I often wonder, if the Fianna Fáil Party contemplated inaugurating a grant of leather medals, whether they would not be well advised to reserve the first half-dozen for British statesmen who come to this country and, intoxicated by our Irish air, appear to go berserk, to the great advantage of the Taoiseach, whenever they do so. I have been reading recently in the public Press the reactions of the Taoiseach to the observations of Mr. Macmillan and one wonders how so level-headed a man as Mr. Macmillan could say so many foolish things in so short a time.
Committee on Finance. - Motion by Minister for Finance (Resumed).
I do not understand how statements of British Ministers can be related to the Vote on Account.
The observations of the Taoiseach will be made the subject of discussion for long and long enough. However, I suppose it is relevant to say that we here in Ireland, who know Partition will go in its own good time, marvel that men who show themselves so prudent elsewhere can, when they come to Ireland, show themselves so indiscreet. One of the reasons I refer to that is that almost anything will be used by the Government to detract the attention of the people from the things that really matter. What matters to our people is how they can live in their own country and I see, in the approach of the Government to the current problems that confront us, very little constructive effort to make it possible for our people to go on living in their own country on terms which our people are prepared to accept. I am particularly concerned about that in its application to the small farmers of Ireland, who are leaving the land and not only leaving the land, but leaving the country.
There was a great effort made in this country to settle our people on the land with fixity of tenure as tenant proprietors, holding their land under no contract of tenancy but in the unique position on the Continent of Europe of owning the holding on which they worked. I think we are following a line of country at present which in a reasonably short time will undo that whole great settlement of the land problem and create a situation in which the disparity in the standard of living between those sections of our community who, by organisation, can make their influence felt and the small farmers who live on family holdings will become so great that the family holding will disappear from our social pattern altogether.
I look back on the Budgets and the Books of Estimates of recent years and in 1956-57 I find that the figure on the Book of Estimates was £109,000,000. In 1957-58, the figure was £112,000,000. That figure was subsequently reduced by the incoming Fianna Fáil Government to £106,000,000 by the abolition of the food subsidies. In fact, the abolition of those subsidies amounted to £6.9 million in respect of flour and bread and £2.5 million in respect of butter, a total of £9.4 million.
When I look at the Book of Estimates for 1959-60, I find that while the figure was £112.6 million when £9.4 million was being made available to reduce the price of bread, flour and butter there is now £115.5 million on the cover of the Book of Estimates and there is no provision at all to subsidies any of these commodities. On the contrary, there is an additional charge, over and above the reduction of subsidies, of about 2d. per lb. on butter.
I should like to recall to the House the consequences of that. We have been faced, since that Budget of 1957-58, with a series of adjustments in the remuneration of public servants and they have all got now, civil servants, soldiers, Civic Guards and everybody else, an increase of approximately 10/- a week designed to meet the increase in the cost of living, the bulk of which was constituted by the increase in the price of flour, bread, and butter. A similar increase has been made available for the bulk of organised trade union workers in the country. I think that is fair.
However, I think the House has overlooked the fact that west of the Shannon there are no agricultural labourers. West of the Shannon, the people who live on farms of from ten to 30 acres are family farmers who do not employ labour but are themselves agricultural labourers. It was one of the great prides of our society that, by industry and hard work, these people were able to maintain for themselves a very moderate standard of living, but still one which gave them a reasonable standard of life, particularly when one took into consideration the fact that they were their own bosses. That was something which was very precious to the small independent farmer in the West of Ireland whose people had known in the past what it meant to be the bond slave of the landlord.
I think the people in this House have forgotten that the small farmer in the West of Ireland depends very largely for his standard of living on bread, flour, butter and tea. We have allowed these things to rise to their full economic price, and in many cases far beyond it, and we have provided these people with no funds at all to meet the added cost of living in which we have involved them. Not only that, but we have notified them that we propose that there should be a reduction in the price of many of the commodities on which they depend for their earning capacity.
I think the consequence of that is, and I see it happening under my own eyes, that in the West of Ireland, in the North-west and the South-West we are losing our population faster and faster every day. It is extremely difficult to shift that population. The bulk of these people are tenacious almost beyond belief. Men who are familiar with the Rosses of Donegal, with Connemara and with Erris will realise the astonishing tenacity with which our people will stick to their holdings. It is true that many of them will accept a standard of living almost unbelievably low rather than abandon the holding on which they were born.
What many of us seem not to have adverted to is that their children will not do that. If they consult the parish register of any rural parish and inspect the number of marriages there have been between small farmers and local girls in recent times, members of this House will get a great shock. One of the most dramatic facts is that if you look at the annual Statistical Abstract published by the Department of Statistics, you will find that the average annual enrolments in the national schools have been growing over the country as a whole. But go down to the West and you will find that three-teacher schools are becoming two-teacher schools and that two-teacher schools are becoming one-teacher schools and that many schools are in imminent danger of closing because there are no pupils in them. That is because the young people, those of marriageable age, male and female, have cleared out.
While Fianna Fáil frequently lay the soothing unction to their souls, that unemployment figures have been decreasing over the past 12 or 18 months, that may serve to deceive some of the more easily deluded members of their own Party and it may even deceive some of the more unthinking sections of the people, but when we realise that over the past two years, approximately 100,000 persons emigrated, and put that side by side with the unemployment figure and ask ourselves what is happening. I think the decrease in unemployment figures as quoted by the Central Statistics Office is not as comforting a figure as Fianna Fáil would have us believe.
I think we are losing sight of the fact, or simply refusing to face it, that the 100,000 persons who went in the last two years were almost all between the ages of 18 and 30, and that those they left behind, certainly in the West of Ireland, are, in the vast majority, people over 50 years of age, a surprising percentage of whom will qualify for the old age pension in the near future. More and more of that population will come to their right to the old age pension with fewer and fewer people working on the land on which the old people lived to get from it the requisite return to provide the revenue to maintain the old people when they become entitled to be a charge on the old age pension fund.
I read recently that Mr. Khrushchev was comparing his institutions in Russia and what he hoped to promise his people, with the conditions of people in other countries such as ours. He hoped it would be possible to have a 40-hour week, minimum wages, three square meals a day, a good roof over their heads and absolute security in these conditions, come hell or high water. That seems very attractive when first read, until it occurred to me that anybody in the City of Dublin has exactly the same facilities available to him and all he has to do to attain to them is to go out and break Clery's window. He can then move up to Mountjoy where he will have a 40-hour week, three square meals a day, a good roof over his head, a relatively comfortable bed and absolute security for the term of his imprisonment.
And a suit.
And a suit thrown in. It struck me that this alluring prospect held out by Mr. Khrushchev to his people and to anybody else who wanted to join their system was fundamentally distinguished from ours in that Mr. Khrushchev had extended the walls of his Mountjoy Jail to surround the whole country while we confine these agreeable conditions to the relatively restricted areas of Mountjoy, Limerick and Portlaoise.
Mark you, I think we would be astonished if we went to many simple people who are unemployed or old age pensioners, or to those in the circumstances of widows depending on pensions, by the number of them who would be inclined to say: "Is it not an extraordinary thing that under a system of government so alien to our whole philosophy things can be done so much better for the weak sections of the community than they are done here in Ireland?" If somebody, say an old age pensioner, or somebody in receipt of a widow's pension, or a blind pension comes to me and says: "Listen; you have all examined this question closely and you have come to the conclusion that civil servants, Army officers and national teachers or secondary teachers and those enjoying their standard of living, require at least 10/- a week to make up for the increased cost of living, on what logical basis do you come to the old age pensioner who has 24/- a week of to the blind pensioner or to the widow and tell him or her that although the cost of living impinges on him or he much more acutely, because he or she is much more dependent on bread and butter than the relatively well-to-do are, he can get along all right by in creasing his weekly allowance by 1/- as opposed to the 10/- approved for the relatively well-to-do?" I do not know the answer to that.
Of course, the Deputy knows he is advocating legislation. It would require legislation to increase old age pensions.
I do not know whether it does or not: we have managed to increase everybody else's without legislation. All I am saying is that these classes got an increase of 10/- a week whether it was fair or not, and the situation has arisen in which those to whom that advantage is not available are going to ask us—and I think with unanswerable logic: "If you provide the 10/- that everybody else requires to meet the cost of living, how are we to do on 1/-?" I do not know the answer to that and I should be very grateful to the Minister for Finance if he would explain to us how we are to answer that question.
When we look at the Book of Estimates, many of us forget that there is another charge which will come in course of payment during the year, the Central Fund Services. We do not yet know what they will involve, but they are going up very substantially and money must be got to meet them. I want to remind the House that the policy of the inter-Party Government was clear and certain. We believe it was desirable to maintain stability and, to that end, we sought to stabilise at certain levels certain essential requirements of the community. Thus we aimed, by preserving that stability, side by side with an expanding output, to prevent the development of inflation in our economy that would result, before there was any price rise, in a steep increase in imports which we would be unable to finance.
I believe our efforts met with substantial success and although in the calendar year 1956 there was some increase in our imports beyond our capacity to meet them, that was due to the international financial storm that was blowing at that time and to certain measures adopted in Great Britain which we could not fully discount, although we did partially discount them here.
That policy was completely reversed by our successors. They increased the cost of living deliberately by an Act of this House. They provided directly from the revenue or indirectly through trade agreements approved by them compensatory payments which undoubtedly, in justice, became due as a result of the action of the Government. They profess to believe that that has restored stability at a level where it can be maintained. The thermometer by which that is determined in our peculiar financial set-up is the balance of trade and much more than the balance of the trade, the balance of payments.
I do not know what the Minister has to say about the balance of payments in respect of the month of January. It reveals an excess of imports of something in the order of £10,000,000. That may be a fortuitous event. When we see the February figures, we will be better able to judge the true character of the January figures; but I should like the Minister to give us his considered opinion as to what those figures indicate at the present time. They are not particularly reassuring and, even to the most cold-blooded economist, they do not seem to be an adequate reward for the economic conditions which this Government have imposed upon the small farmers, the old age pensioners, the blind pensioners and the widows and orphans.
If the increased cost of living which they have been called upon to bear with the assistance of 1/- a week yields no greater dividend to the national economy than an adverse trade balance of £10,000,000 a month, then even this Government ought to look at their policy again and see if it requires revision. If they do so look, I think they will find that one of their great difficulties is that the decision they took in the Budget of 1957-58 is well-nigh irreversible. The whole economic structure of the community has been adjusted to the decision, albeit that the adjustment has left out the widow, the orphan, the old age pensioner and the small farmer. While it is relatively easy to adjust things upward, it is not always easy to adjust them downward again.
I think we have bought a very bad bargain if in the adjustment we have made, we have left every old age pensioner, every widow, every blind pensioner and every unemployed person in the community under a deep sense of grievance, comparing the treatment they have received with that of other sections of the community. We have bought a bad bargain if we have stimulated the exodus of our people from the small farms of Ireland to the point where more and more social engineers, as they call themselves in our day and age, are beginning to call out for the abolition of the small farm and the substitution therefor of what Lord Lucan, the great exterminator, sought to impose 100 years ago in West Mayo—500-acre farms employing those who used to be self-supporting farmers on small holdings, whom he evicted because he said, in those days, a better return could be got from the land if it were divided into 500 acre plots and worked economically.
I wonder if any Deputy shares that view. If he does not, he had better make up his mind that whether consciously or unconsciously, that is the road the Government are travelling. They are not getting value. In my opinion, they are sinking further and further into a very dangerous economic complex, which may give rise to fundamental questions which it will be extremely difficult to answer. Are our people prepared to accept the standard of living which will be left to them over a large part of this country? If they are not, what are we going to do about it? If any more go, there will be no use in providing employment in the West of Ireland, because there will be nobody left to take it.
Mind you, some people are begining to wake up to that fact, when they start considerable projects in certain parts of the West of Ireland, designed to provide employment, and discover to their amazement that one of their primary difficulties to-day is to find people to take the employment. People are being carried by lorries 20 and 30 miles to the centre of employment provided, because all the available labour has long since gone to England or Scotland or, indeed, to the United States of America, as the case may be.
Now, as I watch the figures on the Book of Estimates and for the Central Fund continue to rise and listen to the litany of schemes which successive Governments keep churning out, all designed to procure increased output, an expanding economy and more employment, I wonder if we all have forgotten that the biggest employers of labour and the biggest producers in this country are the people who are already here, giving employment and producing, and that if you could induce all of them to increase their output and their employment by even 5 per cent., that, in itself, would produce a greater revolution in output and in employment than almost anything else? If you wanted to ask yourself what step the central Government could take best calculated to produce that result, does anyone seriously doubt that the most effective measure a Government could take would be to reduce income-tax by 1/-.
We have reached the stage where a lot of people, well intentioned people, have come to the conclusion that increased effort in commercial activity is time wasted, because out of every extra pound they earn, the Government collect from 10/- to 12/-.
I do not want to interrupt the Deputy, but taxation does not fall for discussion on this.
Very well, but I take it that we can discuss on this the question of increased production.
But not taxation.
I think the best way to stimulate production is by making it worth the while of the people who are at present producing to produce more. I know of no more effective way of doing that than saying to them: "If you produce more, you will have a larger reward for your labours." Mark you, in relation to the foreigner coming in here, and I think in respect of any native industrialist who proposes to export his increased production, that is what we do say. Now, if it is true that in relation to increased production for export and if it is true that in relation to persons coming in from outside to invest their capital here, we offer them tax inducements by reducing the burden of taxation they will have to carry, it might well be admitted by all that, if the total burden of taxation on our domestic producers is lightened, nothing else will conduce more to employment and increased production; but it has to be borne in mind that if we continue to pile up the annual cost of running the State, the scope for providing that additional inducement continually recedes. It would be no harm, before the burden of taxation becomes completely crippling, for us to ask ourselves if we are serious about providing more employment and more production in our economy and has not the time come when we must consider providing some inducement to those who are in a position to generate both production and employment from their existing resources?
That does not involve by any means the abandonment of a capital investment programme by the Government. On the contrary, I believe the capital investment programme inaugurated by us back as far as 1949 has amply justified itself. It did succeed in reducing the unemployment figure from 100,000 to 50,000. It did have a dramatic effect on doubling the volume and trebling the value of our exports in ten years. That was no mean performance. I believe that if we did so much between 1947 and 1957, there is no reason why we should not be able to do as much more in the ensuing ten years, if we go the right way about it.
When we come to consider what is the right way, I approach the matter with some delicacy. This is a grey book called Economic Development. I have read it with interest and with care and I am bound to say that I now find myself in a dilemma. The publication of that book marks a complete departure from past practice. Heretofore, the most sacred principle of the public service was that anything appearing from Government sources was the responsibility of the Minister, the political head of the Department whence it came; he had to take the blows and accept the laurels appropriate to whatever a permanent official of his Department did or left undone. That was the convention, the significance of which many of us understood. It was a very useful convention.
We now have a grey book entitled Economic Development, avowedly the work of the Secretary of the Department of Finance. The difficulty I foresee is that this will become a kind of grey umbrella under which the Government will shelter—indeed, under which the Government have already taken shelter. In the old days, the cry used to be: “Don't hit me with the baby in my arms.” Now, it appears that the Government are going to claim immunity from attack while they are sheltering under the grey umbrella. Difficulty will arise because I shall interpret the contents of the grey umbrella in one way and the Minister for Finance will interpret them to mean something else altogether.
The question will spring to the minds of many experienced politicians: Where do we go from here? There is one place we certainly cannot go, and that is to the author of the grey book. His public life, like that of the swan in the fable, begins and ends with his swan song and he can make no further contribution to the ensuing discussion.
Having familiarised myself with the contents of the grey book, I can find nothing in this capacious economic umbrella to justify the proposed expenditure of an unascertained sum of between £6,000,000 and £10,000,000 on jet aircraft as part of the capital development programme. I can find nothing in the shadow of the grey umbrella to justify the outlay of £7,000,000 on the establishment of a nitrogen plant in the Midlands which, as an ex-Minister for Agriculture, I want to say categorically, and I say it, I believe, with the approval of every other Minister for Agriculture who preceded me, will produce the wrong fertiliser at a price involving every farmer in an additional cost of from 5/- to 10/- per cwt. for any nitrogen he requires and the operation of which will envisage the production and marketing of a volume of nitrogenous fertiliser which no reasonable agricultural scientist would recommend for the economic exploitation of the land of this country.
The Minister ought to tell us on the occasion of this Vote on Account who recommended this proposal. What are the economics of it? He himself was Minister for Agriculture and, as Minister for Agriculture, turned it down. Let there be no doubt about that. This proposal has been bobbing about between the Department of Industry and Commerce and the Department of Agriculture for the past 20 years. At one time, it was advocated in connection with gypsum in Cavan. At another time, it was suggested it should be installed at the port of Drogheda or Dundalk. Now it is suggested it will be established in the Midlands.
In my considered opinion, this is a scheme not to produce nitrogenous fertiliser but to burn turf. It will be financed at the expense of any farmer who requires nitrogenous fertiliser for his tillage crops. The Minister has some knowledge of all this from his own recollection. I do not think he will deny that there are files one foot thick in the Department of Agriculture in which he and his successors warned the Minister for Industry and Commerce that the proposal, even if superficially attractive, was fundamentally unsound. He ought to tell us now what has made him change his mind, particularly in the light of certain extracts from the White Paper.
I turn now from the grey book, the product of the Secretary of the Department of Finance, to the White Paper, which is the Government's responsibility, and which in paragraph 20 has this to say:—
"Not only is phosphorus of itself an essential nutrient but it has highly important secondary effects. By stimulating the growth of clover it adds nitrogen to the soil (and clovers are by far the cheapest source of nitrogen) and improves both the yield and protein content of grass."
Further down in the same paragraph, there is the following:—
"Experiments at Johnstown Castle have proved conclusively that, by following a programme of improved clover growth through the proper application of phosphorus and potassium, very striking levels of meat output from pasture can be achieved during the normal growing season, with a consequent substantial increase in the net profit per acre; due to the secondary effect of nitrogen production, this programme can, in addition, lead to a considerable extension of the grazing season."
I shall return later to the White Paper, but, ad interim, I want to ask the Minister for Finance this question. How is the cost of jet aircraft to be amortised by Aerlínte? It is an astonishing, thing that we, the members of Dáil Éireann, should first hear the details of a project of this size from rumours published in the daily Press, with the result that at this moment we do not know whether or not negotiations are proceeding to expend £6,000,000 or £10,000,000 for the purchase of jet aircraft.
If we take the sum of £10,000,000, allowing for the annual charge for interest, I think we may conservatively say if these planes are to be replaced on reaching obsolescence, it will require approximately £2,000,000 a year to amortise their cost, and to be in a position to replace them when they are no longer useful. Does anybody seriously suggest that they are going to earn £2,000,000, a year? So far as I know, Aer Lingus, which is operating its flights all over Europe from Dublin, is a relatively solvent concern. Does anybody believe that we will earn, on the increasingly competitive transatlantic traffic, the profits requisite to finance the purchase of jet aircraft, the initial cost of which is estimated to be anything from £6,000,000 to £10,000,000? Bearing in mind the phenomenal rapidity with which such accommodation has changed and is changing in the memory of the youngest member of this House, and bearing in mind that every penny of the cost of aeroplanes of this kind will represent a charge on our balance of payments, we may look forward to approximately one half of their incoming revenue representing earnings from abroad, and the other half being payments made by our own citizens flying in the opposite direction.
I am not qualified, as the Minister is from the information he gets from his expert advisers, to estimate with any degree what the prospective returns will be from the passenger freights, especially on passenger aircraft of this character from the point of view of balance of payments considerations, but it is manifest that all the money we pay for the aircraft will be a charge on our balance of payments. It seems to me to be perfectly certain that it is quite out of the question for these aircraft to produce an annual income requisite to amortise their cost.
