McGilligan, PatrickFriday, 14 July 1933 |
Dáil Éireann Debate
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In Committee on Finance. - Vote 56—Industry and Commerce (Resumed).
I should like to draw attention to the fact that a quorum is not present.
Is nobody going to speak on the Government side on the Vote on Industry and Commerce? Well, I shall go on. This is the Vote which gives a Minister for Industry and Commerce, who is knowledgeable abo...
Absolutely.
Well the Deputy can give it. If the Deputy is jealous of Deputy Briscoe's efforts—
I shall join with him in it.
Yes, a bet of a few sausages from the Naas factory if we can get them. I read more about this factory than I have read in the Irish Press. A paper called Irish Industry published what, I suppose, A...
I do not think so. I have searched through Naas and I have not yet succeeded in getting an ordinary native sausage, let alone the delicatessen. Let me read what the Minister said about the factory on...
No; a requiem, I think, would be more appropriate than a blessing. The Minister said:— “It gave him great pleasure to perform the opening ceremony, firstly, because of the enterprise of those who had...
I am quoting from the paper——
I might have been hired to keep the factory alive, because it has gone west since. I intend to do nothing more than to mention the names of the directors and to indicate, as it should be indicated, t...
Possibly, but not in the sausage manufacture.
I submit that these names are material. I will just finish this extract: “The Minister and the guests sampled several of the different varieties of sausages.” Where is that factory now? Is there a D...
How many men does it employ? We had a promise of 200 people to be employed there. Are there five people employed there at the moment? The Deputy said it was open still. Does he know anything more ...
Were there more than five people employed there then?
It has got more or less chronically into that state. There is the sort of thing this paper was publishing with regard to Irish industry. It is aligned with what the Minister was saying as to the tot...
That is the excuse! We have often put that to the Minister and we have often said to him “people who are looking for a tariff will say almost anything to you if you are foolish enough to believe them....
He did not say that. He said that the apparel industry, which is covering a very wide range, has progressed, and then he added that every skilled worker is employed, and yet when he was saying that th...
There were at one time 3,858 people employed and in March, 1933, that number had been reduced to 3,360 or a decrease of nearly 500.
The Minister has given the figures himself. Let him read those figures. He has them in front of him.
I will make my speech and the Minister can answer it. He has been strangely silent all along. Let him give us the figures. I will have a chance of going after his figures.
Will the Minister prove me wrong? Nothing would more delight a great many people on his side of the House than to see the Minister proving me to be in the wrong.
There is apparently a lot of anger over this sausage factory.
Well, I suppose that is normal on the Fianna Fáil side.
It is a good topic, it is a great topic. If I were going out to make a cross-road speech I could rant as well as the best that Deputy Kelly could do about his lack of interest in the people looking t...
That may be, and that may be the thing the Minister may find himself up against about a variety of products. I am not sure whether Deputy Moore is a member of the particular society that met last nig...
Not upon this Vote but they would be on a farmers' vote.
No, but the discussion of this matter will be in order upon the Appropriation Bill.
Possibly; they were a bit dull last night. I would like to conform to anything that the Minister acting for the Minister for Industry and Commerce desires but there seems to be nothing that I can sp...
Your experience need not change. We both know where we are now. The Minister for Education who is acting as substitute for the Minister for Industry and Commerce promised more than I have read out. ...
I wonder when was that, but apparently there is another angry Deputy in the House. He promised that there were to be a number of additional workers to be employed. I do not know what meaning to put o...
I need not give any numbers; the Minister has given them.
The Minister said so in reply to a Parliamentary question. Apparently the Deputy does not believe his own Minister. Sometimes I do not either. I do not regard anything the Minister says as proof. I...
This is in relation to new employment. There was an additional number of 658 people who were to find employment in bacon curing. When the Minister was asked to answer about them he was lucky enough ...
Grain milling, I suppose that would be. 14,000—the Deputy has not been listening—how many extra has the Deputy got in his own constituency?
If you can break the price of the native combine's increase, it would be a good thing. I doubt if there are 100 people extra employed arising out of everything Fianna Fáil has done as a Government in...
And we are paying 5/- a sack extra on flour.
That is not all right. That is the type of economics that we are being served up with. We are paying 5/- per sack of flour more.
Certainly; you cannot call 5/- per sack of an extra whack on flour dumping by any means.
The people who have not got so many 5/- might find it a little more difficult than they used to to get flour and to get bread, and to go talking to them about the stoppage of dumping will not get the ...
There was a figure of 14,000 promised in the way of extra employment. Surely, here is an occasion for the Minister in charge of the whole thing to tell us what is being done. We have only had a pros...
