We find this Government coming to the end of their first year of office and using this very frightening language. With the use of a word which I heard commonly over the years in public life, it is realistic of them to be very frightened. They have every right to be very frightened but, unfortunately, that is no consolation to anybody who is the victim of the mistakes they have made and that we anticipate they will make in the very difficult months ahead.
Although we are naturally concerned with all the Ministers, I am not particularly concerned, nor do I have any right to be, with the activities of Ministers other than the Labour Ministers in the Government. In the controlled hysteria of the Minister for Industry and Commerce the other day, listening to him talking and using these very emotive words of panic, scarcities, high unemployment, crisis, and shortages, I could detect a note familiar to me because I had heard it before many years ago. It was the kind of think that you got during the war where you went into a shop or an office for a service or goods and the people seemed to get a certain pleasure out of saying: "I cannot do anything to help you because you must know there is a war on". That explained everything.
It strikes me that the incidence of the so-called oil crisis or power crisis is a Godsend to the Labour members of the National Coalition because it is now a question of "Don't hit me with the power crisis in my arms." We have had this example of their appeal to the Opposition Party to understand their dilemma. The great tragedy, of course, is that the Labour Party are effectively silenced in this terribly serious crisis of our existence.
Everybody is agreed that all over Europe we are now facing a very serious crisis and, from the point of view of making a systematic objective analysis of it, much as I might try to do that myself, I have no illusions about my own limitations in that regard. We certainly had quite outstanding members of our party who would be capable of bringing critical minds to bear on this situation if they were in a position to do it in an objective way. Unfortunately, they are now part of the Executive and they must accept the decisions of the majority in that Executive. That Executive is extremely conservative and unlikely to accept—as we know they have refused to accept—the rather radical thinking and radical solutions which it seems to me must become inevitable in time. It just depends on how long they take and how much suffering is endured by the ordinary people until it is accepted that the ordinary methods of handling this situation will not be effective, the methods of ordinary private enterprise capitalists or Senator Russell's well meant, I have no doubt, Micawber method of waiting for something to turn up.
There is an element of dishonesty in that. It is opportunist, of course, but there is an element of dishonesty in this waving the crisis at us every time there is a new price rise because most of us know—and, above all, the Minister for Industry and Commerce knows—that the main propulsant in driving high prices higher, the prices which he complained of when Fianna Fáil were in office—the main propulsant in driving those high prices to their extraordinarily high level at the present time and still on their way up as far as we can gather, was membership of the Common Market, the EEC. Nobody made the case that price increases for food, drink, clothes, services—food, drink and clothes obviously would eventually mean the inevitable increase in the cost of services—were the inevitable sequel to our joining the Common Market, with more conviction, and expertise, and skill than did the Minister for Industry and Commerce, Deputy Keating.
He advised the present Minister for Finance when they were on opposite sides. He warned him in the many interesting contests between the Minister for Foreign Affairs, Deputy FitzGerald, and Deputy Keating, before we went into the Common Market. I may have been prejudiced but I think the general feeling was that Deputy Keating made a very compelling case for the inevitability of the steep rise in prices. I have one quotation from what Deputy FitzGerald said in the Dáil. I gave it before and I will not repeat it. The effect of it was to say that on his best analysis or assessment of the situation we would not get the very high price rises forecast by the Labour Party and in particular by Deputy Keating.
Now we know that Deputy Keating was correct, that the Labour Party were correct and that the first and prime cause of these food prices, drink prices, clothes prices, services prices, cost of living, all the inflationary consequences of these about which we hear every day in the newspapers, was our entry into the Common Market, our entry into the EEC, as forecast by the Minister for Industry and Commerce, Deputy Keating. The extraordinary sight that we now have to watch is the ideological cartwheel —it can only be called that—of the Labour Party Ministers, led by the most dexterous of them all, because of his special talents, Deputy Keating, Minister for Industry and Commerce as the leading apologists for the inevitability of inflation and inflationary price rises. They were inevitable as soon as we went into the EEC—now they have become a very frightening reality. I think it is pertinent to ask the Minister to tell us what the Government feel they have gained by this decision taken by the Fine Gael Party, and supported by the Fianna Fáil Party, to go into the Common Market, the EEC. Nobody will deny that the one certain aspect of our lives which has changed is this uncontrollable inflation, as a result of going into the EEC.
