or Deputy Davin or anyone else to say that the Government is investing their money here, there, or anywhere else. It is their money and they are quite free to invest it where they wish. We are doing our utmost to encourage them to invest it at home; but this is not a totalitarian State, and if you try totalitarian methods in this delicate and important matter I wonder whether you will get just the results you expect.
In a publication by an Englisheconomist, Mr. Durban, which has been described as a textbook to which the former Prime Minister of England had recourse—there are very few social economists, but being rather curious as to the lines on which they would work I read Mr. Durban's book —I find statements like the following: "The only way in which accumulated capital can be financed is by withdrawal of part of the funds earned by the socialised industries through the workers employed in them to finance the capital items in the industrial budget. Surpluses arising in socialised industries must not belong to the workers in such industries. They must belong to the state."
Even if we went over to complete socialisation, we would still have this problem. If we do not secure investment in the normal way through the well-recognised channels, then it will be found, as it has been found by the Labour Government in Britain, that to run nationalised industries, if finance cannot be raised in any other way it must be raised through the internal funds of the organisation of the industry and, if necessary, by contributions from the workers themselves. The myth that you can create credit and the necessary finance for the capitalisation of these industries out of nothing has been exploded. Everyone knows that if the Central Bank, the banks as a whole or the financial institutions generally of this country were to adopt that policy, you would simply have runaway inflation.
How did Britain find money in the last two wars?
How is she repaying it? She is not able to pay it, therefore, the £ has depreciated steadily. The money for the last war was spent when the people were worked up to a great national effort. They were prepared to do things in war-time that they are not prepared to do in peace-time.
If the £ has depreciated how do you justify——
I am not going to waste my time answering these interruptions.
It is not an interruption, it is just a question.
Deputy Dillon has said that the National Development Fund is being set up as a "slush fund" for election purposes. When Deputy Dillon set up the Connemara development fund or the rocks fertilisation process, which he set on foot with such a great blare of trumpets and advertisement in the Sunday Independent,was it not on the eve of the by-election that followed the death of the late lamented Deputy Mongan?
There was no by-election then.
Neither the Department of Finance nor any of his colleagues knew anything about the land reclamation scheme until he went to some obscure part of the Midlands and, without taking cognisance of anybody, announced to the world this wonderful scheme for the reclamation of the land of Ireland over a ten-year period at a cost of £40,000,000. He is learning now that there are farmers who applied to have work done under that scheme when it was first introduced who have not yet been reached, but how many thousands of applications did Deputy Dillon leave behind him when he left office? Has he ever made a calculation as to how long it would take, working both the Government machinery and the other side of the scheme, before all the farmers who had sent in applications would be reached? If we were to take the figures of expenditure on the actual work of land reclamation and the amounts payable to farmers or about to be paid during the first few years that the scheme was in operation, it is quite obvious that the work would not be done in 20 years, 40 years or maybe 100 years. Even the thousands of applications that were in could not be reached for several years to come.
This scheme was in operation before Deputy Dillon and his famous land project were ever heard of. It was then called the land reclamation scheme and was operated by this Government for many years on a system under which we paid 50 per cent. of the cost of the actual workcarried out by farmers for the improvement of their land. That was not good enough for Deputy Dillon. He must buy hundreds of thousands of pounds worth of machinery, create a bureaucracy, a regular hierarchy of officials, and have the situation that only one-fifth or one-sixth of the total expenditure in the early years went on the actual work, the remainder going into overheads and the provision of machinery. How long would it take before the ordinary small farmer would have been reached under Deputy Dillon's wonderful scheme or did Deputy Dillon consider the small farmers and their circumstances at all when he was getting in all this machinery at an enormous cost? Was he thinking of Pat Murphy in Mayo or Pat Jones in Kerry, I wonder, when he paid out as much as £100 per acre for the fertilisation of the rocks in Round-stone or £60 or £70 per acre for the reclamation of land belonging to large landholders, some of whom received many thousands of pounds? Did he pay more for the reclamation of land than the Land Commission was paying for the most fertile land in this country when they acquired it?
I am surprised that the present Minister for Agriculture took over this commitment that Deputy Dillon left behind him but he did take it over and he has succeeded in reducing the cost, not in any endeavour to discredit Deputy Dillon but because, as the Taoiseach pointed out, we must have regard to the value we are getting for the money. The £2,500,000 we are spending on this land reclamation project must be measured against the various other schemes upon which £2,500,000 could be profitably expended, from the point of view of the employment given, the amenities created or the increase in the productive power of the country secured. Therefore, the Minister for Agriculture, I suggest, was acting in the best national interest and in the interests of the scheme itself, if it were to be made rational and to have regard to the real circumstances of the country, particularly of the small farmers, in encouraging a situation by which we would get the farmers themselves to do the work, make their own arrangements withcontractors and then recoup them to a greater percentage of the cost than they were actually getting under Deputy Dillon's administration.
In order to encourage the farmers to do that we increased the grants. We did that because we realised that it is the small farmers who should benefit by this scheme. We realised also that the less administrative costs, the less overheads and the less bureaucracy you have and the more you get people themselves, whether they be the farming community or others, to operate these schemes themselves, the better they will be and the more efficient and the more economical in the long run.
I am not going to go over again the historical references that Deputy Dillon has made to the Opposition when they came into office. He said they found certain debts and he denies that they left debts behind them. He first used the word "debts" and then changed it to "commitments." The first thing I did when I became Minister in 1951 was to go down and tell the people in my constituency that very formidable financial obligations had been left by our predecessors upon our shoulders, and particularly upon the shoulders of the Minister for Finance, to clear up. One of them was in regard to C.I.E. to which reference has been made. C.I.E. was nationalised by the last Government but they took no steps either to increase the transport charges to enable that organisation to reduce its losses or to secure the necessary finances from the national Exchequer to have it subsidised. Neither one thing nor the other had been done and when we came into office we found that there was a recoupment of interest amounting to £433,000 and there were losses amounting to £1,900,000 to be met.
There was also the question of the Civil Service arbitration award. It is true that the last Government could say that they left office before they had an opportunity of carrying into effect their intention of honouring the arbitration award. They specifically promised, however, that they would carry the award into effect and we considered it necessary to fulfil thatundertaking and we had to provide the necessary finances to do that. To put that award into effect in the first year cost £3.6 million and in the following year about £3,500,000.
There was also a sum of a £1,000,000 for old age pensions. When, under pressure, the social welfare legislation was introduced by Deputy Norton, the then Tánaiste and Minister for Social Welfare, he had a clause introduced into it to satisfy the back bench supporters of some of the Parties, and secure their support for the measure by increasing the old age pensions. No provision was made for that, and it cost, roughly, a £1,000,000 a year.
Deputy Dillon now, apparently, suggests that all the Government had to do when they came into office was to throw overboard commitments like those to C.I.E., the Civil Service and the old age pensioners. He knows that that was quite impossible either politically or, I venture to say, morally. There are certain commitments which Governments enter into, and it would be dishonourable, whether we agree with them or not, and damaging to the national interest in a different sense if, except in very exceptional circumtances, Governments were just to refuse to carry out particular financial commitments of that kind entered into by their predecessors.
Deputy Costello spent a good deal of time telling us how badly off the country was, but he admitted that. it is perhaps a little better off than it was last year. With the exception of the general catalogue of complaints and platitudes, I find very little depth or very little of value in his contribution to the debate. It bespeaks rather the advocate from the courts who hurriedly seizes a brief and uses it in the short time at his disposal to make his appearances in An Dáil to traverse the same ground he has already covered so frequently in the past few years. In the first place, there must be more than a few people who are a little better off than they were last year. Looking at the figures, I notice that the note circulation, which for the ten months ending in October, 1952, averaged £60.374 million per month,has risen in the corresponding period of 1953 to, £65.818 million, an increase of £5.4 million or 9 per cent. There is, therefore, nearly £66,000,000 in circulation in each month and, presumably, it is being spent; it is being exchanged.
You can see that from the racecourse returns.
The racecourses do not affect me.
They prove that.
Perhaps Deputy Davin will be able to find some means of preventing people from going to racecourses, but I do not know of any way of doing it.
They are free to do what they like.
The bank deposits during the first part of the present year increased over last year's figure by 6 per cent. Even the railway receipts are up since January. The chairman of C.I.E. has announced that he hopes the company will be £500,000 better off this year. He has expressed his belief that when the new programme of capital construction is in operation it will be possible to bring about a reduction in the present heavy losses and he is hopeful that in time it may be possible to eliminate those losses altogether. I am sure that we all wish the board every success in their efforts. But, while C.I.E. is making progress, endeavouring to cut its losses and hoping to eliminate them altogether eventually, the number of private motor-cars in the country is increasing. That is not a proof that we are in the terrible state of misery and penury which Deputy Costello suggests.
Many of them are bought on the hire purchase system.
They may be bought on the hire purchase system. Deputy Costello said that there were serious indications of anxiety, that people are fearful and timorous of the future. That must be the atmosphere down in the Four Courts. Perhaps when they are confronted with the bills of theirlearned counsel, those who find themselves in the unfortunate position that they have to have recourse to them may suffer from one of the numerous diseases, thrombosis or otherwise, which afflict people these times. But there is no evidence on looking around the City of Dublin or along the roads of Ireland at the present time that there is any great financial depression. Quite the contrary.
Deputy Flanagan is listening to you.
He may be. The number of new private motor-cars registered in the September quarter was 3,818, or 1,003, as Leperello would say in the opera, more than in the same quarter last year. Last year the national income increased by £30.8 million or by 8.3 per cent. over 1951 to the figure of £404,000,000, and the real national income is estimated by the statisticians to have been 16 per cent. higher in 1952 than in 1938. Due largely, no doubt, to increased agricultural output, the national income is steadily increasing, but the figures I have quoted represent only an income of £136 per head of our population, which is still low in comparison with the figure for other countries. It is quite clear that a higher level of production and output and, therefore, an increased national income are necessary to maintain our economy in a prosperous condition.
When Deputy Dillon was referring to the dreadful things the Government were doing—how they were in league with the financiers, some extraordinary secret kind of organisation which the bankers have, as if the bankers are not, as I have mentioned, simply the custodians of the savings and deposits of the Irish people—he conveniently forgot, as did Deputy Costello, that we had a devaluation crisis which came on rather suddenly in 1949 and which seemed to take the previous Government unawares. They had to take a hurried decision and they decided to follow the English example and devalue—there was no way out of it. In doing so, just as in investing the Counterpart Fund moneys in sterling assets, they admitted that there wasa certain situation there which it will take time to alter. It cannot be altered overnight or suddenly. That devaluation which the Irish Government felt themselves compelled to put into operation here was described by the present British Prime Minister as the penalty the British people had to pay for the failure to take proper measures in time.
Later on, we had the Korean war, with the boom in prices—fantastic, in some cases. There, again, the Government of the day got into rather a state of panic and instructed wholesalers, distributors and business people to stock up for all they were worth. We are still suffering the effects of that stocking up, that building up of huge stocks at a time when prices were reaching fantastic levels. It was obvious that, when prices began to fall, there would be difficulty in liquidating these stocks and the cost of financing them and enabling the people who had these stocks to carry on with their business must have been very considerable.
Deputy Costello went on to refer to unemployment figures and said that the percentage unemployment had grown here more than in other countries; but, in order to examine that question, I suggest one first has to ascertain what the basis and structure of the register of unemployed persons in other countries is. For example in the Scandinavian countries it may be as I think it is the case that only those who are unemployed trade unionists are registered. In this country, a very large number of rural people are registered—in normal times up to about 45 per cent—and in taking 1951 and comparing it with the present year Deputy Costello conveniently forgot as did all the critics of the Government who have used the increase in the figures on the live register as a means of trying to prove that unemployment has increased under this Government and so on, that a very large number of people are now registered, due to the operation of the Social Welfare Act of 1952 who were not registered before. Persons of 65 years of age can draw unemployment benefit right up to 70 years. Thatwas one of the benefits granted to the working people under that Act introduced and passed into law under the guidance of the present Minister. That has brought a large number of people on the register.
The means test has been extended and persons who were not eligible for benefit and assistance before are now eligible. Moreover, a large number of people are on the register and still are not in receipt of assistance because their means are too high. Let us take landholders, for instance. A certain number of these will have been taken off the register during the currency of the Employment Period Order and will come back on the register, but these people may be in the category in which, although under the recent legislation they are in receipt of credits, and up to the passage of the Act should not have been on the register at all, they will not actually receive assistance until their time comes round again. According to the official returns for mid-November, 1953, an increase of 3,265, as compared with last year, which is largely under the heading of agriculture, is attributed wholly to the operation of the Social Welfare Act and it has been calculated that, prior to the coming into operation of these Employment Period Orders—at that period of the year—a total figure of perhaps up to 6,000 persons were on the register who would not have been on it before the passing of this Act.
The live register does not tell us the numbers in receipt of unemployment assistance who were in employment last year. It does not tell us whether they were in casual employment, how many have come on the register for the first time or how many have returned from Britain—I believe there is a large number—who are drawing their benefit here. What we do know with regard to the numbers in insurable employment is that, on the 18th November, there were 495,270 men and 229,027 women—a total of 724,927—in insurable employment. Last year's figure which, I admit, is not entirely comparable by reason of the fact that the Social Welfare Act has changed the conditionssomewhat, was 500,000, and the figure at the same period in the previous year, 489,000.
The Opposition, I suggest, are finding it difficult to have it both ways when they tell us they are delighted the farmers are receiving high prices for their produce, and, at the same time try to reconcile the desire we all have that the agricultural community should be as prosperous as possible with the argument that the Government are responsible for the increase in the cost of living, which is due in large measure to food prices. Last night, we had a motion to have the question of milk prices considered before the costings commission reported, and the House did not feel it should take action until it had the full facts before it. Deputy Costello stated not once but several times that the reason his Government left office was that they refused to increase the price of milk. I believe that, milk being an essential foodstuff, particularly for children, and since milk has to compete with beef and various other products which I need not enumerate, those who tend animals and have their care day after day, week after week and month after month should receive an economic price for their produce. I think they deserve it far more than other sections of the community who are clamouring either for relief or increases.
In any case, it is recognised by all Parties that the State has a certain duty, let the level of prices for milk be what they may, to keep milk producers in production and, if possible, to increase yields and output, and it is recognised that the quickest and best incentive is the incentive of price. In the case of wheat and beet, it is common policy that the prices guaranteed by the Government so far should be continued. The increased acreage, the better yields and the satisfactory position with regard to these important crops means that we are going to have more sugar and more wheat and will be less dependent on foreign supplies, and, although it may involve adjustments and certain difficulties which will have to be resolved, nevertheless, the money will be in circulationin our own country, benefiting our farmers, our workers, our transport organisation and our towns.
The agricultural price index has increased between September, 1952 and September, 1953 by 30 points, to 322 or roughly 10 per cent. and it is very satisfactory that the level of prices has been so good for farmers during that period. It has had the consequence also, as we have seen in the case of eggs, that at certain periods the housewife may find it very difficult to pay the price demanded, but we cannot have it both ways. If we want agriculture to be prosperous and want the farmers to get a good return, we have to put up with these difficulties, and I think that, on balance, the general national interest, the interests of the people as a whole, are better served by having a prosperous and, I hope, a very prosperous, farming community than otherwise.
We have the example of the United States of America which has made it a firm keystone of its policy that the prices of farm products must be maintained. It may involve at certain periods a reduction in acreage, but the maintenance of economic and fair prices for the producers of farm products is the very basis of prosperity in the nation's economy. The Government have, through many schemes in operation under the Department of Agriculture and otherwise, done a great deal to provide State moneys for amenities and conveniences for farmers. We would like to see ways and means devised by which assistance to the agricultural community would be directed into channels which would achieve the speediest return in the way of increased output from our land.
No doubt, that is largely a matter for the farmers themselves. It is a process of education that they should adopt better methods, but the Government has not neglected any occasion to bring home to them the importance of putting land under the plough and treating it with adequate supplies of limestone and fertiliser, if we are to get the best return and to be able to compare the output from the land of this country with what has been secured elsewhere. The Minister forAgriculture recently referred to the main problem before Irish agriculture, that is, the stepping up of the yield from the areas under permanent grass. There are certain counties in the State which have a comparatively small amount of land under tillage—some of them perhaps only 8 per cent. and certainly less than 10 per cent. There is no doubt that the country would benefit immensely, agriculture would be more prosperous and our productive capacity permanently improved, if we could get our farmers to bring the plough right around their farms and to use the various Government agencies which are there to assist them in improving their land, in fertilising it and getting the utmost out of it.