How that can be reconciled with the economic situation of our country, where every penny we can provide is urgently needed for the development of the country, is a mystery to me. How that can be reconciled with the situation in which we cannot provide funds for adequate buildings and equipment to accommodate students at National University is a mystery to me. Does anyone believe we ought to be flying jet aeroplanes to and fro across the Atlantic Ocean when we have 4,000 students in accommodation which was originally designed for 1,000 and which was never half completed?
Does anybody believe we ought to spend £6,000,000 to £10,000,000 on jet aircraft when, in order to provide subsidies for phosphatic fertilisers, we considered it necessary to close down half of the land project—and that, mind you, appears under the grey umbrella? That kind of finance appears to me to be frenzied and cracked. When I look at appendix 2 of the White Paper, which is a Government plan, I find that out of a total anticipated expenditure of £220,000,000 on a public capital programme for the next five years £48,000,000 is made available for agriculture.
When you come to study the nature of the provision for agriculture, you discover that, under paragraph 5 of appendix 2 of the White Paper, agricultural credit appears as £900,000 in the first year, £1¾ million in the second year, £2.1 million in the third, £2.85 million in the fourth year and £3.7 million in the fifth year. Does anybody seriously accept that that provision for agricultural credit will be availed of? I never experienced, at any time when I was Minister for Agriculture, any shortage for the Agricultural Credit Corporation. They always had any money they wanted, and at one stage they asked for £250,000 and got it within 24 hours.
In relation to this £11,000,000 that is provided here by way of agricultural credit for the next five years under paragraph 5, is it seriously suggested that the Agricultural Credit Corporation will distribute this money? Because if it is, I want to tell the House that is all eyewash. That is put in just as a kind of alibi to explain that agriculture is going to get a fair share of the capital which is going.
The balance of £37.6 million is divided amongst the voted capital services, fertiliser subsidy and arterial drainage, and if you take that balance as being the true provision, you discover, to your amazement, that there is £37.6 million being made available for the State capital programme in respect of agriculture over the next five years, out of a total contemplated expenditure of £210,000,000. If that is the best this Government have in mind for the agricultural industry in this country, there is very little prospect of our doing in the next ten years what we did in the previous ten, that is, doubling the volume and trebling the value of our exports again.
I am a believer in the land of this country. I believe if that land is properly exploited, we could get for our people a decent standard of living, but we will never get a standard of living in this country comparable with the material standard that is available in the United States of America and Great Britain. We might as well face that fact, but if we take all elements into consideration, I believe we can get for our people in this country a better living than they can get in these highly industrialised countries abroad, but a kind of better living that is not going to appeal to everybody. Generalisations of that kind are foreign to my mind, and, when I ask myself what should we do about this, it seems to me perfectly obvious that if you want to increase the output of the land, the first thing to do is to satisfy yourself that those who are working on the land are prepared to collaborate with you. I believe they are, and my experience of them confirms me in that belief.
The second question to ask myself is what do they lack, without which it is not possible for them to get the increased output of which the land is capable. I think they lacked facilities for rehabilitating the land from the condition of dereliction into which it had been allowed to fall, and to that end the land project was provided. I want to tell the Minister for Finance that I think his colleague's decision to suspend section B of that project will create widespread unemployment in rural Ireland, and will prevent the rehabilitation of a large area of land which is capable of far greater output, and which is even more important in certain holdings, rehabilitation of that part of the holding which requires it, which would make the holding economic, whereas, without that rehabilitation, it will not provide a decent livelihood for the people who are living there. They cannot undertake that rehabilitation unless they have available to them the resources and the credit made available under section B of the land project.
All-important as I conceive that to be, there is something infinitely more important, that is, the means to communicate to the people on the land at the present time, and who own it, the skill and information requisite to enable them to get from their land the maximum of which it is capable of producing. As far as I can see, in every country in the world, except our own, the trend towards that end has been accelerated and developed energetically every year that passes.
There are certain Deputies who will argue that the existing advisory services of the county committees of agriculture are adequate for that purpose. Any of us who have experience of them, whether from working land or from superintending their general administration through the Department of Agriculture, know perfectly that is not true, and sooner or later that problem will have to be faced and a proper national agricultural advisory service established in this country, the ultimate object of which will be to provide in every parish in Ireland a competent agricultural adviser to whom farmers, who are prepared to collaborate in the work of expanding agricultural production, can look for help and guidance in the task of getting the maximum return from the land they own and work.
I tried to bring that about, with a very limited measure of success, largely because my efforts in that direction were sabotaged by members of Fianna Fáil on county committees of agriculture, acting, I believe, from ulterior political motives. Very often, when activities of that kind have been going on, it becomes easier to get the friends of the saboteur to do the necessary work when their Ministers get into office. I do not believe anybody on this side of the House would sabotage such an effort, but the present Administration and this House ought to open its eyes to the fact. It is well-nigh unbelievable but it is true—our Faculty of Agriculture in the National University at the present time is turning out a considerable number of excellent agricultural graduates who have to look for employment to the British colonies and the Dominions, and who cannot get work in their own country, though the help they are in a position to give, and have been trained to provide, is an absolute sine qua non of the increased output without which the economy of this country cannot be made viable.
For a properly organised parish plan, we want approximately 800 agricultural advisers. We have at present in the employment of the county committees of agriculture and the Department of Agriculture probably somewhere between 300 and 400. Every one of these additional instructors would be in a position to evoke from the communities in which they would be located a far greater return than their salaries and expenses could possibly amount to. If there is any investment at the present time better guaranteed to pay for itself ten times over, than the appointment of an adequate number of parish agents in this country, I do not know of it. It is a complete mystery to me why the obscurantist mind of Fianna Fáil blocked that, except I suspect for the political reason that they are afraid that if it were inaugurated, it would be such a success, and would be associated with the inter-Party Government, that it would have serious political repercussions on themselves. I believe that is the reason they have suspended one half of the land project, because they feel that is associated with the inter-Party Government and they want to destroy it.
I do not know whether that is the attitude to the parish plan or not, but I do say to the House one of the most urgently vital things—if we are to keep the people on the land and if we are to get out of the land the return that we must get if the economy of the country is to be kept viable—the most urgent and essential reform is the parish plan and its adequate manning by the agricultural graduates being produced in our own university.
I look back with satisfaction and pride on the work done by the inter-Party Government. I recall with satisfaction that it protected from the brutal impact of economic forces the most defenceless sections of our community and, while we were in office, the price of bread, the price of flour, the price of butter and the price of tea were kept low, despite the derisive jeering of the Fianna Fáil Party. I look back with satisfaction on the fact that between 1947 and 1957 by carrying the full burden of the cost of that operation——
The price of tea went up by 2/- per lb.
That is not the case. We kept it down for two years when Deputy Davern and his colleagues howled that it was ridiculous and injurious to do so. Is it not true that we kept the price down for two years —if anything, for too long?
And for which the people paid dearly.
No; that is quite a mistake. I am quite proud to look back on the fact that we did that in the hope that we would never have to raise the price. We subsequently had to raise it. I have no doubt that the effort we made to keep down the price of tea was a good thing to do. Even if it had to go up afterwards, it was a very suitable alternative to the proposal of Mr. Khrushchev; it is a matter of pride our Government were more interested in people than in figures, that we were more interested in the daily lives of the people for whom we were responsible. If we had any fault, it was that we tried too hard in that direction.
I look back on that period with pride, not only with pride in the success that attended our efforts, but with pride in our failures. I would sooner fail gloriously in the effort to do what was fundamentally right than to be fundamentally wrong and victoriously successful. I look back with satisfaction on the fact that when the present Government brought in its Programme for Economic Expansion, it stated in paragraph 15, page 11, of the White Paper:—
"The main objective of agricultural policy in the years to come is not only to maintain but to intensify the welcome upward trend in agricultural output which has been evident in recent years."
Deputy Davern no doubt has studied this White Paper carefully and he will be able to follow me in the comments I propose to make upon it. I hope the contents of the White Paper have served to open his eyes to the fact that the policy of the inter-Party Government with regard to agriculture was the policy which is contained in this White Paper.
I am happy to draw the attention of Deputy Davern and his colleagues to the statement in paragraph 17:—
"Climatic and market influences combine to make grass the most important feature of Irish agriculture, and future agricultural expansion will depend mainly on a dynamic policy of grass-land development. Grass is the raw material of our principal export trade, beef and cattle, of milk production and of sheep and lamb production."
I wonder will Deputy Davern summon a meeting of the cumann in Timahoe and read that paragraph out to them and recall that, in 1949, he shouted to them about the price of oats and for the establishment of the Republic. I shall now get away from the paragraph I have just read, but before I do so, I hope that Deputy Davern will join with me in acknowledging that grass production was part of the agricultural policy of the inter-Party Government.
In paragraph 18, the White Paper states:
"The liming programme followed in recent years has made considerable progress, with the result that we are now one of the largest users of lime per acre in Europe."
I hope that Deputy Davern in his honesty, when he makes speeches in Timahoe, will be careful to add that that scheme was inaugurated by the inter-Party Government.
We established the lime industry.
I know that Deputy Davern will be as frank and open as he always is when he next goes to Timahoe and that he will tell them there that the limestone scheme was inaugurated by the inter-Party Government. I shall now go on to paragraph 26 of the White Paper, which states:
"The increased use of fertilisers on grass lands and better management of grass will enable us not merely to feed better our present live-stock numbers but to maintain much larger numbers of stock on a lowcost basis. During the past 100 years the number of milch cows has remained virtually stationary at around 1,200,000.
Deputy Davern will recall that when Deputy Dillon was Minister for Agriculture he urged the farmers, where they kept five cows, to keep seven; where they kept seven, to keep ten; where they kept ten to keep 14; where they kept 14, to keep 20; and where they kept 20, to keep 28, so as to increase the number of cattle. I hope that Deputy Davern gave that advice to the members of the cumann at Timahoe. I hope he told them to listen to Deputy Dillon and that they carried out that advice and that they now have the increased number of cattle they should have.
The White Paper goes on to say:
"The number of store cattle has increased considerably because of the great improvement in the survival rate of young cattle, but any further substantial increase in cattle numbers can be achieved only by means of an increase in the number of cows. The objective of policy will be to increase cow numbers progressively to at least 1,500,00 by 1964."
Deputy Davern will rejoice with me that his Government have thought fit to follow the policy of the inter-Party Government and Deputy Dillon, when he was Minister for Agriculture, in this regard. He will rejoice with me that there has been an end to the throat-cutting of calves and that the calf factory has been closed. When I came into office, there was a factory in existence in North Cork for the disposal of calves.
I do not think it is relevant on the Vote on Account to deal with the agricultural policy of the Government. That would be a matter more relevant to the Estimate.
I am dealing with the economic programme which was dealt with by the Minister.
We are discussing the Vote on Account which deals with the financial policy of the Government.
The Minister dealt with the White Paper.
The Minister dealt with it in passing.
In column 518, Volume 173, the Minister said:
"As Deputies are aware the programme for economic expansion referred to contained an outline of the Government's projected contribution to economic development in the crucial years immediately ahead."
He went on from that until column 522 and he dealt with every head.
The fact that the Minister mentioned these matters does not give the right to Deputies to discuss agricultural policy in detail.
I am discussing the economic programme.
The Deputy is dealing with matters which could be more relevantly dealt with on the Estimate.
I am not mentioning anything the Minister for Finance did not mention. I know that he will help, as the Minister for Finance urges us all to do, to direct the attention of the public to Section 29, in which due credit is recorded for the development of the external trade in particular breeding quality bulls which will be encouraged by the continuation of the scheme to lease top quality stock bulls to breeders. Deputy Davern will be anxious to show that this was brought into operation by the inter-Party Government. He will also draw his supporters' attention to paragraph 30 and he will say that the Minister for Finance expresses great satisfaction at the increase in the number of sheep and lambs which has gone up in the past ten years from 2,000,000 to 4,250,000 and with his well-known rectitude, he will apportion due credit for that to the inter-Party Government.
That will not end his duties, because I think paragraph 277 will call to his mind the policy of a guaranteed price for Grade A pigs and although I think the Minister for Finance, in collaboration with his colleague, the Minister for Agriculture, made a great mistake for which we have yet to pay the price, in reducing the minimum prices payable for Grade A pigs. None the less, the declaration in the programme of economic expansion that it is intended to maintain that system and of the guaranteed minimum price for feeding barley is something that Deputy Davern will be careful to tell the farmers of Timahoe was a lesson from the inter-Party Government.
They grew it and could not get any money for it.
He will then turn to paragraph 38 and he will adjure them to bear in mind this programme for economic expansion and he will say it lays down that in the establishment of the first pig progeny testing station at Cork, the beginning has already been made with this policy of progeny testing of pigs. Deputy Davern will say: "Although my colleague, the Minister for Agriculture, opened this station, it was the inter-Party Government that built it, equipped it, and filled it with sows."
You may as well claim credit for the creation of the world.
No, but I am glad that is the way it strikes the Deputy. I agree it is a pretty dazzling record, but I do not think the Deputy was awake to it until this programme for economic expansion came along.
Another paragraph, paragraph 39, which gets a cross-heading "Feeding Barley", is one which will inspire Deputy Davern to say to the farmers of Timahoe: "We had not feeding barley in this country until the inter-Party Government brought in Ymer and Herta——"
It weighed heavily on the farmers' backs.
On the backs of the cattle.
Order!
He will go on to say that he hopes with me that the Minister for Agriculture will reverse his policy of beating down the guaranteed minimum price for feeding barley which was 40/- a barrel and which now has been brought down by Deputy Davern's Government to 37/- a barrel.
Not my Government; it is the people's Government.
In any case, it is the Government the Deputy supports. He will go on to look at paragraph 45 of the plan and will find it stated that there are prospects of developing an export trade in broilers and day-old chicks. Broiler production has increased considerably in the U.S.A. and the industry has now spread to Britain and other European countries. The foundation stock of suitable strains of birds for the broiler trade were imported by the Department of Agriculture. In paragraph 47, he will see that:—
"Production of turkeys has not suffered the same set-back as that of ordinary fowl despite occasional market gluts. Production is appreciably above pre-war level and efforts are being made, as in the case of broilers, to expand the market demand by developing improved strains of smaller birds.
The Department of Agriculture has imported foundation stock of such strains from the U.S.A. and these are now available to producers generally."
Deputy Davern will hasten to add that these were all brought in by the inter-Party Government.
Least any scintilla of justice should be withheld, I think Deputy Davern will go on to paragraph 51 and will speak of production having been expanded in horticultural groups by the motion of co-operative undertakings with State assistance,
"Such as that for onions, in County Kerry and the County Waterford apple project"
based at Dungarvan.
Surely these are matters for the agricultural Estimate.
I do not know, but they are in the "Programme for Economic Expansion".
The matter before the House is the Vote on Account which deals with the Government's financial policy. The Deputy is going into details on agriculture.
I am not. This is the policy for economic expansion. Is that not what we are supposed to be speaking about?
Most of the matters referred to by the Deputy would be relevant to the Estimate for Agriculture. It does not follow that in detail they are relevant to the Vote on Account.
I do not know how I can discuss the Programme for Economic Expansion if I cannot refer to the paragraphs mentioned here, and there are some very useful things mentioned. In paragraph 55, it is stated:—
"Credit has an important contribution to make to increased agricultural production."
I have dealt with that question in another context earlier, but there is a paragraph at the foot of page 24 which it might be well worth while to consider carefully at present.
"Such factors as the improvement of land and buildings may create further difficulties, even when allowance is made for the liberal State assistance available. While it would, of course, be foolish for a farmer to run into debt lightheartedly, the tendency in this country has been over-conservative in relation to the use of credit; it will be necessary to convince farmers of the net financial advantage of borrowing to finance a greater volume of output."
I agree with that proposition. It is true we have in the past been overconservative in matters of that kind, but there is an equal danger of being excessively lighthearted in undertaking debt in connection with the agricultural industry and particularly for the small farmer for whom I am primarily concerned.
I am glad to see in the same paragraph, it is stated:—
"Where credit is given under State auspices, the borrower will be required to avail of the services of the agricultural instructor in planning his farming programme."
Now that Deputy Moher is here, perhaps he will tell me—for he played no small part in frustrating the parish plan and causing the prevailing unemployment of agricultural graduates who are now emigrating in increasing number— how is a farmer in a county like Leitrim where there are two agricultural instructors to avail of the agricultural instructor in planning his farming programme? How is he to do it in other counties where there is not one quarter the number of parish agents or instructors that would be required if every farmer availing of credit facilities were to carry out that injunction? Is the Deputy now prepared to do anything to see that these young men are not driven to emigration and that their services are made available to the farmers who, according to his own plan for economic expansion, ought to be helped to avail of them.
I shall be particularly interested when Deputy Davern comes to expound the contents of paragraph 56. It says:—
"This White Paper does not deal with the important and complex problem of the marketing of agricultural products, as this is under examination by an advisory committee established in 1957."
Mark you, they are a good time in existence and we have not heard anything from them yet:—
"There is no doubt, however, that the bulk of our agricultural exports will continue to be marketed in Britain."
I can imagine Deputy Davern's voice ringing with passion when he says this to the electors of Timahoe.
Paragraph 56 continues:—
"There is no doubt, however, that the bulk of our agricultural exports will continue to be marketed in Britain, and our trade relations with that country are, therefore, a matter of prime importance."
I should be very interested to hear the frills and furbelows which Deputy Davern will put on that extremely relevant paragraph.
I am glad that much of the Programme for Economic Expansion has been reduced to writing. I recommend it very specially in its reference to agriculture to the careful study of the members of the Fianna Fáil Party. I urge them strongly to face the obligation which confronts them of swallowing most of what they have said in the past and of digesting peacefully most of what they have denied. I hope that, as a result of its perusal and of the expounding of the wisdom set forth here, they will be able to disseminate the light amongst those whom they have helped to confound and bewilder in the past.
I am not at all satisfied that this Government or any other Government can look to the future with any degree of confidence, so long as an atmosphere of stagnation prevails in this country. Mind you, I do not want to take up the position—and I never have —of claiming for any Government, however chosen, the exclusive knowledge or goodwill requisite for the prompt solution of the problems of unemployment and emigration which confront us. I think the great crime of the Fianna Fáil Party was to claim to themselves that knowledge, and the claim made before our people to be exclusive in the possession of the requisite goodwill to achieve the solution of those problems. I do not believe they had either, but I believe the claim they made deceived a multitude of our people who were sharing with the rest of us the perplexities and exasperations of the exceptional economic stresses which arose in the course of 1956.
I think their shameful, dishonest, fraudulent claim to have available solutions for those problems, and the power to give effect to them, is injuring the very cause of freedom in this country at the present time and has given rise to 90 per cent. of the general disillusionment with people, such as ourselves, engaged in public life. It is unhealthy and disastrous that our people, in the exercise of freedom, should freely choose their parliamentary representatives and that there then should be found substantial bodies of influential opinion in this country with the insolence and impudence to hold up the representatives of the Irish people before the world as unworthy and venal persons who are to be held in general contempt.
The verdict of such people upon myself is a matter of supreme indifference to me, but I know that, if that kind of talk is suffered to go unanswered—it is a natural instinct in many of us to ignore it as being unworthy of effective answer—it is one of the most potent instruments in the hands of those who hate freedom and who would love to undermine it, in this or any other community. There is no doubt, however, that the men and women sitting in this House were freely chosen by the Irish people. If we are no better than we are, it is because the Irish people wish it to be so. There is no restriction on anybody better or worse than we are, presenting himself to the electorate and the electorate choosing him, if such be necessary. We are all here by the one mandate, that a quota of Irish voters chose one of us to represent them. That to me is a proud title and those who have the honour to sit in this House, whether we agree with one another or disagree, are persons privileged and marked with that distinction, which I covet and rejoice in having won.
