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Dáil Éireann debate -
Tuesday, 28 Apr 1964

Vol. 209 No. 4

Committee on Finance. - Resolution No. 11—General (Resumed).

Debate resumed on the following motion:
That it is expedient to amend the law relating to customs and inland revenue (including excise) and to make further provision in connection with finance.—(Minister for Finance.)

When I reported progress on Thursday last, I was dealing with the obvious desire of the Government to mend their entire attitude towards the ninth round of wage increases. I was dealing with the manner in which the Government had claimed, at a time when it suited them, to be responsible for this and with the obvious effort of the paper which represents the views of the Party in Government now to dissociate the Government from the consequences of the reduced value of money because they realise, as the country realises, that the results have not been what it was originally thought by the Government they would be. At the time the 12 per cent increase was introduced, it was indicated that through better management, harder work and more diligent application by management and personnel, it would be possible for many of our industries and services to absorb the increase in wages. The first indication we had of the effect of increased charges arising out of increased wages was when we were told that the Minister for Posts and Telegraphs would, in the course of time, bring in a measure designed to increase drastically the cost of postage, telephone calls, and, in fact, all services provided by his Department.

In his Budget the Minister for Finance made a passing reference more or less to this but, overnight, the House and the country were made aware of the contribution the Minister for Posts and Telegraphs would make in consequence of the increased costs that had fallen upon his Department. If a Department of State, answerable to a Minister and a Government, cannot arrange to absorb the increase presented by the Government as being projected, how could any industrialist or anybody employed in the distributive trade so adapt his business as to absorb completely the increase agreed upon? Is it not clear that State bodies failed, like the Minister for Posts and Telegraphs, to absorb this increase and have, in fact, passed it on to the public by way of increased bus fares, increased rail fares and an increased price for sugar? Many of these concerns are, as we know, expertly managed and controlled and, if any body in the country could absorb these increases, surely these companies and firms should have been able to do so?

We have a situation now in which the cost of living has been and is spiralling ever since the Government introduced the turnover tax. The turnover tax was the fuse which caused the explosion of the spiralling cost of living. We in Fine Gael are sometimes asked: "What would you do in such a situation?" The answer is quite simple. We would not have allowed a situation to arise in which the necessaries of life, bread, flour, sugar, medicines, clothing, footwear, would all be taxed. When the Government were introducing this new method of taxation, it was presented as an entirely new way of securing the finances of the State. It was alleged that the traditional methods of taxation had been exhausted. Deputies behind the Minister expressed the view—and I am sure quite sincerely, having heard it expressed by members of the Government—that after the turnover tax was introduced last November, there would be no increase in the taxation on petrol, cigarettes or beer for many years. What a shock they must have got when they discovered that, despite the buoyancy of the revenue, despite the rate at which revenue was pouring into the Minister's coffers, the contents of the Budget were entirely contrary to the arguments advanced, and repeated ad nauseam in this House and outside it, on the merits of the turnover tax.

It is not good enough for a Government Minister to say to the Opposition "If you were in power tomorrow, what would you do?" The function of the Opposition is, so far as they can, to foresee the consequences of the actions of those charged with the government of the country. We reminded them of the occasion when the cost of living was deliberately increased by Government action when the food subsidies were slashed. and later abolished, and, having recalled those occurrences to the Minister and the Government, the Opposition have done their duty, and are in no way responsible for the consequences if the Government persist in their actions, despite the reasoned arguments of the Opposition.

Of course, the Minister for Transport and Power repaired to the hustings at the weekend and challenged the Fine Gael Party to point out where economies could be effected in the public administration. Of all members of the Government to go out to the hustings and have the nerve to inquire where economies could be effected, when he himself is the most superfluous Minister in the Government, when he himself could very well be done without, and when an economy could be effected by the abolition of that Ministry. What has resulted from the setting up of that Ministry? We were told by the Leader of the Government over the past quarter of a century that he could so arrange the affairs of CIE that they would pay their way, or break even. The last deadline to be set was 1964, and towards that end we had the creation of this additional Ministry, with no other responsibility but for transport, power and tourism.

