The third excuse is the bovine tuberculosis eradication question. It has always struck me that this is a very weak and a very lame excuse because we knew long enough about the necessity for the eradication of bovine tuberculosis and there was no reason in the world why we should be caught unawares. We got sufficient warning and should have taken action earlier.
The figures I have quoted show the drop in agricultural output. On page 22 we see that the total number of males engaged in farm work dropped from 398.6 thousand in 1957 to 389.1 thousand in 1959. That is another figure that the Taoiseach did not deal with to any degree.
The Taoiseach referred to a statement made by some council that the flight from the land in Ireland was paralleled in other countries. The use of this statement seemed to me to be an attempt by the Taoiseach to legitimatise his own attitude to agriculture and to agricultural interests in this country, his indifference to their present position, his disbelief that they could be made to become the great source of national prosperity. The fact, of course, is that in other countries in which there has been a flight from the land the conditions are entirely different.
If one takes Denmark, Holland, Sweden, Norway or New Zealand the position is that the land, from which the rural society there is fleeing, is land which has been developed to the maximum, from which the optimum amount of output has been achieved by the use of scientific advances in agricultural know-how as well as generally by the use of the co-operative movement. Their use of both of these has provided a prosperous agricultural economy in those countries. Because of the introduction of machinery, there has been a surplus population in those countries and they have necessarily moved into the small towns or villages in which there are factories based on the output of the agricultural industry or into the larger cities in which they have work in the perfectly natural industrial and textile industries established in these countries. There is no comparison between that drift from the countryside in those countries and the headlong flight from rural Ireland into the cities and across the water. Until we have reached the position in which we have developed agricultural potential to the maximum we cannot be satisfied with the flight from the land.
I am greatly disturbed to find that the Taoiseach has intended to wash his hands of this whole problem. He seems to feel it is insoluble, that there is very little he can do about it, that the best thing to do is to throw the people the odd sop of price supports, to try to keep them quiet by various minor concessions, to concentrate on building up industries on the periphery of the countryside, in the big cities, Dublin, Limerick, Cork and Galway, and leave agriculture to fend for itself.
That is the most serious trend disclosed in the Taoiseach's speech. His admission in that regard is the most disturbing of all. As long as there is this decay in our agricultural economy, with uncertainty of prices and cynicism among the farmers, there can be no substantial industrial arm created because that industrial arm must be based on rural Ireland.
The other figure which was not mentioned was the figure for the number of persons at work in the main branches of non-agricultural economic activity. In 1957 the number was 703,000 and in 1959 it was 692,000, another drop. I do not think that adds up to a genuine picture of prosperity in anything like the terms painted for us by the Taoiseach. As I said, it depends entirely on the type of society which you are trying to create. The export figures show a very unhealthy trend because of the low agricultural content in these export figures.
It is interesting to note that in spite of the talk we have about the industrial boom over the past two years there has in fact been a decline in total exports from £127 million in 1957 to £125 million odd in 1959. The other disturbing fact is that the breakdown of the increases in exports shows that petrol products account for about £500,000—I am giving approximate figures—metal wrought and un-wrought, £500,000; electrical machinery, £437,000; sugar roughly £500,000; footwear £500,000; cement £320,000; ores and concentrates, £500,000; and second-hand cars, £500,000.
That is an unhealthy, undesirable pattern because our exports should stem from produce processed either from the seas around the country or from the land. It should be clear to everybody that an export like second-hands cars is an absurd export item in a country such as ours. It is an extremely undependable item. As regards metal, wrought and un-wrought, I do not know whether that is scrap iron or what it is but if there has been any finished steel product export increase it has been largely due to the industry mentioned by Deputy Corish, Irish Steel Holdings. Ores and concentrates are one of the most depressing exports of all in so far as we are exporting raw material for an industry in respect of which we should have provided a State industry for ourselves in order to get the total value of the mineral wealth in our mines. That is "one of the saddest thoughts of all, that this is increasing and that the real wealth is going to countries other than our own.
The only healthy export increase that I see is sugar which is based on one of the most prosperous of our industries, the sugar industry, probably the most desirable of all in so far as it is based on the produce of the land and because, from the ground right up to export, Irish men and women are employed in growing it, harvesting it and processing it. That seems to me to be the ideal pattern for development of industry in Ireland and it is to be preferred to an absurd development like dependence on items such as second-hand cars.
Other interesting figures show that farmers' incomes rose by 4 per cent., a very small amount. Wages and salaries rose by 3½ per cent. and companies' profits rose by 17 per cent., that is to say, companies' profits were five times greater than the increase in wages and salaries. Once again we got from the Taoiseach, as we do from all these people, the Federation of Manufacturers and industrialists of one kind or another, the usual homily to the workers that they should be very careful about demands for increases in wages; if we increase their wages we will be taxed out of the export market; that they are putting us into an inflationary spiral; that they are making it necessary for us to close down industries; and that, generally, if they look for an increase in wages as a result of increased production they are doing something approaching sabotage of the national interest.