It is a thousand pities that those of us into whose hands is committed the care of the reputation of Parliament should allow ourselves to be misled into that kind of undertaking which no reasonable man can fairly defend: first, and that is the first tragic element, to promise with a poster on a hoarding: "Women, vote Fianna Fáil and get jobs for your husbands." The first evil in that is the disillusionment which ensues when it is found out to be untrue. Even worse, in my opinion, is the implied affirmation that there is a considerable body of opinion in Dáil Éireann that is indifferent to the sufferings of those whose breadwinner is in involuntary unemployment. The implication is that the Government in office have the power but not the goodwill, in the kind of community to which we belong, to provide employment for those who need it to sustain their families; and that, in my judgment, was just as bad and as disgraceful a betrayal of the public trust as was the promise that could not be kept.
If there is spreading amongst our own people a miasma of disillusionment which threatens to turn into contempt not only for the representatives of the Irish people but for the institutions we are charged to sustain, those who are responsible for begetting that spirit of disillusionment in our people ought to examine their conscience. They ought to recall that, in the cut and thrust of vigorous politics, it is right that we should indict one another's policies, it is right that we should not recoil from all the exigencies of trenchant debate and vigorous disputation and that we should not become so thin-skinned that we are afraid to meet the ordinary exigencies of debate in a House such as this, but we ought also to remember that individual liberty and parliamentary institutions depend for their survival on the readiness of all participants to accept the indispensable rules under which that process is carried on.
There is not the slightest doubt that, just as on the football field or in any other sphere of human activity controlled by rules universally accepted by the participants, there will be an initial and passing advantage for the first party that breaks through those rules and, in the process, snatches the advantage of a foul, but, so certainly as one Party resorts to that, so certainly will there come a nemesis on all, because, as the rules are breached, they will be abandoned and, when they are gone, the machine designed to sustain individual liberty and freedom will cease to function in this country.
Here in this House is the citadel of liberty for every free man in this country. We, the members of this House, are charged with the responsibility of maintaining it. We have the ability to do that, so long as we retain the confidence of those who sent us here. If, by any act of ours, we throw away the respect and the confidence of those who have the power to elect us, we shall be responsible for tearing down Parliament; and, if we are, we shall be responsible for our people's loss of liberty. I hope none of us here will live to see that day.
I hate to think of the prospect that lies ahead if the Government continue as they are at present travelling. There are certain of their policies which have been adequately discussed here in recent weeks and the fuller discussion of which we will now take to the country. They are all associated with the preservation of liberty. I am glad to think that, in regard to certain matters extensively discussed in this House recently, the Government appear to be getting cold feet; they are putting out feelers to know whether they can now get out of this straitjacket they forged for themselves and whether there is not a middle course which they would now take as an acceptable one, but which at one time they arrogantly rejected as utterly unacceptable.
One of the great values of this House is the argument and discussion that take place here. Discussion and argument often sounds futile in the ears of those who listen and, indeed, sometimes in the ears of those who make the case, but those of us who love Parliament and who recognise it as the greatest instrument of human liberty ever forged are from time to time encouraged by the knowledge that what seems an unbreakable brazen front in the course of long debate begins to show some cracks and fissures. I think this programme of economic expansion provides abundant evidence that the brazen front of Fianna Fáil has been pretty extensively breached. I like to think that the brazen front of their political folly is cracking now under the impact of recent debate. I welcome them back to the element of economic orthodoxy in this White Paper. They can rest assured of the reception appropriate for a prodigal son when they reform their political practice.
I do not think anybody could say that there has come from the Government side of the House in this debate any real ray of hope. Listening to the speeches and reading the speeches of the various Government Deputies and Ministers, it must also be agreed that nothing new has been said. The White Paper on economic expansion to which Deputy Dillon referred was given scant attention by the Minister for Finance, the Minister for Health and the Minister for Education.
I thought the Minister for Finance and the other Ministers would have given us something like the criticism that has been made of this White Paper, either favourable or unfavourable, by Deputy Dillon. Deputy Dillon talked about this House. He said it was a place in which one could speak freely, a place in which discussion could do some good. Deputy Dillon may, on occasion, use this House to express sentiments he feels strongly and in which he really believes, just as he believes discussion here can do some good. After 13 or 14 years in this House and after 13 or 14 years of debate on the Vote on Account, I am wondering whether or not there is any discussion beyond recriminations, abuse and criticism, with no real statement of policy. I do not blame the Opposition, because they are the Opposition. It is the Government's duty, as the Tanáiste said when he was in opposition, to put forward proposals and it is the duty of the Opposition to criticise them.
What did we get from the Minister for Finance in this debate? It may sound hackneyed, but we had not one word about the twin evils—unemployment and emigration. Not once did the Minister mention either of them. The Minister for Health in the beginning of his speech abused the Labour Party for not speaking sooner. He abused Deputy McGilligan for going too far back. I do not propose to quote exactly what he said, but he abused Deputy McGilligan for going back as far as 1952. Thereafter, the Minister for Health went back to the Shannon scheme, to 1940 and to the promises made by Fianna Fáil in 1932. No Deputy examining the speech of the Minister for Health could say that here was something new. He did not strike an optimistic note. He gave no hope to this section, that section or the other section. He was followed by the Minister for Education who—I do not say he wished deliberately to deceive the House—juggled with figures in an effort to pretend to the country that we are far better off than the Opposition says we are or the country believes we are.
Notice taken that 20 members were not present; House counted and 20 members being present,
I do not think many of us will disagree with what is contained in the White Paper, but I notice that the White Paper, in the light of some of the official statements, is intended to plan for the future. That is a good thing. It also aims at doubling the national income in 35 years. I suppose that is a good goal to try to achieve, but, like the Taoiseach, I should like to know what is to happen in the meantime. I shall quote for the benefit of the Fianna Fáil Party a statement made in this House on 17th July last at column 1062 of Volume 170 of the Official Report:—
"We must have regard for the sufferings of those undergoing hardships at the moment while we are trying to plan for the future. That is the basis that I, for one, have adopted. When I get programmes from economists pointing out that you must do this and you must do that if you want to be ultimately successful, I have always to ask myself ‘but what about the people at the moment?' We have to keep these in mind just as well as the ultimate good."
That is what the Taoiseach said on 17th July, 1958, and I should like to ask the same question. What is to happen to the people who are suffering at the present time? What plans have the Government got to alleviate their hardships and sufferings? The Taoiseach said that, but in statements made by the various Ministers who have spoken, there is no evidence that anything will be done in the immediate future to reduce substantially the unemployment figure, or the number of persons who emigrate from year to year.
As a matter of fact, we have a statement, quoted by Deputy Barrett, in a letter sent by the Minister for Local Government to the Cork Corporation to the effect that he expects emigration will not be diminished in the next four or five years and, consequently, the Corporation of Cork City should build a smaller number of houses than they proposed to build. Great stress has been laid on employment in recent years but we have had a sudden switch on the part of the Fianna Fáil Party from what they regard as non-productive work to productive work. That might be all right for other countries but not for Ireland. We have led a substantial number of people to believe that we have employment for them in work connected with Government Departments and local authorities. Tens of thousands of people got full employment, a year's employment, on, say, roads and housebuilding and now, suddenly, we decide that that sort of work is to be discontinued.
The question the Taoiseach and I must ask ourselves is what is to happen to those people? While waiting for productive employment, are we content to allow them to emigrate to Britain, Canada, America and other countries, until we can get what is described as productive employment? If we are to have any regard for the 78,000 unemployed or the 50,000 or 60,000 odd who emigrate each year, we must have something better for them than this White Paper on economic expansion and recovery. That may be all right for ten years hence, 20 years hence, or, as the White Paper itself says, 35 years hence, but in the meantime people must live and there is no use in telling 78,000 unemployed people or those on half-time: ‘You will be all right in 35 years' time when this 35-year plan materialises." It is easy to write a plan, as it was the easiest thing in the world for the Minister for Finance to initiate the Health Act, but it was another thing to get it to work, and I doubt if this 35-year plan outlined in the White Paper will work in the time which it is suggested it will work.
I do not know whether or not it will do any good to talk about unemployment figures. The fact is that while there may be an improvement in one year or a disimprovement in another year, we still have this colossal problem of unemployment. It is not correct for Fianna Fáil speakers to allege that there has been a substantial decrease in the number of registered unemployed. There has been a decrease of about 10,000 compared with a year ago, but, on the other hand, we must have regard to those people who are actually in employment and the figures prepared by the Statistics Office show that in March, 1954, there were 488,000 in insurable employment; in March, 1955, there were 498,900 in insurable employment; in March, 1956, there were 501,400; in March, 1957, there were 485,900; and in March, 1958, there were 464,700 persons in insurable employment.
We must come to the conclusion that this decrease must represent the people who have emigrated to Britain or some other country between these years. It cannot be denied, so far as emigration is concerned, that the conclusion we must reach is that we have between 50,000 and 60,000 people emigrating each year. The Minister for Health and the Minister for Finance said in recent weeks that emigration had been curbed. It is possible it might be curbed, but every Deputy must agree that a saturation point is always reached. It is my belief that we have now come close to saturation point, and in a short time emigration will be curbed, but curbed merely because there will not be people without jobs to go across to Britain to seek work.
It is my belief—I said it last year and I do not want to repeat myself— that there is room for what is now generally described as non-productive work. Any work, even non-productive work, is far better for the unemployed than having to wait for productive work which may be found for them in ten, 15, 20, 25 or 35 years' time. I wonder why employment in certain lines has diminished so much in recent years, why we have a lesser number employed in road making and road work generally, a lesser number employed on the land? It seems to me also that we have a lesser number engaged in factories.
At 31st January, 1956, we had 18,433 engaged in road work; at 31st January, 1957, the number was 15,650; at 31st January, 1958, 14,347; and at 31st January this year we had 13,412. That means that in three years 5,000 fewer are working on the roads of this country. That, I suggest, is a serious position, which has been brought about, let me say, by a too rapid introduction of machinery. I may be told I am ill-advised and that one cannot stand in the way of progress, but I believe that the county councils introduced machinery too rapidly to the detriment of the rural worker, the worker who cannot now be placed in employment in the towns or cities, the worker who cannot now resort to agricultural work because it is not there for him, and who cannot now go to forestry work because the moneys provided for forestry will not allow of taking any more men into that type of work. I object, and did object, to such a rapid increase in machinery for road work.
I think that would be a matter for the Estimate for Local Government.
I want to relate my remarks to employment generally, especially in the rural areas, and the point I want to make is that here we were importing machinery from Germany, Britain, and countries all over the world, to displace Irish workers. By buying that machinery— and we still are—we were giving employment to Germans, to English people, to Welsh people and to Scottish people, and were throwing our own people out of employment.
As regards agriculture, during the past six or seven years we introduced such machinery the like of which we never thought we would see. A farmer had to have all the agricultural implements he could get, tractors, ploughs and harvesting equipment, but we did not seem to realise that this machinery was not produced in this country but was bought from England, Germany, and other countries, and our buying it gave employment to Germans, Belgians, French, Canadians, Americans, and in particular, to the British. I do not think that was a good or a sound policy, and I think it has been responsible, to a large extent, for the unemployment we have, especially in the rural areas.
The inter-Party Government, or what the Opposition at the time referred to in a jeering way as the Coalition Government, introduced what I thought was an admirable system, not alone to increase production on the land but to give employment, that is, the Local Authorities (Works) Act schemes. Contrary to what the Minister for Finance said last week, the type of work done under those schemes was, I believe, excellent as far as agriculture was concerned, and I believe that system was scrapped mainly because it had been introduced by the inter-Party Government. It gave valuable employment, and it was the type of employment to keep men employed in rural areas, pending jobs being available for them in factories, whether in rural areas or in the towns.
I read an abbreviated report in the Irish Independent yesterday of a speech by Most Rev. Dr. Lucey, Bishop of Cork, and I think most of it would be acceptable to every Deputy. He said:—
"The Irish countryside was becoming depopulated at a rate almost equal to that of the Famine years. They were told that the countryside was never more prosperous. That was true but it was prosperity for the few. The small farmer or the farm labourer was not prosperous, and the various public moneys going to agriculture went in the main not to them, but to the big farmer."
I do not know if there are any farmers in the House at the present time, but I believe that to be one of the truest things ever said in recent years. It is the speculator, the big farmer, the farmer who in many cases does not need the grant, who can qualify for it and who can engage in the work, but the small farmer in West Cork, in Galway or in Wexford, by reason of the fact that he is a small farmer, cannot avail of the grant, given so freely by this Government and by previous Governments in the past, because he has not got the balance of the money required to get the grant.
I do not know whether Deputies will agree with me in this. There is a means test for the payment of unemployment assistance; there is a means test for old age pensions; and there is a means test for widows' and orphans' pensions. Why should the farmer with 1,000, 2,000, 3,000 acres qualify for a substantial grant and so take money that could well be devoted to small farmers who are much more deserving of getting it? The report of Dr. Lucey's speech continues:—
"That was because State thinking, State spending and State policy were in terms of production rather than of producers, of products for export than of Irish homes, families and the family holding."
If one looks at the White Paper and checks up on the various grants that are proposed to be given to agriculture, one might well ask oneself how much more employment will the giving of these grants produce? How many more men will be employed by reason of the fact that these extra grants will be given to the agricultural community? I think the answer is that there will be very little, if any at all. Dr. Lucey then went on to say:—
"They must see that what counted was not increased production so much as increased population. They must favour the small holding, because it was a family holding, because it produced good, sturdy persons.... What we want for rural Ireland is more holdings and more people, not bigger farms, more machines and empty spaces."
Most Deputies must agree that that is the position we have arrived at, due to the manner in which we approached the agricultural community over the past ten, 20, 25 or 30 years. I venture to say that if we had endeavoured to make the agricultural community more independent and more self-supporting, greater initiative would be shown by the farmers. Instead of that, we have always approached them—and unfortunately many of them have approached various Governments—on the basis that they could not increase production unless the Government came to the aid of agriculture.
Let me not be misrepresented. I do not disagree with the policy of giving aid to industry, and especially of giving aid to agriculture, but I believe that we have made the agricultural industry much too dependent on Governments. Until the time comes when the agricultural industry and its personnel can stand on its own two feet, we will not have a prosperous agricultural industry.
The policy enunciated here by a very famous, now deceased, Minister for Agriculture, that we should concentrate on cattle, grass and pigs, was laughed at from every Fianna Fáil platform from 1927 onwards, but now what do we see? During the past three or four years, the Fianna Fáil Government have reverted, without a blush on their faces, to that policy announced so many years ago.
They were too late.
During the past 20 years, posters were shown throughout the country saying "Grow More Wheat". Now the farmers are being told not to grow any more wheat.
The Deputy should grow up.
The Deputy should continue his sleep.
Nonsense.
I suggest that the Deputy himself ought to grow up. If any farmer now suggested he was going to grow more wheat, he would not get a good reception from Deputy Loughman.
When we told them to grow more wheat, there were only 20,000 acres under wheat in this country.
We got them this far anyway.
You want them to go back now.
We have other things to grow.
Order!
I mentioned at the beginning of my speech that housing, over the past ten or 15 years, was a great source of employment. I am wondering has there been a change of policy within the Government's ranks, as far as housing is concerned. I remember in 1957, when the Taoiseach spoke on the Vote for his Department, he pointed to Deputy Blaney as Minister for Local Government and said that he was busily engaged in preparing plans to revive the house-building industry and generally to provide work. I do not think that any Deputy in Dublin would agree that if that was the task allotted to the Minister, he has been very successful in it. I remember Deputy Briscoe and the Cork Deputies of the Fianna Fáil Party and the former Deputy Colley as late as the winter of 1956 and spring of 1957, complaining bitterly about the decrease in house building. I wonder is there more or less building in Dublin now than there was two or three years ago. I wonder if the demand for houses has diminished. If the demand has diminished, the Taoiseach must have been aware of that when he spoke in July, 1957.
I would suggest, and I would go as far as to allege, that the Minister for Local Government is engaged in a scheme whereby housebuilding will be slowed down to a suitable minimum. I had a question to the Minister to-day with regard to houses in a certain local authority area and it seemed to me that by deliberate act of his Department, housing has practically stopped in that area. I know that the Minister for Finance can set aside and put into the Book of Estimates a sum of money to be spent on housing, but whether that money is spent is another matter altogether. I doubt whether all the money allocated this time last year was fully spent or whether or not the Minister really wants to spend it. The evidence is that housing was never at a lower level for the past 15 years than it is at the moment and that there are fewer people employed in housing now than there were at any time in the past 15 years.
As I said before, I believe that in a situation where we have not what is described as productive work to offer the workers, we are justified in offering them employment on drainage schemes, on unnecessary house building and on unnecessary hospital and school building. After all, apart from what the State has to pay out in unemployment benefit and unemployment assistance, these schemes help to circulate money which would otherwise be lying idle in the country. Give money to a road worker, a tradesman or a builder's labourer and he will spend it in this country. He will buy goods here and keep the factories going. He will buy food, cigarettes and stout, or whatever he drinks, and other things manufactured in this country.
I have often wondered what is the attitude of the Minister for Finance to the National Development Fund. I remember in the autumn of 1947 the Minister for External Affairs, when he was Minister for Finance, or acting-Minister for Finance, saying that in a situation where the balance of payments problem was favourable and unemployment high, the State would be justified in spending a sum of something like £5,000,000 a year primarily for the purpose of giving employment. That was 12 years ago and whether the Minister for Finance has the same attitude I do not know. That is what the Minister for External Affairs said. He justified a proposal to spend £5,000,000 a year on projects which, he said, had been filed away in State Departments for years, but which could now be brought out in order to keep men in employment.
I agreed with him at that time and I defended the Bill which he introduced at that time, believing that Fianna Fáil were sincere and believing that, where we have a big number of unemployed and where the balance of payments situation is favourable, the spending of £5,000,000 a year would be justifiable in order to give men wages to keep them in this country and prevent them from emigrating.
I put that question to the Minister for Finance last year and I do not think there was a reply. If there is a reply to it and if there has been a change of attitude, I think we ought to hear it. I think the expenditure of £5,000,000 a year for the putting of men into employment is desirable. I think it is wrong to describe certain work as non-productive. Work on roads may be non-productive in a direct way, but if one follows it down, I think it could be regarded in some ways as being productive. If men are engaged in drainage and in forestry work, these works could be regarded as productive, and I think we would be justified in providing a sum of £5,000,000 a year, as suggested by the Minister, to keep men at home and to keep them in their jobs.
We must remember that not alone are the workers lost to this country as workers, but when we lose workers, we are also losing consumers. That is something that is often forgotten. If every man who goes away takes his wife and four children with him, it means that six people will not buy Irish produced food, drink Irish drink, buy Irish boots or clothes or contribute to Radio Éireann by way of the purchase of licences. Such a man will not buy any of the things produced at home, once he goes away.
All of us are well aware of the fact that it is the man who earns £7, £8 or £9 a week who always buys Irish goods. He cannot buy luxury goods because he cannot afford them, so that when a man emigrates from this country, not alone is a worker emigrating but a consumer as well.
In the declarations of policy made by the Government since they assumed office, there has been emphasis on the fact that private enterprise must be the guiding factor in the development of the country. Most people will subscribe to that, but I do not think we should pursue a policy where we believe in private enterprise and private enterprise only. We have had examples of where the Government have taken steps to establish industry and we have seen many examples of the success of these industries. I think nobody will disagree when I say the E.S.B. has been very successful and is very well run. According to the discussion we had last week on the Turf Development Bill, the House is unanimous in considering Bord na Móna very successful; so much so that we decided we should give it more money to expand further. The Sugar Company, often described as a monopoly, is, I think, in the opinion of practically every member of the House, a successfully-run company. Irish Shipping, to which it was proposed in a recent Bill to advance more money, has also been acclaimed as a very successful enterprise. We never tire on both sides of the House of singing the praises of Aer Lingus as a very successful company, which is State-sponsored. We, therefore, have the E.S.B., Bord na Móna, the Irish Sugar Company and Aer Lingus, to mention some of the companies in which the State has a certain part and in which the Government have the biggest financial interest, which have proved successful.
