McGilligan, PatrickWednesday, 26 November 1930 |
Dáil Éireann Debate
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Ceisteanna—Questions. Oral Answers. - Proposal re Cement Factory at Clare Castle.
I have received a copy of a printed statement issued by the Fergus Reclamation Syndicate, Limited, outlining in general terms a basis for a scheme for the erection of a cement factory on lands owned b...
The assistance of the Department is at the disposal of anybody who cares to investigate this matter. Certain investigations have already been made. The departmental investigation is mainly based on ...
The Department's resources and experts are at the disposal of anybody who cares to avail of them, but the Department cannot give expert advice on that matter.
Ceisteanna—Questions. Oral Answers. - Payment of Unemployment Benefit.
Except for the short period between 8th November, 1920, and 30th June, 1921, applicants for unemployment benefit have been subject to an initial waiting period of six days ever since the first establ...
Ceisteanna—Questions. Oral Answers. - Number of Registered Unemployed.
On the 30th of June and the 3rd of November, 1930 (the nearest dates to those mentioned in the Deputy's question), the numbers of persons registered as unemployed were:—
Private Business. - Vote No. 57—Railways.
I move:— “Go ndeontar suim bhreise ná raghaidh thar £7,750 chun íoctha an mhuirir a thiocfidh chun bheith iníoctha i rith na bliana dar críoch an 31adh lá de Mhárta, 1931, chun íocaíochtanna fé Acht n...
I am not in a position to make any statement with regard to the negotiations which the Deputy alleges are going on.
No.
What is the matter?
I do not know anything about the negotiations to which the Deputy refers. I have no official information about them.
No official information about them.
Nothing can be done in regard to Government-owned railways without myself having some say in the matter. I can come in on the proper occasion but I am not in at the moment. Question put and agreed to...
Private Business. - Vote No. 69—Electrical Battery Development.
I move:— Go ndeontar suim ná raghaidh thar £25,000 chun íoctha an Mhuirir a thiocfidh chun bheith iníoctha i rith na bliana dar críoch an 31adh lá de Mhárta, 1931, chun Taighde agus Forbairte maidir l...
Unsupported!
Unnamed experts!
Who is unnamed!
You must correct your statement.
I am inclined to base this entirely on Professor Allman's report.
How have events shown that?
No. Have you any idea how long patents take to work out?
What time did Edison take to work out any of his discoveries?
Ten years is the average.
Is Deputy Flinn not going to speak on this matter? He spoke about it in Kerry, and I would like to hear him here.
We would like to hear Deputy Flinn, or any rough diamond talk either.
Deputy Flinn was very keen on this matter, and it is strange he is not here to discuss it. He surely had notice of it.
It is hard to get some Deputies to learn anything.
Who is on the Shannon Board?
Since when?
Is that the extent of the Deputy's information?
Keep to the Shannon Board.
Objection has been taken to voting this money until Deputy Lemass gets his curiosity satisfied by having the matter referred to an independent technical expert committee to report whether a valid and ...
The Deputy passed an examination to enable him to be appointed as a patent agent and should know a little more about the subject than he does.
I am answering the Deputy. The Deputy has a certain reputation as a patent agent.
He puts up certain submissions here and asks people to believe them because of his experience. Does he not know that occasionally people claim things in order to find out whether they can be patented ...
Not after the length of time during which I had to tolerate the Deputy.
No, not on the lines on which the Deputy has already spoken. Who is going to determine whether a valid and sustainable patent exists? That will be determined hereafter; you are going to wait until a...
I am taking full responsibility for what I am saying, and these people can challenge me if I am saying anything in conflict with their recommendations.
What did I say in June, 1928? If it is the statement about railway electrification which is referred to, I said something which, if the Deputy queries it, I am going to prove. Supposing I did say so...
I am quoting them to show that I am proceeding along the lines of development they suggested and I am backed up by them in that. That is the general tenor of their report. I am to ask a committee to...
I said that a certain discovery had been under examination, that “further investigations are being made, and there are still further experimentations in connection with it.” I further stated: “I do n...
I am quoting from the debates of the 13th June, 1929.
Exactly, what led me up to the further point to which I have got now.
At any rate whatever it was, it enabled me to make that statement. I still abide by that statement.
What point?
We have distinctly.
I had the results of the various reports of the people who were interested in the matter, the reports of the experts, not the dishonest stories promulgated by dishonest papers, of which the Deputy spo...
The Deputy does not know anything about it.
The Deputy is in the outer darkness as far as this is concerned and is looking for the light. Because the Deputy has not light he is content to describe this more or less as a failure.
The Party that would like to land us into all sorts of experiments into wheat-growing, that does not want tariffs examined by anybody, that wishes to upset the whole economic fabric of the country wit...
——wants to have a sum of £25,000 for a certain purpose examined by a new committee of experts after I have told them that two committees have already sat upon it and that one individual expert outside...
They will be published in good time, but they certainly will not be published for the purpose of enabling members of the Party opposite to make up their minds whether they should vote for this sum of ...
And the Deputy asked for the other opportunity.
The Deputy saw that there were other runs, and he did not bother.
The Deputy has not seen that the coach was running since with certain people on board?
The Deputy did ask to be present on another occasion.
It is a matter of shyness really that is responsible for the Deputy's lack of information.
The Deputy asked a lot of questions. I am not going to answer these questions. I have not the technical knowledge to answer them. They were put up as a sort of elementary type of questions, the ans...