Reference has also been made to the work being done by the veterinary services and it is rather alarming that the Minister for Agriculture has had to call public attention to the fact that stock owners are not availing themselves of the facilities in existence. He has reminded us recently that one of the most costly and damaging diseases of our live stock, contagious abortion, could probably be eradicated, if livestock owners would only take full advantage of the opportunities which offer and the facilities given for vaccination.
I started my remarks by referring to the question of national investment and the problem of raising moneys to finance these large capital projects. Last year, current savings, estimated at £30,000,000 as compared with the disinvestment in the previous year, are stated by the official statistical returns to have financed up to 77 per cent. of our domestic capital requirements. The Government would like to urge upon our people to invest their moneys in Irish enterprises. They believe there is security here and a yield which cannot be equalled elsewhere and it was for that reason that, on behalf of the Minister for Finance, I called the attention of the Irish banks recently to the fact that the increase in their resources and assets enabled them to stock up their portfolios with larger holdings of national or municipal stocks.
Did you tell that to the Central Bank, too?
The Central Bank is not a depository of savings.
It has £63,000,000.
And the Central Bank, by law, has to exchange every legal tender note for sterling or vice versa. In my opinion, that situation can only be remedied when we have a position, as was recently suggested, in which we have established our credit and financial soundness as a nation in which foreigners will not be averse to, but rather will be attracted to invest in this country not alone because there will be political peace and security here but because they can rely on the Government of this State to fulfil their obligations to the last penny. If they are interested in developing non-State enterprises, they will know that this is a State where free enterprise is welcomed, where private enterprise is encouraged and where all the incentives that the Government can reasonably give to investors from outside are provided.
There has been unemployment, due to the recession following on the boom that I have referred to at the time of the outbreak of the Korean War. Perhaps there may be another recession. We are told that there is a downward trend. It may not be significant. It may be one of these adjustments which take place in the American economy. However, it is very notable that European countries generally are up and doing. They are not living in a fool's paradise, like Deputy Dillon, believing that dollars can be produced by some sleight of hand or by some conjuring trick. They are doing their utmost—they are doing their damnedest, we might say—to increase their exports and their trade with the U.S.A. They are doing their utmost also, to balance their trade with their neighbours on the Continent of Europe. They do not intend to be taken unawares. If it should happen that there is a change—and, as I have said, these changes can come rather suddenly— they will find themselves in a strong position because they will havemeasured up to the situation. They will have strengthened their economies, their industrial and agricultural position and their productive capacity so that even if there should be a fluctuation or a falling-off in activity or in prices, they will still be able to carry on without suffering any serious or any permanent losses. What we have to realise is that these changes can come very suddenly. We hope no such change is coming.
I believe that the outlook for Irish farming is bright and that a very prosperous future is in store for our farmers if they will only take full advantage of their present opportunities. But, as has been said by some of my colleagues and by others, with the decontrol measures that are about to take place in Britain, there will be an entirely new situation. It is obvious—as has happened under the decontrol measures that have taken place up to the present—that there will be more freedom of choice, more competition and that the buyer will feel he is in a stronger position to exercise his choice and to leave his business and his custom, as the saying is, where it profits him best. These matters will receive all the attention that is possible from the Government when the situation demands it. But, in the long run, it is on the efforts of our producers themselves to improve their methods, to keep up with the times and to take advantage to the utmost extent of the schemes that have been provided for their benefit that this country will prosper.
What is quite certain, in my view, is that unless we increase our output both from farm and factory and achieve a much higher level of production we will not, if there should be any recession or downward trend, be able to maintain our standards of living to our satisfaction. If we do not throw our whole efforts into increasing our production, it will be doubtful whether we can maintain these standards and whether the State services and the benefits which are being conferred upon large sections of the population through the extension of social and health services, and other services, can be continued.
I think we have reached the limit of what we can do with the present level of production. Taxation is as high as it can be. To reduce expenditure considerably and on a large scale is not easy but it is a matter to which the Government have given a good deal of attention during the past few years. They realise that, there again, a general increase in the level of output and greater efforts on the part of all concerned will mean that the burden that has to be borne will be lighter upon the individual producer and the individual worker.
Deputy Costello suggested that taxation has been increased beyond all justice. May I remind him that the purpose of the taxation is largely to provide benefits for those sections of the community which, under the Constitution, we have an obligation to assist. The revenue is not raised for purposes that are not genuine, that are not necessary or that are not desirable in the general national interest. The Deputy forgot to mention that even in the 1952 Budget the Minister showed his understanding of the situation of the white-collar workers, the middle class—who claim that they are not able to take advantage of the schemes and that they have not the facilities and the advantages which persons in business or in farming occupations often have— by increasing the allowance of those people who form such a large section of the income-tax-paying population.
It was very amusing, also, when Deputy Costello and Deputy MacBride again went over the old well-trodden ground of trying to suggest that in some way the Government are responsible for a restriction of credit which, they alleged, the banks are carrying on in this country that Deputy Finan should be able to say that money is being provided—as it seems to be— and that credit is being made available for such projects as the building of cinemas. The Deputy, who has as good an understanding of conditions in the Irish countryside as anybody else in this House, gave very little credence to the suggestion that if a project was a good one it would not merit consideration and not have the necessaryfinances provided to enable it to be carried out.
Whatever may be the relations between the banks and their customers one thing is certain. We will not permit our policy to be dictated by Central Banks or by anybody else in the banking world. Deputy Dillon said— I think we can all re-echo his words in this particular connection—that this House is the authority and it is for this House to decide if they believe that the law should be changed in regard to banking or credit to do it. But we have had commissions of inquiry. We have had examinations of these matters. In the end there is no easy solution.
Credit is only one aspect of the problem. There is organisation. There is the provision of raw materials. There is the training of the population for industry or for modern agricultural methods. There is the provision of markets. There is the putting of your products on the market in the most attractive way so that they will appeal to the consumer on the other side. All these factors enter into the economic well-being of the country as well as credit. If everything else in the economy were right and if everybody realised his duty to the community and to the country and tried to carry it out, I am quite sure that these difficulties that are stated to be there in regard to the provision of credit for worthy objects would be got over.
No examples have been given. We in the Government have not heard, recently, at any rate, of any such restriction. We know that there has been a restriction of credit in the building industry. I do not know what foundation there was—there would seem to have been some foundation, but that was some time ago—for the suggestion that there was some holdup in the provision of credit for fertilisers and for farmers in getting on with their spring work. I need hardly say—I am sure everybody interested will agree—that it is of the utmost importance to the country that farmers should get every possible facility by way of credit to enable them to carry on with their spring work and increase the output which is so badly required.
This debate affordsus an opportunity of dealing generally with Government policy or the absence of Government policy. Most of my speech to-night will be devoted to the absence of Government policy. Before I go into the details of economic disaster and lack of foresight and conception by the Government, I should like to deal briefly with the external situation that presents itself vis-à-visourselves and the people of Northern Ireland.
Reference was made here by other Deputies to the recent very regrettable arrest and imprisonment of an elected member of the Northern Parliament. I feel it necessary to inquire from the Government what policy they will pursue in relation to Partition. I was not silent in recent years on the issue of Partition. I constantly questioned the Government on that policy. I feel that we have arrived at a situation now where young men entering the political arena or the field of political thought in this country should know what our policy is, if we have any.
I do not want to aggravate the situation. I do not want in any way in this particular problem to try and embarrass the Government, but I feel the time has come when we should take some firm stand in relation to the outrages that are being perpetrated. Let us not blind ourselves to the fact that outrages are being perpetrated on the principles of democracy at our very doorstep. I will not dwell on that subject. It is one that might lead to a good deal of heat. It is a subject that might tend to inflame a good deal of passion when one considers the full implications of this type of activity.
I do not believe in paying lip service to our belief in the 32 Counties of Ireland. I believe we have to make some gesture in the real sense of the word to show our belief in the ultimate achievement of this goal and to at least give some kind of sympathetic support to the people who have the courage, as I feel young Kelly has, to express abhorrence of the travesty on democracy that is being perpetrated in the Six Counties. Let that much suffice.
Strangely enough, I do not to-nightintend attacking this Government, but the general pattern of government over the period of the existence of this State. I think that to find the real basis and root cause of many of our difficulties here we have to take the general pattern of government and discover the recurrent deficiencies that have led to our troubles.
I resent bitterly the implications in the observations of the Minister for Lands with regard to this nation and its credit-worthiness. Fearlessly and unashamedly, I regard this Republic of ours as one of the most credit-worthy nations in the world to-day and that it ill-behoves any Minister to cast slurs as to what might become of that credit. I am going to address this House in a spirit of anxiety, and in the course of my argument endeavour to prove that without trying to justify, actions on one side or other of this House we might have got together to evolve a plan that could be gradually implemented for the benefit of the nation generally.
This country has been cursed by one thing not only under this Government but under all Governments, for its planning nearly always consists of the two walls of the Book of Estimates from year to year and we find ourselves constantly forced into the position of finding expedient remedies for situations. I firmly believe that if we had a little bit less political codology and a little bit more realistic, integrated planning on a national basis we would have advanced in the 30 years we have had our self-government into one of the finest nations in the world. It is only if we can make a Government realise the necessity for long-term planning and the necessity for planning its financial system and its financial development to implement and augment that long-term plan that you can really start talking of investment in capital development on the proper lines.
There have been many ills which possibly have become more pronounced under the dead Administration under which we are labouring at present. It is possible that the return of Fianna Fáil to office has aggravated emigration, has worsened the employment situationand has led to many varying conditions, but they are only exaggerations or aggravations of a situation that already exists. Because of what—that is what I want to find out. To-night I will endeavour to direct the mind of the House to the type of government and the type of plan that this nation requires. I have been preaching relentlessly for a number of years that we cannot hope to build a prosperous Ireland, whether it is industrial or agricultural, on a rapidly diminishing population, that we cannot hope to find strength and virility in our economy if our main exports are to be the young boys and girls of Ireland to the farflung corners of the world. The problem this Government and this Dáil has to face is the problem of getting to grips with a realistic plan to stem the flow that is getting down to the very vitals of our nationhood.
I have had sneers and cynicism from the Government when I said before that it is a poor and a very poor compliment to native Government that after a period of complete freedom enjoyed within the Republic, we are back to the system of emergency or Government schemes to relieve unemployment. When one goes back over the expenditure in this country during its years of government, one wonders why it has not been possible yet to find an over-all plan into which in everincreasing amounts the resources of the nation could have been poured to build more and more real assets at home, at the same time increasing not only employment and output but also the standard and quality of output.
We have heard lip service from all sides of the House to the fundamental corner-stone of our economy, namely, the Irish farmer, but the fact remains that we have endeavoured in a situation of expediency to build all kinds of industries, many of them not germane to the basic economic set-up of the country and many of them not practical at all. Therefore, to-night my accusation against this Government is that it is continuing the ills that have been rampant not only in the period of office of this Government but have been rampant over the period of our self-government, the ills of expediency andemergency dealing with situations instead of having a sound, basic plan. If it cannot be implemented in a five-year period let it be implemented in so far as it can and let the process of implementation gradually build up to the realisation of that plan. You cannot keep young boys and girls at home in Ireland unless you can offer them a reasonable prospect of security and continuity of employment and a substantial prospect of development within the field of their employment. That cannot come in an economy that is ill-planned. We find ourselves in the situation to-day of having quota restrictions, quota licences, tariff protection, duty-free licences, supply and counter-supply in Irish industry. The fault is not in the main that of the Irish industrialists. The fault is in the system that has been evolved. Under the system that has developed the responsibility for many of the abuses that have occurred with regard to the use of quota and tariff restrictions fall on the shoulders of the few glicboys as distinct from those anxious and willing to invest in and develop Irish industry of a lasting and permanent type.
In the years I have been in this House I have heard infinitely too much talk and, unfortunately, very seldom of the existence of practical development. There is no doubt at all about it that the platitudinous announcement of the Minister for Lands is something that stares everybody practically minded in the country in the face. This country is starved of investment and it is completely under-capitalised. I cannot for the life of me see why we should be in any way apologetic about conceiving a plan to put more and more of Ireland's resources back into the development of Ireland at home and not Ireland abroad because the present financial structure and the present financial policy of this Government is allowing Irish money in large quantities to be used cheaply abroad while Irish emigrants, be they men or women, can avail of cheaper facilities in regard to money to build their houses in foreign lands than they could at home. There is something chaotic and there is something fundamentallypathetic about the system of allowing that to go on.
I was appalled at the campaign carried out one time by the Fianna Fáil Party in relation to putting the country into pawn because I feel a sense of responsibility and a duty to the Irish people that we should use our resources in every practicable way to keep those Irish people at home, to get efficient Irish industries under way and to encourage and foster every possible type of agricultural expansion. When I hear talk about foreign experts for this or foreign experts for that or when I hear about this economist or that economist making pronouncements, sometimes I would love to say: "To Hell with the whole lot of them; let us get down to the business of building this nation into a practical reality."
The Communists will argue that black is white, depending on what particular concept they take of a problem and will build their argument on that premise. Foreign experts—and I do not mean any disrespect to them—will come in here from various nations to decide the merits or demerits of certain Irish projects, but they will examine them in the light of their previous training and experience without taking into consideration many essential matters in relation to the character and type of the people who are engaged in particular avocations. They give their views, whether these views be American, Swiss or German. I think that for too long we have been of the frame of mind of allowing outside people to tell us how to do our job. I believe that we have within ourselves the full capacity and capability of getting down to the job of work of developing our country for the Irish people. It may be necessary, of course, in certain ways, to get highly technical advice in respect to particular matters, but I do not for a moment concede that we have not got within our national capacity, with the limited type of technical assistance available to us, the full strength to enable us to carry out a scheme of complete development.
I want to press on the Government that they are charged with the task of preserving this nation in its continuity. In order to do that, we have to face up to the responsibility of providing ourselves with an integrated plan that will put more and more people into employment, and more and more capital back into Irish land, that will enable greater productivity to come from that land, and that will enable us to produce better and finer qualities of goods so as to maintain our industries and the general standard of life of our people.
I suggest that can be done very simply. Deputies should have no doubt at all about it, despite the sneers or jeers that may be made about it. I say that every pound of Irish money that is ploughed back into the land by way of fertilisers or drainage is going to give a yield not merely of a 100 per cent. dividend but is going to be of inestimable value in the ultimate improvement of our country's productivity. We should not in this Dáil be arguing about the problem of money. We should get down to the problem of considering what we can best do for the Irish people and, after that, come hell or hot water, it is the Government's job to find the money to develop worth-while projects.
There have been violent denials by Government spokesmen as to any curtailment of credit. There can be no doubt, however, that there has been a definite and a serious curtailment of credit. I know of some industries where plans for expansion and for increased employment have had to be closed down completely by virtue of the fact that this restriction of credit is there. The Government say that they did not tell the banks to do it. The banks will more or less imply that it is the Government's responsibility, but when you try to pin somebody down by asking them to give that as an assertive fact in writing, they will shy away from it. Yet, the situation that I speak of exists. The type of expansion I speak of is necessary now when we are running into difficulties in regard to employment, but it cannot be undertaken because of credit restriction. We will hear denials that itexists. There is, however, one thing certain, that for some strange reason industries are not expanding. If you ask industrialists about it, they all give the same answer that it is due to this restriction of credit. Therefore, there is something wrong in the system under which we are encouraging industrial development.
What is the situation in regard to agriculture? It is that up to now we have been nibbling at this problem. Even the conception of the Dillon reclamation scheme of £40,000,000 is only a flee bite when one has had regard to the way the Government should be thinking in regard to capital investment in the land of Ireland and of its development. We should remember that the land is our real fundamental wealth. The Minister for Lands said that the Government were considering ways of putting money into Irish land which will give the quickest possible return. That is something which can be regarded as a short-term policy. Again on that I am at complete variance with the Government. It is true that we have to expand quickly in order to keep the standard of living of our people right and possibly to face the competition of a very competitive market in the near future, but the Government cannot do that on the basis of the exploitation of Irish land. We should have learned a lesson that you cannot take more out of the land than you put into it, and it ill-behoves any Government to deal with Irish land on the basis of a short time over-use of it. One could conceive a plan, on a short term basis, for the rapid improvement of good land, but the Government should certainly implement a plan for gradually bringing up to a proper level of fertility every acre of land in the country, and of putting it into decent heart. Nobody should be able to gainsay the implementation of the plan which the Government would then design.