We have prospects like the oil refinery at Whitegate where the Government had to take the initiative and had to do practically all the negotiating. It succeded to the extent that the refinery will be in production, I believe, in a relatively short time. Government initiative was also shown in the development of the Avoca copper mines for which the two sides of the House may claim credit and the Fianna Fáil Government may take credit for the success of the venture now known as Avoca copper mines. Over and above all that is the fact that it has been successful because the Government negotiated with the people now operating the project; the Government had a financial interest in it, and I say that it is for these reasons that it has been successful.
People may say the E.S.B. in providing electricity and Bord na Móna in providing fuel, the Sugar Company in providing an essential commodity, and Irish Shipping and Aer Lingus in providing two essential services, are in a special position. But we have another example. Twelve or 18 months ago, the engineering works at Dundalk closed and the town was faced with the position where hundreds of men were actually unemployed. That situation could not be allowed to continue. Ministers and Deputies were interviewed and the people of Dundalk, the workers especially, kicked up such a row—they were not unruly but they protested—that the Government were induced to do something. I may be told that Dundalk Engineering Works is a private company and the Government have no control over it, but the fact is that Government money was put into that firm to provide work. It may not have been given directly through the Department of Finance, but the money was advanced by the Industrial Credit Co. and factories established to assemble motor cars and manufacture agricultural machinery.
Nobody could say these are in the same category as the production of electricity or fuel, although important in themselves, but the Government confronted with the situation where hundreds of men were unemployed, had to do something to make sure some of them were put into employment. From a Dundalk colleague, I gathered last week that about three-quarters of the men who were unemployed, following the closing down of the G.N.R. works, have now found work in these two factories. I suggest that while we should continue to include in our policy an emphasis on private enterprise, the Government should not be so timid— no Government should be—in taking the initiative to establish a factory to provide employment for the people.
The Government may pass legislation and provide money to be given to such people to establish factories and businesses throughout the country; the Government may provide money through the Industrial Credit Co. or some organisation; they may provide other facilities such as tax reductions and even grants; but what the Irish businessman has not got —and the sooner we face up to it, the better—is a tradition of running factories. If the facilities we offer here were offered in other countries, there might be some results. We have little or no industrial tradition and what exists is at least 25 years old. We have no industrial tradition such as Britain's and I suggest we can go no great distance towards establishing industry in this country, unless the Government take the initiative. I do not say that in any criticism of the Government, but, if you like, as a compliment. I believe if we are to have the additional factories that we need in Munster, Leinster or central Ireland, or in Dublin, we shall wait quite a while before getting sufficient factories to absorb many of the unemployed we have at present registered.
I cannot see where the Government's difficulty is in deciding to establish ten or 20 factories, in view of the information they have from import figures and concerning potential export markets. They could invite the public to participate by contributing money and give them a "say" in control and administration and after a stipulated period, let the concern pass over to private enterprise. In the main, the Government must take the initiative in the establishment of factories here.
While there are increases under certain headings in the Book of Estimates, there are very deserving sections of the community for whom there are no increases. Does the Government intend to pursue the standstill policy, as far as the social welfare and social assistance recipients are concerned? I thought that this year, in view of all the circumstances, the Government would have provided an increase in the Estimates for old age pensioners, for the blind, the widows and orphans and the unemployment assistance and unemployment benefit recipients. I believe the Government should now indicate that they will give these classes some assistance.
The last time we had an increase in the provision in the Estimates or a Supplementary Estimate for the old age pensioners, the blind, the widows and orphans and the sick people was, I think, April, 1957. Since then, food has gone up in price by 12 per cent. Adequate provision has not been made for those people to compensate them for the increase in the price of food to the extent of 12 per cent. It is true, as someone will tell me, that the cost-of-living index generally has not increased by 12 per cent. That may be so, but food, and that is mainly what these people purchase, has gone up by 12 per cent. Included in the cost-of-living index figure are household goods, furniture, clothing and, I think, even drink, newspapers, periodicals and things like that; but the important commodities as far as they are concerned, are the articles of food—tea, bread, sugar, butter, a little bit of meat and things like that. They are concerned with food and that has increased by 12 per cent.
I do not see any reason for the Government's failure to provide something to compensate those people for that steep increase. I also say that, as far as those people are concerned, while food has increased by 12 per cent., rents, according to the cost-of-living index figure, have gone up by about 4 per cent. in the past two years, that is, since May, 1957. These are important increases for these people. We have at the present time, by the Minister for Local Government, a further attempt to harass old age pensioners and widows, sick people and unemployed by telling the local authorities that rents must be increased—or else! There are proposals with local authorities all over the country, on the direction of the Minister for Local Government, or, if one likes, on his advice, to increase rents by as much as 100 per cent. I have seen some cases where the proposal was to increase rents by 150 per cent. People who are in receipt of such small allowances should not be called upon at the behest of the Minister for Local Government, to pay such increased rents.
Deputy Haughey is alleged to have said in some recent debate that the people of Dublin were 50 times better off than they were in 1956. Deputy Haughey since contradicted that and said that what he said was that the people were——
Oh, no.
That things were generally 50 per cent. better——
Oh, no. Things were "50 times" better.
I give him the benefit of the doubt.
He even corrected me when I said 50 per cent. I suggested 50 per cent.
In any case, we will take his latest statement.
He is right.
Will Deputy Loughman tell me who is 50 per cent. better off?
Everybody in the country.
Let that be recorded.
Now we have the interpretation of the word "things".
Now we have the interpretation of "50 per cent. better off".
It is "50 times" better off.
Do most of you believe that over there?
Deputy Corish is limiting himself in order to be a good Christian. The Official Report has it.
Deputy Loughman is from, I think, South Tipperary. I do not know what town he lives in— perhaps in Clonmel. There are 250 persons registered at the Wexford labour exchange enjoying unemployment assistance.
There are more in Clonmel.
Those persons have wives and children. The man who has a wife and two or more children has 41/- per week. They will not get home assistance and will not get any other type of assistance. Are they 50 per cent. better off?
Fifty times; 50 times.
I would want to know what the conditions are amongst the 50 per cent. to know what percentage they have. It is all very easy to weight cases with figures. Those people—what ages are they?
If Deputy Loughman does not want to answer——
I want to know the ages.
They are recipients of unemployment assistance.
Take those more than 65. They are better off.
They have all aged since the change of Government.
I do not want to argue about it.
An old age pensioner has 25/- a week now. He had 24/- in 1956. How is that 50 per cent. better off?
Could I ask the Deputy if he looks upon the old age pension as a means of living?
Yes.
I do not; I regard the old age pensioner as dependent, to a great extent, on his children.
Is he 50 per cent. better off than he was in 1956?
I would say he is.
That is all I want to know.
We do not weep over them, but try to do something for them. You are weeping over the poor.
That is all you are doing—weeping.
I have given Deputy Haughey the benefit of the doubt in the correction he has made, in saying that what he meant was that the people were 50 per cent. better off than they were in 1956. I do not think anyone here would believe that, with the possible exception of Deputy Loughman. In any case, Deputy Loughman is satisfied because now we have a plan.
I am not saying I am satisfied.
We have the White Paper on Economic Expansion and Recovery, where we are going to spend £230,000,000. We are to spend £10,000,000 on jet aeroplanes and the unemployment position is not as bad as it was and people are not emigrating in as great numbers as they were, and Deputy Loughman is happy.
Certainly.
Deputy Loughman is happy. The leader of his Party expects to go into Árus an Uachtaráin.
That is another story. I do not see where that comes in on this Vote.
Why does the Deputy mention that?
What harm is there in mentioning it?
Why do you mention it?
I just mentioned it in order to show why Deputy Loughman is happy.
You mean the Taoiseach is going to get away from responsibility and have a good time—is that it?
I had not anything like that in my mind.
Then, in the context, it looks like that.
If the Minister wants to interpret my remark as meaning that, I cannot help him.
Why did you mention it?
To show how happy Deputy Loughman was. All is right with the world as long as the Taoiseach is to be President. Deputy Haughey's statement that the people are 50 per cent. better off——
Fifty times better off.
Fifty times better off than they were in 1956, shows the attitude of the Fianna Fáil Party towards the people.
Notice taken that 20 members were not present, House counted and 20 members being present,
During this debate so far, every speaker has referred to the twin evils of unemployment and emigration and to the efforts made since 1922 to decrease the former and reduce the latter. It might be as well if the House were to examine these problems rationally and dispassionately for a few moments. We should not allow the implication to be made or the suggestion to go abroad that these evils came upon us immediately after the British evacuation, since then the inference would seem to be that all our economic difficulties stem from the fact that we won our independence. That, of course, is not true.
We inherited these problems; they were problems which Britain either could not or would not solve. Whatever about emigration, unemployment was a problem which up to the outbreak of the Second World War, Britain had failed to solve even in England and England was then, as it were, the hub of a great empire and a highly industrialised country. Furthermore, she had been ruling herself uninterruptedly for hundreds of years.
We had to start from scratch and we have had little more than a generation in which to try to undo the wrongs of over a score of generations. Even in the short time during which we ourselves have had the tackling of these problems, tremendous strides have been made: to mention but a few—electricity, cement, turf, sugar, aviation, housing and so on. All these have put thousands of people to work and all are the direct result of Irish initiative and Irish enterprise.
It should be our aim to prove that, given the opportunity, Irish tradesmen, Irish craftsmen, Irish technicians and the Irish professional classes are just as clever as their counterparts in any other country, and the Irish businessmen just as shrewd. To that end, the money spent on technical education should not be grudged.
Despite its asserted importance, agriculture of itself cannot provide the employment necessary to sustain here the population we would all desire. The only solution appears to me to lie in the extension of existing industries and the creation of new ones. We may not be able to compete in the export market in relation to many items of manufactured goods, but it should be possible to encourage a demand for goods of a distinctly Irish character. Switzerland is famous the world over for its watches, clocks and precision instruments. Could we not increase the demand, for instance, for Irish linen and Irish tweed?
Fianna Fáil Deputies have been criticised for stressing the fact that a feeling of optimism is abroad. Surely, if such a feeling is there—and it is there—the need is to stress it. We have had a surfeit of gloom and pessimism. It is a poor reflection on our people if they cannot be brought to have faith in themselves and in their ability to build a prosperous country. On the people themselves—the worker, the professional man, the businessman and all sections of the community—depends the success of any programme designed to solve our economic difficulties.
Under the Coalition Government, self-confidence was at a very low ebb. I do not suggest that the members of the Coalition deliberately set themselves to undermine the people's confidence in themselves. They no doubt did what they did with the best intentions. I submit, however, that the policy of the Coalitions had the effect of spreading despondency and despair for the future of our country. There appeared to be neither leadership nor direction, and it is the responsibility of the Government to lead and direct.
In the Estimates, of which this Vote on Account is the forerunner, neither leadership nor direction is lacking. Neither is encouragement lacking. The programme for economic expansion of which this year's Estimates are, as it were, the first instalment, demonstrates the Government's realistic approach to the situation and their very definite efforts to deal with it. The welcome it has received from the business community augurs well for its success. Overriding all considerations of what any Government can do to bring prosperity is the consideration of how far the people are prepared to help in tackling problems and, in the long run, it is on the people that the success of any plan depends. If we are to inspire that confidence abroad which is essential in order to market our exports, we must ensure that we have here a body of workers both willing and able to work hard and consistently, free from the danger of recurring labour troubles. Such a body we undoubtedly have and, given sound leadership, they can be depended upon to do their share in getting the country over these very difficult times.
To encourage and stimulate our people to greater efforts, it is necessary that they should be informed in some way of the task confronting them. It has always been the belief of Fianna Fáil that the public should be encouraged to take an interest in the affairs of government. To this end the newspapers and radio could be pressed into service. In this connection, I must refer to Deputy O'Donnell's remarks last week when he said that in the Coalition term of office, the Public Gallery was always full. If that is so, they can congratulate themselves on having achieved something. Most Governments, however, would prefer to be judged by rather more solid achievement.
As a Dublin Deputy, a big number of the inquiries I receive are in connection with housing and it is gratifying to be able to report that the Government are able and willing to push on with their programme in that direction. I should like to make a reference to Deputy Corish's speech. He mentioned that there was less building in Dublin in the past two years. I suggest to Deputy Corish that if he takes a short walk from the Parnell Monument for 100 yards, he will see at least five flat-dwelling developments in course of erection by the Dublin Corporation. Building is in progress, too, on the south side of the city, so that we can safely say that the problem will be finally solved in the near future, thus reserving capital and energy for more productive enterprises.
It was once said that Ireland was a country which "always had, always has, and always will have a future". The reply to that was, that always having a future was at least better than having nothing but a past. Nevertheless, in planning for the future, it is no harm to reflect occasionally on our past. From that, one can see that Ireland has emerged from centuries of oppression with her distinct independent character intact. Surely it is not too much to ask that we keep faith with those who have gone before us, those men and women who believed that once having gained control over our own destinies, the comfort and the prosperity of our people would be an easier task.
It will not be so easy. It will require a concerted effort from all sections, and it will require a recognition by all our people that it is not possible as yet to provide here all the glamour which makes those "far away places" seem so attractive. With the lead given by the Government and the continued confidence of the business communities here and elsewhere that we are as capable of working hard as we are of fighting hard, there is no reason why, given the necessary peace and stability, we should not reach the solution of all our economic problems. As the Vote on Account is the first stage which shows the Government's desire to do their part in finding this solution, it should meet with the approval of the House.
I should like to sympathise with many of the sentiments which the Deputy has expressed. It seems to me, at any rate, that he has not attempted to show how the Government have given any sound reasons for the optimism which he says he finds throughout the country to-day. It seems to me that the Government have had only one anxiety over the years, that is, the neck and neck struggle between them and their predecessors in the figures shown on the live register of unemployed from time to time. As long as they kept 2,000 or 3,000 ahead of the record figures established by their predecessors, they have been content.
It is quite clear that, in fact, no real remedial action has been taken by the Government to deal effectively either with emigration or unemployment. The plan for economic expansion has been mentioned—it is not the first one talked about here—but I believe it will go the way of all the other plans which have been discussed from time to time in this House, and for reasons which I should like to give.
It does not seem to me to matter very much whether the business community are overjoyed or pleased with the plan for economic expansion. To hear people talking about the business community and its anxiety to show its muscles, to show its strength, one would think that this was a country which had just emerged from an extreme socialist totalitarian type of Government and that at last the free air of private enterprise in a capitalist economic system was to be tried out. In fact, the reverse is true. So far as all productive capital investment is concerned, we have had all the advantages, all the doubtful advantages, of private enterprise in a capitalist economic system here for 35 years and it is clear that is not the answer to our problems. A difficult thing to understand is why, when so many of us know this to be true, people who are very much more talented and more capable of understanding these truths than am I, do not face up to this reality and accept the fact that it is the failure of private enterprise in the capitalist system for the past 35 years here which has left us as we are to-day, a backward under-developed community with record unemployment and emigration figures.
It is quite clear that business has had every possible opportunity, private business and private industrialists have had every possible incentive, and every possible encouragement for the past 25 or 30 years, from all the successive Governments in power, to expand and increase their output and their production, and to improve their methods and, in toto, to create an economy which would allow us to have a reasonable measure of social justice for all our people.
We have accepted the principle that social justice and prosperity can be won for our people as a by-product of the pursuit of wealth by a small minority of industrialists. As in so many other countries, it is at last becoming clearly shown to be an unworkable thesis—that you can have private prosperity, that you can have private wealth, and the privileges the wealthy enjoy in our society under private enterprise, and, at the same time, have social justice for the mass of the people, and so it is difficult to understand why a young society such as ours, a newly-formed revolutionary society, formed out of a revolution, should so readily be led back into the stagnation and the class privileges of that society which they set out to change 30 or 40 years ago, as referred to by a previous Deputy. It is difficult to understand that these men should have continued to condone and to encourage all the self-same class differences, educational differences, differences in health services, differences in the care of the age which some of them—at any rate from what one could gather—set out to change.
Probably the most disturbing development in recent years has been the failure of private business—so obvious that successive Governments have now decided to call in anybody and everybody, from the four corners of the earth, to do what it is now clear our own private capitalists either do not want to do or cannot do. Therefore, we have the Dutch, the Germans, the Swedes, the Canadians, the Americans, the Texans and, of course, the British. These people have been invited by various envoys to come in and develop our raw materials, our mineral resources, oil and so on, to acquire our land, use it and work as they please, or not work it, if they so please.
We must be about the only country in the world which is, as it were, for hire, for sale. We see various exciting developments in the Middle East, in the Afro-Asian countries, in India and elsewhere, where they suffer under the serious disadvantages from practically absolute illiteracy, not relatively limited illiteracy amongst the mass of the people. We see the wonderful upsurge in all these countries, determined to rid themselves of exploitation by foregn capitalists, in order that they can develop their own raw materials, whether it is the oil of the Middle East or the mineral resources of Africa, in Northern Rhodesia or Southern Rhodesia, or whether it is merely their labour on the lands. They are anxious that these resources and this labour should be exploited for their own national welfare and well-being. All these people are doing these things under tremendous disadvantages, and with great hardship and sacrifice to themselves, while we continue to advertise and to cajole, and to beg foreign capitalists to come in here and use our relatively cheap labour and make their profits.
Deputy McQuillan referred to this in passing the other day and, of course, he is either misunderstood or misrepresented in Deputy Norton's suggestion or implication that Deputy McQuillan was not in favour of the development of these resources. Of course, Deputy McQuillan favours the development of our mineral resources. I think he has made that clear on many occasions here. The general principle of the development of our natural resources is one which we all accept. The difference is that I and he say that our natural resources should be developed by our own people, and for the welfare and the benefit exclusively of our own people. As a previous Deputy said, we have shown we are capable and fully competent to take up the most skilled and difficult trades, crafts, and professions and in the development of know-how in these most complicated enterprises, I am quite certain that we would be as good as the next.
The general principle in which I am interested, and in which Deputy McQuillan is interested, was first stated, as far as I remember, in 1911, by James Larkin. He founded a paper, the Irish Worker and he said this:—
"A Party or group, which while pretending to the Irish of the Irish, insults the nation by trying to foist on it, not only imported economies, but which had the temerity to advocate the introduction of foreign capitalists into this sorely-exploited country—the chief appeal to the foreign capitalists was that they would have freedom to employ cheap Irish labour."
I think these sentiments are still broadly true. I state that the ambition for our people should be the same as was Larkin's ambition in 1911, that our raw materials of wealth—they may be limited in minerals but there is unlimited wealth in the agricultural land and labour of our people— should be exploited for our own people and by ourselves.
It is quite clear from this new plan for economic development that there is no shortage of capital whatsoever. The capital is there. It is merely a question of the use of that capital by our own people, sufficiency of faith in our own endeavours, and our own ability. If our private industrialists cannot find the capital sufficient for these enormous projects—and they certainly are enormous—then I think it is the duty of the Government to find the capital and to develop these mineral resources, using our own technicians, craftsmen, and workers, and taking all of the profit of their labour.
Mianraí Teoranta was responsible for a large amount of the development of the Avoca mines in particular, and it was most undesirable that this development should not have been concluded by that Government company. There is also the question involved, in that mining development scheme, of the exploitation of the shares position, referred to by Deputy McQuillan, and which I hope to deal with at a later stage. I do not think that the plan, or any other plan on those lines, for economic development can be successful.
I think that as long as we continue to operate the private enterprise economic system, in which there are so many impediments, we cannot create prosperity in Ireland. I blame the Government because they have not, even though it must be quite evident to them that they are there, made any attempt to deal with the restrictive practices of private enterprise. No attempt has been made to curb these practices, although everybody knows they exist. Everybody in this House is unanimous in passing the legislation to deal with them, but nothing has been done.
Restrictive practices are responsible for the high level of inefficiency in industry. There may be efficient industries, efficient businesses and efficient shops, but behind restrictive practices, it is possible to shelter too much inefficiency of business methods and productive methods. These restrictive practices increase the price to the consumer, in so far as they prevent the operation of dynamic private enterprise and free competition. If private enterprise is to be successful, the only way it can operate is by free competition, but it is quite well known that free competition could not be permitted or tolerated. There would be chaos. Consequently, the restrictive trade practices are allowed to continue.