We have now seen the indifference —not unexpected really when you think of the people we are dealing with—of these international capital bankers and financiers and I do not blame them. With their ideology, with their outlook, why should they care what goes on in Donegal, or Connemara, or Clare, or anywhere else? They do not care what goes on in the backward parts of their own countries, never mind in other countries and, in particular never mind our country, and the western seaboard. You now have this pathetic spectacle of the Minister for Foreign Affairs, Dr. Garret FitzGerald ferretting around. I have to use that word because it seems to me to describe him extremely well: the extraordinary activity of the man, the extraordinary dynamism and drive of the man, but he just seems to go round and round and round and never seems to get anywhere. However, at last it appears that, after enormous activity on his part, very great work on his part, the now-on/now-off regional fund appears to be effectively off. It certainly will not provide the kind of money which might have made it desirable for us to go into the capitalist cartel, as if we were ever likely to get any serious help from them.
To me one odd aspect of his bowling his begging bowl around Europe —and I made this criticism before of the former Taoiseach, Deputy Lynch —is this total absence of any sense of—I am not a great nationalist either—national self-respect, concern for the fact that other people might wonder what the hell you were doing going around Europe asking for money to make your own people more prosperous, or less hungry, or to employ your unemployed, or to look after the old people, or to care for and heal the sick. Speaking as a socialist, my answer is clear, but these people, speaking as capitalists, are concerned only for themselves.
Why should they be concerned with what is happening in the west in Connemara and Donegal, in Italy and now in parts of England? Having got a promise of a pittance from these people there is this extraordinary sense of exhilaration on the part of our statesmen when they come back to their airport interviews, with the obsequious interviewers not asking any difficult questions but giving them every possible assistance to create this absurd sense of euphoria which has permeated all their activities in the last nine or ten months.
Having brought back the outdoor relief from Europeans who worked very hard for their money and made great sacrifices for it, they organise their society so that they have this surplus to give. There is no sense of shame or self-criticism amongst our statesmen, our people or our political commentators. After 50 years we still have to look for money from complete strangers. Do they really owe us a living? On what grounds do we base this claim especially in the light of the attitude of the present Government and their predecessors? There is a miserly, mean, utterly selfish attitude on the part of the present Government as there was on the part of their predecessors in regard to their contribution to the Third World. It is absolutely scandalous. We are not a bit interested in what goes on in the poverty stricken areas of the Middle East, of Africa, of India or anywhere else. Occasional private donations are made but, as a State, we are not greatly disturbed about the Third World or what takes place there. Now we have a pretty good chance of finding out at first hand what it is like to be part of the Third World and now we are beginning to be rather frightened of it all, and understandably frightened since it is dreadful to be a pauper in the Third World. But that has not worried us up to now.
The present position is that the Government are apparently satisfied, although the satisfaction is somewhat muted I suspect now with their activities in the EEC. The continued display of the empty begging bowl on television despite—if I may use the description of a colleague of mine, the Minister for Foreign Affairs, Deputy FitzGerald—the racing commentary type of comment he makes when he arrives back. Despite this and the empty begging bowl it does appear that the people are at last beginning to understand that there is precious little in the Common Market, that it is not wonderful easy living for everybody.
On top of that you now have the very little talked about Social Fund. We were going to revolutionise the whole social structure and fabric of the State. The old people were to have the best living conditions, marvellous domiciliary services, greater allowances, pensions, et cetera. We were going to be better off than ever before with the Social Fund. Now we know that that was also an empty promise.
They were wrong about prices. The Minister for Foreign Affairs was totally wrong about prices. He was clearly wrong about the Regional Fund. He was wrong about the Social Fund and so were his colleagues, but he was the chief PRO for these. We all listened to him telling us what marvellous benefits we would get. The only counter-argument put forward was by Deputy Keating. Deputy FitzGerald was misled, or mistaken, whichever you like. Is it going to be any consolation to anybody to know he was stupid or foolish. These are unkind words and I would rather not use them. He must have been intellectually limited to have believed that the EEC meant all these things and to have gone around with such conviction as he did at every opportunity, at every crossroads, at every microphone, at every television camera telling us that we were heading for a land of milk and honey if we joined the EEC. Does anybody believe that any more? It was a disastrous decision to enter the EEC. We are only beginning to suffer and the suffering we will have to endure will be more severe than anybody realises.