What is the good of an emergency scheme here or a relief scheme there when we have at our hands, if we have the will to do it, the means of ensuring a better standard of life for ourpeople and an indefinitely higher yield per acre from our land if we have the courage to put Irish money and Irish savings into that land? Where better could that money be put. In this modern world of credit and sterling fiction, where currency is backed by no more than a promise, I ask myself the practical question, why should we deny ourselves the right of pouring more and more money into all types of aid and assistance for increasing the productivity of our agriculture? At the same time, this Government— or any Government that takes its place—should be planning the gradual building up of Irish industry that can draw to whatever extent is possible on the raw material sources available at home. That can be built up on the basis of the three Fs—fair prices for the consumer, fair conditions for workers and fair profits for the investors. It is better for this Government to get down to the business of planning industries that have markets at home and potential capacity for export markets than to describe as factories many of the things we have seen scattered around this country and which dealt with certain types of shortages that arose in the immediate post-war period in England and which made inordinate profits without reflecting any credit on this nation in the type of products they marketed in that situation.
I came into Dáil Éireann believing that it was possible with sincerity of purpose to try to get something on a broad national concept planned and effected for this nation. Each succeeding year only heaped disillusionment on that belief but I have no hesitation in saying, no matter what the theorists or economists may say, that there is nothing unsound or impracticable in any Irish Government having the courage to use all the resources at its command to deal with the problems of the day as they find them. If we have immense credits to-day—as we have— how can they be better used than in ensuring the maintenance of employment and the improvement of our country at home. Is there any commitment that we should be more pleased to honour than that of trying to main-suppltain our people at home and give them an opportunity of working and living at home? Is there anything wrong—no matter what the theorists may say— about Irish money being poured into bricks, mortar and slates to make homes for Irish men and women to live in? Is it not a negation of all reality that we cannot have houses at home in Ireland for our own people but we can subscribe through our Central Bank in its portfolios of British securities, £60,0000,000, £70,000,000 or £80,000,000 to enable cheaper facilities to be given to people in other lands to do the same thing? I am not as conservative as some of my colleagues in my own Party and in the main the general block of the Government Party, and I think if necessity arises for the Irish Government to use our credit resources for the immediate benefit of the Irish people in an hour of difficulty, I would not let any standing banks committee or any type of banks committee stand in my way, and I do not see why this country should not find itself in the position that many Governments throughout the world find themselves in when there is necessity for vast State expansion, that they can levy at a reasonable rate, or at no rate of interest, the necessary money to meet that necessity.
When one considers, as I have said, the fact that modern currency is no longer backed on the basis of gold or on the basis of anything other than the written promise on the front of the note, I cannot see why one should suddenly have all the apprehensions that have been mentioned about the deposits that banks hold for their customers. Can anybody tell me of anything more secure for the use of that money than the development of Irish land, the building of Irish homes and hospitals where they are necessary, the creation of solid visible assets here at home? Is there not more real security in that than there has been in the financial policy up to date?
Surely devaluation taught us one lesson. In the situation that arose then, we were powerless to stop in any way an overnight 33? depreciation of the sterling value of our assets. If that money had been at home here inIreland, whether in the form of drains or drainage pipes on the lands of Ireland, or in fertilisers to improve the quality of the land, it would not have been possible to depreciate it overnight in that way. Rather would we be sitting here to-day to watch the ever-increasing spiral of our agricultural productivity.
I do not believe that we really grappled with this problem in the right way. People in this House talk of £1,000,000 for this and £1,000,000 for that without realising the fundamental truth that all those millions will be of no avail if we cannot arrest the emigration of the flower of our youth, whether male or female. We do not realise, apparently, in this Dáil—and the Government certainly has given no indication of a realisation—that you cannot bolster an economy on a dwindling population. Now, to arrest this everincreasing seepage of emigration a Government will have to take bold action. It cannot take it within a concept of £5,000,000 national development plan. The plan that this Government should conceive does not run into £5,000,000. I would far rather see them on the point of looking for £500,000,000 for Irish capital development over a period of years than falling down on the side of a lack of courage.
Where better can our resources be used than here at home? Where better can we find fruitful use for all this credit built up by the energy and effort of the Irish people than by putting it back again into that same energy and effort that made the first credit possible? That is why I resent what I describe as the gross impertinence of the Minister for Lands in making implications against our credit-worthiness. Let us glance briefly in retrospect over the history of this country before ever it became an independent State. The Irish people were always capable by their own energy and effort, even in the most difficult circumstances, to build up enormous credits. Before we ever became an independent State we had credits of over £100,000,000 in England. Now that credit has reached somewhere in the region of £600,000,000 or £700,000,000.
What amazes me is the fact that nobody seems to have the courage— possibly that is due to increasing age— to conceive and implement a practical plan. This House has been too long engaged in justification of this act or that act, whether it be my own colleagues on this side of the House or the Deputies who occupy the Government Benches. They are all too easily embroiled in their own personal self-justification and personal difficulties to get down to the problem that the nation wants this Parliament to get down to, namely, the problem of dealing with the difficulties of the ordinary men and women throughout the length and breadth of the country.
I grow impatient not only with the Government spokesment but with those of my own Party when they begin to talk about what someone did or did not do. The fact remains that, irrespective of who did or did not do something, there is a mountain of work still to be done if we only have the courage to face the task of doing it. In particular, I want to emphasise that it is time we got over the growing pains and got down to the task that is at hand. It does not matter to the unemployed man, faced with economic hardship or the threat of emigration, a row of pins, who was right in 1922 and who was right in 1932. His problem is where will he find a job in 1954.
My main attack on Government policy is that the Government cannot offer any solution to that problem. Even in the big State and semi-State concerns, such as Bord na Móna, we have a tremendous impact of unemployment falling at the close of the year, all due to the fact that there is no co-ordination and no planning.
Let us face realities. This country is suffering not only from the disease of underinvestment but also from strangulation by the Civil Service. I do not say that by way of being uncomplimentary to the work done by the Civil Service. I say it from the point of view of the system under which Government has developed here, a system which has allowed, as Government succeeds Government,bureaucracy to grow and the power of Government to diminish.
Never in the history of this country did we so badly need a young, virile, energetic Government. Generally speaking, this House does not seem to get down to grips with the problems of youth to-day. It does not seem to get down to grips with the problem of where the future lies for the young people leaving our educational institutions. This problem exists not only in relation to those who might normally be absorbed into our various industries; it is a problem that presents itself equally to the young people leaving our secondary schools and our universities. Those coming out of our universities equipped for a professional career, who should be able to find themselves absorbed into their own professions in their own country, are faced with the task of choosing anywhere, other than Ireland, in which to find work. That is a poor compliment to 30 odd years of effort on the part of native Governments.
I do not want to indulge in petty criticism. I want to impress upon the Government that they will not get away from their difficulties until they have the courage to plan and take into their own hands the power to make available all the money necessary to finance proper capital investment schemes. Such schemes cover an amazingly wide field. I often think we are inclined to take too seriously the views of orthodox economists who work out problems in the environment of their own learned institutions, in the quietude of their sombre studies, rather than in getting down to grips with the practical realities of the problems that occur in our present-day world.
I do not disrespect the views of these learned gentlemen but if half of them appreciated the problems of severe hunger, the trek to the labour exchange and the anxiety about young families in a situation where the bread winner cannot get employment they might find themselves able to apply an infinitely more practical yardstick to what one might call justifiable capital investment on the part of the Government.
The only thing that deters capital investment is ill-conceived projects. If there is any economist anywhere who can say that there is anything improvident or impracticable in projects that lead to the provision of homes of decent standard and quality for the Irish people, adequate hospitalisation, proper drainage, proper fertilisation of the land, the procurement of technical advice and improved methods of agriculture, I invite him to voice that opinion in his own professional journal or any public journal that he cares to choose and I will argue with him on the basis of his own economic theory.
Why do Governments, when they have had a long taste of office, start to go extreme right of the extreme right? Why do they suddenly become moribund in outlook and stultified in effort? I tell this Government, irrespective of politics, irrespective of anything else, there is a clamour in the country for something practical to be done to arrest the twin disasters that beset our nation.
Why do they go extreme right of the right?
Because age is honourable and caution exceeds caution. There are people throughout this country in the age group 18 to 25 who do not give a fiddle-de-dee about all the politicians in this country and who have not the least interest in them because they believe that every one of us is as bad as the next. That does not alter the fact that, if we are to survive as a nation, we must evolve an integrated, over-all plan that will bring the land of Ireland, year after year, into increased productivity, that will bring, year after year, the industries of Ireland into increased productivity, that will at the same time ensure improved methods in agriculture, the maintenance of standard and improvement in quality of industrial output. That is the basis on which the plan must be laid. We have the money. We have the credits. Thanks be to God, we have still within the Irish nation a wealth of brain and energy and strength that makes it possible to reintegrate our economy whenwe get an inept and incapable Government out of the way. Clear the road and make way for progress.
Deputy Collins has posed a question which a number of members of the Labour Party are very anxious to have answered. He asked why does the Government go to the right even of the right; in other words, why do they become more conservative than they were when in opposition. I feel that the answer is that although they know what should be done they are living under and working a capitalist system. When as members of an Opposition Party, they took a detached view, not having the responsibility of government, they realised that the ills of this nation in these modern times will not be solved by a capitalist system. That system has served its purpose. It is outdated, rotten and this country, as well as every other country in the world, must face the fact that that system must be replaced. The profit motive alone, which is the basis of the capitalist system, is not sufficient to give that state of wellbeing to the people that is now recognised as the minimum to which they are entitled.
Deputy Collins has shown an outlook in the younger members of the chief Opposition Party which I, as a Labour Deputy, welcome and appreciate. It is well to see those who in the past had rather narrow views as to the requirements of the State and the standard to which people were entitled, beginning to realise that the solution does not lie where they thought it did.
Anyway movement away from that right of right or even from the right itself towards the left or any policy that includes a right to welfare benefits is welcomed by our Party.
I should like to take advantage of this debate to examine general Government policy and its effects on the lives of the people. It is natural that I as a Labour Deputy should see things from the standpoint of those who may be called the working class. I recognise no class distinction but there is a difference in the incomes of citizens. If we in the Labour Partyrepresent anything we represent the people in the lower and middle income groups, in its broadest sense, the working people.
It cannot be denied that the removal of food subsidies affected the lives of the working class.
I suggest that whether it is up 2/6 per week or a sum bigger than that, according to the size of the family, the removal of the subsidy on bread and butter and tea and sugar, which are the ordinary household needs of the average family of this country, has an effect of very minor importance on any of the families of the 259 people who last year, according to the figures given in statistics and in Dáil replies, shared an income of almost £4,000,000. What matter to them whether the household budget increased by 2/6 or even 10/- or even £1 per week? The effect must have been of little or no consequence, and equally so on any of the families of the 5,000 odd people who shared an income of £20,000,000. The effect on them, to say the least of it, must have been insignificant.
What a contrast when we examine the effect of that hunger Budget on the old age pensioner, he or she who has to live on the sum of 21/6 per week. How does the increase in bread, butter, tea and sugar, the four essential commodities of their daily life, affect them? It is well-known from Dáil replies that at present-day value of money you would require 24/- per week old age pension to equal the purchasing power of 10/- in 1939. Equally so a single unemployed person with 24/- per week at the present moment due to the removal of the subsidies and the consequent increase in the cost of living is now living on the equivalent of 10/7 per week. In 1939, when it was admitted that unemployment benefit was only an aid to a single person to exist, the figure of purchasing power was 15/- per week. After the number of years that have gone since then, notwithstanding all our cries of increased benefits and better standards of living for the people of this country, we find that an unemployed single person has to exist on the miserable pittance which in real money values is only worth 10/7. What a contrast! How difficult to get ananswer as to how Government policy has affected the people! There is, I suggest, no way that anyone in my Party, representing as they do the ordinary people, could look upon Government policy during the past year, as it was in other years, but that it was a disastrous policy for the ordinary people.
When I spoke in the Dáil on the Estimate for Industry and Commerce I repeated the promise I had already made on behalf of the Labour Party speaking on the Budget of 1952 when I, in the name of the Labour Party, pledged in this House that we would not either take part in a Government or support a Government that would not undertake to restore in full the subsidies which were removed. On the Estimate for Industry and Commerce, I repeated the promise, but stated that because of the fact that rationing had been discontinued it would be practically impossible to implement the promise as made; but I reiterated that promise in the form that we in the Labour Party would not enter or associate with any group in government, any Party, that did not restore in the form of allowances for those who received benefits under the social welfare scheme an amount equal to the difference between the cost of food then and in 1952. The Minister for Industry and Commerce, Deputy Lemass, in his closing speech on his Estimate saw fit to say that: "Deputy Kyne and his colleagues in the Labour Party can now enter the ranks of Fianna Fáil because we have done exactly what he says his Party will require to be done by anyone that they will join in a Government." In a box in the Irish Pressit appeared that the doors of Fianna Fáil were open to me and that if I would take the trouble to examine the Estimates, according to the Minister, I would find that the thing I was crying out for had already been done by the present Government. I want to say this, that what I stated in 1952, and what I reiterated on the Estimate for Industry and Commerce, I intended without any camouflage or without any hedging to state—that the amount of £8,000,000 or so that was saved by the removal of the subsidies should be added to the present social welfarebenefits, and that is what our Party asks for. Deputy Lemass very carefully ignored the fact that in 1949 we had in this House under an inter-Party Government a Social Welfare Act, or a Bill as it was then, in which benefits equal to if not better than the present Social Welfare Act were outlined.
I consider the present social welfare increases scarcely sufficient to meet the increased cost of living other than that caused by the removal of the food subsidies; and our promise is this— that we will demand that the sum saved on food subsidies will be restored to those who are unable to provide for themselves and are entitled to benefit in the form of cash before we will be satisfied. Either that or the cost of those foods will so have to be reduced that they will have the same purchasing power as they had at that time.
The Labour Party makes no secret of the fact that they consider the present social welfare benefits inadequate. We believe that a children's allowances of a weekly sum of even 5/- per child is not an excessive amount at the present moment in view of the high cost of living. We believe that it is an absolute necessity that old age pensions should go forward to make their purchasing power equal to what 21/6 was in 1949, to a point of roughly 24/- at the present day. Anyone who wishes to tie the Labour Party to that statement is perfecly welcome to do so. We are prepared, if necessary, to vote for increased taxation on indicated commodities and services such as cigarettes, cinema seats, racing, entertainments of all kinds, petrol or any other commodity once we are satisfied that the concessions which we seek cannot be achieved through other means.
I should like to say that a number of Deputies who in 1952 were Independent Deputies in this House indicated— principally Deputy Dr. Browne and Deputy Dr. ffrench-O'Carroll—that they did not agree with the removal of the food subsidies but by their action in joining the Party which removed the subsidies and which continues to keep them in abeyance,they now endorse the very policy they condemned.
I cannot see how that arises on the Estimate for the Taoiseach.
I bow to your ruling. I was about to suggest to them that if they agree with the policy of the Labour Party in seeking to restore the subsidies and to reimpose the excess profits tax, then the Labour Party will be with them. I suggest that the people of this country will judge them by their reaction to that suggestion. When I state that the old age pensioners are entitled to 24/- or 25/- per week and that a children's allowance of 5/- a week is not excessive, considered in relation to the present cost of living, I want to make it clear also that other people dependent on social welfare allowances—the blind, the widows and orphans, the sick and the unemployed—are perfectly entitled in our opinion to an increase.
On a motion tabled only last week in this House by Deputy Norton, Deputy Larkin and myself we said that we were prepared to vote with any Government that would give these increases, even if it were necessary to increase taxation. The Minister for Social Welfare thought fit in his reply to state that if the Labour Party were sincere, they should put down a motion demanding such increases indicating where the money could come from. I should like to reply to that by stating, as the Minister knows very well, that if we were to put down a motion now it would have to take its place in the queue and very likely would not be debated in this House for another 12 months. If the Minister and the Taoiseach give us an undertaking that if we put down that motion and if we indicate where we believe the money can be got and how we are prepared to support them, then the Labour Party will accept that challenge because we do not believe in lip service to the working people. We consider, and I think I proved it on the motion, that had the 1947-48 excess profits tax remained in operation, in the year 1952-53 the £28,000,000 profitswould have yielded a tax of £10,000,000 whereas in actual fact the tax collected was just £2,500,000. The difference between £2,500,000 and £10,000,000 is a considerable amount of money. It would be sufficient, I suggest, of its very own, assuming that profits remained at the same figure as last year, to finance, without adding one further penny of taxation, the difference between the present benefits and the benefits that we believe the ordinary people should get.