These restrictive practices, as everybody knows, are a conspiracy against the consumer entered into by industrialists and businessmen and directed against the consumer. It is an astonishing thing that a democratic Government can permit them to continue uncurbed. I believe that restrictive practices, where known to exist, should be dealt with as were the black marketeers in wartime and that those engaged in them should be subjected to prison sentences. If these people believe in private enterprise, they should allow it to operate in a spirit of free competition and they should not be allowed to shelter behind restrictive trade practices.
I do not want to interrupt the Deputy, but I think he is going beyond the bounds of what may be discussed on this Vote, which is the financial policy of the Government.
I believe that if the Government changed their attitude to free competition, the whole Book of Estimates would be completely altered. It would be possible to spend greater sums of money on more desirable projects. The Government have taken no steps to deal with the general policy of tariffs. These tariffs were introduced in the years when we were starting our industries and they were retained long after they should have been reviewed and modified. I freely concede that they were fully justified early on, but the time has now come when these industries which shelter behind these tariff walls should be given a choice, within a limited time, of expanding their export markets or having the tariff protection removed.
I know that these tariffs are used as a form of blackmail upon Governments. They are told: "If we do not get the tariff, we will close down and you will have men out of work." That is a matter which a Government has to face—that a continuation of tariffs encourages inefficiency, condones and conceals inefficiency, allows inefficient industries to carry on because there is little or no competition, allows an industry to continue to use obsolete machinery and in that way increases the cost of the finished product to the consumer. As always, the consumer pays.
In addition to the cost of these tariffs to the consumer, there is the cost of the absurd shadow boxing of advertising which is so necessary to private enterprise. There is a multiplicity of advertisements for what is actually the same product at the same price. A fortune of money, all of which comes from the pockets of the consumer, is spent on these advertisements. All this money is expended on great advertisements for fake competition, because the prices are all arranged—the prices of petrol, cigarettes, soap and drink. These advertisements offer for sale articles which differ only in name and for all of them the consumer must pay.
Probably the biggest failure of private enterprise is the failure to develop the export market. They have had the wonderful facility of protection in the home market. They can sell practically everything they produce under protection, but they are not concerned with the national interest. They are concerned only with their own personal family wealth. Their needs are relatively small. Taking the needs of the whole population into consideration, businessmen's needs are relatively easily satisfied. They are prepared to continue to operate this grossly inefficient economic system in order to win profits for themselves. The net result of this has been that the national income is practically stagnant. It certainly does not allow us to provide for our people social services on a level such as is enjoyed by societies that have been as long as we have been trying to create prosperity and social justice in our society.
Added to the mad inefficiency of the retail and distributive trade, the multiplication of shops, the waste of time and energy and ingenuity and intelligence of shop assistants in all these shops selling the same goods at the same prices, the unnecessary duplication and multiplication, we have inefficient, extravagant and expensive advertising and continuation of tariffs long after they have served their first important function. For all these things, the unfortunate consumer must pay higher prices for the finished goods. He must pay also for the failure to create employment, for the unemployed, for the natural increase in our population. The total net increase in employment over 25 or 30 years is something in the region of 1 per cent., a truly monumental failure which, I believe, is clearly obvious to anybody interested in the truth.
Notice taken that 20 members were not present; House counted and 20 members being present,
The result of the failure to provide employment has been the staggering increase in emigration to a total of about 750,000 since the State was founded. After that, if anybody likes to make the case for private enterprise, I should like to hear it.
On the land, it seems to me the Government have pursued much the same policy. The farmer is at the mercy of fluctuating markets and uncertain prices and an uncertain outlet for his goods. Consequently, he tends to be cautious and finds it difficult to plan his production. He is one of the people who must also pay for the restrictive trade practices among retailers and wholesalers, the people he buys from, on the one hand —this is added to the cost of the goods he produces—and on the other side, he is at the mercy of the middleman. It is clear that expansion of the co-operative movement should be greatly encouraged. I think it is nonsense to talk about the fact that the co-operative movement failed here 30 or 35 years ago and to suggest that the same would be the case to-day.
Would the Deputy allow me to ask whether the Government could, by extending or restricting expenditure, remedy these things?
I think it is always possible—as other Governments have shown—to encourage or discourage a movement. I say the Government have not encouraged this particular movement as other Governments have done, and I quote Denmark, Sweden and Norway.
Encouraged it by extending or restricting expenditure? What is troubling the Chair is: how is this matter related to a restricting or extending of expenditure?
By declaring policy, in the first instance, and by facilitating credit, in the second.
It is not sublimely clear to me.
It is possible for the Government to encourage co-operation. The Government should have taken over the responsibility of providing State-owned and State-financed operations for food processing—plants for the processing of agricultural products. It is only in this way that such plants can be provided and the financial outlay required could be made available. Only the Government could find the capital to develop and expand new markets, in addition to the British market, which would be required to absorb a much greater output from the land than it produces at the moment. It is the obsession with the private enterprise system in the profit-creating sector of our economy which has led to our greatest failure, the failure to increase the national wealth and national income to a level which would allow us to give the people the things which most of us want to give them—better health services, better education, better old age pensions and so on.
Ireland has been a kind of microcosm of the great world conflict which has gone on for some years between those two systems, the capitalist system and the socialist economic system. Curiously enough, we have tried both of them. Our difficulty is that the Government's failure has been either to restrict the State investment side to the largely non-profit-making enterprises—social amenities, such as road making, house building, hospitals, schools and so on, which are absolutely necessary—or to confine it to vast enterprises which cannot be run at profit, such as that of transport, which it is difficult to run at a profit.
Whatever else we have failed to do in the past 40 years, we have shown that it is impossible in a capitalist system to create enough wealth to go around. We have shown that the pursuit of wealth will not as a by-product, create social justice. It will not produce full employment and it will not stop emigration. The conflict between profits and dividends, on the one side, and wages, working conditions and social amenities for the people generally, on the other side, is an insoluble conflict. The higher the profits, the lower the wages, the longer the hours and the less money available for distribution amongst the people in the form of social services. This is in addition to the fact that there is the gross inefficiency of the private enterprise economic system. For those of us who manage to survive the next ten or 20 years in public life, it seems to me that an objective analysis of past mistakes must clearly show that to be true.
We have had the advantage of having seen here in Ireland the remarkable success of the State socialist type of enterprise. State and semi-State bodies are the enterprises about which any of us must be proud to boast, as achievements of our society, as mentioned by the last speaker. Aer Lingus, Bord na Móna, the E.S.B., Comhlucht Siúicre Éireann, Irish Steel Holdings, a particularly magnificent State enterprise—the remarkable thing is that all these have succeeded, in spite of the fact that they were operated by people who were non-socialist in their ideologies—as far as one could gather, anyway—in an atmosphere of hostility, in an atmosphere where the Press, the public and the politicians were only too delighted to deride and decry State enterprise whenever possible.
In spite of all these disadvantages, we have proven to us that efficiency and extremely efficient operation of the most complex and complicated industries can be obtained under the State socialist system. We have proved that technically we are as good as anybody, that our professional people, our workmen, our craftsmen and our labourers are second to none in the world. In most of those industries, we have achieved a very high level of efficiency.
We have had the comfort of knowing that in the very few which are permitted to operate in the profit-making sector of the economy, should any of them make a profit, that profit goes back to the community and is not distributed in the form of dividends to investors who probably have never done a hard day's work in their lives. It is quite clear what must be done by a Government really determined to deal with unemployment, with emigration, with the very backward state of our society and with the gross inadequacy of our education system. The vast majority of our young people get little or no education after the age of 14. There is a lack of technical education and a lack of opportunity for our children, who are not able to get to universities even if they have sufficient talent. If a Government are conscientiously intent on dealing with these problems, it must be clear that private enterprise will not solve them and that instead there must be an extension of the use or control of private enterprise in those capital or profit-creating businesses.
I cannot see how the question of private enterprise can be debated on the Vote on Account, which deals with Government financial policy.
The Minister for Finance, in his opening statement, referred to private enterprise and to the fact that encouragement of private enterprise was part of Government policy. It is a part of Government policy of which I disapprove. At column 518 of Volume 173 the Minister said:—
"It is hoped to achieve this by encouraging private enterprise."
I say that private enterprise, no matter how much it is encouraged, will not solve our problems. It must be clear to the most limited intelligence now that private enterprise, with every possible encouragement from every direction over the past 30 years, has failed. It is understood that the Government are interested in solving unemployment and emigration and in providing proper social services. The Minister for Industry and Commerce has stated that there is unlimited private capital available for worthwhile projects. If that is so, where are the worthwhile projects? The Government intend to make capital available, but "One can lead a horse to the well but one cannot make him drink."
A somewhat similar situation arose in relation to the American Loan. A great deal of money was available, but the money could not be spent in a useful way. It could be spent, with certain exceptions, only according to the whim of private businessmen who wanted to buy lipsticks, cigarettes, refrigerators, television sets, or whatever it might be. Only when the Government take over whatever capital is available, will we be able to create wealth on a scale sufficient to permit us to give our people the standard of living we all know they deserve. The difficulty at the moment is that the private businessmen are not interested in the people as a mass. Some are beginning to recognise their social responsibilities; they know now that we could emigrate to such an extent that their consumer market would disappear. That, of course, is taking the long term view, and that is something businessmen are reluctant to do.
It is clear beyond all doubt that it is only by the expansion of State enterprise from non-profit making projects, such as road construction, house building, schools, hospitals and so on, into profit-making projects that employment in sufficient measure will be created. I refer in particular to the processing of agricultural produce from the land and the fish from the seas around our coast. It is only in that way that we will be able to build industry up to the point at which it will create the national wealth essential to give us social justice and the services our people require.
All this has been said before by James Connolly. His ideal was ownership and control of the means of production by the people, together with a co-operative movement on a very large scale. Unfortunately, none of the major political Parties will bring about the radical changes necessary, since they are all too deeply embedded and too interested financially in many of our industries and in the private enterprise network. Forty years of self-Government have left us a backward, under-developed and near-bankrupt society. The operation of private enterprise, here or elsewhere, has given us no reason to believe that it will do in the future what it has so signally failed to do in the past.
I should, first of all, like to deal with some of the observations made by Deputy Dillon to-day. He levelled some astonishing charges against the Fianna Fáil Government. Most of the charges would not be believed by the general public, but, at the same time, I think it is just as well to remind Deputy Dillon of the facts.
He implied that the severe emigration which has, unfortunately, taken place from the western districts and the decline in the population are due in large measure to the withdrawal of the food subsidies. Deputy Dillon seems to forget that emigration had been proceeding from these areas before ever the food subsidies were withdrawn and that the very undesirable and large-scale emigration revealed in the 1956 Census had actually begun during the high tide of inflation in 1954 and 1955.
I do not know what Deputy Dillon's aim is when he tries to link emigration from the West with the removal of the food subsidies. He carefully refrained from telling the House that we have twice faced colossal Budget deficits at the conclusion of Coalition Governments, at the moment when they were about to fall; once in 1951, when the total deficit was £15,000,000 and again in 1957 when we were faced with a deficit of £6,000,000. If I might speak for a moment as fancifully as Deputy Dillon does—it is not, I admit, a fair comparison—the two deficits together amount to very nearly what was total Government expenditure back in the thirties.
I wonder what the effect on emigration would have been if people had been taxed for the whole of the subsidies and for the whole of the deficits on the subsidies which had been retained? However, I think Deputy Dillon had his tongue in his cheek when he made that fantastic observation in which he implied that the Coalition Government were the first to think seriously of providing more agricultural instruction in the rural areas through the parish plan. It is just as well to remind the House that the expansion in the number of agricultural advisers began under Fianna Fáil, before the Coalition Government took office in 1948, and was proceeding well on its way before the parish plan was ever heard of and, moreover, the credit for the parish plan, I understand, is to be given to the late and most respected Canon Hayes. For Deputy Dillon to talk about the parish plan as if it were something invented by the Coalition, and as if we never had thought of trying to make more advisers available, is just creating illusions.
I want to speak to-night on the programme for economic expansion and to emphasise its importance in the coming years. It is the first of its kind since the foundation of the State and, for the first time, the Government have prognosticated expenditure under various heads for bringing about an expansion, both in industry and in agriculture. For the first time, there has been planning ahead for a considerable period, and an effort has been made to indicate how the national income could increase through a combination of Government aid and assistance, and private enterprise.
In a country where stimulus and encouragement are required, the stagnancy which has been so evident in the past years must somehow be ended. It seems to me that this programme marks an important change in the whole outlook towards improving our economy. This programme for economic expansion comes at the end of ten years during which there has been perfectly evident the greatest hesitation in facing reality, and some of the difficulties we are facing in getting away from this recession that took place in 1956, due to the totally unnecessary crisis brought about simply by a lack of financial prevision and a lack of intelligence in managing our economy.
One of the difficulties we face in getting away from that period is, that no sooner were the Fianna Fáil Government defeated in 1948, than we had a prolonged period during which at no time did the Coalition Government set out to make it absolutely clear that the whole prosperity of the country then being enjoyed was very largely due to the post-war boom, to scarcities of food, to the establishment of price supports in agriculture, in other countries and in Great Britain which, assisted by trade pacts, had their repercussions. On no occasion was it made evident that there was no time to lose if we were to get ready for the day when we would meet normal conditions, when the post-war boom was over, and when there would be competition in at least most of the export fields.
If there had been some kind of long term programme then, if the Government had made it clear there must be large-scale changes in methods of farming and large-scale investment to be prepared, as I have said, for the period when we would no longer have the temporary boom conditions which came to us after the war, the recession need never have taken place.
Deputies on the opposite benches did not tell the people or remind the people that during the period up to the end of 1955, £250,000,000 war savings were disbursed or liabilities incurred and that a huge amount of it was spent on consumption, and that this was a tremendous advantage to our economy, and gave an appearance of temporary prosperity which did not arrest emigration, but certainly postponed the day when realities had to be faced. Importing goods without paying for them inevitably produces employment by itself. This is a nice, easy, bogus way of making employment available, so long as the imports can continue. When this system of money-making comes to an end, employment has to be found in a much harder way, by genuine production, production under competitive conditions, by production of goods to be sold abroad.
We have had to re-establish a completely fresh attitude towards the national economy since that time. Mercifully, in 1956, the Coalition Government and ourselves agreed on one issue and that was that no longer could the spending of these savings continue on the same basis, that they really had come to an end. The whole of the controversy in 1951 and 1952 was whether or not there was any harm in the disbursement of £61,000,000 of savings in one year. In the end, the Coalition Government admitted we were right and they were wrong.
Was not the Minister in office at that time?
Is the Minister suggesting that £250,000,000 of foreign assets were dissipated?
There were also foreign liabilities incurred.
Would the Minister make that clear?
The liability of the American loan, for example, spent on anything but productive goods.
Would the Minister make it clear that we did not spend £250,000,000 of foreign assets?
I have made it quite clear that the Coalition Government encouraged an attitude of mind towards economics which left them in a sorry mess.
That is nonsense. Does the Minister remember devaluation?
Evidently Deputies do not like to hear it.
At least the Minister might come down to the ground.
In any event, as I have said, the programme of economic expansion is to get us over these difficulties, to provide employment which must, first of all, offset the unemployment caused by the ending of inflation. Naturally this cannot be done overnight and everything in the economic programme is perfectly clear in that regard, that we cannot develop new industries, we cannot develop agriculture overnight, and it was for that reason we decided to plan ahead, to make it clear what we would do over a period of five years, so that the people, at least, could see the picture of what was to come, provided that, there again, there was co-operation between the people as a whole and the Government and provided that once the Government offered maximum aid, maximum assistance, there would be, as we hope, a response from the people.
The interesting thing about this programme is that there is a lot of loose thinking about it in Opposition circles. Reading the speeches of Fine Gael Deputies around the country, it can be seen that they are all different in their attitude towards it. Most of them seem to approve of it. Some of them say they invented it; others say that it is a red herring drawn across the track in order to deceive them. They do not like to admit that the economic programme is a magnification and a restatement in large measure of what has always been the Fianna Fáil policy.
Merciful providence !
That is an absolute fact. It is a magnification or a restatement in large measure, of what has been Fianna Fáil policy.
What did you cut the calves' throats for?
They did not do that at all.
Deputies opposite can suggest anything they wish about our programme. They can say whatever they like, but the economic programme is a magnification and a restatement of what has been Fianna Fáil policy.
The Minister is saying what he likes now and he would like us to believe that it is true.
A number of people in opposition think there is no value in the programme at all, but if they think the programme is something invented and formulated by Fine Gael, they cannot, at the same time, criticise it. The fact is that you hear every kind of talk throughout the country about the programme from the Opposition and what it really amounts to is that they know it is a good programme. What we would like to have is constructive criticism of the programme—how it could be amended and in what aspects it could be stepped up.
You want us to put it into effect.
They know in their heart of hearts that the programme is a good one. One of the interesting features of the programme is that it has the support in very large measure of the principal producers' associations in this country and that is a new feature in our national life. There has never been in the past, in the same way, the distinct and specific approval of a Government five-year programme—even if reservations have been made—by the major producers' associations in the country, and particularly by the National Farmers' Association.
One of the happiest features in connection with the programme is that the National Farmers' Association produced a very valuable programme for increasing agricultural production about the same time as the White Paper was published and that the proposals in the White Paper in relation to the importance of the agricultural industry link up and dove-tail with the policy of the National Farmers' Association in regard to the increase of cattle stocks in a way which should produce excellent results in the coming years.
I have said that the economic programme is in very large measure a magnification of Fianna Fáil policy and one of the difficulties faced by the Opposition is the fact that most of the creative ideas which have helped to benefit this country have been the work of Fianna Fáil. Most of the new ideas that require imagination, that require drive and require taking risks, entering new fields, were the work of Fianna Fáil, and that is always embarrassing to an Opposition, particularly when, on top of all that, the Government produces the first economic programme for expansion in the history of the country and get the full support of the major producers' associations for its implementation.
The £100,000,000 plan of the Tánaiste was surely before this.
That is also embarrassing the Opposition. They had a great deal to say about the £100,000,000 plan——
Which died.
I do not know whether Deputy O'Sullivan wants me to repeat everything I said about the pre-election blueprint plan. When I provided a careful analysis on a previous occasion in this House, I made it perfectly clear that it was a plan for study and I read to the House the numerous aspects of policy in that plan which had already been put into operation within 15 or 18 months of this Government taking office. A great part of what was derided in the £100,000,000 plan was put into operation in 18 months. The plan was described as something to deceive the electorate.
Consequently, then, this is not the first one.
The economic programme for expansion in itself is the result of a study of many of the proposals made in the blueprint published in October, 1956.
Is the Minister saying that this is document No. 2?
I am not talking in shibboleths and Deputy O'Sullivan is not going to make me talk in shibboleths. I am not making jokes about our economic difficulties and programme. I am trying to give a detailed description and the Deputy will not stop me.
On that score——
Deputy Rooney might cease interrupting, if he wants to remain in this House. The Minister should be allowed to speak without interruption.
The Deputies opposite do not like to hear the facts. The £100,000,000 blueprint study of what could be done in the ensuing ten years did not go up in smoke. After study by the Departments concerned, and other matters, the programme for economic expansion turned out to be a projection in practice—if you like— of the greater deal of what was in the blueprint study.
It is good that a Party in opposition can produce a blueprint for study and then are able to take office and devise from it a practical programme. There was evidently sound and careful thinking during the whole of that period.
Mention has been made about the amount of employment that would be given as the result of the working out of the plan. Naturally, if the economic programme can be fulfilled, if the results which flow from it are those which we hope to see, there will be very extensive employment given. We would much prefer at this stage simply to point out that production must increase and, if production does increase, inevitably employment will flow from that and it is far better to point out simply that employment comes from increased trade and increased exports, rather than to try to predict what the level of employment will be in any particular period.