The tragedy is that the mass of the people will suffer. Deputy FitzGerald or Senator Russell, who tells us to tighten our belts, et cetera, with all respect to both of these, they will not have to tighten their own belts very much. They will get by. But there are people who will have to tighten their belts and these people are being led into a new developing line now. We got a preview of it from Mr. Heath. This business of union bashing—I got echoes of it in Senator Quinlan's speech earlier—and his talk of a threat to the whole fabric of the State by the miners and the railwaymen— good luck to them and I hope they win out. The nation is in danger and it is all hands to the pump. The Minister for Industry and Commerce recently appealed to the Opposition to be understanding and considerate and to remember the national interest, et cetera. This seems to be the beginning of the soft line to be associated with the prospect of a new National Wage Agreement.
The workers must make up their own minds what they will do but I, for the life of me, cannot see why the workers should show any restraint or accept any restraint whatever unless they get a guarantee that that restraint will be equally shared. There is no sign whatever—nor has there been during the lifetime of this Government—that it is intended that this restraint should be shared.
I spoke about this during the last session and recounted—I am not going to repeat it now—the financial pages of the papers linked to the editorial hurrahs of the leader writer praising the marvellous achievement of Irish industry in making such marvellous profits, in declaring such wonderful dividends, in giving return on capital as never before. I saw Ranks increasing their dividends, Guinnesses and all of these people increasing their dividends, increasing their profits, and sending in to the Minister for Industry and Commerce an appeal for an increase in price. The insolence of it is quite blinding, but it has gone on for a long time and so I tend to become accustomed to it. I do not get as upset by it as I used to. I just hope that in time the irrationality of this kind of thing going on will percolate into the national consciousness and we will find that somebody will call a halt to this kind of thing.
The banks, whatever their function used to be, are now plain, ordinary usurers—money lenders—and they appear to be able to do what they want. There appears to be no control over the interest rates they can declare, and the case they make for increasing the interest rates does not seem in any way to them to be made to look ridiculous by the enormous profits they are already making on the existing interest rate. They are flaunting their wealth in the most extravagant and cruel way in my view by erecting luxury buildings of all kinds all over the country, while there are people living in overcrowded conditions. Recently we had the Allied Banks declaration that they are going to build a luxury village in the heart of Dublin in the RDS grounds. Has the Minister no power? Is the Minister unconcerned about these things? I frequently deride these places as talking shops. I have done it for many years, but in the bottom of my heart I sometimes have a feeling that there is some little thing that a Minister can do when he is sufficiently outraged by the behaviour of these people, that at last he can mobilise his colleagues and say that this must stop and that he can exercise some power. This goes on year after year here, and up to 1969 there was no opponent voice at all until we in the Labour Party then came and put forward certain attitudes, certain policy proposals, as an antidote to the irresponsible and apparently uncontrolled, ostentatious display of wealth by the minority in the face of the great need of the mass of our people for housing, care in old age, education and for health services.
Unfortunately, these ideas which are as valid today as the day they were made are now silenced by the fact that these talented men are now members of a Government dominated by the very conservative capitalist attitudes which have made it imperative for the Minister for Foreign Affairs, Dr. Garrett FitzGerald, to go round Europe with his begging bowl looking for a few halfpence here and a few pence there, because we are a chronically bankrupt society.
But one has this feeling that surely there must be a Government or a Minister within a Government who would feel that there must be an end to this. I hope that we will not get the lectures on wage restraint that are being given to the unfortunate miners and the railway workers in Britain, and I sincerely hope that they will be rejected if we do get them. Everybody knows that we could have arranged, because of our relative poverty, to make a different agreement—a form of association with the Common Market which could have obviated not all but many of the frightening repercussions in price inflation which we have seen here. I have little or no influence in the trade union movement, but I think that the Government is dealing fortunately with a very much more highly literate worker, particularly the industrial worker and to a considerable extent the agricultural worker as well, than they ever did before. I do not think it is going to be quite so easy to make him swallow the medicine this time as he has done year after year, just because he is asked to do so in the national interest.