I want to say on behalf of my Party that we do not believe in just saying that social welfare benefits must be increased, that people must get work and wages and leave it at that. We have a live economic policy. We know what we intend to do and what should be done. In connection with the external assets of this country, we believe in a system of repatriation, not as suggested by Fianna Fáil speakers in squandering our external assets on consumer or luxury goods. We believe that the money invested abroad should be brought back to this country in the form of machinery, of equipment or of materials to develop the economy of this country. Deputy Seán Collins spoke of investments abroad and he made an appeal for measures to secure the return of that money for investment here at home. Let me support him in his plea. I find it difficult to believe that money invested abroad, mainly in gilt-edged securities yielding a small profit of roughly 3, 4 or 5 per cent., could not be invested in this country in agriculture or in some other industry in a manner that would give a bigger percentage yield and that would, in actual fact, serve a double purpose because the fruits of that investment would give us the raw material for further exports from this country.
There is a ready market abroad for all the agriculture produce that we can produce in this country. As I have said, I agree with Deputy Collins, and I support him in his plea that that money should be returned in some form that will help national and economic development. I am aware that the attitude of this Government is that theinterest earned by our external assets helps to finance the difference in the balance of payments between imports and exports. That is a perfectly correct and a perfectly sound policy, but the very same interest earned at home would do the very same job with, as I have said before, the added attraction that we would have Irish people employed in Irish industry, and we would have goods and materials available for further export.
It has been an old trick of this Government, and even of other Governments, when challenged about the difference between imports and exports, to claim that the price of imports had gone up, that there was no relation to former times, that things were imported over which the Government had no control, and that they had gone up in price while the price of exports had gone down. That was accepted as a legitimate excuse and nobody can deny that, if it were true at the time, it was a legitimate excuse. But accepting that, does it not presuppose that if import prices have gone down and export prices have gone up, we have a right to expect from the Government something to show the effect on the life of the country and that a higher standard of living is available here? With such a state of affairs, one would have expected a vast improvement.
The import price index for September, 1951, at its peak period, was 324; in September, 1953, it had dropped to 285. That means that things we imported were 12 per cent. cheaper in 1953 than they were at the peak in 1951. Would it not be only natural to expect, then, that the standard of living here and that the employment here would have improved? What do we find? We find 70,000 men and women and boys and girls walking the streets of Dublin, Waterford, Cork, Limerick, and towns and villages in our country. What do we find with regard to emigration? An estimated figure of 30,000 people leaving this country every year. We know from the returns for last year that 22,000 males had left agriculture as compared with the previous year, the highest known figure since records have been kept.One would have looked for an improvement, but unfortunately we find that the reality is different. The fact is that not only is there no improvement, but things are gradually getting worse.
We heard the Tánaiste indicating how his Government propose to allocate the National Development Fund of £5,000,000. The Local Loans Fund is to get so much and the Road Fund so much more. While I agree that in the present position in this country there is an absolute need for money to be allocated to the Road Fund, to emergency employment schemes, and to financing the Local Loans Fund, let me make it clear that we look upon that as only a temporary measure, as only an expedient to take hungry men off the dole and put them in employment at any cost. We visualise a Local Loans Fund, not for giving grants for temporary special employment schemes, but being used for development of such a kind that the national income will increase.
In connection with the Labour policy, we have a saying that the national cake must be so shared out that all sections of the community will receive a share, but we add to that that not only must it be shared out, but that the national cake must be increased by development of our home industries so that in the share out the people will receive a bigger and better share in order that the standard of living will rise from the present level to a height never known before. Our policy is an extension of national income to finance a proper standard of living and a better social welfare scheme. We believe not only that the working people and the producers should share in national improvement in this country, but that by means of social welfare benefits every person who is incapacitated or who is unemployed through no fault of his own should receive an equal proportion of the increased standard of living so that this country would be a model Christian country in which all the people would secure their share of the profits to be got by proper development of our resources.
The last speaker wasbuilding a very fine Utopia around us, but I am sorry that he and his colleagues did not try to put some of these schemes which we hear about into practice when they had an opportunity, or even show us that they had started to put a number of these schemes into operation. As a matter of fact, we on this side of the House are trying to improve our country economically and otherwise. We will continue in the future, as we have done in the past, to give the maximum protection to industry. We have encouraged people to invest money in industry and we have told them that if they invest money in industry we will give them the necessary protection to enable them to go ahead and develop that industry. We would not dream of doing what colleagues of the last speaker said. They said that we locked these people behind closed doors because they invested money in industry.
Talk sense.
I will get the quotation for you.
Twist it any way you like.
I will get the quotation for you. When they had an opportunity for three years of doing something worth while they failed to do it. Deputy Hickey was a willing party to that hypocrisy.
On the industrial side we have done everything we could. We have given the maximum protection to those who invested money to create employment and to produce something for the benefit of the nation. We will continue to do that. Notwithstanding the misrepresentations we have heard from the other side of the House during the last few days since this debate opened, we will continue to try to create employment and to get people to invest money in Irish industry.
On the agricultural side, on many occasions during the three years of the inter-Party Government I was forced to ask questions of the then Minister for Agriculture. They are talking now about men going off the land. Thebad turns men do often live after them. The inter-Party Government was supposed to have collective responsibility, but when I and a few other Fianna Fáil Deputies tried to get protection for certain agricultural and horticultural interests, I was told I was concerned in a vested interest. The then Minister was more concerned with giving employment to foreign labour to produce the things we should produce ourselves. It was trotted out here that it was a question of expediency, that I was concerned about those people and was not concerned about the consumer. I was and am concerned about the consumer, but I hold that we ought to give the maximum protection to agricultural and horticultural industries. We did that, but the Parties opposite tried to destroy that economy. In three years they succeeded in doing more harm to that economy which we had gradually built up.
Wheat, beet and peat were the three industries often slighted and insulted, along with the people who supported them. Then gradually, after having been in office three years, they began to learn something. They saw an election coming. They are asking now why so many people are going off the land. In one year they destroyed the economy we had built up, giving encouragement to our farmers by grants and various schemes, including the relief of rates on agricultural land, schemes for land improvement and the improvement of farm outbuildings. In one year after we left office that economy was killed. In the second year more of it was killed and in the third year it was worse. As a result, when we came into office again in 1951 we found the ship going down the stream. We tried to bring that ship back up the stream to where we had it before we left office.
It must be one of the ships the Minister for Defence wanted to sink.
When I spoke on the other side of the House I got very little support from the people concerned. I spoke of various commodities flooding the market at a time when we had our own produce here for the home market. There was the usual old cat-cry thatthey were too expensive. If they were too expensive, it was the responsibility of the Minister dealing with that Department to see that the market was made right and he had the means at his disposal to do that. That was another economy they succeeded in destroying.
The very year we left office, a number of beet growers in County Dublin were advised to grow oats immediately. There were no inspectors to go across the fence. Deputy Dillon was boasting no inspector would go to see anyone. No inspector was sent by us, only to get the farmers to do something for the benefit of the nation, of themselves and their families.
To compel them, not to encourage them.
Deputy Blowick is like the weather cock, with his nose in every breeze. I am sorry to be sarcastic. There was no compelling anyone to do what was in the interest of the nation and of his own home. We had to do something at that time. If the last speaker were in the same position, he would have asked the people to do it, too. Those who were not inclined to do it were visited by inspectors employed by the Government of the country, which had to take direct responsibility to the individual and to the collective masses of the people at that period. The inspectors were advised not to compel but to encourage as far as humanly possible. If a man is not worthy of being encouraged in a time of national emergency, he deserves no respect from any Government. I would say that even against myself if I were unable to rise to the occasion and do as required to do, in order to try to feed our people when the war was on.
What was the talk about putting the tractors in over the wall, so?
That cheap cat-cry will not get old Ireland anywhere.
That was Deputy Smith's cry.
The Deputy knows it was in the interests of the nation that we should do the things we had to do. During that period a lot of scurrility was used here. When we changed over to the other side, the principal speakers were full of misrepresentation. That will never get old Ireland anywhere.
We have here to-night some of the speakers who should not have stood for that, at that particular period. We hear them to-night accusing us about the number of people who have left the land. I heard the last speaker and others using those phrases. They are the people who are responsible for upsetting our tillage economy which we were gradually building up. Thanks be to God, a number of our people are beginning to see that tillage is paying again. This year we had a remarkably good harvest. Farmers are growing wheat again voluntarily, just as we desired. We are giving them every encouragement and they may rest assured the Government will stand behind them and will not let them down in any tillage commitments they may make. We will continue doing that. I hope we will succeed in convincing good farmers throughout the country to continue that policy until we can produce everything we require in agriculture. We will then reach the time in our agricultural economy when we will be able to export the surplus that is not required at home. This can be done only by the method adopted by the Fianna Fáil Government. The farmer knows now that when we ask him to do a thing we will not do as Deputy Dillon did in 1948. He advised farmers to grow more oats and go away from wheat, saying the wheat was costing the country too much. Then the country was flooded with oats. There had been a good and guaranteed market for wheat. He adopted that attitude against wheat because Fianna Fáil had advocated wheat, which was responsible for saving the nation during the war. Deputy Dillon and Deputy Blowick must take full responsibility for that heresy. Deputy Blowick carried on in support of Deputy Dillon and tried to destroy our wheat economy.
Did the widow get shut of the oats yet, I wonder?
Deputy Blowick and other Ministers at that time must take their share of the responsibility. Their short speeches across the House and interjections will not put me off my trend of thought. That will not get them out of their difficulty in facing the nation on these matters.
I heard Deputies speak of public works and of housing and of various methods of providing employment. We heard some of the usual able white-washers talk of the rebuilding of Dublin Castle and the rebuilding of the Houses of Parliament. We heard all these things from the other side. May I ask Deputies who are members of local authorities, do they want the Government to abolish all county councils and start building houses themselves? Is that their approach? It is not on the records of the Department of Local Government that the Minister there refused to sanction the building of houses in any area in County Dublin or any other of the Twenty-Six Counties. If there is anyone responsible for the slowness in building houses, it is the local authority. If those Deputies want to uphold the local authority system and if people who are responsible councillors cannot see that their work is carried out, it is very strange that they should say here they want more houses built and do not want Dublin Castle built. These calls and cheap interjections are dishonest and have no foundation in fact. No Minister for Local Government in a Fianna Fáil Government ever prevented the improvement of housing conditions. Every Bill to improve housing was brought forward by Fianna Fáil. The present President of Ireland, when Minister for Local Government, made one of the first big advances on the housing problem. His colleague who succeeded him was supported by the Party as a whole in continuing that work. I appeal to the speakers opposite not to continue with the thrash and misrepresentation they have indulged in on this matter.
We have heard a good deal about roads and public works. I would like to see a lot more money spent onroads. If the resources of the nation can afford it, I would like to see up-to-date roads in every part of Ireland. The first thing the inter-Party Government did was to cut the road grants by £2,000,000. When they saw that was a political mistake, they brought in the Local Authorities (Works) Act as an expedient to try to cover up that mistake. Every Deputy knows that in some places we have a number of prairie tracks, not roads, and that we have a long way to go to improve them. I am talking about the third-class roads there are in some counties still. Some counties have advanced reasonably well, but others have not and have a long way to go to get anywhere near perfection. The Minister for Local Government has made an intelligent approach to this and is anxious to see our roads improved. We had the usual mean cat-cries from Deputies opposite, that wide roads for big cars are not wanted. That comes very badly from responsible men who should have a national outlook. We should have advanced from the time of parish pump politics and should not have that kind of talk across the floor of the Dáil. We all know that more money should be spent on roads and that we have a long way to go before they will all be perfect. We in Fianna Fáil will continue with the work, which was interfered with by three years of inter-Party Government.
The last speaker said we need better social services. No one has ever said here that we have given as much in social services as we should give. No man has ever said we have gone as far as we should go or that there should be a stop to the amount of money being spent on social services. When we were trying to get money during the recent Budget in order to improve social services, and when the Minister for Social Welfare challenged, in a recent debate, some of the responsible Deputies who voted against increases in certain taxation, and pointed out that a lot of this money was intended for the improvement of social services, they voted against it. That reminds me of the play, The Merchant of Venice. They want the pound of flesh all right, they want the social services but they dare us to look for any increase in taxation for that purpose, or to spill one drop of blood. That is the policy of Labour and Fine Gael.
It is very hard to be patient with the Deputy.
I am sorry if I am hurting the Deputy, as it is not my intention to hurt him personally. I am trying to show him the error of his ways over many years. If Parties on the other side of the House want to improve and extend social services, let them support us in increasing taxation and we are all the way with them. They voted against us, misrepresented us and will continue to do so, acting as in the old play, The Merchant of Venice.Some day I may succeed in converting Deputy Hickey to the right road. I assure him I will never despair.
I have dealt slightly with economics. I have tried to deal with the broad principles of our policy, without going into details. I should like now to deal for a moment with the proposed rebuilding of Dublin Castle and some other public works. Fianna Fáil gave the maximum protection to industry, to agriculture and to horticulture. Fianna Fáil increased the road grants and encouraged rural electrification. We have done our best with bog development. We initiated national drainage schemes. Despite all these endeavours, we find that we still have unemployment in our midst. We are trying to develop public works. What is wrong with that? Public works have been developed in other countries. However, the moment we say we want to improve public property we are greeted with the protest that it would cost £10,000,000. If the work is necessary and if it provides employment for our people instead of the dole, even if it does cost £10,000,000 surely it must be agreed that the work will be of national benefit? Are we to adopt the policy and the outlook of the Coalition Government that "the house my grandfather lived in is good enough for me"? This House of Parliament is too small. The Deputies of eachpolitical Party are all crowded into one little room. In my view, it would be well if we had a House of Parliament of a size sufficient to enable a Deputy to interview his constituents, or any other callers he might have, in private.
Bravo, Paddy. You are right.
What is wrong with this House?
Let me develop my argument. You are the same as——
I am not.
——the fellow who went out to plough. Deputy Blowick reminds me of the old man who went out to plough and who said——
That is a parable.
——"My grandfather always dug that field with a spade." Deputy Blowick is the same as that man. He does not want any advance. This House of Parliament is too small. A Deputy needs a room where he can interview his constituents in private or where he can interview anybody who calls upon him. We need additional accommodation, and yet when the Government propose to erect a new House of Parliament Deputy Dillon and his colleagues in the Fine Gael Party go down the country and begin complaining about the amount which the project will cost the taxpayer and the ratepayer. Then again, we hear them talk about unemployment. They shed crocodile tears over the plight of the unemployed. I can assure the House that the policy which was pursued by the Coalition Government is responsible for much of the unemployment which exists to-day.
Hear, hear!
We cannot forget that the Coalition Government were in office for three years and that they did a great deal of damage to our national economy in that period of time. When this Government decide to spend money on public works I hope thatmembers of the Opposition, who like to cry now and again over the plight of the unemployed, will not complain that the works will cost so many million pounds and that the Government ought to be ashamed of themselves for wasting money. For my part, I should dearly like to see every person in this country usefully and gainfully employed. The policy of the Fianna Fáil Party is to bring about that position as far as possible. If we are stopped or frustrated, through the force of economic circumstances beyond our control, in our attempt to provide employment, at least it must be admitted that we are making an honest effort to bring about a satisfactory employment situation. We will continue these efforts——
Who is stopping you from employing them? You have the power in your own hands.
We have heard some of the recently converted Republicans on the Opposition Benches speak about the international situation. Fianna Fáil have nothing to be ashamed of so far as the political position is concerned. Our leader is a statesman who will be respected for hundreds of years after his death.
Sure, he will never die.
Ever since he became leader of the Fianna Fáil Party, he has contributed more than any other person in this country to the cause of our political freedom. Every political move he has made during his leadership in this house has been the move of a statesman. Whenever he had occasion to speak on the international position he always began by referring to Ireland. Nobody in this House can say that the present Taoiseach was ever afraid to say "No" when the interests of this country demanded it.
There are people in this House who are anxious to misrepresent the Fianna Fáil Party and who wish to make the public believe that we are not anxious to get back our six northern counties. Many men on the Fianna Fáil Benches spent a long time in jail in their effortsto bring our Six Counties within the jurisdiction of this Parliament. I am delighted to note that we are all as one on that particular matter.
My only endeavour now is to make it clear that I take exception to some statements which were made and to some questions which were asked at a time when the Government are doing everything in their power to see that we have the government of our 32 Counties. Nobody can ever say, with truth, that the Fianna Fáil Government are doing nothing about the sundered part of our country. We are doing everything we can. I might point out, in passing, that any move which was made in that matter by Fianna Fáil was successfully made and made by a statesman.