As I said, Fianna Fáil in the past have been responsible for the very great majority of productive plans which have already effected much good in this country and the Opposition do not like to hear that. I heard Deputy Dillon talking earlier about plans that were ascribed to the Coalition. I do not know how many times we have to repeat in this House the fact that many of the agricultural policies of which he speaks were initiated by Fianna Fáil and not by the Coalition Government. We might as well repeat again for the twentieth time—if they are listening— that the farm buildings grant scheme was prepared in 1947 and was ready for implementation by the new Government.
The first grant for ground limestone was given in County Carlow. Plans were made for the extension of that scheme but nothing was done until 1951. The land reclamation scheme was started in 1939 and was mechanised and extended by Deputy Dillon when he became Minister for Agriculture. Before that, however, much useful work had been done and I do not deny that much more useful work was done by the extension of the scheme. However, the idea was promoted by the Fianna Fáil Government and a great deal of excellent work was carried out from 1939 on through the war years even though machinery was not available and petrol was scarce.
The first soil analysis was made under Fianna Fáil and artificial insemination was carried out under Fianna Fáil. Other agricultural schemes were also begun under the Fianna Fáil Government.
Is the Minister serious about artificial insemination?
I am.
Who started it?
The first start was made before Deputy Dillon took office. If the Deputy will examine the records, he will find that artificial insemination was started under the Fianna Fáil Government.
When?
Before Deputy Dillon took office.
No.
If you examine the records you will find that is right.
It was started before Deputy Dillon came to office.
It would be far easier to enumerate the benefits of productive schemes that took place under the Fine Gael Government than to mention those that took place under Fianna Fáil. Hours would be saved. In some ways, this programme is a minimum programme. It is a programme which we believe we can achieve, provided that general economic conditions remain fairly stable and that no unforeseen emergency arises which would make this impossible. This is in some ways a minimum programme and its extension depends on the availability of private savings and the extent to which private ambition and private enterprise result in any part of the programme running ahead of the target set.
When Deputy Dillon suggests that the Government would not supply the amount of agricultural credit that might be required under the plan, I should like to say that so far as we can possibly do it, the Government will make available all the credit required. One of the satisfactory features of the economic programme, and this, I believe, is not a coincidence, is that a number of the commercial banks, for the first time in the history of this country, have started to offer specific credits and are making specific advances for specific types of production, such as the building of cow byres and silos, the retention of heifers and the replacement of heifers under the bovine eradication scheme. That shows a very useful attitude on the part of the banks.
You have the commercial banks, for the first time, channelling loans into specific production schemes. You have the National Farmers' Association, for the first time in the history of agricultural associations, launching a specific scheme for an increase in the cattle population and, at the same time, you have the Government scheme for the improvement of our breeding stocks. You also have the making available of subsidies for fertilisers. You have the Government doing everything they can to assist in the general campaign.
Was the action of the banks, of necessity, following the example of the British banks?
I would not know what example they are following, but it is interesting to note that we have helped to bring about the economic stability which makes these arrangements possible. I would not like to go into details about it and I do not know the circumstances under which the action of the banks took place. The National Farmers' Association and the banks worked this matter out between them. Even if the British had made no change, I still think the atmosphere has been established for a change in the attitude of the banks, whereby they are prepared to offer specific credit for specific productive schemes.
The Minister for Finance indicated in some detail what was being done to improve the breed of cattle and to ensure that everything was done to improve beef production in this country and to ensure that we would reach the point where, by progeny testing, we could assure the maximum production of beef as an article of food. I should mention that the Government have been investigating the general system of agricultural credit, apart from the loans being made available by the banks. The Government are examining at large the whole question of agricultural credit and we hope to be able to offer a scheme which will be more satisfactory than anything made available in the past. Grants for the purchase of fertilisers have been reinstituted through the Agricultural Credit Corporation.
I heard Deputy Dr. Browne speak about the need for further educational facilities. We are only 3,000,000 people and the increase of £723,000 in the Vote for Education indicates that we take that subject very seriously and that we believe in extending educational facilities. While all of us would like to see education extend more rapidly, I think that the increase in the Vote is satisfactory under the circumstances.
I have given a brief picture of what is being done in connection with agriculture. The same note of expansion can be seen in the development of fisheries. Grants are being made available for the first time for purchasing vessels and the rate of interest has been frozen. Facilities are provided for the training of skippers and the result of the improvements can be seen in the fact that, for the first time, a number of private factories for the processing of fish have been started. One was started in Dunmore East recently and others are coming along.
The forestry planting rate has increased by very nearly 40 per cent. since 1956. Private forestry, I am glad to say, is expanding as a result of a propaganda campaign and the doubling of the grant. Far greater interest is being shown in private forestry and I hope to be able to report an increase in the acreage of private planting of trees, even though the campaign began only last September, after a very bad year from the standpoint of encouraging farmers to indulge in what, for them, was an entirely new form of production and a long-term one at that.
The work of attracting tourist anglers is being speeded up enormously. We found that as a result of an intensive drive to attract anglers and as a result of encouraging local associations, we had an increase in the number of game fishermen tourists last year of 73 per cent. and of coarse fishermen of 55 per cent. The increase has been so rapid that we have had to alter the campaign in order to ensure that there is sufficient promotional work in Britain to enable many people there who want to come here to get information on how to get to Ireland, how to reach the many small towns where this splendid local development work is going on.
There has been tremendous development in providing aid for industry since 1957. I think it is true to say that every conceivable step has been taken to encourage private industry. Every step that could be taken in so short a period has been taken. Fresh capital has been found for the Industrial Credit Company and its facilities have been expanded. For the first time, loans can be advanced upon which the repayment of capital can be deferred. In some cases special interest rates are made available. For the first time, the Industrial Credit Company can act as a hire-purchase company enabling loans to be made for machinery. It is worth noting that £7,000,000 of capital is already earmarked for industry.
The methods of operation of the Industrial Research Board have been changed so as to ensure more active co-operation with private industry, with a more immediate effect in facilitating production, discovering new ways and means of expanding production. While we can never be content with the amount of industrial development taking place at any one time—because the need is so great —the fact is that some seven new factories are being built at the present time and that before the Industrial Development Authority there are no fewer than 49 projects.
One of the most valuable aids to production is the direct Government aid for technical assistance for industry. Technical assistance takes various and valuable forms. It includes assistance for market research in co-operation with Córas Tráchtála Teoranta, enabling firms to study markets abroad and to study whether goods can be sold of a given quality at a given price, and, above all, assistance towards time and motion study investigation. We hear very little about time and motion study in the House, although it is one of the most valuable contributions towards increasing exports. The Government provide grants to enable companies to hire consultants. Their services are invariably costly and excellent results can be obtained, as I know from the work done by them in both the Department of Posts and Telegraphs and the Forestry Division. We should like to see more firms making demands on that Vote than have done so. I may cite the instance of one firm that managed to double its production in six months and achieve a world-wide export trade. The workers in the firm who were at one time doubtful of the results of work study, fearing they might lose employment through more work being done by fewer men, were in the end delighted because they found exports increasing so much that more men were employed instead of fewer.
Technical assistance is also being made available to enable firms to study new methods of packaging and presentation of goods for export. Considerable aid has been given for mining enterprises. A total of £35,000 will be available for mining. Coal exploration is being started as a result of a grant of £80,000 from the Grant Counterpart Fund. As everybody knows, the first major investigation of the possibilities of finding oil here has been initiated.
And a chance of gold.
The work of Córas Tráchtála Teoranta has been examined to make sure that that valuable agency expands its activities. Greater financial aid has been made available.
The Industrial Development Authority is working at the highest possible speed to encourage industry and it sends representatives abroad, when needed, in order to acquaint people of the conditions under which factories can be started here and of the advantages of initiating industry in Ireland. Apart from that, in the State companies, where there can be any sort of positive development, they are encouraged to go ahead. Irish Shipping is to have fresh injections of capital. The E.S.B. is expanding, using turf as fuel and, typical of the Minister for Industry and Commerce and his ideas about expanding industry in new ways and taking risks which in most cases are justified, we have the Shannon Airport new industrial centre which seems to offer great hope for industrial development.
We have been doing a great deal for the tourist industry for a long time. The Tourist Board, as it was then called, was started by the Fianna Fáil Government and at last we have decided to provide grants for hotel accommodation and also specific grants for major developments in resorts under conditions which are quite reasonable. For the first time, something really genuine is being done for the improvement of Cobh, one of our major passenger harbours. We also have in hand the development of the Verolme dockyards at Cork for the building and repair of large vessels, as well as the development of the steel industry.
These are very real achievements in the course of a comparatively short time, and if, added to them, we include all the tax incentives which have been given, one wonders whether very much more can be done to stimulate industry than has been done in the past two years.
There are actually fewer in employment now than in 1956.
The Deputy will get an opportunity of making his own speech.
I thought it was relevant.
The Minister should give us facts.
That the Government is quite prepared to introduce State enterprise, when necessary, can be seen in our intention to promote a nitrogenous fertiliser factory. Earlier to-day, Deputy Dillon seemed to imply that the nitrogenous fertiliser factory was in some way meant to be a form of subsidisation for Bord na Móna. We should scotch that ridiculous assertion immediately. We intend to make nitrogenous fertilisers available to the farmer at more than competitive prices using our own raw materials for that purpose. Never in the history of this country has there been a greater marshalling of aids for industry than there has been in the last two years. What no doubt embarrasses the Opposition is the fact that this is a great magnification of the work first initiated in the thirties by Fianna Fáil.
And yet they fled.
Eight million people.
To that extent we can feel satisfied although there is monumental work to be done. There must be a considerable increase in industry to end the undesirable level of emigration. The aids we are providing are of a substantial kind and something that can really be talked about. They are not just a mere petty contribution to a great economic problem. They represent really hard thinking and definite action. They represent a capital commitment which will require financial stability and a very great seriousness in our whole attitude to national finance if the capital is to be made available.
What we need at the moment is less pessimism and a greater determination to make this programme work. What we would like to have is that the Government would be given an opportunity to make the programme work and not to hear a series of speeches violently pessimistic in tone, which serve no purpose. We would like to have an opportunity now to make the programme work.
How much longer?
We would like to have some constructive opposition.
Two years of it, and what programme have we?
We would like to have criticism of the plan, suggestions as to how the plan needs to be amended. That would help. The Government has always benefited by constructive criticism. If anyone has any suggestion to show how this plan can be improved——
Get cracking.
Or where there are any gaps in it, or specific proposals for the amendment of the plan.
Back to work.
If someone would like to rewrite the programme to produce a different programme to show how it could be operated while maintaining the finances of the State we would be delighted.
The people have elected you as a Government to put that plan into operation.
And you have a majority.
That is what I am saying. We would like to have constructive opposition.
Why do you not do something?
The Deputy can talk that way, but the fact is that the implementation of the programme will take time to produce results.
How long?
The Deputy cannot say that at this moment the results are not there because it takes time for a plan to work. Unfortunately, when it comes to building up industry, to finding promoters, to finding capital to build up plants and get the men employed, that cannot be done overnight. Equally, a plan for increasing the cattle population so that we can derive more benefit from cattle numbers rather than from the high price of the cattle and ensure ourselves for the future now that there is a good market for cattle, will inevitably have a long-term effect.
You cut their throats.
I look forward into the future. The National Farmers' Association, in their statement recently, suggest that ten years from now if the plan in which they believe and which is dovetailed in with the Government programme works, there will be an increase in cattle exports of over £80,000,000 annually. If that plan prospers and if, working with the Government, that result can be brought about, an increase in the purchasing power of the farmer will be such that very great increases in employment will be inevitable and the goods will be bought in Irish factories and the services provided for them.
The success of the plan depends on the ambition and the willingness to take part in its operation. It is interesting to note in that connection that all through the period of the last ten years Deputy Dillon boasted about the increase in production, taking as his base year the year 1947, after two appalling years of bad weather, and hardly ever did he advert to the fact during that period that the basic deficiency in the country was that the foundation stock of cows had hardly altered in 100 years.
Their throats were cut.
With or without an economic war, whether the economic war was on or the World War was on, whether under Deputy Dillon or under the Fianna Fáil Government, the foundation stock remained the same. One of the major parts of the economic programme and one of the most important sections in it, is the combined plan operating with the National Farmers' Association for the increase of the cattle population. Of course, one can make optimistic assumptions and it is possible that the prediction of the National Farmers' Association as to the result in the future may be optimistic. We ourselves did not predict to that extent. No doubt, inevitably, if changes of that kind take place, there may be increases in costs which have not been envisaged and the net result in employment may not be just what it looked like at the time. Nevertheless, it should be very considerable.
The many proposals for an economic revival in this country, in my opinion, must relate to conditions some of which are fairly easy to fulfil and some of which require great care. I would like to conclude by pointing out that when counter proposals are made for giving employment or for any plans related to the economy which have the effect of increasing costs of production here, they will be fatal to progress. So long as we remember that while we have natural skill in this country, that while we can be superbly efficient when management is good, when management and workers co-operate, that while we have raw materials from the land and all the aptitudes for increasing production, we must keep the cost down. At present it can be said that conditions are favourable here for industry or agriculture compared with other countries, particularly with countries with which we have to compete.
We always will have to make up for the extra freight costs across the sea; we will always have to compensate for the fact that many units of industry must of necessity be smaller than those abroad; we will always have to compensate for the fact that to some extent there may be higher selling costs in this country. If we can do that and if we can say that, in spite of these difficulties, conditions are favourable, costs are low and people are willing to take part in new enterprise, we then can make genuine progress.
Some observations have been made in this debate on the size of the Vote on Account. As already indicated by the Minister for Finance, the increase in the Vote relates largely to productive expenditure, to expenditure on education and other services which are all essential. There has not been any notable increase in services of a nonproductive character, except where they were absolutely inevitable.
I should like to conclude by saying that we would welcome constructive criticism of our plans and specific suggestions made on some aspects indicating that our attitude is perhaps too hesitant. That is the kind of criticism which will bring benefit to the country and the kind of criticism which will enable us possibly to surpass the hopes we have of bringing about a resurgence in our economy.
The Minister for Lands has made a plausibly reasonable speech. Listening to him, one would think that things are not too bad after all, and, when the White Paper is implemented, the finances of the country will be completely changed for the better. One would have had more faith in the Minister"s pronouncements if one did not throw one's mind back two or three years to 1956 when the Minister advised the people that the bottom had fallen out of the cattle trade because Argentine meat was being dumped in England; the Minister told the farmers then they would have to try some other methods. Had the farmers followed his advice, what position would the country be in to-day? Because of the bad harvest last year, the only resources the farmers in my constituency have at the moment is the cattle trade. I am glad to say prices are good and the farmers have been able to pay their rates. Had the bottom fallen out of the trade, as the Minister said it had, the rate position would be very bad and the finances of the Kilkenny County Council would be in a bad way. So much for the confidence I place in the speech made by the Minister for Lands here this evening.
Last March, the Government were one year in office. It is difficult to criticise any Government after just one year in office. They have to find their feet. Many things have to be done. Last March, the Government said they were still clearing up the mess. In 1956, unemployment was very serious. Nobody on this side of the House has denied, or would try to deny, that. When the election took place in 1957 the Government were elected on slogans: "Let's get cracking" and "Wives, get your husbands out to work. Let's go ahead again." Slogans are all right when they can be implemented; they are not all right when they cannot be implemented. The people become disillusioned. Remember, these posters did not appear in only one constituency. They were sent out from headquarters in Dublin to every constituency. Naturally, the people felt that Fianna Fáil, who had had 20 years' experience of government, could do what they promised they would do. What a difference it would have made if the Fianna Fáil Party had simply said: "We shall do our best. We know unemployment and emigration are bad." The people to-day would have said that Fianna Fáil had done their best, but they had failed: to fail while doing one's best is not a bad thing at all. But Fianna Fáil said they had the key to the whole situation and the people were bluffed into electing them with a majority, the like of which was never seen before and to-day, at the end of two years, we find ourselves with no change of any kind in the economic situation.
The White Paper is quite good and we all hope that it will be implemented, but the White Paper is long-term policy. It is not policy for to-day or to-morrow or the next 12 months. What will the Minister for Finance do for the people now and in the next 12 months?
One of the first statements made by the Taoiseach on returning to office in 1957 was in relation to housing; he said he would promote housing activity. In Kilkenny to-day, housing is at a standstill. The borough surveyor informed me the other day that there are only two men engaged on local authority housing at the moment. In 1956, there was a regional hospital in course of construction, a new post office, a very large school and a housing scheme. I wonder has the Minister for Lands won over the Taoiseach to his point of view. He has stated on several occasions—I heard him myself in Kilkenny—that money spent on housing was slush money. There may not be direct monetary returns from housing, but, indirectly, there are the best returns any country could have for money spent on its people.
The Local Authorities (Works) Act provided valuable employment in the months of December, January and February. County councils like to do road work in the summer time. The Local Authorities (Works) Act gave employment at the back-end of the year. That has been cut out altogether because the Government hold some of the schemes were not good schemes. If there are 1,000 schemes and one can point the finger at one or two, that does not justify one in closing down on the schemes altogether.
The same argument holds with regard to Section B of the land project. The Minister for Lands stated this evening that Fianna Fáil initiated that project in 1939 in a small way with picks and shovels. He said good work was done under it. I have no doubt there was. Section B of the land project helped those farmers who had not sufficient capital to avail of Section A. Under it, they could carry out the work by putting the cost of it on to their annuities. As was pointed out here earlier, people with capital can take advantage of all kinds of schemes, but this part of the land project helped the small farmer to reclaim his land. The Government have cut down on that.
The numbers engaged in forestry have been reduced. Forestry is really productive work. The Taoiseach said that, if he could get productive work, he would not mind how much money he spent on it. In the light of that, more money should be expended on forestry now.
Unemployment and emigration have been mentioned several times. Unemployment is still at the 80,000 mark. It has fallen some 4,000 or 5,000 as compared with this time last year. Emigration is still running at the rate of 50,000 per year. One Fianna Fáil speaker said that the economy of the country is very buoyant at the moment. It is easily known that it was a city Deputy who said that. No Deputy representing a rural area could make that statement. He also said that unemployment had been reduced by 6 per cent. I suppose that means 6 per cent. fewer are now unemployed than at this time 12 months ago. I would not say that is any great boast.
The outlook for business is better, we are told. When Deputy Moloney from Kerry was speaking, he did not make that statement. He said not much was done in the past two years but, by and large, Fianna Fáil for the past 25 years had done their best to reduce unemployment and emigration. He admitted that because he has to go back to his constituency and if he said anything else, it might appear in the local or the daily papers. Instead of being buoyant, business was never slower than it is at present. In the past two years, 100,000 people between the ages of 20 and 30 have left the country. If they had remained and had an income of only £2 per week —roughly £100 a year; and that is terribly small—it would mean £10,000,000 in circulation in the country. Recently the chairman of Messrs. Ranks stated that for every ten sacks of flour sold in 1955, they sold only seven sacks in 1958. Can anybody call that buoyancy in our economy?
Since the Government came into office, the cost of living has risen from 135 in February, 1957, to 146 in November, 1958. That was done by the deliberate action of the Government in removing the food subsidies, but they did not say anything about that when seeking the votes of the people. That increase in the cost of living has resulted in a great burden being put on the local authorities through increases in wages, which were fully justified, increases in officials' salaries, again fully justified, and increases in food costs of institutions. Since this burden has been placed on the local authorities, it is no wonder that the rates are as crippling as they are.
No attempt has been made to control prices. When the inter-Party Government were in power, prices were examined and unless a man made a very good case for an increase, especially in the case of an article of food, no increase was granted; but since this Government came into power, there is apparently no control, and no intention of controlling prices.
We all look to agriculture to provide our main exports. We have exports from our secondary industries, but agriculture has to play the main part in keeping our balance of payments right. What is the Government's policy with regard to agriculture? We know the eradication of bovine T.B. has first claim on the Government. We appreciate that, and it is proper, because if we do not eradicate bovine T.B., in some few years, our cattle market will be completely gone. However, we cannot content ourselves with that alone; we must look to the other things.