It is about time somebody else shared this concern for the national welfare and the national interest and in that I will say include the industrialists, businessmen and the bank managers or whoever controls or owns the banks. It is quite obvious that this uncontrolled interest rate permitted to the banks, fed into the economy, has resulted in an important part of the cost, a component of the end-cost of any commodity in our society. Even the private enterprise businessman who must borrow at a high interest rate will pass it on.
But much more seriously, this high interest rate, if not used directly in relation to the most important aspect of our social life, in financing housebuilding, has had the other indirect effect of helping to propel the interest rates of the building societies at such a rate that now the price of a house is so enormous many young people starting life are simply unable to find the money for the down-payment or to finance the subsequent mortgage rates.
There is, therefore, a great social evil resulting from these uncontrolled interest rates permitted to the banks, and then inevitably passed on to the building societies.
There were fine plans for housing in the Labour Party's 1969 document. Even in the National Coalition programme housing was to become an emergency operation and the housing programme was to be initiated. I do not think anybody believes or protests that that did happen. In fact, little or nothing has been done to increase the 20,000-25,000 level which Deputy Molloy, when Minister for Local Government, initiated. Certainly, nobody has any impression in our society that there is in the mind of the Government a sense of urgency amounting to a need to declare an emergency for the thousands of families who are living in inadequate, grossly overcrowded and inhumane conditions, as a result of the rash of luxury office buildings, which to me is probably the major scandal in our society.
All over Dublin luxury office buildings are being put up, while at the same time there are thousands waiting for houses. How can a Government responsible to the electorate continue to behave in this way and get away with it? That is one of the achievements of the communications service, the fact that it concealed from the mass of the people the Government's lack of interest in the welfare of the majority and their prior concern for the wealthy minority. Otherwise, it would not be allowed to go on.
One of the things that always fascinates me is to watch building workers on an office building site and to see the marvellous craftsmanship, tradesmanship, workmanship and labour involved in putting up these enormous buildings. Why is it, the trade unions do not declare that they will not go on providing these office buildings until the needs of the ordinary worker in relation to houses are first provided for?
Certainly, that should be true in relation to the Allied Irish Banks luxury village in the RDS grounds. But it seems to me that Fine Gael are being true to themselves. I do not blame them for that: I have always complimented them for that. They are always conscientiously right-wing conservative, capitalists; they believe in that; they have always preached that. Except for a short period, when Deputy FitzGerald was wooing the Labour Party—and I think practically he, alone; I do not think any other members of the Fine Gael Party indulged in that exercise—we are getting conventional, right-wing, conservative, capitalist government. The extraordinary thing, if you look at it from the point of view of the democrat is that they have no overall right to give us these policies. Electorally they have no overall right to give us these policies, and they are only doing so with the consent and support of the Labour Ministers who have betrayed their socialist principles in giving them this support.
To some of us the 1969 period was not, as it apparently has been to others, an academic exercise in L and H or Hist. or Phil. politics; it was a real conviction on our part that very serious changes had to take place in a society, very profound changes had to take place in the fabric or the structure of our State, if we were to achieve the objectives, even in the 11-point or 13-point programme, housing, social concern, health, education, all of these things. They could not possibly have been achieved, if there is any meaning in these points at all, if they were not merely mouthing of words—as they obviously were—without fundamental restructuring of the whole fiscal and financial basis of our society. This has not been done. Until it is done, these objectives—egalitarian, socialist attitudes in education, health, old age, housing and so on— will not be achieved.
Fortunately, it is relatively unimportant that a tiny little place like Ireland still potters along in the control of people who have these totally discredited views about the possibility of manipulating the capitalist system in order to provide a just society. Does anybody seriously believe this any more? Anybody? Ireland, England, America, any part of the European states? It is one of the wonderful satisfactions of my life to spend 25 or 30 years talking about this and being ridiculed, as we necessarily were, because we kept on saying it: capitalism is in crisis, and it was not in crisis, but we kept on waiting for it to come into crisis. This is really what must be the happiest period of my life, to watch it collapsing.