I heard Deputy J.A. Costello, the former Taoiseach, speak here yesterday. I must say that I was rather astonished that a learned man should speak in the vein in which he spoke. One would expect that his contribution to a debate of this importance would be more statesmanlike. One would not expect that he would stoop to try to score some small political point by way of a trick or that he would try to misrepresent the present Government on important political matters. I do not intend to go over past history now or to create any bitterness. I should like to kill any bitterness that might exist. Sometimes, however, it is very difficult to restrain one's tongue when one hears a man such as Deputy J.A. Costello, who should know better, try to misrepresent the Fianna Fáil Party so far as the international position and our Six Counties are concerned. We will never relax our efforts to bring in our six northern counties as soon as it is humanly possible to do so. A number of people outside this House, especially young people, have often been misled by people holding responsible positions in this country. There are men on both sides of the House who have an honoured career as far as the country is concerned and nobody can take that from them. Their record is an honourable one. I do not want to deal with that but I do say, having read the parts of Deputy Costello's speechwhich were published in the paper, that it is very unworthy of a man of the ex-Taoiseach's standing to make speeches of that kind.
This Estimate is always a very important one and I regret that the Taoiseach departed from the practice that has been established for a considerable time of giving a survey of the past year and an outline of his proposals for the coming year so that not only the members of this House, but the people of the country as a whole, would know what are the intentions of the Government for the future.
During the past year we know that the Government's intentions changed many times. These changes were brought about by sad events in some cases, through the death of Deputies and by the reverse which the Government Party suffered in the by-elections. Let me give an indication of what I mean. The Government, through the Minister for Local Government, issued a circular last May to the county councils telling them that they were to frame their local taxation demands upon a Bill that was to be introduced. They gave an outline of what the proposals were going to be but, as I say, the by-elections took place in Wicklow and Cork and the Government switched overnight. It is only reasonable to assume that the change in policy was due in no small way to the reverse which the Government suffered in these two by-elections.
During the Galway by-election, in my own presence, the Taoiseach announced the £5,000,000 Capital Development Fund. It was the rabbit he took out of the bag for the people of Galway. I was listening to him so that there is no hearsay about it. The impression he gave to the people in Galway was that there were £5,000,000 for them and that all they had to do was to send a postcard to him or the Fianna Fáil Party and a new factory for making spinning tops would be established in Galway or on the western seaboard. The exact words he used were that the Development Fund would be for proposals that were otherwise looked upon as not being asound commercial proposition. Therefore, if you could make a proposition that was in any way reasonable at all the money from the Development Fund was available for it.
The important point I want to make is this. The Taoiseach today, in answer to Deputy Dillon, said they never said there were debts when the inter-Party Government went out of office but that there were commitments. The Taoiseach in Ballinasloe, again in my hearing, declared it was true that there were £24,000,000 of the Marshall Aid money left behind but he asked what was the use of talking about that £24,000,000 when they were left debts greater than that amount. In that cute way of his he put this one across. He said it was like a man making a will and bequeathing £400 but leaving debts of £500 to pay and what good was that? The people of Galway and Ballinasloe listening to him cheered him to the echo. He was positive and definite that we left debts.
I want to support the assertions of Deputy Dillon and Deputy McGilligan that there were no debts left but that they did leave the commitments—any amount of them—and this Government made no effort to cancel a single one of the commitments we had made. Then you hear Ministers talking about financial problems. I will quote a few gems used by the Minister for Posts and Telegraphs quite recently. Deputy Kyne, the innocent man, talked about the repatriation of sterling assets. Would it astound him to learn that the Minister for Posts and Telegraphs, when speaking in his own constituency, declared that there were no sterling assets left, that we spent them all? He made that astounding statement without any hesitation. I will give the reference and the extract so that there can be no misunderstanding about it. The Minister for Posts and Telegraphs, as reported in the Longford Leaderof June 27th, 1953, said that those who were talking about the repatriation of sterling assets and capital development were talking crass ignorant nonsense. He then went on to say:—
"The whole of the assets, totallingsome £151,000,000 abroad, saved up during the year, had gone."
They were all gone. What use is there in Deputy Kyne talking about bringing them back when, according to the Minister for Posts and Telegraphs, nothing is left? If that is not nonsense, what is? The Minister went on to say that anybody who talked about prosperity during the time of the inter-Party Government was talking about a Government who lived beyond their means and who did not tax sufficient to bear the day-to-day expenses of Government.
There is not a halfpenny left of the £151,000,000 that we had saved and, mind you, the Minister for Posts and Telegraphs was quite clear as to what it meant: "The whole of the assets, totalling some £151,000,000, saved up during that period, had gone." He was speaking to the Fianna Fáil Comhairle Ceantair. When that sort of statement is made by the Minister for Posts and Telegraphs we must take it that he was talking on behalf of the Government because the Fianna Fáil Government are the only Government in this country who speak with full collective responsibility.
They do not talk in divers tongues.
Maybe I will prove you do.
Mr. Boland
Go ahead.
Was the Minister for Posts and Telegraphs saying what the Government meant and believed to be true when he said the whole of the £151,000,000 was gone and that it was repatriated? If the Minister for Justice says that he was, then I am going to contradict that because it is not true. There is no difficulty in getting from the Government's own statistics the proof that that is not true but the charge was made that the inter-Party Government extended and increased those sterling assets.
Again the Minister for Finance, Deputy MacEntee, in his broadcast as reported in the daily papers of 11th May, 1953, declared that because of the unwise and improvident spending ofthe former Government the current Budget for many years to come would carry a lot of dead weight. Therefore, what anyone would expect from this Government was that they would not have any borrowing and that there would not be any improvident spending. However in Ballinasloe, at that same meeting, the Taoiseach said: "There is greater capital expenditure than ever. This year we propose to spend £39,000,000 to the inter-Party's £24,000,000." What was the inter-Party Government spending this money on? Land, housing, schools and hospitalisation. As Deputy Dillon asks, which one of these commitments did this Government alter? None except two of them, which they restricted— they did not say they would stop them —land rehabilitation and schemes under the Local Authorities (Works) Act. Their defence for the restriction of the local authorities works is that they are going to spend more money on the roads. Before building roads it would be much better to improve the land and have something to carry on the roads. Improve your land and do the drainage first; let the roads come after. After the roads by all means let the buildings that Deputy Burke was speaking about be erected, including the Castle if he likes. It is when you have this work done that you could talk about doing public works that would be of value of the country generally.
I heard a Deputy on the Fianna Fáil Benches to-night—of course, sometimes it is not wise to take notice of them—praising Senator George O'Brien for the views he expressed recently in the Seanad upon finance generally. They forget that Senator George O'Brien and several other eminent economists and advisers were on the Currency Commission and that they advocated even a further restriction of capital expenditure. When the war came and when they were challenged about it, their answer was that their decision was based upon peace and a continuation of peace but that, if they had to envisage the outbreak of war, the report on capital expenditure would be completely different; in other words, great economists as they are, they made a ghastly mistake. Therefore,I am not going to be impressed by any speeches, no matter who makes them, so long as the policy they are advocating is going to create more unemployment, more hardship, and a lowering of the standard of our people generally, because that was the policy of the people we tried to put out of this country 30 years ago. Although we put them out, unfortunately we did not succeed in expelling with the armed forces in so far as they left our country, the financial system they left behind them and which has done so much damage.
That is true.
The failure to do it by the first Government was not their fault. There was here a situation that makes people to-day regret that it ever had to occur but that does not get us anywhere. The fact remains that at that stage the Government of the day could not undertake the alteration of the financial system. When the change of Government took place in 1932 an economic war came upon us and I presume the Government then felt unable to alter the position although that was the best day they could ever have for doing it. If at that stage, instead of Ministers boasting— and I do not want to resurrect things —that we could do without the ships, without the exports of cattle, about which there was so much talk, and without all the things we were importing and exporting, we had broken away and established our currency, we would have been much better off, because the economic war would not have pressed so hard on the people.
In 1947—and I cannot understand this—the Government came to the conclusion that the people had too much money and they introduced their Supplementary Budget in that year, imposing £7,000,000 extra taxation. We said in these benches at the time that that was not necessary. There is one thing for which the Fianna Fáil Party will never forgive us and that is for taking off the £7,000,000 taxation to prove they were wrong, because Fianna Fáil are the only Party in this country, according to themselves, who never made a mistake. They arealways right, no matter what happens. No matter how many twists they take and no matter how many times they change their course, they will tell you they are still on the same one. Even the youngest schoolboy knows how silly that is, but when they came back into office through the support of Deputies Cowan, Browne, ffrench-O'Carroll, Flynn and Cogan they published 17 points, one of which was to the effect that they were not to remove the subsidies. In the general election the Minister for Finance declared that those of the Fine Gael and the other Government Parties who were saying that if Fianna Fáil got back into office that taxation would go back on the stout, whiskey and so on, were talking sheer nonsense, and that it was an outrage for us to say such a thing. Nevertheless, it was the very first thing they did when they came back to office, to abolish the subsidies and put on taxation. Why?—to get back to the position they were in in 1947 and to show by the campaign against their predecessors that we failed to tax enough, that we were in debt and that we ran the country into an impossible situation. The Minister for Finance declared, and the Taoiseach declared in practically the same words, that they did not put on taxation for pleasure. I do not know what they put it on for except, as I have asserted, for that one reason, to punish the people who voted against them and put them out of office in the past, and to damn the reputation of every one of us whether he was a Costello or a McGilligan, a Norton, a Blowick or whoever the Minister might be. You have a back bencher like Deputy Burke getting up to throw that about. It is true that none of the Ministers to-day will do as he did, but you will get the back benchers after they have been primed to do that.
I often wonder why, when Fianna Fáil comes into office, the people as a whole have to suffer so much. Remember, that when Fianna Fáil came into office in 1932 they promised faithfully that they were going to reduce taxation by £2,000,000, and that they were going to increase the income of every worker on the land by an average of£11 10s., or at least that there would be £11 10s. per head of the population for every person engaged on the land over 14 years of age. But as soon as they came in, what did we find? The first thing that happened was that the income of those of the agricultural community was reduced by exactly £11 10s. Similarly, in the years 1951, 1952 and 1953 the Government set out to reduce the income of every person in the country, either by direct taxation or by leaving them unemployed, so that they had not the wherewithal to meet their day-to-day requirements.
The Taoiseach declared that there was no restriction of bank credit. Of course, everybody in business and everyone in contact with the agricultural community knows that that is not correct, and that there is restriction of credit. I am aware that that is so in the case of the building trade, in the industrial end as well as the agricultural end. I know industrialists who have been called upon to reduce their overdrafts, even though they have very substantial means, treble what their liabilities are. Yet, the bank has called on them to reduce their overdrafts.
Similarly, if a farmer to-day tries to get credit, or a loan, from a bank, well he might as well be trying to get a snowball into the lower regions. He cannot get it. I wonder is it only in my constituency that this hardship is being imposed? My information is that it extends all over, but I am aware of it in my own constituency where successful business people have been called upon, within the last 12 months, to reduce their overdrafts by very substantial amounts. As soon as that happens, either in industry or in business, it immediately has the effect of reducing the purchasing power of the businessman or of the man in industry, in regard to stocks and the result is that there is a reduction in employment.
As I have said I often wonder what is the cause of all this hardship that is being brought about by Fianna Fáil upon our people. While, again, I do not want to resurrect old things, I find that it has been the view of the Leader of the Party, the present day Taoiseach, for a very long time thata life of ease, or a life of comfort of the Irish people, is not one to be brought about. As a matter of fact, he declared on one occasion in Cork that the people who were then opposed to him would be offering an inducement to a life of ease, and he said that he resisted that, that if we got that then we would live the life of the beast. Now it is very hard for anybody to think that the very gentle Taoiseach at the moment would say a thing like that, but yet I can document it and prove it and it is strange to see that every time when he comes into office he imposes hardship. The result is that you have people walking the streets of Dublin, Cork or Limerick, and whether they are marching in unison or singly they are idle and hungry and their wives and families are in the same way. That always comes about and that is to be deplored. The Taoiseach declared at one time that there was no trouble whatever in solving the unemployment problem, but after sixteen years of office he throws up his hands and says: "If there is anybody who can come in with a plan to end unemployment we will put it into effect."
I do not intend to delay the House, but when you consider all the fine things which Government speakers pretend are happening in the country you get disillusioned. There will be more people going out of the country than have been going, and the result will be that, bad and all as the countryside was before the establishment of the State, it will become worse. The countryside was described—and conditions in the countryside were described before the establishment of the State—as a torrid desert in ways— in which people were getting a miserable existence. We thought that, when we had done our work, a change in that respect would be brought about, but it did not bring that change. Now, the whole plan and the whole solution for all our problems is to rebuild the castle and have new constellations. Remember, a Bill was passed through this House since this Government came back into office restoring the constellations. I do not know what has happened to it. We have not heardanything about it since and it is about time that someone put down a question to ask what has occurred. As I say, all that has been brought about by this particular Government in this particular way.
I want to finish with my word of protest against the conduct of the Northern Government in arresting an elected representative for utilising freedom of speech during a so-called free election.
I think that the Taoiseach should, in our names, have protested against that arrest. The fact that he says that there is nothing he can do about it is a very grave reflection upon himself and upon many of his supporters in the past, because I remember the day when, to end Partition, all you had to do was to vote Fianna Fáil. It was just as simple as that. This is the position after their many years in office. Of course, during the years from 1932 to 1938 the economic war was being fought, a great battle was being waged, and you were not to embarrass the Government in any way. They then made further agreements on Partition, and some still remain. I am quite prepared to leave it at that and to say that, in my opinion, this Dáil should seriously consider the whole question of reinviting all the elected members in Northern Ireland into this Parliament. We should issue the invitation and afterwards reconsider the whole matter. If the thing goes all right very well—we will be very proud and very happy—but if they refuse to come and still want to remain outside, then I think this Government—upon whom, of course, the whole responsibility rests for policy at the moment, because I subscribe to the view that nobody can put any policy into force in this country relating to Partition only the elected Government of the country that now sits in those benches —has responsibility to do what is the correct thing at the time.
With these few remarks on the matter I leave it. I conclude by again protesting against the failure of the Government and the failure of the Taoiseach to make the survey of the past and the portrait of the future.
I did want to mention two otherthings, but because one of them is sub judiceI cannot go into any details—that is the Ballinalee Post Office case—but I want to condemn the Taoiseach for his refusal to receive the deputation from that village. He said that no purpose would be served by receiving it. I think if it had been received perhaps much good would have been achieved.
The other point is that the whole conduct of Radio Éireann and the appointment and dismissal of employees there perturbs me very much, but as that Vote is passed, I do not intend to say anything on it, except to protest to the head of the Government on this Vote against the handling of that whole situation.
The question of the reunification of this country is a vital one for our nation and it has been said here during the past few days that this Government has been silent on that issue. That is not so. Here at home, and in the councils of the nations in Europe and throughout the world our representatives have done their best to keep it a live issue, to fight the people who are the representatives of the nation which has the main responsibility for continuing that unjust division of our nation—by force if you like, by gerrymandering, and by many parliamentary methods which would not find international approval. Anything that occurs to keep Partition a live issue, to my mind, is all to the good because this question of Partition at the present time is not one applying to our country only. In Germany, in Italy, in Korea, and in Egypt and elsewhere the same issue has come into the international plane in a very real way.
When Deputy MacEoin speaks of his method of solving it, I think he would just put a veneer over the whole problem which would perhaps lead other nations to think that this Partition problem was now solved because all the elected representatives of the nation were in one Parliament, while in fact the same injustices would be perpetrated as are being perpetrated to-day and the elected representativescoming in here, or there, or elsewhere would not be able to lift a hand to remedy that position.
I do not want to go back over the whole history of this very knotty problem but the Partition issue in this country is being used abroad by Britain's representatives from the very first days when it was enacted by those who then had responsibility in this country. Even though they had the same numbers then as now, 42 or 43 members, and had a different name— they now have lost part of their name if not their identity. Some members of the Party are new perhaps and do not know the history of these times, but I would advise those on the opposite benches to go back and read in the records of this House what happened at the time that the Boundary Commission was set up and what happened to the request of the Nationalists of the North.
It was a pity the Deputy was not here to oppose it.
I was behind iron bars. Read that record and you may get a salutary lesson from it.
Could we read something else along with that?
It is a good thing we are all agreed on the one point, and that is that every effort that possibly can be made to end that position will have the united support of all Parties and all members at present in this House. Even though Fianna Fáil got part of the way by getting back the ports, their efforts in the direction of a general unification of the country have not been so far successful. These efforts have not ended and I hope that in our time we will see that ideal achieved.
