“Very well,” said Dr. O’Grady. “Now do we want a pier?”
“We want the money,” said Doyle.
“I don’t know,” said Father McCormack, “could we get the money without we’d build a pier when we’d got it.”
“My point is,” said Dr. O’Grady, “that the pier itself, the actual stone structure sticking out into the sea, being no particular use to any one once it’s built——”
“It’d be a public nuisance,” said the Major.
“We can do very well with an inferior kind of pier,” said Dr. O’Grady. “What I mean to say is we might spend a little less than we’re actually given.”
“What about the inspector they’d send down?” said Doyle.
“Them inspectors,” said Gallagher, “is as thick about the country as fleas on a dog. Hardly ever a man would turn round without he’d have one of them asking him what he was doing it for.”
For once Gallagher had spoken in a way that was acceptable to the other members of the committee. There was a general murmur of assent. Everyone present was more or less conscious of the enormous numbers of inspectors in Ireland. Even Major Kent, who had been in a bad temper all along, brightened up a little.
“I was reading a paper the other day,” he said, “that 80 per cent, of the adult population of Leinster, Munster and Connacht, were paid by the Government to teach the other people how to get their livings, and to see that they did what they were told. That included schoolmasters.”