Oh, that is the excuse!
The Minister does not remember the boast of the real Minister for Industry and Commerce: “Give us eight months' time.” That was from 12th May, 1932. Has he got the eight months? “Give us eight mont...
“Not metals” does not include sausages. Let me get back to the sausage factory. Who are at present employed in the Naas factory besides the directors? Could we have it said that Franz Vogel is stil...
It had so much to do that the Minister who is in charge of it went down to open that factory and to listen to all this about the export trade we were going to get with France, Germany, Switzerland and...
The Minister reminded me that the Minister whom he is substituting is an exceptionally busy man and I had to refer to this.
I hope there is no implication against the Minister. I had joined the Minister in with the Department and he is busy starting factories here, there and everywhere. This is one of them. I have spoken...
Not with the lesson to be learned that the Deputy wants to learn. The Deputy would like and we would all like to have rosy factories mounting up; that these promises were coming somewhere near fulfi...
And Cuibranovitch, who is probably a director of the Naas sausage factory. I do not see why a Montenegrin general should not be as good a sausage maker as Franz Vogel and the two Witstuns.
There are two or three items in the Vote which would require explanation. Sub-head K makes provision for the cost of exhibiting at the Paris fair including the rent and the hire of show-cases. May w...
I want details of the exhibits, not the whole of them, but some general idea.
I asked already whom the exhibits were in charge of. Was it a member of the Civil Service here, or someone specially hired for the occasion?
Who?
Who was the person specially engaged for the occasion?
The Minister does not know what has been done for the £450 voted for the Paris Fair?
The Minister knows that someone was hired by the Commercial Attaché, as he calls him, in Paris. Does he tell me that he has not the name on the files?
I am speaking of an individual who left this country and who was specially selected. It appears now that the Commercial Attaché in Paris was looking after the matter.
Does the Minister agree that someone was sent out specially from this country?
The Minister need not answer now. I would rather if he delayed and got the information, instead of saying that he has not got it on the files. It is inconceivable to me that the Department would hav...
I put it that it should be disclosed, and that the Minister should take steps before he replies to get further information, because it is certainly in the possession of his Department. On sub-head I...
I have some questions—
May I respectfully agree but when the Minister is called upon to conclude it is not the practice that the Minister makes the first speech at the conclusion. The Minister has not interfered in the deb...
In Committee on Finance. - Vote 57—Railways.
May I ask what the token vote of £10 is for?
If the Minister will let me know when speaking later how these law charges are likely to arise I will be grateful to him.
And an explanation was always given of it. The explanation varied, according to the changed circumstances of the Vote, and according to the expectations. I want to know now what is the expectation t...
I do not want to be interrupted. I want to have some information also in relation to sub-head C—payments in respect of steamer service. The Minister says it is expected that £300 will serve the subs...
I submit, sir, that that is hardly an answer.
Sub-head A makes payment to the railway company and there are certain obligations arising from that.
Then the Minister cannot say that it does not arise, if he does not know what the basis was.
It would put up the expenditure of the Galway-Aran service certainly.
I asked a few questions in regard to this Vote and I should like to put them again in so far as they have been left unanswered. I asked for some explanation of the sums set out in the Appropriations-i...
The Minister apparently does not really know anything more about it than what is in front of him. There should be some approximation between the sum paid to the Great Southern Railway Company and twi...
It is one of the appropriate things to be spoken of on this Vote.
I am speaking in respect of sub-head C—payments in respect of steamer services. These are not statutory. If the Minister asserts that these payments are statutory I will ask him to produce the statu...
There is not a line of it statutory. It has reference to the payments or subsidy to the Galway-Aran steamer service. If it is statutory I ask the Minister to name the statute so that that sort of ve...
I am asking what coal is used under that Vote, whether it is British or Irish or whether the experiments made have been taken into consideration. There is a payment of £300 there, and the question ar...
I submit I am entitled to raise on the question of the Galway-Aran steamer service the wages paid by that service; the cargo it carries, whether there has been an increase or a decrease of employment;...
I want to show that nobody could be convinced by the answer because the Minister does not know what he is talking about. He said that the Conciliation Department was there and that it adhered to and ...
He referred very particularly to the railway dispute. I want to point to the fact that there is conciliation machinery in the Department, and that that is not ordinarily used in railway matters show...
I do not know how it will. There is a big principle involved in all this, and quite a lot of talk has arisen out of disputes, and as to the necessity for conciliation machinery. The Minister acknowle...
I did not get my preliminary winding-up at any rate in Trinity College, Dublin, as the Deputy did. Question put.