The next problem to the unification of our country is, I am sure, to secure the economic stability and general well-being of our nation, the employment of our people, the promotion of our agriculture and the extension of our industries to give more employment to our people and to preserve the credit-worthiness of our nation. Some people here to-day talk very gliblyabout this question of national credit, external assets and all the rest, and they speak as if we were a mighty nation with unlimited resources not involved in the international system of finance which has in its embrace the credit of countries far greater than ours and with greater resources and potentials. But we have seen in our own day a financial crash in America where many of our exiled people suffered intensely. We have seen England go off the gold standard with all her might and Empire intact, at the time and in that particular phase, it is estimated that this nation, through being involved with her financially, lost at least £15,000,000. When the inter-Party Government was in power we know that there was a devaluation of the British £.
We followed the British at that time even though some people here now talk about establishing our own currency, our own credit and so on. When that opportunity offered they did not stand on their own and say: "Now is our chance. We will not devalue the Irish £. We will see what we can do with the American dollar and we will stand on our own feet in relation to our own finances." But they did not do that. It is very easy to come along here and criticise and talk when, having the power in their own hands, they did absolutely nothing. Perhaps they could not do anything about it but, if they could not, would it not be honest of them now to admit that and say it could not be done? It cannot be done, though many people will not agree.
That was the situation at that time and no action was taken in relation to it. Fortunately, or unfortunately, we are involved in the international financial system and, like oppression from outside, that has brought many ills to this country. If the national unity of the country had not been broken at a vital time we would have been able to take that further step, because things can be done in revolution which cannot be done subsequently. Unfortunately national unity was broken and we were unable to do what we set out to achieve.
We were told by Deputy McGilligan that our financial position is unparalleled due to the fact that our currencyis tied to the currency of another nation. Consider the fact that other nations much bigger and more resourceful than ours have had at times, in order to back up their currency, to get the advantage from other countries of stabilisation credits; if Deputy McGilligan examines that position he may not consider our position quite as unparalleled as he appears to think it is.
I am sure many Deputies saw the quotations from the American papers when another devaluation of the British £ was threatened, to the effect that only if England balanced her own economy and the trend was in the right direction would the United States consider using stabilisation credits to back up her currency either through the financial resources of the United States or other international financial institutions.
Our own Government warned us when they came into office against the dangers of allowing the international financial position to drift because, as they said, in two years our credits abroad would be exhausted and we would be at the mercy of other nations in our trading and even perhaps in maintaining our national position. I wonder did the Deputies within the last three or four weeks see a statement made by Mr. Wilson, who was a member of the recent Labour Government in England: he said that since this threat to the British financial position every concession given from abroad had, as far as he could see, a military tag or condition attached to it. That statement was made by a man who knew what he was talking about and that is exactly what our Government stated would happen to us if we allowed the international position to drift. But it has not been allowed to drift.
I am afraid there is not the same comparison.
Deputy Hickey and myself make different comparisons in matters of this kind, but in case Deputy Hickey has any illusions in the matter I will pass from the Labour Minister and I will come to the Minister for Finance in his own inter-Party Government. In Volume 125, atcolumn 1880 of the Official Report Deputy McGilligan stated:—
"Unless we are building up our productive capacity to an adequate degree, so that by increasing our exports or reducing our imports we can within a few years equalise our external receipts and payments, we must inevitably suffer a decline in our living standards.... Increases in remuneration offer no escape from this unwelcome development."
Again, at column 1906, he said:—
"I must, therefore, sound again the note struck at the beginning of my speech by emphasising the critical importance at the present time of increased savings.... In other countries where private savings are deficient it is necessary to impose taxes to make up for the savings that the public ought to do."
Whichever view is taken, those are the views of people for whom possibly Deputy Hickey may have some regard.
On the question of our national economy, it has been stated that this Government did not borrow at the right time and did not offer the proper rate of interest, namely, a low rate of interest, which would be more advantageous to the people, and so on. What is the actual position? The Government has to get the money from the people, and their savings come from their own efforts. Those savings are preserved in one way or another. Possibly they are lodged in the bank at a low rate of interest. Some may have invested their savings abroad. If a man has saved £100 and if he does not get a proper offer from the Government he is quite likely to say that he will take the chance of using the money himself and he will not give it to the Government for national development. One Deputy pointed out to-day that farmers lodge money in the banks at a low rate of interest. If the Government offers a rate of interest which will induce those farmers to lend that money to the Government for national development, is not that better financial policy than to have the money tied up in the banks at a low rate of interest? Even thougha little more may have to be paid from time to time for the use of that money, and rates of interest fluctuate just as do the payments made for the use of other commodities according as circumstances change, is it not better that the Government should have the use of that money for the benefit of the community as a whole? People know that very well but they argue around the point as if there was some easy way out of these difficulties. Markets have to be examined in the same way as they have to be examined when people have something to buy or sell.
That is happening because we are not in control.
If Deputy Hickey would give us the easy way out the Government would be the first to seize it. If the suggestion is to turn on the printing machine and print money as required, I am not prepared to face the consequences of that policy. Money is only a medium of exchange at best but without that medium you cannot enter into trade or commerce or the other elements that make life revolve around us and keep people employed and interested.
The Government got the money they were seeking. It was said here to-day that it is not a question of money but of what is being done with it. The previous Government increased the national debt by £81,000,000 and I would like to know where the return is from any of their projects to pay off that debt. Personally I cannot see it.
Increased agricultural exports.
Agricultural exports have been increasing considerably quite recently but I do not see where the previous Government invested money in agriculture in order to bring about that result because, while they were in power, Mr. Millar of the United States visited this country while Deputy Dillon was Minister for Agriculture and he said he could get nothing done in agriculture. He had to abandon the idea and turn to tourism as a means of advancing the national interest.
What about land reclamation?
It was published in the Press at the time that he could not get anything done in agriculture. The Government has given a new impetus to the industries it established. When Fianna Fáil returned to power, in the suburban area of the city that I represent, where the textile industry is so important, having a long tradition, the mills were practically closed down and the other industries in the city were equally hard hit. From the report of the Chamber of Commerce it is clear that the industries are going full blast and have orders months ahead. If the Government did nothing else but inspire new confidence in those in charge of these industries and give employment to the workers, it has done a great job.
The Government has not been content to expend its energies only in the cities. It has established towns in the heart of the country and instilled new life where there existed only desolate boglands and moorlands. Generating stations are being erected and workers can visualise good and regular employment in their own country for years ahead. People are becoming confident of getting employment. The revival is very evident and shows the confidence of the people in the Fianna Fáil Administration.
Certain criticism was expressed of employment on the roads which is regarded by some Deputies as a temporary employment scheme. Work on the roads has gone out of that category long since. The roads have their own economy. Income is derived from the users of the roads. The roads must be kept in proper repair. It may be possible to plan so as to provide work on the land during harvesting and other busy times and work on the roads and quarries when land work is not available. Machinery is used to a greater extent on farms. The work can be carried out more quickly and there is increased production but there is a reduction in labour content.
Instead of talking around questions and criticising, we should devote ourminds to the question of how to serve the rural population, how to maintain them in employment, how to improve the national economy. Deputy Dillon referred to increased agricultural exports and Deputy O'Donnell has made reference to it now. We all know that dairying and mixed farming is the basis, and should be the basis, of agriculture because, if we have not dairying and mixed farming, we will not have the meat or other farm produce for export to Britain or anywhere else. The dairying industry suffered a severe setback during Deputy Dillon's régime and is only now recovering.
We are encouraged to improve the land. A great deal has been said about the efforts under the land reclamation scheme. The Fianna Fáil Government was the first to establish these schemes and the first to advocate the fertilising of land by lime.
On 19th June, 1947, in Volume 106, at columns 2250 and 2251, the then Minister for Agriculture, Deputy Smith, said:—
"I am a believer in lime.... I have a map, produced by those who know more about the subject than I, showing the areas of this country in which there is a lime deficiency, and, looking at that map, it is obvious that we can never hope even to touch the fringe of the problem of introducing into that land the lime required, unless it is approached in a very big way....
I have a scheme in mind about lime which I am considering in consultation with my colleague, the Minister for Industry and Commerce.... We have gone a long way in determining the type of organisation we require, the cost at which this ground limestone might be provided, the area in which it would be required and so on. That will take money. If it is to be done in the way it must be done it will take a lot of money.... If lime is to be used by the farmers it must be provided for them in such a way that it can be handled easily, in such a way that it can be got at easily, and it must be provided cheaply."
We did not wait for anybody to tellus about the utility of fertilising the land in that way.
Now we are told that the Government did nothing to cancel the commitments of our predecessors if we did not agree with them. They cancelled, the Lord knows, enough of the projects of Fianna Fáil to make the country right sick of them. One that Deputy Dillon did not mention, of course, was the chassis factory, the start of one of the heavy industries in this country that they scrapped and put in a position that it will not be easy to revive. It was the same thing with some of the other things that they scrapped at that time and put in abeyance. We would have been in that flood-tide had we taken some of them and promoted them at that time, but now bigger nations and vested interests have associated themselves in a way that it would be very hard for a country of our size to compete with them in certain spheres where if we had taken action at that time we would have been the pioneers.
I think it is not necessary at this stage to say very much more. It has been said that the housing drive has slowed down in consequence of our increased rent charges. That is not so, because this Government has not left any housing authority without money for the building of houses, and housing authorities have established direct labour units and given big contracts to various firms for the building of houses for our people. The plain fact of the matter is that many housing authorities through the country have practically finished their building schemes. These have been announced in the papers week after week, and in order to provide employment for our people, every effort must be made to promote the industries we have, to pay more attention to our basic industry, agriculture, to go on with the drainage of catchment areas which will enable these lands to be improved, and, if our towns are not just to be trading and distributing centres, as far as possible some little industry must be established in all of them.
When the statistics of the things still being brought into this countrywhich could be manufactured at home are examined it will require only very little local enterprise to get the Government interested in these matters, because you all heard when a certain town was mentioned here in the Dáil recently and a complaint was made that the Minister for Industry and Commerce had let it down because he had not established an industry there, the Minister retorted that the town had let the Government down because they had put up no proposal, there was no local initiative to give an impetus to any new industry and no check up of what would be appropriate for the particular area.
It will require the united efforts of all of us to solve our national problems, our economic problems, our employment problems and all the rest, and it is not by criticisms of long years ago, I presume, that we are going to get anywhere now but by considering the right road ahead of us, thinking over the line of progress that we are going to follow and throwing our unselfish efforts in on behalf of the nation— that we will think of Ireland and our own people first, their welfare and the comfort of their homes and the future years of their children, and that the ideals of those who have suffered for this nation will not be forgotten in our efforts and that with these things we will preserve, too, the art and the culture, the language and the traditions of this nation for which countless generations have suffered.
The last speaker, Deputy MacCarthy, seems to bewail the fact that his Party was out of office for the period of the inter-Party Government. He has no business crying over that now because the best thing he can do about it is to examine the causes that put them out; and the causes can briefly be described as a policy of voting money here in the House for the apparent benefit and welfare of certain sections of the people, particularly the farming community, and taking great care that that money was never spent. The present Government is back again at the same policy now of voting sums of money just like the £5,000,000 development fund we are promised. This time nextyear or two years it will be interesting, if the present Government is then in power, to find how much they will have spent out of that £5,000,000. My guess is that it will be like the Undeveloped Areas Act. It will be passed through the House here with a great flourish of trumpets, a great amount of noise, and the net result from it after it is passed will be nil.
I am sorry that the Taoiseach when introducing this token Estimate in the House did not give what is usual and customary here, at least an outline of what the Government's policy was for the year, what it had achieved, and what they hoped to do for the coming year. It is not good enough for the Taoiseach or Prime Minister of a country to walk into Parliament and just merely say: "Well, I am asking for this much money for my Department. You can give it or not as you like. You will not hear any explanation from me of what we propose doing." There can be only two explanations of his attitude. One is sheer contempt of the House, and the other is that he was afraid of criticism of the year's turnover, the year's output, of the present Government.
One of the principal things that this House should devote its attention to is in my opinion the shocking flight from the land and emigration that is draining the lifeblood of this country away. That seems to go on day in and day out. While the present Government was in opposition they were deploring it very much until we almost brought it to a standstill. Then they became remarkably silent, but it is a remarkable thing that since they have come back this emigration and flight from the land has got back to its old proportions. I do not think I would be exaggerating in saying that it is now even worse than it was prior to 1948.
We had succeeded in creating an atmosphere in this country wherein the young men particularly were only too delighted to take off their coats and work for the development of the country. Now they are back to the state of mind in which their only desire is to flee the country and to spend the best years of their lives either inEngland or the United States in an effort to get a little money together in the hope that some day they will be able to return and settle down here again.
It would be much better if these young men could be induced to remain at home to develop the country and to take an interest in its development. After all is said and done, Ireland has the first claim on them and it is a sad commentary that after 30 years of self-government, we cannot give our young men a decent wage, provide work for them and give them a headline to develop our own country, as every one of them would be only too glad to do if they had the opportunity. I have said before in this House, and I repeat it, that I have yet to meet the young man who leaves this country willingly. It has been asserted by some Deputies that they go simply because the wanderlust is in their blood. I have known a good many young men in the country but I have yet to meet one of them who left it for either of these two reasons —that he wished to go because he hated Ireland or just because he wanted to wander and see the world.
Government policy, so far as I can see, can be summed up in the statement that the Government is striving or straining to establish heavy industry in this country, industry that would suit highly industrialised countries like England, Germany, Japan or the United States and, while they are failing to do that, they are completely and totally neglecting the principal industry that they have here under their very noses, agriculture. I suppose the very fact that the inter-Party Government was chiefly concerned with the development and building up of agriculture and that the policy of the inter-Party Government could be described as putting the agricultural industry on a sound basis, was quite sufficient for the present Government to wreck every single scheme we had initiated for the development of agriculture. It seems that the farmers are to be singled out as the political football for Fianna Fáil whether they are in office or out of it. Our schemes—therehabilitation of land, the ground limestone scheme, the fertiliser scheme, the Local Authorities (Works) Act, arterial drainage, the relief of congestion by the Land Commission wherever it existed, and the extension of forestry—have been either completely wrecked or throttled down by the present Government and the only reason for that is simply that they were sponsored during our period in office.
The present Government has been back in office for two and a half years and anything that has happened in that time has served only to convince me that the policy which we adopted during our period in office was right and that the policy of the present Government is wrong. While we were putting these scheme into operation there were times when I just wondered whether we were right because when a person is doing anything, putting his heart into it and wishes to make a right good job of it, there are occasions when he will ask himself: "Am I doing the right thing?" Sometimes a certain amount of doubt will arise when you are at a cross-roads and you will ask yourself whether you are right or wrong in the step which you propose to take, but everything that has happened since we left office convinces me that we were right in the policy which we adopted.
There has been a good deal of talk in this House about the land rehabilitation scheme and it was only last night when a motion introduced by Deputies Lehane and Finucane was being discussed, that the Minister told me across the House that more money was being spent on land rehabilitation this year than ever. Unfortunately, I was not in a position to go into the details on that occasion because the motion under discussion would not allow of my doing so. Let me now inform the Minister for Agriculture that under the Land Rehabilitation Act it was proposed to spend £40,000,000 on that project, that is at the rate of £4,000,000 a year, inside ten years. That scheme was commencedin 1949. The aim as I said was to spend approximately £4,000,000 a year for a period of ten years. A new Department virtually, or at least a large section of the Department of Agriculture, had to be mobilised and had to get the necessary training. New machinery had to be purchased to get the scheme going. A very important factor was that the officials who were in charge of the land rehabilitation scheme had to accumulate a certain amount of experience so as to administer it properly. During that first year and a half or two years, the money that could be spent on the actual scheme itself, until the departmental machine was set going, could not amount to very much. I think in the first year we spent something over £250,000, something less than £500,000 anyway. In the second year, the amount spent reached £1,000,000.
However, when the present Government took office the scheme was going full blast. The necessary staff had been recruited and they had acquired the requisite experience. Deputy Dillon left behind him all the necessary machinery. Then the present Government stepped in with plenty of money at their disposal, because we left them £24,000,000 of Marshall Aid which had not been expended. That has been admitted by the Minister for Finance. Of that money, £6,100,000 belonged to the Marshall Aid Grant, one penny of which had not to be repaid. The land rehabilitation project, with an experienced staff in charge, was running like a new machine in every single county of the Twenty-Six when the present Government took over.