Or the other people, too.
There is no reason why it should not be given to people who ask for it at the proper time and at the proper place.
If the Deputy heard it it would make as slight an impression on his mind as it would make on mine. The Deputy cannot urge that it would help him to make up his mind. The answers to the questions on ...
We are both in a position to get technical advice. I have got it. But there are three definite reasons why certain technical information cannot be given. Deputy MacEntee talked about the veil of se...
The Deputy did his best to damage it. What is the meaning of the Deputy's long oration about Edison and the years he had spent; how he had tried out zinc as one item? What was the conclusion to be dr...
The Deputy is luckier than I thought he was. The Deputy must have read it, at any rate.
I am not sure that I cannot quote what the Deputy said as being a matter relevant to this debate, seeing that the Deputy has, with his usual discretion, stayed away from the debate which he must have ...
Deputy Briscoe talked about the country. I said in my opening statement that I had a company—Celia, Ltd. There were certain directors. The names of the directors could be obtained by anybody who ca...
Does the Deputy disbelieve this?
The insinuation is that I am giving the House wrong information.
There could not be any other interpretation of this letter.
There cannot be any other interpretation of the letter that I have got than what I am saying, and no ignorant insinuation of the Deputy will drive me any further.
I have stated what that Director said to me. I stand by it. That is the gist of his letter. I am not quoting, and I will not produce the letter. If the Deputy thinks I am saying anything that is w...
It is only the Deputy's business to make an ignorant insinuation which is in line with the Deputy's talk previously, and I do not mind. That was late in 1929. I think it was in the early spring of t...
There are four to be on the new Board.
Two of the original six, yes.
Yes. The Board will be reconstituted and will emerge with four. There has not been a change in the directorate to date. The company has not been transformed. Certain directors have gone, but the c...
One.
What does the Deputy mean by “now”?
As a matter of fact, there was an extra director co-opted. If the Deputy has any plain question to ask I will answer. What is he suspicious about?
I ask the House generally to take the view that Deputy O'Hanlon took, that here is a responsibility in connection with this matter, and that the responsibility, as far as this House is concerned, is m...
I do not know what that means.
I have lodged a number of specifications which, when added together, are complete.
I do not know what the Deputy means by “any certainty.”
Yes.
No.
“Those specifications.” What does that refer to?
There are a number of patents lodged.
I will take nothing the Deputy says as being correct.
No; that was not my explanation.
Hear, hear!
Sometimes.
The only point remaining open is with regard to its life.
That is quite a different thing.
The Deputy is wrong.
I would not like to say that.
There is experimental work going on all the time.
And a great deal more.
The House would not understand them.
Originally I asked the Executive Council for £10,500 and they granted that sum. Eventually, when we came to discuss this matter, we decided that £5,000 was enough to carry on.
It was handed to me, but, if it was handed over, any part of it not used was recovered.
The Deputy dare not say that any of the money has gone astray, whether or not he would like that were so.
Any reason given to whom?
I am not sure on the technical point.
The Deputy has made so many statements that I hate to discredit him. I asked originally for £10,500, and at a particular period I made up my mind that £5,000 was sufficient. I am now asking for much...
It is the usual method when a grant-in-aid is being voted to put in a footnote similar to this. Deputy Lemass has talked as if he were very angry with the House for what it has already done, and afte...
Deputies must get down to regard this as a business proposition to be dealt with in a business way. There is no sane man amongst them who would contend that the Comptroller and Auditor-General should...
I will do whatever I think is necessary to justify myself to the House.
I should like to have that quoted.
The circumstances are dead against that.
It will be under my control completely.
I shall have to consider what I shall do when I see——
When I see how the development goes.
Whatever right I give them.
If I give them the right.
And the Comptroller and Auditor-General would be on top of me. Cannot he stop it?
What is the use of the Comptroller and Auditor-General?
No.
I said there would have to be an accounting officer and that he would bring the whole thing under the ordinary financial regulations.
No.
It would have reference to everything except this.
No, I said it related only to that.
By no means. Obviously I could not say anything about a sum of money which at that date I had not got.
I like the Deputy's honest indignation springing from his great financial reputation.
I do not want the Comptroller and Auditor-General brought into this, because I say that the system of the Comptroller and Auditor-General's Office and a commercial proposition are incompatible. You ca...
It would apply to the Comptroller and Auditor-General looking after the details of the expenditure of the money given out under the Trade Loans Act.
That is a different thing.
The Comptroller and Auditor-General certainly has no function with regard to the day-to-day business arrangements of any money guaranteed under the Trade Loans Act. It would be quite as foolish to put...
He will be in this one exactly the same way.
Choke down your righteous indignation for a minute. The Comptroller and Auditor-General will be able to see that this money goes to the proper quarter, and that nothing more than that will go, and tha...
The Comptroller and Auditor-General has not the right to follow that money into the details of the business. No business could be carried on under the Trade Loans Act in that way. It would be a terr...
I shall consider that question.
I shall consider the question of the account. Some time or other, I have no doubt, accounts will have to be produced by an outside firm of auditors dealing with this matter, but when they will be pro...
That eventually I will supply all these to the Dáil.
Unless the Deputy thinks that telling all the details to the Dáil means so many nothings.
I think I have. Question—“That the Estimate be reduced by £10”—put. The Committee divided: Tá, 45; Níl, 76. Tá
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