The only qualification I would make is that the people who will, unnecessarily I fear, inevitably get hurt, are the people for whom I have worked all my life in politics—the ordinary people, the mass of people: it is they who will suffer, because of the obstinate recalcitrance of the politicians in these various countries who, I am certain were as convinced of the ideological merits of a socialist case as I am, with infinitely better intellectual apparatus than I have but continued to potter on and make pragmatic decisions hoping that, as Senator Russell said, something might turn up until the inevitable calamity. A little country like Ireland does not matter very much. But this will obviously have very serious repercussions for everybody and it will take some time before the revolutionary situation develops. Most Senators would agree now that it is not such an unlikely possibility as it used to be.
I will not deal at any length with the interest I have in mineral wealth because I hope we will get an opportunity of dealing with that in considerable detail. As I said to the Taoiseach when he was here last, whatever conservative attitudes the Fine Gael Ministers have had, they must now seriously reconsider, in the light of the frightening possibilities facing us all of high unemployment, industrial collapse and all the social consequences of these things in any economy, their very serious responsibilities in regard to mineral wealth in the Navan mines. Whatever easygoing attitude they may have had in this regard and the need to look after their friends or to allow it to be developed by private enterprise, capitalism, they now have a very serious responsibility to do everything they can to see that not a penny-piece goes anywhere except to our people. They know well how this can be done. We cannot spare anything in the siege economy which the Minister for Industry and Commerce talked about on Sunday, the war economy. We cannot afford the extravagance, the waste, the squandering, of private enterprise, the capitalist approach to this wonderful wealth which we have in the country.
In some ways the oil crisis is fascinating to me because of its implications in this regard, the manipulation of scarce materials by a poor country of the Third World to achieve its political ends. This is an obvious thing but unfortunately we do not appear to have accepted its possibilities except in so far as we did way back when we simply denied a very obvious thing—friendship—to people in County Galway. Boycott. How enormously powerful that was as a weapon. I would beg the Minister for Industry and Commerce—I know he does not share my views but I have never thought any the less of him for that—in the light of the very serious situation to try to ensure that this badly needed wealth is used for our people in order to mitigate as far as possible the considerable suffering which most of us agree is facing us in the months ahead. It is one source of wealth which is our own and for which we need not be beholden to anyone. The whole question of the disposal of mineral wealth, oil and gas, has assumed a completely new meaning for our society. It would be completely unforgivable if the Government allowed their preoccupation with doctrinaire and conservative ideological attitudes to deprive our people of this very badly needed wealth.
The power crisis is a subject of considerable delicacy and complexity. Ghandi's liberation of the whole subcontinent of India by his wonderful disobedience campaign was probably the greatest human achievement since Christ was on earth. They say that war is diplomacy by other means. We are now facing another war but it is a very civilised and sophisticated war. It is a very humane war if one takes it in the context of the dreadful wars —Auschwitz, Buchenwald, napalm bombing, blanket bombing, Coventry, Hamburg and Dresden. Living through it and suffering as we will, it is worth bearing in mind that it would be an advance for humanity if we could—ideally not make anybody suffer—but if we feel very strongly about a point that we could do it this way rather than in the way in which Mr. Heath was brought to the conference table at Sunningdale the other day. Nine hundred poor people were blown to bits before he saw sense. I was surprised at the compliments paid to him; the insolence to the former Taoiseach when Deputy Lynch asked for the right to discuss the matter with him and then because they eventually became terrorised he came to the conference table. That is by the way.
The Taoiseach, Deputy Cosgrave, referred very briefly to the Israeli conflict of 1967 and what our attitude will be in this war—the Minister for Industry and Commerce, Deputy Keating, has called it a war. Are we clear on the position we intend to take up on the matter? One of the many causes in which I have become involved over the years was that against any kind of anti-semitism. At the same time, there is the question of Israel, of its militarism and its expansionist attitudes. Its origins were the expropriation of a state in order to solve the guilt feelings of a post-war European world. We are now paying for that. The Palestinians did not feel that they should have their country expropriated and, understandably, we share that feeling about forcible expropriation.