What was their contribution to that scheme? Instead of running it up to the pitch that we had intended if we had remained in office, a pitch which would have involved an expenditure, approximately, of £4,000,000 per year, the sum asked for this year is just a little over £2,000,000, half what it should be. Yet the Minister for Agriculture tells us that more money is now being spent than ever before. While that may be literally true, technically it is a falsehood, a complete and absolute falsehood. The present Governmenthave cut down the expenditure on the land rehabilitation scheme. Coupled with that, expenditure under the Local Authorities (Works) Act has been whittled down from £1,900,000 to £400,000 this year. Mayo, my native county, is getting something only in the region of £5,000 by way of grant, as much as would be spent in one parish in one year. As regards arterial drainage, they have just carried on where we left off. They have just carried on with the three schemes we had started on the Brosna, the Brick and Cashen and the Glyde and Dee. Not one single new scheme has been started in the two and a half years since Fianna Fáil came into office. I am sure the Minister for Education has taken sufficient interest in arterial drainage to know——
I spoke on the Brick and Cashen scheme in 1945.
And you pigeon-holed it for ten years.
The Arterial Drainage Act which gave you authority to undertake the Brick and Cashen scheme in 1948 was passed in 1945.
The particular grouse that I have with Fianna Fáil is that they come in with a flood of legislation. We have sheaves of Bills with our post every morning but nothing ever comes of them. The Arterial Drainage Act was passed in 1945 but before we took office there was not the remotest idea of starting a scheme in even one catchment area.
You are blowing again.
If there was, tell us now. Whatever other faults I have I would not like to be guilty of accusing even the Government side of the House of something they were not guilty of, and if the Parliamentary Secretary or Deputy Killilea can tell me of even one scheme which was contemplated, I will withdraw what I said. Out of 107 catchment areas perhaps about 87 are major areas and the rest minor areas or smaller rivers.
You had not to buy a whistle for the Brosna.
In the first year we were in office we had to buy well over £250,000 worth of machinery. Deputy Killilea will not put that across me because from 1945 to 1948 the Fianna Fáil Government could have made some effort to start on at least one catchment area to show that they were in earnest about the matter. It will not do for them to come along and say they had not the machinery. The Board of Works had machinery left over from the Barrow drainage, which was an excellent scheme I am told, although I never saw it. The machinery was taken from there away back, I think, in 1928 or 1929 to the Board of Works workshops and it was in fairly good condition—in good enough condition to start off with. I know that the war years were not the time for buying heavy machinery but the war was over three years before we took office in 1948 and there was not one machine ordered during all that time. If I am saying anything that is wrong I ask for a contradiction of it.
You know it?
I do, because I made it my business when I became Minister for Lands to point out what the 1945 Arterial Drainage Act meant. I found there was not the slightest intention of even getting one catchment area done.
Who started the Brosna scheme?
The Deputy's pet aversion, Deputy Donnellan, started it in April, 1948, and also started the Glyde and Dee scheme. Let us assume for a moment that Deputy Killilea is right and that the Fianna Fáil Government had a whole sheaf of schemes ready for operation. Since we went out of office what has become of the pre-1948 schemes which Deputy Killilea would have us believe were prepared? The Corrib scheme was to be started last June and it will not start even next June.
Who said it would be started?
Your Parliamentary Secretary——
Did he not give the details and the reasons?
He led us to believe——
This cross-examination must cease. Deputy Blowick is in possession.
Last February he led us to believe that it would start in June, but it did not start in June. When he was questioned some time later about it he told us that it would start in the fall of the year. Now it is to be next June. I will make one prophecy to Deputy Killilea: next June will-come, and if Fianna Fáil are in power, it will not be started. Probably then it will be June, 1955, and when 1955 comes, it will be 1956. I think Deputy Killilea is in a very strong position to change all that.
You cannot start a drainage scheme overnight without any examination.
The survey of the Corrib was almost completed. It would only take three or four months to complete it and we have been out of office for some years past. Is it not a fact that some of the heavier machinery which could not be used on the Brick and Cashen scheme is lying up rusting on the coast of Kerry? Is that something for a Government to be proud of? Perhaps Deputy Killilea when he speaks will tell us why that heavy machinery is down there instead of having it working on the Corrib or some of the other schemes we had practically ready for operation when we left office. If I am saying something that is wrong or if I am exaggerating, the Deputy, having all the information which the Government have always at his disposal, will be in a position to contradict me and point out that I am making an exaggerated statement. Let Deputy Killilea, if he likes, leave the House and get all the information he can find to contradict me and come in here and I will be glad to listen to him. Of course he will not do that. He knows too wellthat what I am saying is the truth and that there is no answer to it.
The decent attitude for him would be to admit that they do not mean to go ahead with arterial drainage. I remember that during the war when it must have been very unpopular, Mr. Churchill told the English people that he had nothing to offer them except blood, sweat and tears. The truth proved to be the soundest policy in the long run. I suggest to Deputy Killilea to go to Galway and say: "Fianna Fáil does not intend to go ahead with the Corrib catchment area or any other catchment area. We have been two and a half years in office and we do not intend to go ahead with arterial drainage. When we passed the Bill in 1945 we meant to hoodwink the Dáil and to stick the Bill into a pigeonhole and allow the dust to accumulate on it." What they have done in regard to the Local Authorities (Works) Act is proof of that.
Perhaps you will tell us what you did about the Lough Mask drainage scheme.
That is part of the Corrib scheme. The survey was within a few months of completion. That survey has been completed.
It was never started.
It was completed long ago.
Order, order!
I tell Deputy Killilea that whoever is telling him that is fooling him. I suggest to the Deputy that he should stick a pin in himself and waken up. The Undeveloped Areas Act was passed two years ago and I must admit that I was foolish enough to have high hopes of it. The Dáil gave the board power to make grants under that Act to the tune of £2,000,000 over a period of seven years, I think. As far as County Mayo is concerned, one factory has been started in Kiltimagh employing about 35 girls. I understand that that Act is intended for the undeveloped areas and the undeveloped areas followed almost exactly the boundary of the old congesteddistrict board's area. I thought that much more would have been done for the West of Ireland and Connaught counties in particular. We find the Fianna Fáil organisation promising factories to this town and that town. I am sure Deputy Killilea is going around Galway offering factories to every town.
We have been promised a carpet factory somewhere in Mayo. I think the only solution for that factory, which Deputy Moran and Deputy Seán Flanagan are offering to various towns in Mayo, is to mount it on some kind of bus chassis and have it one day in each town, because it was promised to Westport, to Ballyhaunis, to Clonbur, to Ballinrobe and to Hollymount. The next place I heard it has landed is in Ballyvary.
That is what you say.
May I point out to Deputy Blowick that he is going into too much detail in connection with the matters he is dealing with? They do not arise on the Taoiseach's Estimate.
I submit that I would not be outside the bounds of relevancy if I dwelt on the failure of the Undeveloped Areas Act. I admit I had high hopes of it, but these hopes have now gone overboard. We are proud of the one factory we have in Kiltimagh. I hope it will be successful, if for no other reason that if one factory can be a success it might be an incentive to others to get going to try to establish some industry in their own town. Some Deputy said that he would not like the towns to be nothing more than centres for shops and traders. That is correct. The town is the community centre of a countryside or strip of country, and it would be nice to see some industries, light or heavy, in the towns.
I would like to see the Undeveloped Areas Act going ahead. We thought it would do much better, but in practice it has been a complete flop. I do not say that in any disparaging sense. I want to come to the advice I gave the present Government when that Act was going through theHouse. It aims at establishing factories, under-the-roof industries, in the towns. That is grand and we would like to see it, but it will not stop the flight from the land. Deputy Killilea must be aware of that, being from a rural constituency, as I am. It is good to have industries in the towns, but if we are to hold the young men on the land we must bring industries of a permanent nature to their doorsteps.
I would speak now of the failure of the Government to develop a useful weapon I left them—the forestry programme. In areas where forestry was unknown, people were beginning to take a live, active interest in afforestation. They wanted to see the waste land under timber. It was ideal employment for young men, especially in areas where the quality of the land was poorest, and it was there that the flight from the land was greatest. Deputy Killilea knows that, as certain parts of his constituency are affected in that way. I do not want to disparage the Undeveloped Areas Act, but I regret—as perhaps the Government Ministers regret—its complete failure.
Afforestation offers a cheap and ready means of stopping the flight from the land to a great extent in most areas, especially in mountainy districts where the quality of the land is poorest. We import between £8,000,000 and £8,500,000 worth of wood products, mostly raw timber, from countries that buy nothing from us in return. We should not forget that in any six consecutive years, at the present rate of consumption of timber, we would have paid in sterling, to countries that do not buy anything from us in return, the whole of the Marshall Aid Loan, for timber we could produce at home. People not interested in forestry and certain officials of the Department of Finance, and the Minister for Finance argue that afforestation does not give a return quickly enough for the money spent. Unfortunately, I must agree that that is true. It does not give a return quickly in the sale of mature timber. Against that, if some Government does not take its courage in both hands and spend alittle money in this generation to establish live forests, the next generation will find just a barren country, devoid of trees, as we have found.
Is that not being done?
It is not. Nurseries are being cut down. I do not want to go into detail, as it would not be correct to do so on the Taoiseach's Estimate.
Name the nurseries now.
Nurseries. Another opportunity will arise when I can give details with perfect relevancy. The whole forestry programme is being cut down—and all that with the connivance of Deputy Killilea. If he does not want that, he and another colleague have a unique opportunity—they can tell the Taoiseach that they will not vote for it and will resign from Fianna Fáil.
We will take the Deputy up on that. Will you tell the number of individuals employed in the work to-day as compared with any other year. Give us the facts and figures.
Nursery centres have been cut down to half and the men told to go home.
The Deputy is dealing with questions of administration, which do not arise on the Taoiseach's Estimate.
That happened in my county, for one, and also in the Deputy's county.
That is not true. The poor lad wants to be nursed all the time.
I would not like to have the problem of nursing Deputy Killilea. I wish to refer to Land Commission work, but will not dwell on it. I deplore the go slow policy of the Department in the last two and a half years since Deputy Derrig took it over. When I took over the Land Commission in 1948, I found a close-down Orderhad been given by the last Government in April, 1944, prohibiting the Land Commission from acquiring or resuming any land for the relief of congestion. The commissioners had power only to proceed with the cases in the machine, and even then only with the most urgent ones. By the time of the change of Government in 1948 I had the unpleasant duty of taking over a Land Commission which had not one single perch of land on hands for the relief of congestion. They had only some bits and scraps in various counties, amounting to 6,000 acres, of very poor quality land which they offered to congests and tenants and they would not take them.
I had to start anew and get the commissioners to establish a pool of land, 30,000 or 40,000 acres, in order to function properly for the relief of congestion. Now we find they are back to the same attitude, acquiring little or no land. Inspectors seem to have a definite direction from the Minister to take things easy and they are definitely doing that. It should be the policy of the Government and of the Taoiseach to see that the relief of congestion goes on until congestion is finally relieved. When I was Minister sitting over there, I remember that responsible Deputies, including Deputy Moylan, the ex-Minister, were asking when there would be finality in the work of the Land Commission. Definitely there would not be finality if they were allowed to remain, as instead of keeping the Department geared up to deal with the work, they were working with the brakes on and using a deliberate, go-slow policy.
I believe that if the work were tackled in a business-like and a workman-like way, the job of the Land Commission could finally be completed and a winding-up Act could be brought in within five, six or seven years from now. The present Government seem to be content to let things drag on from one day to another. So long as they do not have unpleasantness and do not lose funds they will not divide or take up any land. They are just going from one day to another and hoping that things will keep fine for them.
When I left office I left a fairly considerable pool of land in most of the nine counties that come under the Undeveloped Areas Act. However, not the slightest effort has been made to allot that land since the day I left office, with the exception of one farm alone. I was forced to table a question to the Minister for Lands just before the Dáil rose for the Summer Recess. I discovered that since I left office the Land Commission had collected £2,800 in grazing fees from that farm alone. That gave me the solution of the question I was constantly asking of the Government about their reluctance to divide the land. Since I left office, they are using it as a money-making business. I went through all the various Acts which were passed in relation to land acquisition and division and I could not find in any one of them a provision whereby the Land Commission could hold the land for the purpose of making money for the Minister for Finance.
Surely you know that that is not true?
Does Deputy Killilea assert that the Minister for Lands gave me a false reply to my question?
Surely the Deputy knows that the Land Commission have land in hands for the past ten years? The Deputy was in office for only three and a half years.
I am talking about land that could be divided within a year.
Deputy Blowick is well aware that this Government divided more land last year than the Coalition Government did in their whole three and a half years of office.
I want to refer now to the Minister for Finance's mania for unproductive spending. The policy of the inter-Party Government was to spend money fairly liberally, but always wisely, on productive works, such as drainage, land rehabilitation, limestone, fertilisers, afforestation and other schemes which would show a return to the country sooner or later.Some of these schemes—drainage and land rehabilitation—show good results after a short time and start yielding a profit in as short a period as three months after the work has been completed. The present Government seem to be back again to their pre-1948 policy—a policy of non-productive spending. We heard Deputy Burke try to justify this evening the rebuilding of Dublin Castle at a cost of approximately £10,000,000. We found that scheme when we took office in 1948. I remember that, in the Council Chamber, there was a circular model of the proposed work covered over with a glass dome. I must say for the man who made the model that it was a work of art. It included even toy motor cars lined up outside the new Dublin Castle under the glass dome and certainly it was a pleasure to look at it. I understand that it cost something like £600 to complete that model. We scrapped that scheme. It was one of the commitments which Fianna Fáil left us. We had no hesitation in cutting that particular baby's throat. What is the position now? We find that the surgeons are back again on the job. They have stitched up the baby's throat and they are going to present us now with a much more elaborate Dublin Castle than was proposed in 1948. They justify that step on the grounds that, in addition to providing suitable accommodation, the work will give constant employment over a period of years to 80 or 90 men in Dublin.
What a consideration !
I come from the West of Ireland and I do not, therefore, know a great deal about the people of Dublin. I cannot help wondering, however, how the people of Dublin will mark their ballot papers at the next election in view of the steep rise which was brought about in the cost of living by this Fianna Fáil Government. The only thing now that this Government have to offer them is to rebuild Dublin Castle in seven or eight years' time and to provide constant employment on that work for 70 or 80 or 90 men. Quite a good proportion of the people of Dublin are my own county men andwomen. I wonder if they take kindly to the idea, in common with the rest of the people of Dublin, of paying 4/2 per lb. for butter which cost only 2/8 per lb. while the inter-Party Government were in office and of paying 9d. for a loaf which cost them only 6d. while the inter-Party Government were in office.
When the new Dublin Castle is erected, there will probably be a very big party at its official opening. The Army Band, the Garda Síochána Band, the President, the Taoiseach, members of this House, Dublin Corporation, the Diplomatic Corps and many others will be present at the function. There will be great noise and flying of banners, and so forth. We shall hear the same old story to the effect that the people of Dublin will never see a poor day again now that Dublin Castle has been rebuilt at a cost to our community of several million pounds after years and years of privation and a higher cost of living to produce this monster on the banks of the Liffey. I hold that that money would be far better spent on drainage work down the country, or on some similar productive work. I do not want to take any money from Dublin City and to transfer it down the country—money which could be used to better advantage in Dublin. Without knowing the first thing about it, however, I am sure that there must be productive work of some kind costing £2,000,000 or £3,000,000 that could be carried out in Dublin besides the rebuilding of Dublin Castle.
Deputy Burke said that we want a new House of Parliament. Perhaps I am stodgy, out-of-date, and early Victorian in my outlook, but I must say that I think that Leinster House is a lovely home for a Parliament. I am quite satisfied with it. I should not like to be called out-of-date. I like to keep pace with the trend of modern events, just as much as anybody else. In my opinion, this Chamber, the Library, the Committee Rooms, the Party Rooms and all the other advantages and amenities which Deputies need in the course of the discharge of their public duties are very satisfactory here. Whenever a motion for theerection of a new House of Parliament is moved here I will oppose it, if I am a member of this House, until the time I see an earnest from the Government that they mean to go ahead with other development and improvement works in this country.
We have been hearing a great deal of talk about emigration. No such consideration is given to the matter of the flight from the land which is going on at the present time. Very little or no attempt at all is made to stem the flight from the land, to bring the cost of living within reasonable bounds and to give employment at home in an effort to induce our young men and women to remain in their own country. These days, every single train from the West is carrying load after load of our young people away from the country and over to Britain. I am sorry to say that some of these people will never come back again. I have yet to meet the young man or woman who is willing to leave this country.