In Committee on Finance. - Vote 58—Railway Tribunal.
I did not hear the last phrase. Is it that remuneration for the chairman is not considered necessary?
In Committee on Finance. - Vote 59—Marine Service.
Why have the appropriations-in-aid decreased, or why is it estimated that they will decrease?
It cannot be much if you do not know what it is. Vote agreed to.
In Committee on Finance. - Vote 60—Unemployment Insurance.
Might I ask Deputy Coburn am I not right in stating that the English Ministry passed the amendment to clear up a doubt? The matter is not by any means clear here. In fact it is quite obvious that if...
But it is not clear that it requires legislation, and I am putting the point—I want to speak on it myself—that I would be entitled to speak on a matter upon which doubt has arisen, as to whether it co...
We had the peculiar position to-night of the Acting-Minister for Industry and Commerce blundering in to give away all the things that the Party have so far kept hidden: the sort of character that one...
That was not what the Deputy, who always interrupts and cannot make a speech, poor dumb chap, envisaged at the time he was going for election. At the time of election we were to have all these things...
Why?
I did not.
I did not say that.
They were not there.
They are there, you know.
There is no “might” here.
Why?
This Vote should show it.
I take off my hat to the two Toms.
That is entirely rubbish.
On a point of information the Minister for Industry and Commerce stated that fifty per cent. of the work given out on relief schemes came under the heading of insurable occupations.
In Committee on Finance. - Vote 61—Industrial and Commercial Property Registration Office.
In connection with that item of saving on salaries, may I ask what was the actual sum got in last year in connection with patents? If the Minister cannot answer that, perhaps, he could tell us what wa...
The Minister must have before him last year's estimates of the receipts.
That is to say, they have gone down by £9,000. The receipts estimated this year for fees are, in respect of patents, £17,850; in respect of trade marks and designs, £4,475, and miscellaneous, £675. W...
Will the Minister, then, state if there is any truth in the story current throughout the city that there is a great falling off in regard particularly to trade marks and designs because it is believed...
At any rate, the position to be taken from this is that the estimated amount from all these sources is down by from £6,000 to £7,000, so that the saving of £4,000 in the office, mainly from salaries— ...
In Committee on Finance. - Vote 68—Electrical Battery Development.
Are we going to get any information on this?
I certainly am, and I want to say that I think the Minister's silence will be better than his speech on this Vote.
Oh, let us pass it. Vote put and agreed to.
Keep silent about it.
Possibly, because I never said anything foolish about it like the Minister. No wonder he is blushing.
Certainly, not having blundered as the Minister did.
In Committee on Finance. - Vote 1—Governor General's Establishment.
The Minister is certainly not here to give the House any benefit from his emoluments or his supposed oratorical powers so far as this Vote is concerned, but I suppose silence, even on this, would be b...
We have a Vote now moved in respect of the Governor-General. It shows a decrease of £2,682 on the year, but we know from a footnote that the Governor-General's salary has not suffered any reduction, a...
It might be, but we are entitled to know, on this Vote, just what is the position with regard to this establishment. Why has the establishment been cut down? What is it proposed to do with the offic...
I am not sure that it does not and, if it does not, it is an item that used to be paid for under this Vote, and I want to know why it is no longer being paid for under this Vote.
We are always entitled to compare expenditure one year with another. That is the principle on which the discussion of Votes has gone and I am keeping to that principle. That is an item of expenditur...
It is easy to make the matter relevant. Is the present Governor-General to be allowed to be the centre of insult to the French Government?
I apologise. I want to explain that I was not trying any tricks of the type, and I am leaving the matter. The Minister for Finance, when moving the Vote, simply said: “Here is the Estimate for the V...
What is sufficient, if it does not relate to the functions which have to be discharged? In that way we should pay anything that the Minister brings in, and we would not be able to discuss it.
I would if I thought there was any point to be made on it. At any rate, I would have thought that asking about hats was a rather sore subject to some of these people. Let me add that to the others. H...
I am sure we will get an explanation which will make that as clear as most of the President's other explanations. Is the hat entirely in order?
Is there any repercussion of that on the headgear of members of the Executive Council? That will probably arise on the President's Vote. Seriously, I think it is necessary that the House should be gi...
In Committee on Finance. - Vote 3—Department of the President of the Executive Council.
You do not anyway.
There are not many lessons you could teach. You would not be able to give a good grind.
Besides being an outrageous falsehood.
Outrageous falsehood I have said.
It is a scandalous and outrageous falsehood.
Sir, I submit that we have 23 hours to go.
In Committee on Finance. - Vote 70—Export Bounties and Subsidies.
