FROM THE ARCHIVES:As the second World War began its third year in autumn 1941, the Fianna Fáil government restricted emigration amid fears that too many young people were leaving as employment at home dwindled - JOE JOYCE.
‘OF THE many problems which the third year of the war may bring to us, that of unemployment is fundamentally the most serious of them all and may have more permanent consequences on the nation’s future,” said Mr. Seán Lemass, Minister for Supplies, addressing a Fianna Fáil meeting in the Catholic Club, Dublin, last night.
He stated that in the four months ending in August last, a total of 17,000 persons went to Britain to work, but said that that figure included migratory workers, who habitually go to Britain for harvest work.
The contraction of employment developed slowly at first, the Minister said, but it was gradually being experienced over an ever-widening field.
Notwithstanding efforts to keep open the channels of supply, these were deteriorating with increasing rapidity, and, unless some big changes occurred in the circumstances affecting this country, a serious crisis might develop.
War time unemployment could strip many homes of the comfort and security won by years of saving, and might reduce the power of recuperation after the war.
“It is,” said Mr. Lemass, “the primary cause of the new tide of emigration which is now flowing. It can be the cause of social unrest and, therefore, a danger even to our national solidarity.”
It had been proposed that the Government should prohibit this emigration. That, if adopted, would represent a very drastic use of authority in the case of a State which was not at war.
The State was undoubtedly entitled to command the services of its citizens in times of urgent necessity, but it would be an entirely different matter to restrict the movement of citizens for whose services there was no immediate demand at home.
To obviate any danger of the country’s man power becoming so depleted by emigration as to endanger the supply of labour required for the production of food and fuel and other necessary work, the Government had decided to make arrangements whereby the recruitment of workers for employment outside the country would be brought under official supervision and control.
Except in the case of migratory agricultural labourers from Donegal and Mayo, travel permits would not be issued to persons until there had been a specific examination of individual circumstances by a local officer of the Department of Industry and Commerce, and a formal decision given that the applicant had not employment immediately available for him.
It had been arranged with the British authorities that all applications for employment made direct by Irish citizens to the British Ministry for Labour would be referred back here for examination.
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