Yet I have never heard from anybody a lecture or a homily addressed to the Federation of Manufacturers, the industrialists, telling them they should put a curb on their profits, on the dividends they distribute from time to time to their shareholders. As a Socialist I do not believe in private enterprise at all. I believe the worker has an absolute right to the product of his skill and his labour. I do not believe a penny of that belongs in unearned income to the moneylenders, which is what the shareholders really are. I do not think the pockets of the workers should be pilfered by any of these people.
It is becoming quite obvious that we are the last preserve of private enterprise in a wonderfully anti-private enterprise world and that the change will come to Ireland as it has to so many other countries. I do not understand why the workers tolerate this extraordinary situation—an increase in wages and salaries of 3½ per cent. and an increase of 17 per cent. in profits. The most interesting fact of all seems to be all the talk about increases in wages in the last twenty years when the worker of to-day is making little more than he did 21 years ago—in purchasing power very much less.
Using figures supplied by the Central Statistics Office, it is possible to show that, in fact, incomes have not increased—actual incomes in terms of purchasing power—since 1930. This is during a period in which, year after year, mounting profits and dividends are being issued in bonus shares of one kind or another in different companies and different industries. It is, of course, completely wrong and I think it is one of the points to which the Taoiseach never seems to advert nor does his opponent on the other side. They do not seem to concern themselves as to for whom they are running our society, for whom are they organising our economy.
The number of people affected by the wages standstill in effect over the last twenty years is something like 60 per cent. of the workers engaged in industry. That has gone on, that restriction in the workers' purchasing power, at a time when there has been virtually no expansion in our social amenities. There have been no free health services. There has been no appreciable expansion in opportunities for higher education for the middle class and lower income families. The old age pensioner and the widows and orphans are all living in a state of semi-starvation because of the gross inadequacy of their allowances.
That conservative policy of successive Governments has driven the best part of one million people out of the country. It has made it impossible for us to give the people a proper health service, to give our young children proper education; it made it impossible to provide playgrounds or other recreational amenities of that kind which are restricted to the children of wealthy parents. Our leading politicians are the architects of one of the most backward societies in Europe. And this is after forty years of internal peace and with no great war damage or the repairs that were required in most other European countries. We have had none of those difficulties, disabilities or drawbacks and yet we have succeeded in creating this ghostly, defective society.
I marvel to listen to the political leaders on both sides who dogmatise to us with such conviction. At last, they say, we are facing prosperity; at last we are turning the corner and prosperity is just upon us. These are the same trite nostrums from the political leaders that have been reiterated for the past twenty, thirty or forty years. But that is not so bad. What is worse is that they are not learning from their repeated mistakes over the years. The Taoiseach conceded, and it is rational, of course, that the keystone of our economy lies in Britain— that due to our nearness to Britain it is the obvious market.
Years ago it was natural we should find ourselves in that position, but I charge the Taoiseach with being largely responsible for the position in which we are inevitably dependent on the prosperity of Britain for a prosperous Ireland. And yet, by the refusal in the 1930's to face this problem, he did not put investment into the creation of industry of one kind or another, based on the agricultural produce of Ireland. Because he did not do that, because of an inferiority complex he appears to have had about ourselves and our country, he opened the door for the British manufacturer to come in here and establish the subsidiary industries here to which Deputy Dillon referred. That is the fact.
That is one of the most damning features of the policy because, as time goes on, we shall realise more and more how completely dependent we are on a prosperous Britain for our prosperity here. Britain is now facing the consequences of the Tory Party's election gimmick, the opening of the doors to hire purchase and cheap money in order to expand the sale and use of consumer goods to keep the wheels of industry turning over, creating the philosophy of "I am all right, Jack" for their own election purposes. They are now beginning to feel the hangover of that dishonest device, a device they used in order to win the election. But I am not concerned with that except in so far as it affects us, for we are tied to the tail. We must go wherever they go. If they go up, we go up a certain distance also; if they go down, we go down with them.
The Taoiseach must know enough about developments in Britain to be very worried about the fact that Britain is the corner-stone of our economy and the foundation stone of our prosperity. In Britain, they are very worried indeed about the failure of private enterprise to expand export markets in competition with countries like Western Germany, Japan, America and so forth. We are in a very delicate situation indeed. I cannot understand why the Taoiseach should have had this inferiority complex about ourselves. It seems to me to disclose a curious dichotomy, an unreasonable dichotomy or schizophrenia in the Taoiseach because, on the one hand, we provided the capital, the personnel, the technicians, the craftsmen, the labourers, right from the bottom up— all the prerequisites — of the marvellous industries which we have. One has only to look at the developments in housing and in hospitals to see the pattern; we provided the architects, the engineers, the planners, the finances, the professional people, the craftsmen, the artisans, the labourers, and the firms with the commodities required to erect these magnificent hospitals and housing estates. All this was done by Irish personnel. It did not matter whether it was unskilled labour or the highest professions; we had them all.