There is no encouragement this year for the growing of grain. The price of wheat was slashed last year and apparently it will remain the same. Not only was it slashed but a levy was put on it. The floor price of barley has been reduced and, in the past month, I saw pure maize meal on offer for the first time for some years. There is no great credit in that, and I am sure the imports of barley and maize this year will be very substantial. The Government should have increased the floor price to give a fair chance to the growers.
There is another point which has been mentioned—the beet industry. In my constituency of Carlow-Kilkenny a number of people have been refused contracts this year. Growers who have been growing beet for years are no longer getting contracts this year. I saw on yesterday's paper that a meeting of the Carlow Beet Growers' Association is to be held, and they intend to interview the manager about this matter. It is hard to understand why we are importing sugar. The Minister for Industry and Commerce said last May that our imports of raw sugar from abroad were 900,000 cwt., or about 45,000 tons. I have no doubt our imports for the present year will run to the same figure.
It is hard to understand why the Irish Sugar Company should be refusing beet contracts. We are seeking to start new industries for which most of the raw materials must be imported. We can grow our raw materials for sugar and farmers are anxious to do so because it suits their husbandry. Farmers who grow grain one year cannot grow it the next year because of the need for root crops in rotation. The system suits their method of husbandry, and this year, for the first time, farmers have been turned down for beet contracts. That is a matter for the Government because it is the Government who control the import of sugar.
The Government give a licence to the Irish Sugar Company to import cheap sugar from behind the Iron Curtain, and the Minister for Industry and Commerce stated some time ago, in reply to a question by Deputy T. Lynch, that most of the raw sugar was imported from behind the Iron Curtain, while our own farmers' contracts to grow beet are being reduced. It is a terrible state of affairs and the Government should not permit it to continue.
The other day a small farmer with a farm of about 50 or 60 acres told me he had given his son, who is about 24 years of age, a small farm. The son signed a contract for four acres of beet, but after some time the loading agent told him: "You cannot have your contract. The only thing you can do is to ask your father for two acres of his contract and he can keep two acres for himself, but you cannot get four acres for yourself at this time." That is not fair. Beet gives very good employment in the rural areas. There is the thinning of the beet, the pulling, the crowning, the loading, and all these various things. There is a greater labour content in the growing of beet than in any other crop.
It may be slightly cheaper to import our sugar, but the Minister last week put a 200 per cent. tax on certain articles which these farmers will have to buy and they are refused any consideration in regard to beet. A duty of 200 per cent. was imposed by the Minister on certain articles, but when the farmers ask for a reasonable price for beet the Government say: "No; we will import the sugar." I think it would be much better if we built another factory down at New Ross or any other place. After all, the price of one of these new jet planes would build a beet factory and give work to hundreds of people in an area.
According to the White Paper, and the Minister for Lands, the Government look to private enterprise to develop this country and to give employment. Private enterprise will do its best, but how can private enterprise succeed under the present burden of taxation? How can an enterprising man go ahead when he finds that after all his hard work, most of his profits are taken from him by the Government and he is left with no money to buy new machinery and new plant? We all look forward to a substantial reduction in taxation in the coming Budget, because, if the Government do not reduce taxation, those people who have any heart left will lose it. Most of them have lost it already. I suggest a reduction in income-tax especially.
We may not discuss that.
In general terms?
In any terms.
If they do not reduce taxation, the Government will go from bad to worse and it is my advice to them to reduce it, even if I am out of order in doing so.
I never heard such a weak speech as that by the Minister for Lands, and the reason it was weak was that he had a weak case. He came into the House to try to contradict several statements made by Deputy Dillon and, at the same time, to claim credit for himself and his Party for the various schemes implemented by Deputy Dillon during his years in office. The Government can be convicted and condemned for their failure to provide employment and stop emigration. Those were the planks in the platform on which they stood in 1957, but now we find a situation in which there are fewer people earning wages to-day than there were this time two years ago, when they took office. I shall give some figures regarding the number of wage earners to illustrate the trend in relation to employment. These figures were given in reply to a parliamentary question in October, 1958. For the year ended March, 1954, there were 489,900 people earning wages, that is, when the inter-Party Government were about to take office. A year later, in 1955, there were 499,900 persons employed, which showed an increase of 10,000 and, at 31st March, 1956, there were 501,400 employed, which showed that the number had increased by 12,500 since the inter-Party Government took office.
When we come to examine the figures for the period when Fianna Fáil took office again, we find that on 31st March, 1957, there were 485,900 employed and, on 31st March, 1958, there were 464,700 employed. In other words, there were 35,000 fewer people employed on 31st March, 1958, than there were on 31st March, 1956, when the inter-Party Government were in office during the year of depression, when there was considerable depression in trade. We have a situation now in which there are fewer people earning wages than at any time in our history, and we have the Minister for Finance trudging around, from dinner to dinner, telling the people that Fianna Fáil have saved the country from financial ruin.
I should like to remind the Fianna Fáil Government of the achievements of the inter-Party Government. In 1948, when they took office, we had the lowest number of cattle, sheep and pigs at any time in our recorded history. When they left office in 1951, that number had been built up to a record figure. Similarly, we found a situation in which 100,000 families were seeking homes in 1948. There were no plans to provide homes for them, but, during the past ten years, and particularly during the inter-Party Government's term of office, approximately 100,000 houses were built.
We employed the land drainage programme to such an extent that 1,000,000 acres of land which had previously been derelict were brought into production, and we brought about a situation where we had a record number of wage earners engaged in industrial employment. Similarly, we brought about a situation where the volume of our agricultural production was doubled and the monetary value of that production was trebled. Those are the facts which must be set against the arguments which are advanced by the Fianna Fáil Party to deceive those who are capable of being deceived.
With reference to the Vote on Account, the Minister has mentioned that there is a reduction of almost £1,500,000 in relation to the adjustment for the wheat losses of 1958 and also, of course, the surplus which came from 1957, which was exported, with a heavy loss, at a sacrifice price. I should like to mention that the vast majority of the wheat growers are still awaiting a refund of the money which was stopped from the cash due to them in respect of wheat deliveries. I do not believe that 10 per cent. of the wheat growers have yet received any refund.
The butter subsidy is also down, and the reason for that is that many of the creamery milk suppliers have been driven out of the production of milk for the manufacture of butter by a positive reduction in the price of milk, though their costs have been increased.
I hope the Deputy is not going into details of the Estimate.
No, Sir.
Surely that is a detail of the Estimate for the Department of Agriculture?
When the Minister for Lands was speaking to-day, he seemed to claim credit for his Party in respect of every aspect of agricultural expansion which took place when Deputy Dillon was Minister for Agriculture, but many of us can remember the large headlines in the Evening Press and Irish Press when the Minister for Lands was gloating over the fact that the bottom had fallen out of the price of cattle early in 1956. At that time, for certain reasons, the price of cattle fell and the attitude of the Minister was that he wanted to tell the farmers that Fianna Fáil had told them so, that there was nothing reliable so far as the cattle trade was concerned, and now they had seen that for themselves in the drop in the price of cattle. He seemed to be delighted to be in a position to tell them that they could not rely on the cattle trade and that they must look elsewhere for a living.
He also took up Deputy Dillon on the statement he made in relation to the stampede in the form of emigration from the West of Ireland. It must be remembered that that stampede has taken place because a very large number of people are living on what is barely a subsistence level. Their money income has been reduced drastically and progressively by the increase in the prices of bread, butter and flour. Bread has increased from 9½d. to 1/3, and butter from 3/8 to 4/4 per lb. and flour *from 4/2 to 7/6 per stone. That is the reason for the stampede from the West of Ireland. The standard of living of the people there has been severely reduced as a result of that decision of the Minister for Finance in his Budget.
The Minister for Lands spoke about the programme for economic expansion. He boasted that it was going to bring prosperity. That programme mentioned a figure of £200,000,000 to be spent over five years. If we examine the provision for capital investment over the past ten years, we find that the pattern of investment in that programme was devised and planned by successive Party Governments. The difference now is that it has been put on paper as a forecast of a programme for five years. If we examine that forecast, we see that, in fact, it is only following the programme which was followed for the past ten years.
Our capital development programme budgeted for between £35,000,000 and £40,000,000 every year. If we multiply that £40,000,000 by five we will find that it comes to the £200,000,000 which is mentioned so boastfully by Fianna Fáil speakers at the present time. When we hear them talking about programmes, we remember the £100,000,000 scheme which the Tánaiste announced and the 100,000 jobs which were to be created in five years. That would work out at 20,000 jobs a year and yet to-day we have the lowest number yet of wage earners in recorded history.
The Book of Estimates shows an increase of £5,500,000. It is a great mistake to have an increase in taxation, when that taxation cannot be balanced by a substantial increase in the national income. It means that a greater burden of tax is imposed on the earnings of the people. We must relate the level of taxation to the total national income and we should not follow the national income step by step with a burden of taxation. We should allow the national income to rise faster than the level of taxation, in order that the standard of living of the people may be improved as a result of the margin between their earnings and the level of taxation.
We have a situation in Dublin City where there are almost 20,000 people unemployed. I listened to the speech of Deputy Cummins, the new Deputy for Dublin City, and I congratulate him on it. He presented his speech in a very practical way and made his case very well, but I feel that that case was based on a foundation which cannot stand the test. He said that there was prosperity in Dublin. It is difficult to support that view, when there are 20,000 unemployed in Dublin, when Deputy Cummins got only 6,000 votes out of a total of 18,000 cast in the by-election in which he was elected and in view of the fact that his Party lost 5,000 votes in that constituency in the space of a year.
That does not seem to have anything to do with the Vote on Account.
Very well, Sir; but I should like to mention the fact that there are 700 destitute families in the Ballyfermot district. That is a direct result of Government policy. It is a direct consequence of the fact that the building programme was ended by Fianna Fáil. Those people being destitute means that their money income has been reduced by the heavy increase in food prices.
We have 80,000 persons registered as unemployed. That is no indication that the Government have made any progress particularly when we remember that the inter-Party Government succeeded in bringing the number of registered unemployed to its lowest level at 38,000. When will we reach that situation again? Can we hope to reach it under this Government? If we are to go by their record up to the present, we can be sure that we will never see a situation under this Government when the registered unemployed will be down to 38,000 and that was at a time when the population of the country was much greater than it is at present.
Instead, we may find a situation in which the Fianna Fáil Party may equal its own record of having 145,000 people registered as unemployed. If any Fianna Fáil Deputy is familiar with conditions in rural areas at the moment, he will admit that there is a great increase in unemployment and destitution. In the rural areas, there is now only part-time employment on the farms, because the farmers find themselves in a position in which they are unable to provide full-time work for their labourers. The number of those on home assistance will prove that. Those people who are unemployed have to undergo a very rigorous means test to qualify for home assistance.
Lately, we saw a heading which stated that there were 1,000 people unemployed in Drogheda, the highest figure ever known and another heading stating that, in Navan, the number of unemployed had broken all previous records. That is the situation which we have to face up to, and at the same time, we have to listen to the Minister for Lands telling us of the wonderful plans the Government have. The Government have had a majority for two years in which to implement a progressive plan. Instead, we find fewer people earning wages in 1958 than in 1956, when we were in the midst of a world crisis. Fianna Fáil must accept the lion's share of the blame for the present situation regarding unemployment and emigration, having been in office from 1932 to 1948 and having had 16 years to implement any productive policy, if they were capable of doing so. Instead, the national debt has mounted without any offsetting increase in the productive capacity of the projects which caused the increase.
Of the 198 items, approximately, which are considered when the cost of living is calculated, we find that more than 150 have increased in price since the Government took office. Some prices have been deliberately increased by this Government, especially essentials such as bread, butter and flour, apart from other items usually the subjects of tax adjustments in the Budget.
We see no advertisements this year encouraging farmers to grow wheat. Obviously, the Government have decided to abandon the wheat policy which was a plank in their platform in the past. It has been abandoned because they find there are no votes to be got on a wheat policy now. The guaranteed price is gone and there is only a price scale in existence which does not guarantee prices.
The Minister for Lands took credit for many schemes initiated and implemented by Deputy Dillon as Minister for Agriculture, and the Minister completely overlooked the 1948 Trade Agreement, the greatest milestone in our economic advance since 1922. As a result of that agreement prices for our live stock sold in Britain, were put on a more realistic level. The agreement showed that cattle were sold to Britain at sacrifice prices during the war years under the 1938 Agreement which remained in force until the change of Government in 1948. In those years, farmers lost millions of pounds in consequence of operating under the 1938 Agreement. An examination of the prices they were obliged to accept at the time compared with the prices paid to home producers in Britain proves that to be a fact.
At present, ratepayers are being shocked by rate increases resulting mainly from the unsatisfactory position regarding health services. Every year, the cost of these services mounts and still the people benefiting are not satisfied. They find frequently they do not qualify for one service or another, although they were led to believe they would by the scheme in general. In last year's Budget, the sick poor had the cost of health services increased by 28/- a week for hospital treatment.
Surely this is a detail for the Estimate.
It is all untrue, which makes it worse.
It is not.
It is a detail of an Estimate that is not at all relevant to the Vote on Account. It should be left for the Estimate on which it is proper to discuss it as fully as the Deputy wishes.
A political issue which occupied the time of the House to a great extent only three years ago was the building programme. We recall the agitation then carried on in this House regarding building finance, while we now find that three times as many persons were employed in the building trade in 1956 as are employed at present. The present building programme represents only a quarter of the building taking place three years ago, although there are still nearly 40,000 families in Dublin City pressing for proper accommodation. The Government should now say why they carried on that agitation in 1956, in view of the sorry plight of the building trade and the great fall in the house-building programme at present. It seems that when Fianna Fáil are out of office, they have plans, but when they come into office nothing happens.
We recently noticed great anxiety among leaders of public opinion, particularly some prominent Churchmen. It is a sorry day for the country when it is necessary for prominent Churchmen to speak as they do on the plight of the country in regard to unemployment and emigration, apart from the economy generally. It seems the Government are not doing their duty, and when we examine what has happened in the past two years, we must agree the Government are sliding down the hill without putting on the brake, making no attempt to steer the country on to a safe course.
Only a fortnight ago we had a situation here where, as a result of Government policy, it was necessary to raise £1,000,000 to compensate State servants for the rise in the cost of living. Some of them, by reason of the agreements, were entitled to a rise of around £1 a week; and they were earning £1,000 a year. At the same time, the old age pensioners, who are certainly on a destitution level, so far as money is concerned, get only 2/6 a week to meet a rise in the cost of living in similar essentials. Approximately 198 items are taken into consideration when the cost of living is being computed. These items apply to the old age pensioner getting 25/- a week, just as they do to the State servant on £1,000 a year. The compensation given to one by reason of the conditions of employment was much greater than the compensation given to the other, although in each case the cost of essentials affected them in the same way.
We have also noticed from the statistics that there has been a fall in population. I mention this matter because every effort is being made by the Fianna Fáil Party to tell the people that there is no way of counting the number of persons who emigrated during the past two years. The Fianna Fáil Party always seem to be able to count the emigrants, when they are out in the wilderness, in opposition. They are always able to count them then, one by one; they are able to take photographs of emigrants waiting for the train or the boat, but they can never count them when they are in office.
The population figures as given in the official records ought to be able to count them for them. I shall just mention the figures for 1958 and 1957, to show in a general way what has happened and to prove that in fact 60,000 people emigrated from 1957 to 1958. The number of persons enumerated—I suppose by the Registrar General—in the June quarter of 1957 was 2,855,000. In 1957 the figure was 2,855,000 and in 1958, 2,833,000, leaving a difference——
Of 60,000?
No, it does not, actually.
22,000.
That shows a drop of 32,000 in one year.
22,000.
All right, 22,000. I am sorry; I am not sure of these figures. In addition to that, we have the annual births excess over deaths, which is estimated to be 28,000 persons. If we add the 28,000 excess population to the 22,000 who are missing from one year to another, we get a total of 50,000—although my previous calculation was 60,000 from the figures I seemed to get. From that, we can easily calculate the approximate number of persons who are obliged to emigrate from one year to another. There is no use in Fianna Fáil saying they cannot count the emigrants when they are in government. It is quite easy to count the net figures from the existing population and the average annual birth rate and find whatever figure results from a subtraction of the relevant figures.
In relation to national development. I should like to mention one project which the inter-Party Government sponsored, in spite of vigorous opposition. That was the opening of the Avoca mines, which at present provide employment for over 500 persons. The proposal at that time to provide finance for the opening and operation of the Avoca mines was vigorously opposed by the Tánaiste. He has since swallowed his own words by going down to the official opening a few months ago and telling them what a wonderful project it is. When the inter-Party Government took office in 1954, there were only 20 persons employed in the Avoca mines for the purpose of keeping the water out of them.
In addition to that, the inter-Party Government initiated and sponsored the establishment of the oil refinery in Cork, which provides very great prospects for the nation in many ways and particularly a great period of prosperity for Cork City.
In relation to unemployment, I should like to quote the Tánaiste again, now that I have mentioned his attitude in relation to the Avoca mines. Some of his remarks in relation to unemployment are worth quoting, to show the attitude of the Government towards this matter. At Trim, on 21st February, 1957, he said:—
"Unemployment and emigration are the acid test of policy. The Fianna Fáil Government will measure the effectiveness of its work by those standards."
At Kinsale, on 17th February, 1957, he said:—
"Fianna Fáil's immediate task will be to get work for the unemployed."
In Dublin, on 22nd February, 1957, he said:—
"The unemployed cannot be expected to wait until long-term production plans bring them permanent benefit."
Finally, there is the Fianna Fáil advertisement of 23rd February, 1957:—
"The country needs in Government people who have thought out the problems and who are agreed amongst themselves as to what is to be done in relation to unemployment."
Still there are 80,000 seeking employment now, and there are fewer people earning wages than there were two years ago when those statements were being made.
In relation to the levies imposed in 1956 to adjust the trade balance position at that time, we remember that the Fianna Fáil Party opposed them for several reasons. One Fianna Fáil speaker said that the effort was "too little and too late" and that the temporary levies would not have the necessary effect. Time proved them wrong. The worst part of the attitude of Fianna Fáil in relation to these temporary levies was that, when they got the opportunity when they came into office, instead of getting rid of these temporary levies, they brought some of them into the permanent framework of taxation. They are permanent taxes now, instead of temporary levies, imposed during the period of the inter-Party Government, to adjust the financial situation which existed at that time.
I heard the Minister for Lands say this evening that there was a deficit of something like £62,000,000 in the balance of payments after 1951. He neglected to mention that, if the figures for that year were examined out, it would be seen, first of all, that his Government took office in June of that year and prior to June, 1951, the deficit in the balance of payments was only £15,000,000. Between June and the following March, with a Fianna Fáil Government once more in power, the deficit in the balance of payments increased by a further £47,000,000. The figures are there to prove the truth of what I have said and disprove something out of which Fianna Fáil made political capital during the subsequent by-elections and the General Election of 1957.
When the inter-Party Government first took office, the country was in a state of stagnation because of the poverty in agriculture and the lack of activity generally. In 1957, when the course was set by the second inter-Party Government, the money value of exports in the first half of that year was equal to the total amount received for exports in 1947. That speaks well for the progress made and the development which took place under the inter-Party Government, but, to-day, every effort is being made by Fianna Fáil to make the people believe that the inter-Party Government did not make any great advances in our national economy as a whole and did not make the tremendous improvement they did make in the standard of living of the people and in national development.
Candidly, I cannot relate the major portion of the Deputy's statement to the policy of the Government on the Vote on Account and he does not seem to be coming any nearer to it.
The Minister for Lands referred to the £250,000,000 external assets in 1948. If that was the position, then the Fianna Fáil Government should have invested that money in projects at home because the country lost nearly £100,000,000 subsequently, overnight, when devaluation took place in 1949. We could do nothing about it then and we had to accept a heavy cut in the cash value of our external assets because of devaluation.