Of late, the Government seem to be easing the stringent policy they adopted in the earlier period of their office but they are not doing enough. It is not merely a matter of throwing money around in fistfuls. I do not advocate that. The inter-Party Government spent money wisely on productive works and I think that the support we got was proof enough of it.
I remember the fierce opposition we met from Fianna Fáil in every single scheme which our Government put forward. I remember the filthy campaign which was carried on by Fianna Fáil when the land rehabilitation project was being put under way. Even Fianna Fáil supporters among the farming community were told not to touch that project. They were told that it was a mean device by the inter-Party Government to try to increase the valuation of holdings all over the country so as to obtain higher rates from the farmers. That was not a very nice attitude to take up in relation to such a beneficial scheme as the land rehabilitation project. We find, to-day, that the Government have budgeted for only half the amount that we would have provided, were we in office.
Ha, ha!
I hope the Parliamentary Secretary to the Taoiseach will not choke in one of those gurgles of his over there. We aimed at spending £4,000,000 per year and Deputy Dillon, as Minister, made it quite clear that we were going to spend £40,000,000 over ten years. When we left office, a sum of about £3,000,000 had been spent.
Three million pounds?
Yes.
Look it up again.
That left this Government with £37,000,000 to spend, and, if they wanted to work to the terms of the land rehabilitation project they could and should spend £4,000,000 per year.
The Taoiseach at by-elections and in the House has spoken about various commitments which we left the Fianna Fáil Government. We did leave a number of commitments, but when the Taoiseach took office it was very simple for him to cut out any of these commitments he wished and cast them aside. Included in the commitments which his Government left us were Store Street, the Constellations, Dublin Castle and the new houses of Parliament and we had no hesitation in going through the list and casting into the drain those which we considered to be nothing more than daft and foolish spending. We were not going to tax the people to put up monuments of that kind. Instead, we devoted the taxation to certain jobs.
I want to point out that since this Government came into office they got on the day after taking office a sum of £30,000,000 in Marshall Aid money, £24,000,000 in loan and £6,100,000 in grant. They have raised since then over £30,000,000 in taxation of various kinds—telephones, telegrams, stamps, the taxes on petrol, cars and tractors and the abolition of the food subsidies, which drove up the prices of butter, bread, milk, meat—every item of foodin the cost of living. That makes £60,000,000. They floated a £20,000,000 loan last year at 5 per cent., which brings it to £80,000,000, and a £25,000,000 loan a few weeks ago, of which £21,000,000 was subscribed, which gives us £101,000,000.
They have got all that money over and above the normal inflow of revenue from tobacco, drink, tariffs and the 101 other things which contribute to the Exchequer. I want to ask the Taoiseach to let us know what is being done with all this money, because it seems to be the policy of this Government to store up a huge sum of money in readiness for the time when the general election comes. I believe the policy of the Government is a hair-shirt policy until the election comes and then there will be umpteen carrots dangled before the people to mislead them. We want to know what has become of that money. It is not the Government's money; it is the money of the people, and the Government are getting enough in normal revenue to run the country. We have been told that so much is being spent on capital development, but I do not see any of it.
Let me deal with the commitments which we were supposed to hand over to them. We handed over the land rehabilitation project, the Local Authorities (Works) Act, Land Commission works, a forestry programme and a Forestry Department working at full blast. I could name half a dozen more. The Taoiseach has no business grousing about these commitments which we handed over, because it was in his power to cut out any or all of them if he wished. That is what he was voted to power for by the House and complete and absolute authority was given to him when he became Taoiseach on 13th June, 1951. Why did he not cut them out? He has, in fact, no business calling them commitments, because they were projects which the people had sanctioned and the proof of that is that he had not the courage to cut out a single one of them.
I want to tell the Government now to cut out the foolish squandering of public money which they propose toproceed with. The people will not have it. I cannot for the life of me see how the people of Dublin have kept their temper all this time, and, as one who is absolutely unfamiliar with city or town conditions, I do not know how the average person in town or city at present is making ends meet. I wish Deputy Burke would give us the benefit of his experience, coming as he does from a city constituency.
I thought you would give us some information about Clann na Talmhan policy.
Admittedly, those who live on the land have certain raw materials at first cost. They have their own eggs, milk, butter and so on, which help considerably to ease the household bills, but I cannot imagine how people in a city like Dublin who have to pay for everything except fresh air, are managing to live. They have to pay for light and even for water; they have to pay enormous rates and shocking prices for every single thing they buy. Even the ordinary head of cabbage which is sold by the farmer for 1d. or 2d. sells at 1/6 down the town. The same is true of potatoes which are sold at 2/- per stone and finish up being retailed to the poor of Dublin at 4/- and 5/- per stone. Apples are being sold down the country at a price as low as £3 per ton. I wonder what price they are sold at here? These are some of the things I should like the people of Dublin to know because the suggestion made when we were in government was that the farmers were blistering and fleecing the townspeople wholesale. These prices are some of the prices that were obtaining for years before the inter-Party Government came into power.
And all during their time.
The same is true to-day and what is happening is a matter for Deputy Burke to take up. I can tell the Deputy that if these conditions obtained in the country, we would notbe as dumb as some of the Deputies I know on the opposite side with regard to them.
The Deputy reminds me of the hurler on the fence.
I hope I will always have good eyesight, but I would not like to see Deputy Burke engaged in any game of hurling. Like myself, he has too much upholstering under his skin for the game. I want to advise the Government to try to do something to stem the flight from the land. I appeal earnestly to them to do something to put the principal industry of the country on its feet. We have no business going around like Johnny-Head-in-the-Air, with our heads in the clouds. Our basic industry is agriculture, and if agriculture were put on a sound, firm basis once and for all and we had a decent exportable surplus—the only surplus we have is agricultural produce —we could maintain a good industrial output within the country, because, before we can bring in raw materials— and most of the raw materials for our industries must come in from outside— or keep a level balance of trade, we must export something, and the only possible means I see—I am sure the Taoiseach will agree with me—of keeping a level balance of trade is by increasing agricultural output to the limit.
I do not want to see that exportable surplus increased by the simple and easy expedient of cutting down on our own people—by increasing the prices of agricultural produce at home to the consumer to such a point as makes it impossible for the consumer to buy. I do not want to see an increase in our agricultural exports brought about by that expedient, because it will not be much comfort to us to know that, as the Minister for Finance told us last year, we have an exportable surplus of £20,000,000 more than in the previous year when we know that that £20,000,000 worth of food was denied to our people, simply because the price was so high that they could not purchase it. The wages were cut down in most cases. Agriculture should be put on its feet first, and if some real solid attempt were made to put our principalindustry on its feet, then I would say that we were drawing nearer to the day when we would have a happy and prosperous country with a healthy economy.
I have the greatest regard for Deputy Blowick. I admire the great sympathy he has for the people of Dublin. Yet, last night I understand that he voted for an increase in the price of milk. We in Dublin feel that we are paying through the nose for milk. Yet, Deputy Blowick comes along and sheds crocodile tears for the people of Dublin and at the same time he wants to increase the price of milk. I think that we in Dublin have treated the farmers very well. We are very good customers of theirs and we are made pay through the nose. Deputy Blowick will want to examine his conscience when he begins to worry about the people of Dublin. He attacked this proposal in regard to Dublin Castle and said we should spend the money down the country.
No, I did not.
Pardon me, you did. I listened very carefully to the speech the Deputy made.
I said I would like to see it spent on productive works.
The Deputy is a good man for producing a few red herrings.
What useful purpose do the Deputies opposite hope to serve by suggesting that conditions in this country are really worse than they are? If they would only face the facts, I am sure they would be forced to tell the truth. They complain bitterly that we are not spending enough money on the land. My knowledge of the land is very small, but still it is quite obvious to me that more money was spent on land improvement since Fianna Fáil came into office than was spent during the Coalition régime. They complain about our attitude to agriculture. There, again, the facts are that agricultural production and exports have increased. The Deputieson the other side of the House know that. Yet, they attack us at every available opportunity. I think they should face up to the facts and tell the people the truth.
They attack our attitude towards afforestation although the acreage of afforestation has increased since Fianna Fáil returned to power. That is a fact. I think Deputy Blowick will not laugh when I tell him from what little I know about agriculture that the production is definitely on the upgrade. Does the Deputy deny that?
Give us the figures for last year.
The Deputy will appreciate that I do not regard myself in any way to be an authority on agriculture but one has only got to read the papers and the speeches made here to see what I am saying is true.
The Deputy should have a look at the forests.
The acreage in regard to afforestation has certainly increased.
There were 15,000 acres during the last year of the inter-Party Government and there are now only 10,000 acres.
Deputy Blowick spoke at length and he should allow Deputy Gallagher to make his speech.
I did not interrupt the Deputy while he was speaking. I allowed him to carry on and enjoy himself immensely in his jovial manner. I sat nice and quite and never interrupted him. I think he should behave himself likewise. He is longer here than I am and one would expect he would have more patience and a little bit more dignity than he has.
I might have that, too.
We heard a great deal in this House during recent months about the question of housing and in that field I think I would score points over Deputy Blowick. I wouldsuggest that I know a little bit more about housing than Deputy Blowick. I would not say that I know as much about housing as he does about land but I certainly could teach him a few wrinkles when it comes to housing. We are inundated in Dublin with applications for loans under the Small Dwellings (Acquisition) Acts. I will be very fair to the Opposition and take their peak year, which was 1950-51. As the result of an answer I got to a parliamentary question on the 21st October, 1953, I received a list of figures in respect of applications approved for loans under the Small Dwellings (Acquisition) Acts. In the year 1950-51 there were 1,209 applications approved in Dublin City and County and for the six months from the 1st April, 1953, to the 30th September, 1953, the number of applications approved was 1,241. Those are the correct figures for Dublin and County. If anyone tells me that that is a slowing up of private house-building I will eat my hat.
The figures are there in black and white and I cannot see how anyone could suggest that we in Fianna Fáil are not doing our best to promote private house building. The same can be said of the Dublin Corporation output which has been maintained ever since Fianna Fáil were returned to power. Every effort is being made to wipe out the slums in the city and provide homes for close on 11,000 people who are still on the waiting list in the City of Dublin. It is a difficult task and I think that any Deputy who is a member of the Dublin Corporation will agree with me that we are doing our very best. I think we can do no more. Every week we hold meetings of our housing committee and the agenda is very long. Deputies on both sides of this House who are members of the Dublin Corporation give a great deal of thought and time to this problem. In fact, some of them give more time to it there than in this House. The Dublin Corporation's output of houses is certainly very good and the number employed on housing in Dublin has increased a great deal. I want to emphasise this matter of the applicationsfor loans in Dublin under the Small Dwellings (Acquisition) Acts. The Opposition complain that there is a slowing down. I have given the figures and they speak for themselves.
Deputy Blowick, as I said, attacked us about this proposal in relation to Dublin Castle. We in Dublin feel that the old castle is crumbling away and needs to be put in repair. If we wait another five or ten years it will cost twice as much to repair it. Deputies who read the official organs of the Civil Service associations will see there that the civil servants are complaining of having to work under unhealthy conditions in the castle. A great deal of tears were shed by the Opposition in regard to civil servants during the past two and a half years. Here now is an opportunity to get, if you like, more work from them under better conditions. We are sneered at by the Opposition. As I say, the proposal in regard to Dublin Castle will give a good deal of employment to Dublin men and I think that should not be sneered at.
When I spoke on this question before I suggested that there should be a residence qualification in the contract ensuring that people getting a job should have resided for at least five years in the City of Dublin. I am not entirely opposed to people coming from the country, but I think it is only right that Dublin men should get priority in a matter of this kind. I understand that the work on Dublin Castle will give constant employment to between 150 and 200 men for a good many years. Does the Opposition suggest that the pay packets provided by the work on Dublin Castle should be taken out of the pockets of the Dublin housewives? I do not think we should approach the matter in that way at all. I appreciate that Deputies opposite who come from farming constituencies should fight their corner and do everything possible for their constituents. I think that the few Deputies who represent the City of Dublin should hold their own also and fight their corner. I am doing that in a fair manner. We intend to give employment to Dublin people and I do not think any Deputy on any side ofthe House could laugh or jeer at us on that score. I hope the Taoiseach will make sure that plans are set in motion right away in order to give us an opportunity of doing that work.
Deputy John A. Costello yesterday referred to the Modern Homes action against the Dublin Corporation and he felt we should not have gone on with that action, that is, in connection with the town planning scheme. I do not wish to go into this too much, but I, for one, in the early stages was against taking this action, because I had certain knowledge of what would happen; in my own business I received information that we had no hope of winning. However, we took the advice of the lawyers and it may surprise Deputy Costello that when this question came before the city council in the City Hall as to whether we should take action or not, I, for one, spoke against it. Immediately up jumped the lawyers, both Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil lawyers, who said: "We must go to law. We have the opinion of our law agent, of our counsel, and we should fight it."
They wanted to find employment for their colleagues.
And they got a right goose.
We were told it was coming before a jury and that we might have a chance. I know juries and they proved in this case they were not fools. I am sorry it had to happen, but it will make us proceed with all convenient speed with our town planning scheme. Let us hope it will solve our traffic problem in the city. It is badly needed and it was too long delayed.
I do not know whether Deputy Costello was sincere or not in regard to the O'Connell Bridge structure. Unfortunately, I have not got a copy of the speech, but some other Deputy told me he mentioned my name in it, and said that I had more or less changed my mind on the question. Apparently he felt we should get in touch with the Arts Council. I feel the same, that in a matter like this weshould certainly seek the aid of the Arts Council. I am satisfied we have on the Arts Council some eminent people who would appoint adjudicators who would arrive at some decision in regard to a monument or some other suitable structure. As a result of a question I put at the last meeting of the Dublin Corporation, I was told that, so far, £3,400 has been spent on O'Connell Bridge and that it was proposed to spend another £3,500.
That would make a good road down our bog.
I personally did not think it was worth spending £7,000 on it. We should admit a mistake has been made and get rid of it.
What about mounting the model of Dublin Castle on it?
The model of Dublin Castle was there in your time and eventually you would have used it.
I never saw it.
If you had the fortune or misfortune to come back into office you would more than likely have followed the same lines. However, I am satisfied that to spend £7,000 on O'Connell Bridge would be a mistake and it would not be possible to have the thing put right. I propose at the next council meeting to put forward a motion to that effect, that the bridge be restored to its pre-Tóstal state. I think Gandon's beautiful work was destroyed by that concrete slab on O'Connell Bridge.
I am a member of the Town Planning Committee of the corporation before which that proposal came. We were told we were allocating £10,000 for the decoration of the city for An Tóstal, and that included something for O'Connell Bridge. I feel guilty that I did not see the plans of it; I had to take a bus across the city to look down past the hoarding to see what was in it and I discovered it was some sort of fountain or whatever you like to call it. It is only fair that the DublinCorporation should admit that a mistake has been made and that the £3,400 should be written off. If more money is spent you are not going to deceive anyone. I hope our motion succeeds at the next corporation meeting and that the bridge will be restored to its pre-Tóstal state.
In my constituency there is the rightful home of the Lane pictures, that is, in Charlemont House and I would like the Government to continue to press for the return of those pictures to Dublin. A lot has been said elsewhere and a very good case was made and justice demands that those pictures be restored here. I am not suggesting that I am a great art lover but I like good pictures when I see them and I have visited many galleries in various parts of the world. I would impress on the Government to keep up the fight to have these Lane pictures restored to the rightful place, that is in Charlemont House, Parnell Square, in my constituency.
Time and again I have mentioned in this House the question of malicious damages and I would ask the Taoiseach if he would realise that this is causing us a great concern in Dublin. I am tired raising this matter and I would impress on the Taoiseach that the Dublin Corporation staff are finding it extremely difficult to cope with the claims that are coming in day after day every year now for the past five or ten years and the amounts being paid out are continuing to increase considerably.
You would want to amend the law.
I agree. I would ask the Taoiseach to ask the Department of Justice to reconsider their attitude on this question.
The Deputy knows he cannot advocate legislation on an Estimate.
I am asking the Taoiseach to ask the Department of Justice to reconsider their attitude.
That does not make any difference. That is advocating legislation.
As far as we are concerned in Dublin it is a big problem and every day claims are pouring in. People may say it means only a 1d. or 2d. in the £ on the rates. A 1d. on the rates brings you £10,000 in Dublin. On the other hand that £10,000 paid out for malicious damages claims could be used to build six corporation houses.
It is the same all over the country.
It is not as bad in the country. A cock of hay, for instance, does not cost as much as some of the plate glass windows that are broken in the city.
It often means more.
I move to report progress.