The personnel in Aer Lingus are Irish. So are the personnel in Comhlucht Siúicre, Irish Shipping, Irish Steel Holdings, Bord na Móna, the Electricity Supply Board, and so on. I can never understand why the Taoiseach ever thought it would not be possible for us to find the technicians, the capital and the know-how to do the samething in industry which could have gone into the export markets in the same way as Comhlucht Siúicre has done in recent years. They have had no difficulty. The Taoiseach said something to the effect that if we did not have these tie-ups with the Japanese, the Germans, the British and the Americans we would be denied access to markets. The fact of the matter is the Sugar Company has been able to develop export markets on its own. It has been able to establish the necessary contacts abroad. Aer Lingus has done very well on its own in competition with the best in the world. It seems to me that all the facts disprove the Taoiseach's contention that we had to have this contact with outsiders in order to establish, maintain and develop our industries to the maximum of which they are capable.
Our dependence for prosperity on the prosperity of Britain is a very good argument why we should refuse to extend that dependence to embrace other countries as well as Britain. If we continue in that fashion, we shall find ourselves in a very short time dependent on a prosperous Japan, on a prosperous Western Germany, on a prosperous America, and so forth. When they go into recession, we shall go into recession too. And the Taoiseach will tell us: "It is just too bad". If a bunch of extremists get a hold in Japan and wreck the industries there, what will be the result on us? Our industries will close down, and that is an end to Shannon.
The position is well illustrated by the possibility facing us as a result of a possible recession in Britain. I find it difficult to understand why the Taoiseach, with his considerable intelligence and ability—much more intelligence and ability than anything I can command—should not be clearly aware of the facts. He may have had certain views in the past. Everybody makes mistakes. Whatever views he may have had, it is now clear that, with the best will in the world, these people are incapable of expanding exports at a rate which will give us the expansion we require in order to reach a national income which will permit us to create a socially just society. I suppose that is where we really differ in this House.
I believe the Taoiseach said something to the effect that he did not want to develop our economy at the expense of values that we might have here. I do not know if he really gave that statement of his any really serious thought because, quite clearly, over the last 40 years we have developed our economy without giving a single thought to the creation of a socially just society for all our people. There is a minority who live in conditions of very great privilege, who have access to magnificent schools for their children because they can pay for them, who have access to first-class health services, again because they can pay for them, and who do not have to worry about their old age because they can pay the necessary moneys to look after themselves in their old age. That is a privileged society but is that really what the Taoiseach had in mind when he started out 40 years ago to try and build up a new Ireland, a new society?
At the present time the trend, as I think I have shown here, is that there has been no real expansion in the purchasing power of the income of the wage earner and salary earner. There has been, in my view, a disproportionate increase in profits made from the worker, and there has been practically a virtual standstill in the expansion of social services of one kind or another because various Ministers say that the money is not there to provide it. There have been continued decreasing opportunities in finding employment in the country and there has been continued emigration, as rural Deputies have pointed out, of disastrous proportions in country areas.
The only development which has created a gloss of prosperity has been the great easing of cheap money and hire purchase facilities, which has spread here from Great Britain and which has put the consumer, the worker, the salary earner in the position of buying essentials—at any rate what have become essentials—under the hire purchase system. The result is that the average white collar and working class family are up to their necks in debt to these hire purchase companies. That is a very unhealthy situation and it is largely due to the fact that their purchasing power has not increased to any appreciable extent in the last 20 years.
In his opening statement the Taoiseach seemed to hark back to the many speeches he made as Minister for Industry and Commerce. He did not really take into consideration the fact that he is now a person who has responsibility for over-all policy as it concerns all Government Departments and that, where they are defective, he should have tried to give us an explanation as to why they are defective and what steps he proposes to take to remedy the defects he finds in them.
Of course the great trouble, as far as I can see, is that there will be no appreciable difference in financial and economic policy even if the principal Opposition Party goes back into power. That is one of the most distressing truths of political life in Ireland at present but, while I do not wish it on the Government, it seems to me that they will be facing up to a time of very great difficulty because of the failure of their agricultural policy, because of their failure to provide outlets for agricultural produce at stable, guaranteed prices and because, as has been shown by each of the consultative councils of the bodies set up to advise on the marketing of agricultural produce of one kind or another, they have failed over the past 40 years to provide the necessary marketing facilities for farmers.
In addition to our internal problems it seems to me that the Government will be facing a really greater problem of a possible recession in Great Britain in which case, as Deputy Dillon pointed out, we on the periphery must be amongst the first to suffer because of the fact that British capital controls so many of our industries and there will be very little we can do about it.
The curious inconsistency in the Taoiseach's policy is that he said we must bring in foreign capital. I personally think that by the many excellent industries which he helped to establish he has disproved that. But the inconsistency comes from the fact that, at the same time as he said we must have these foreign industrialists in the country, he boasted that in fact most of the capital invested in the new industries about which he was talking is Irish capital. He cannot have it both ways.