A number of projects were initiated by the inter-Party Government, projects which improved our economy. In particular, I should like to refer to the removal of the tax on superphosphates—a tax imposed by the Fianna Fáil Government. In addition, grants were provided for farm buildings, hay-sheds and cow byres. We had guaranteed minimum prices for pigs and barley and these resulted in a considerable increase in bacon exports.
The Deputy is not dealing with the Vote on Account at all.
Am I not entitled to refer to these things?
I cannot pick out what the Deputy is entitled to refer to, and I have no intention of trying to do it. The Vote on Account is before the House. It relates to Government policy on expenditure. It would appear there is sufficient scope there for the Deputy to disport himself.
In that case, I shall conclude, Sir, by asking the Government to give some indication of a policy which will bring some immediate remedies in its train. It is wrong for Ministers to tell the people that there is a greater measure of prosperity to-day than ever before when we remember that there are smaller numbers of wage earners to-day than at any time in our history. The test of policy is the numbers employed and the numbers earning wages, together with an increase in the national income and increased exports. The Government can boast of none of these and there is no doubt that, were they to go to the country now, they would be rejected by the people solely on the basis of the policy they have been operating over the past two years.
The Minister for Lands to-night used one word to describe the achievements of his Government over the past two years. The word he used was "tremendous". I cannot see how that word can be applied in present circumstances. Two years ago, when the Government changed, those who were dispossessed did not like it naturally. Mark you, I was not sorry because I told myself that, if the Fianna Fáil Party can do the things they promise, well and good; it is a good job there is a change of Government.
A year passed, and certainly I did not criticise because they could have said: "We have not had time. We have been in office for only one year." Now a second year has passed and it is time we on this side of the House, who have been patient during the past two years, stood up and asked them to come to heel as regards their promises, and what they told the people they would do if they were given an overall majority and, to use the words of the Taoiseach, a stable Government, although for the past three months we have heard that we have not a stable Government and that there is to be a change in the voting system to make for stable Government.
A better quotation could not be found than the one I am about to read now. It is an editorial from a newspaper. Fianna Fáil may say that newspaper is Fine Gael; Fine Gael may say it is Fianna Fáil; but my view is, that it is a newspaper that does not mind about Fianna Fáil or Fine Gael; it does not mind which of them is in power. It speaks out honestly according to what it thinks itself. I refer to the Irish Independent, and I quote from the editorial of Saturday, 28th February, 1959.
"We refuse to think it is the Government's deliberate policy to make this country bankrupt——"
charitable enough
"——but we do say that if such was the design the Ministers could not go a better way about it. A year ago the Book of Estimates for the Public Services provided for the gigantic expenditure of £110,000,000. This year the corresponding figure is over £118,000,000."
They could not go a better way about it. It continues:—
"This of course does not complete the nation's bill. These figures only cover the Public Services. There is another Bill to be added to that, a bill for what are called Central Fund Services. That has also gone up. It will require a further sum of £20,000,000. Thus the Government that got into power by promises of economy proposes to spend in all a sum of £140,000,000 in the coming year."
"A Government," it says, "that got into power on promises of economy are about to spend £140,000,000 in the coming year." That is over £50 per head of the population of this country at the present time. Since Herod was first dethroned in 1948, we have been lectured by the Taoiseach about false promises, and about political life being degraded by people of different Parties making promises and on election to this House doing the opposite to what they promised the people they would do. We have been lectured again and again on that point and, mind you, when speaking at Limerick, he went so far, according to a report in the Irish Independent of November 19th, 1957, as to tell the people to make up their minds when it came to:—
"Passing judgment on politicians who come before them at election times to be ruthless with those who lied to them and who tried to degrade the political life of this country to be a dirty political game."
Those are the words of the Taoiseach at Limerick. Be ruthless with those political Parties who tell lies and make promises in order to get into power. Was there ever an occasion when the voters of the country should be more ruthless than they should be with the Government who are spending £140,000,000, the very people who promised economy? The Taoiseach, the man who proposes to go to the Park, said to the people in Limerick at a public meeting that they should be ruthless with the Parties or the groups that told lies for political gain.
I challenge you here that he told the greatest lie and the people in the last general election two years ago were more deceived by the lies of the Taoiseach and the lies of the Minister listening to me than they were by any other Party.
The Deputy should not use the word "lies."
Untruths—but he said "lies" in this quotation which I have given.
He was not speaking in the House.
He was in Limerick and he knew damned well where he was.
The Deputy can say what he likes in Galway, but he should not say it here.
The Minister does not say much in Galway. It is quite clear that when the Government came into office through untruths—I shall not use the word "lies" in the House since you, Sir, rule it out of order— the first thing they did was to attack the proper sections of the community. The first economy they effected was £9,000,000 at the expense of the poorer sections of the community.
That was not the first thing.
It is very hard to say anything to the Minister for Finance. He is a plausible sort of man and I like him.
Who is this?
The Minister for Finance.
Not the Minister for Lands?
The Minister for Lands? No one heeds him.
I could not stand much of this.
The first thing the Minister for Finance did was to take £9,000,000 from the poorer sections of the community. During the election, two years ago, when he was challenged that he would remove the food subsidies, the Taoiseach himself said: "We never do the things others say we would do." The Tánaiste said there was no danger they would do such a thing, and the Minister for Justice stated that the suggestion made his blood boil.
In taking away that £9,000,000 from the poorer sections of the community, they raised the price of the two lb. loaf from 6½d. to 1/1½d., the price of butter from 2/10d. to 4/4d. a lb., and the price of a stone of flour 2/8d. to 7/8d. I tell the people, in the Taoiseach's words: "When it comes to passing judgment on the politicians who come before them at election times, let them be ruthless." Let them be ruthless with those who promised that they would not do away with the food subsidies. Even the price of sugar was increased from 4d. to 7½d. per lb.
Deputy Haughey had the cheek to come in here and say that in Dublin City the people are 50 times better off than they were two years ago. That has made me bring a paper called the Sunday Review into the House——
A nice rag it is, too.
——which deals mainly with Dublin City, though it is widely read throughout the country. Did Deputy Browne say it was a rag? Deputy Childers said the Kerryman was a rag, too. I want to point out how wrong Deputy Haughey was in making that statement. Of course, he was told to make it; he is like the rest of them over there—“it must be right when Dev said it.” In the Sunday Review of 8th March, 1959, no later than last Sunday, there appeared an interview with a woman and her husband, Mr. and Mrs. Mahon, who live in Ballyfermot. That is in Dublin City, is it not? She said, as reported in the newspaper:—
"Yes it's tough—very tough—to make a living in the city at the present time. My husband is unemployed and the contribution to the home is £3 0 1d. per week, his National Health Insurance."
Her worry is how to cover living expenses, for 11 mouths, out of that sum, plus what she gets from a daughter who is over twenty-one, and, which amounts to about £6 per week. The report continues:—
"How does she do it? ‘Sometimes I just don't know myself,' she told Sunday Review.‘I just live from day to day, very often from meal to meal. If the money is there—we eat. If it's not—we don't. It is just as simple as that.’
When times are really bad the Mahons eat at the St. Vincent de Paul Food Centre at Ballyfermot.
‘I just don't know what we would do without them,' she said. ‘We—and others like us—would starve. They've been so good to us with food; they also help us out with clothes.'
They remember, too, how just before last Christmas, two of their boys—Patrick and Peter—were away in Lourdes Hospital....
‘The Catholic Welfare Society called to see us and gave us a lot of help,' Mrs. Mahon said. ‘They were really wonderful. They knew the boys were sick.'"
Further on, the report continues:—
"Getting into arrears, however, is something they have to face. ‘To tell you the honest truth,' said Mrs. Mahon, ‘I sometimes have to risk eviction because I just can't bear to see my children hungry. So now and then I have to "borrow" from the rent in order to buy them one good sound meal that will last them for days and weeks.'"
There is Deputy Haughey's "50 times better off in Dublin City," and the same thing applies to the East Wall, Donnycarney, Marino, Ellenfield, Larkhill, Coolock, and St. Anne's, the area which Deputy Haughey represents. Will he tell the people living there that they are 50 times better off than they were two years ago? How could they be better off? Mrs. Mahon tells the truth, and she is only one of a number of those people trying to live from hand to mouth.
It is all right for Deputy Haughey to come in here and say that. He is young, but none of the hoary warriors at the back would say that. They know they would not get away with it, and I want to tell Deputy Haughey that he will not get away with it either.
Another great cry of Fianna Fáil's was that about unemployment. "Let's get back to work,""Get cracking" and "Wives, put your husbands back to work"—those were some of the posters. The people were told that 100,000 jobs could be provided and that millions were to be spent, but what is the position to-day? Regardless of all that, there are still nearly 80,000 unemployed in the country.
The Minister for Defence, speaking in this House on 15th May, 1957, at columns 1283 and 1284, said:—
"In my opinion and in the opinion of any fair-minded person who even now goes back and looks over the speeches made in the election campaign, it is beyond all doubt that we were put in here as a Government to take the necessary steps to remedy the situation of mass unemployment and emigration brought about by the previous Government. It is useless for the Opposition now to try to pretend that the action we have taken has come as a shock to the people. The people definitely realise that it was necessary to take decisive and tough action and it was because Fianna Fáil were the only Party who could be trusted to do this that we were put back into office."
That is what they were put back for— to do away with mass unemployment and emigration. Still there are 80,000 people unemployed, in spite of the numbers who have gone and two years have passed. Was that another untruth? What has been done about it? Nothing whatever.
I am sure some of the Deputies opposite have read the statement of Dr. Lucey in yesterday's paper. Nothing whatever has been done about unemployment. Where now is the "get cracking" policy? Where now is the slogan "Wives, put your husbands back to work"? In the City of Dublin, where we are told the people are better off, many of them are living from meal to meal. Meat they do not see once in a month. That is because of the £9,000,000 saved by the removal of the food subsidies. That was the action that brought hunger and poverty to the doors of the poorer sections of the community. That is how the Government have dealt with unemployment.
Let us come now to the question of emigration. That was another of the evils. According to the Taoiseach, the people should deal ruthlessly with any Party that tell untruths. Did any Party ever tell more untruths than the Fianna Fáil Party at the last general election? Unemployment was to be a thing of the past. Emigration was another evil, another cancer that was eating into the life of our people and was to be stopped. That brings me back to the time when the Taoiseach said that this country could support 8,000,000 people. He has learned quite a lesson since then. Now when a question is put down about emigration, he says that people are coming and going and that you could not keep an account of them. He said that most of those who go come back again. They do not come back to see him, anyway.
Maybe it is back to see the Deputy they come.
They would have more to see than if they saw you. Keep out of this now and stay with the ranchers down in Tipp. If the Taoiseach cannot get a proper return as between those who come and those who go, I think I will be able to help him a little. I suppose it is admitted that the vast majority of our people who emigrate have to go to the country of the old enemy. If the Taoiseach looks up the Cork Evening Echo of 14th November, 1958, he will find that a question was asked by a certain Labour member in the British House of Commons of the Minister of Pensions and National Insurance as to the number of people arriving from the Irish Republic who applied for national insurance cards for the first time during 1958 to the latest available date. In reply the Parliamentary Secretary there said:—
"In the period from the 1st January to the 31st October"
—that was only ten months—
"the number of people arriving from the Irish Republic who applied for National Health Insurance cards for the first time"
—it was not those coming and going—"was 40,497."
In the first ten months of the year, nearly 50,000 of our people applied for National Health Insurance cards for the first time in the old enemy country. The Taoiseach need not worry about the "comers and goers"; there were nearly 50,000 "goers" in ten months.
That could not be right.
It certainly is, and it cannot be denied.
But "The Chief" said——
If "The Chief" said: "Eat boiled nettles" the Deputies behind him would say it was right.
Very funny.
There is the untruth. "Let the people deal ruthlessly with those who promised at the last election that they would end emigration." Not alone that, but in yesterday's paper—is there a Corkman in the House?
Deputies
Yes.
Most Rev. Dr. Lucey, Bishop of Cork, said, as reported in yesterday's Independent, that the Irish countryside was becoming depopulated at a rate almost equal to that of the famine years. After two years' work by the people who were to cure all ills, that is the record.
I am sorry the Minister for Finance has left, because he made a statement that there had been a drop of 50 per cent. in emigration. How does he make that out? The position will soon be that only old age pensioners and children going to school will be left because everybody able to leave the country will have gone. Neverthless, the Minister told the Dún Laoghaire Chamber of Commerce at a dinner— I am sure none of the 50,000 emigrants were there—there had been a drop of 50 per cent.
What paper was that in?
The most widely read provincial paper in Ireland, the Kerryman.
That is the one Deputy Childers said was a rag.
He did not make any mistake, either.
How can the Minister for Finance say there is a drop of 50 per cent. in emigration, in view of the fact that our new airline that went into operation recently found it necessary to introduce special single-trip emigration fares to get the emigrants out—they were not going fast enough by boat. When the Minister for Industry and Commerce was questioned about it in the Dáil, he said that at least three other transatlantic airlines had promoted this emigrant service from Shannon in 1958 and why should they not do the same thing? It was a competition to get them out.
In what paper was that?
The Kerryman. This is no laughing matter. Look at the benches opposite; there is not a smile there. To make matters worse, the writer said he had personal experience of one group of people who emigrated by sea last year and who had gone to five shipping companies in a vain attempt to get a booking. The journey was eventually made by taking a chance on the waiting list for three months and at the end of that period, this group left Cobh in a liner packed with emigrants.
They were not all from Kerry, I presume?
They were not. That is the position about emigration. Aer Linte had to enter into competition with the other services offering one-way trips to emigrants. Like the trip to the graveyard, there is no "come-back". They may come back one day and then they will be tourists, if they have the money to pay the fare, but I do not think they will get back as cheaply as they got out.
I see there is a sum provided here for tourism and I shall deal with it later. I know one is not in order in repeating oneself in the House, but I am tempted to repeat what the Taoiseach said in Limerick.
I do not think the Deputy should do so.
But that is what put this Government into power. Now, they are afraid to come before the people again, unless they change the system of election and that is what has been discussed for the past three months in this House and for a month in the Seanad. They are trying to cloud the issue and to avoid the promises they made by adopting the voting system of the ancient enemy across the water.
Sometimes one finds a laugh even in political life. The other day I was reading a publication called Dublin Opinion. I am sorry the Minister for Finance is not here. He was shown testing the old black cloak, which is now being aired again, on the Tánaiste to see how it would fit. Of course, it was much too big and much too long. I would advise the Minister for Finance to wear it himself. It would suit him better than it would the Tánaiste.
It does not arise. It has no relevance to the Vote on Account.
It has, you know. The Presidential Election and the referendum are to be on the one day, but with two different ballot papers. That was said in Clare.
The Deputy might come to the Vote on Account and deal with the financial position.
Dr. Lucey also said they were told the countryside was never more prosperous; that that was true but it was prosperity for the few. The small farmer, he said, or the farm labourer was not prosperous and the various public moneys going to agriculture went, in the main, not to them but to the big farmers.
The Government abolished Section B of the land project. I suppose they will be selling machinery soon again, as they did the last time, when they put roughly 13,000 out of employment. They have kept Section A, the better section, which suits the big farmer who can contribute £20 an acre and go on with the work. The poor man who could have had the cost put in with his rent to get the work done is now completely wiped out.
Another great boast by the Minister was the subsidy on fertilisers. I cannot recall how much it was, but I have the figure here.
You will find it in the Kerryman.
I need not go so far. It was something like £500,000 as subsidy on fertilisers. Who is to gain by that? It is not the small farmer, who will not buy one cwt. more than he bought last year, as he cannot afford it. As a consumer, he is contributing to the type of farmer who can buy 5,000 tons. The poor man in West Cork, Kerry or Donegal is contributing to that type of farmer who is being subsidised by the Government.
Dr. Lucey was right when he said the small farmer was suffering, because, as he said, State thinking, State spending and State policy were in terms of production rather than of producers. That is why our people are leaving by air and boat as fast as they can.
Then we have people like Deputy Haughey telling us the people of Dublin are so well off. Another Deputy tells how the fertiliser subsidy suits them in Tipperary. I say that to 90 per cent. of the farmers the fertiliser subsidy is of no use; they are just contributing to the other 10 per cent.
The shining light in the Minister's statement was the "advancement of agriculture." That comes from the Minister for Finance, who in the dark, bad, hard, old days was Minister for Agriculture. He said that bovine T.B. must be eradicated by 1960, so that we will have a clear bill of health, or we would lose the British market for cattle. That brings my memory back to 1948 when, through Divine Providence and nothing else, there was a change of Government and Fianna Fáil were put out. What did we find then? Our Minister for Agriculture, Deputy Dillon, found fewer cattle and fewer sheep than at any time since the Famine; and no pigs at all. One could not buy a lb. of bacon even by giving £5 for it. That was the position when Fianna Fáil went out in 1948. The very people who now talk about our exports to the British market and hold it up above all else, saying no matter what it costs, we must eradicate bovine T.B.—I agree, of course, that it should be done, no matter what it costs—are worried lest we lose that market.
I could quote some of their statements, such as the statement that "the British market is gone and gone for ever". In 1948, we found it was as good as gone, as we had nothing for it. This Minister who talked about the position of agriculture on this Vote on Account was then Minister for Agriculture and was known, like Herod in the Slaughter of the Innocents, as our Herod in the slaughter of the calves. At that time, Fianna Fáil preached throughout the country that we should cut a calf's throat and throw the body across the ditch, as it was not worth keeping. They are the people who left us, in 1948, with fewer cattle and fewer sheep than at any time since the Famine. Our export trade to-day has increased, despite that. It has increased, thanks to Deputy Dillon, as Minister for Agriculture, and the inter-Party Government of 1948 and their agreement with the British Government in that year. Were it not for the steps they took then, there would be nothing to sell to-day. Yet, there are people who have the infernal cheek now to talk about the advantage of the British market. Of course, one should be grateful for their conversion, tardy though it is. I wish them well in their conversion and I shall do everything to help them in it.
Here they are now trying to edge in on the work done by the despised inter-Party Government, the Government that the Taoiseach said were degrading public life because of the promises they made. What about the promises made, but never so far implemented, by Fianna Fáil? I shall give the same advice now, in relation to Fianna Fáil and their promises, as the Taoiseach gave: "Deal ruthlessly with them. They made those promises to you. They deceived you in such a way that you gave them an overall majority to form the strongest Government ever in this country since 1922. They got in on the strength of the promises they made you. You were never more deceived."
There is a certain amount of money being provided for tourism. I regard this as waste. I am sure the Parliamentary Secretary remembers a statement he made some years ago, a statement I heard him make. He said that 90 or 95 per cent. of the people coming into this country every year are our own emigrants coming home on holiday. I hope that some day all our own will be able to come back. Some of them have not been home for 20 or 30 years. These people are not tourists; they are our own coming home again. Possibly 5 per cent. represents the number of genuine tourists. We have something to give them, particularly those who wish to get away from the tempo of life in other parts of the world.
Dr. Lucey pointed out that our country is being denuded of its population. Now the Local Authorities (Works) Act schemes are to be wiped out. That will further help to deplete our rural population. There was a discussion recently in the Galway County Council. Some of the members—friends of mine, I admit, but not my way of thinking politically— said that those schemes should be continued. Indeed, one Fianna Fáil Deputy said he would make sure they would be continued.
Can the Deputy name him?
He is not here at the moment, but I can name him.
(Interruptions.)
Order!
I am quoting the Deputy.
(Interruptions.)
Deputies must allow Deputy Donnellan to make his speech.
I agree with the leading article in the Irish Independent of 28th February, 1959. I agree Fianna Fáil could not have done more to bankrupt the country. In the words of the Taoiseach, I appeal to the people to deal ruthlessly with politicians who come before them with false promises. We have to-day 80,000 unemployed and have emigration running at 50,000 a year.
Progress reported; Committee to sit again.