One has to remember the fear of the Israelis of the various commando attacks. It is not a simple question. I do not want to dwell on it at great length, but they obviously were frightened of their neighbours, too. It appeared that no formula was arrived at for giving them the boundaries behind which they could feel secure. I believe that the post-1967 stalemate was that the militarists in the Zionist cause appeared to be unduly exultant and unwilling to negotiate.
That is seen at one level. From the other level, of course, there is the struggle between the United States of America and the Soviet Union in the Middle East. What is our position in that very difficult state in the light of our present moral commitments? There is a moral factor involved in it. It is easily as tangled as our own Partition question. What is the position of the Government? Are they, wittingly or unwittingly, playing a part on the side of the United States of America? The United States of America have committed themselves to support the Israelis in this conflict. They have invested enormous amounts of wealth of different kinds—military wealth mostly.
On what grounds are we taking our stand in relation to the Israeli conflict? What will satisfy our Minister for Foreign Affairs to the extent that we have to be satisfied at all? We have to be, to a certain extent, because there is considerable goodwill for us in the Middle East. Most of these countries, Algeria, Libya, Tunis, Egypt, have suffered occupation by the Imperialist powers in the last 200 to 300 years. For that reason, from my short acquaintance with some of these people from those areas, I know that their attitude is one of considerable sympathy for us.
To what extent are we going to keep it clear that we do not wish to be involved in the US v. USSR struggle? What position do we take up if there is, in the Common Market, the question of whether we share our supplies because the Dutch have a pro-Israeli policy? Do we accept that point of view? Is this another of the disastrous consequences of any reprisal the Arab nations may apply in relation to what they consider to be a recalcitrant western European country such as Holland? Is there any limit to which we will go? Are we to be unlimited in our support for whatever stand is taken in the EEC? Are we, the one non-colonialist state, with our hands clean from this kind of colonial exploitation, in a special position? Can we, in the entanglement of the EEC, use that special position to try to mitigate the hardship on us of the, to me, perfectly legitimate tactics of the Arab states in the present situation?
Has the Minister for Foreign Affairs any intention of sounding out these various countries? I have not got great faith in him, as I made clear during my contribution, as a negotiator but, at the same time, I recall that in the time of the last Government a number of us were asked to go to the Middle East to look at the question of Palestinian refugees whose plight is particularly terrible. It can be the only explanation for the dreadful things the Palestinian underground movement are doing in the various parts of the world. Deputies Cooney and Cluskey were two of the people who went, as well as a member of the Fianna Fáil Party. I understand that the contacts made there were particularly friendly and there was considerable sympathy. Can that be used in the present crisis?
Regarding Sunningdale, I presume we will have another chance of dealing with it later. One has to compliment the Fine Gael Party and Deputy Cosgrave, the Taoiseach, on complete consistency. Cumann na nGaedheal Fine Gael always believed in a Partition State. In going over 50 years after the original Treaty negotiations to ratify the acceptance of a partitioned Ireland, it seems to me that Fine Gael were acting completely in character in doing this. Whatever compliments are in order for that they are welcome to.
The whole Sunningdale episode was a considerable achievement in public relations because so little was achieved in addition to what was already a reality in relation to Partition. We could have had a Council of Ireland any time during the last 50 years. It was just our own whims or our own foolishness or whatever reason that kept us from forming it. The politicians of that period had their reasons no doubt.
After that what else has been achieved? We have registered the right of the British Army of occupation in part of our country. It seems to be a mix with the United Nations. It is an extraordinary comment on the 50 years of failure of Government since the State was formed that now the right of a group within the State to opt out should be conceded to them on foot of a case made by them and I might say on foot of a good case made by them. That is the sad part of it. I do not know if there is a precedent—if there is a precedent the historians will tell us—for an invading occupying army long after it has lost its imperial and colonialist power claiming the right to the continued exclusion of the group which, in the first instance, established its right to possession by the force of arms. Everybody will agree that the absorption of ethnic groups is a perfectly normal historical process in the formation of any nation. Most of us, I think, would claim to be a polyglot, ethnically at any rate. I myself am Anglo-Norman-Spanish-Irish and I think that would be a reasonably common finding within our society.