You have always been in one.
In Committee on Finance. - Appropriation Bill, 1933.
What were the terms of the motion to sit late?
We have not got the Appropriation Bill.
This is the Second Stage of a Bill to apply certain sums out of the Central Fund and to appropriate the supplies granted in this session. One of the items set out in the Schedule is for the Salaries ...
I will start anything against Deputy O Briain, because he has not had the courage to say one word, to make a speech in this House.
I am making a comparison with what the President did here this morning and what he did years ago. I believe I am entitled to draw the analogy.
I will take as my second chapter what the Minister for Finance did.
We had here the disgraceful exhibition of the President, who was not able to stand up and answer criticisms directed against himself. That is just very comparable with the conduct he displayed years ...
The Deputy was barely weaned in those days.
The Deputy was very close and quiet about it in those days.
I am prepared to speak to the Minister about anything either of us did; but remember, I never funked two wars the way the Minister did. He missed his train in one place and he missed his tide in anot...
Even though it is a degrading one. One would think that the man who is President of the Executive Council, which has conducted itself in a particular way for a year, would have been able to stand up ...
It was a scandalous performance on the part of the President not to be able to stand up to criticism. It was still more scandalous for him to put up a person who tries to smother a debate with rather...
I am making no argument except the one I was precluded from making by the cowardice of the President in not being here, and his absence, I suggest, is solely due to his inability to face criticism. I...
Let the Deputy get it and read it. Does he not know that the statement was made, and would he argue with me on any occasion he likes as to what is the implication of the statement issued as a warning...
Very well, I will give it away; but we did not give away £19,000,000. That is the big question— the £19,000,000. That is the breadth and length of the statement—that this country was going to be sad...
We were warned to-day by the President that the settlement of the economic war is not in sight, and he brushed his Minister for Finance aside in the usual derisive way. The Minister had been putting ...
Column 274 on the 8th of June.
Indeed I will not. I might spoil my own style of English.
If the Minister was not so light-headed he would not bob up so much. The Minister cannot deny that he was full of anxiety about the Economic Conference——
——and that Senator Connolly was going into a most fateful conference for this country. There is another Deputy who is very anxious that the good prospects of this country in relation to a settlement ...
I think the comparison is a good one, and I should like to repeat it. The Deputy has heard what I said about the attack by a man named McWalter and how, in making a murderous raid on a man's house, h...
I think that anything which is a little bit perverted is seemly for the Minister.
I wonder whether Ministers think their conduct has conduced to order or to disorder in the country. We know of a certain occasion upon which a man who had been brought up on a certain charge and conv...
It is cowardice on the part of the Minister.
In Committee on Finance. - Appropriation Bill, 1933—Committee Stage.
I have a group of amendments here which I should like to hand in.
“Study” is not the word.
On the same point I have another amendment, but it is not one of the two types to which the Minister for Finance has objected. I want to get an opportunity of putting a point of view in relation to t...
I did not say that.
I said nothing like that.
Oh, no.
I do, better than the Minister.
Why not?
I should like to have some information as to what this particular declaration is which is required in certain cases before a grant can be received, who are the types of people before whom it is to be ...
I should like to get some better enumeration of the people who may get the grants and who are forbidden to receive such grants until a declaration of a particular kind has been made. What is the form...
I hope that is not a reference to the Attorney-General. Am I in order, sir, in discussing the Hogan trial on that reference of the
It may have been some reference to when he was in the police courts himself.
Of course I don't pretend to be the perfect little gentleman that the Minister is.
I thought it was a reference to the Minister being in the police courts himself. One has only to mention Smithfield—I hope the Minister understands. But let us get back to whether it is a grant made...
I do not think you, sir, have heard what I said. I don't think you are taking the Minister's word as reporting anybody's speech. Question put: “That the question be now put.” The Committee divided: T...
In Committee on Finance. - Dáil Eireann Loans and Funds Bill, 1933—Fifth Stage (Resumed.)
Is the word “Whitechapel” a Parliamentary expression?
May I apply the term Billingsgate to the Parliamentary Secretary? They are both local terms.
Go back to Trinity.
I was not afraid to pass all my examinations at the National.
Before any ruling is made upon that point I protest very definitely that the Bill has not got anything like sufficient discussion considering the audacious nature of its proposals. The Fifth Stage has...
But only one speech.
I protest very definitely against the closure being accepted on this occasion.
He is applying to the Minister the words he used. The Minister has been quite cowardly in his action.
The Minister could easily be described by a child with a knowledge of the first four letters of the alphabet who could put three of them intelligently together. Question put: “That the Question be now...
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