During his period in office, he has proceeded in my constituency to rip up every line of railway. He has ripped up every single mile of railway line in that extensive constituency. The whole thing was done in such a way that no single representation was permitted from anybody within that area affected by the railway closure. We were told: "You are the people who must suffer." We were told that the line was not economic. Is there any single line that is economic when the Minister comes in here and says: "We have been defeated in our efforts to make the railway system pay, and we want £2 million more in subsidies?"

When that line was being closed, it was presented to the residents of Bandon, Bantry and all points west of Cork, that they would be making their contribution to the national effort to make the railway system pay. We in the Cork local authority are faced with the additional cost of carrying on our roads many thousands of tons of beet and other goods which were formerly carried by rail. There is no provision to assist us, and no compensation for the higher charge upon the Cork ratepayers for the maintenance of those roads. We get some compensation on the capital development side by the removal of certain railway bridges. That is capital assistance only, and it is in no way comparable with the assistance which was given to the constituency of the Parliamentary Secretary to the Taoiseach and the Minister for Local Government.

I cite that as an instance of how the Government have placed the increased transport costs on the shoulders of the ratepayers and the consumers. For what purpose? To relieve the Exchequer. Notwithstanding the buoyancy of revenue, and notwithstanding the manner in which people were obliged to pay increased charges for everything they ate, drank and wore, in his Budget the Minister has had to introduce additional taxation. When the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Finance sat in these benches, he was not without ideas for the effecting of economies. He said he would amalgamate Departments. He said that a Fianna Fáil Minister would be quite capable of administering two Departments, but the next time his Party got back into office, there was an increase in the number of Ministries. The cost of government is £100 million more than it was when the Government assumed office; when we were assured that the end product would be 100,000 new jobs. To-day we have 70,000 fewer people in employment notwithstanding the expenditure of that additional £100 million.

This Budget was presented in the country as a farmers' Budget. The debate has gone on for such a lengthy period that Deputies intervening at this stage have heard the contributions of other members from various sides of the House. I did not think that in discussing the Budget the Minister for Social Welfare and I would have anything in common. I was rather surprised—but of course I know the reason—when he intervened last week and made an excellent case explaining that this is not a farmers' Budget at all. It was presented by the Government as being a farmers' Budget. The member of the Government selected to speak on the radio on the night of the Budget was the Minister for Agriculture. That was no surprise. It was deliberately done to convey the impression that on this occasion special consideration would be given to the agricultural community. If the Minister for Social Welfare walked down through Ballyfermot and said that, he would not get much sympathy for that point of view, so last week—and I do not know whether it was intentional or inadvertent—he gave the impression that other sections of the community got increases and the farmers had been left behind.

Let us see what the Government did when they decided to give some relief to the farming community. When the dairy farmers got an increase of 1d. per gallon on the price of milk delivered to the creameries, on the same day we were told the Government proposed to find that money by putting 1d. on the packet of cigarettes. The milk farmers were jibed at and joked in every bar and in every public house throughout the country by smart Alecs. The Government repeated that performance in this Budget. It is suggested in one of the daily newspapers to-day that there was a deliberate transfer of £5 million from the urban community to the farmers.

Let us examine that. The agricultural community is approximately 60 per cent of the entire population. We must assume that this money is got from the 40 per cent. We must assume that those engaged in agriculture do not smoke, drink or drive a car as otherwise they could not possibly get this transfer of money from the urban and industrial community to the agricultural sector.

I strongly contest this figure of £5 million. I am in complete agreement with the views expressed by an independent observer shortly after the Budget of this year was announced. Writing in the issue of the Cork Examiner of 21st April, 1964, under the heading Implications of the Budget for Farmers, “Observer” states:

The initial reactions of possibly 80 per cent of our farmers to the recent Budget were favourable, but in 98 per cent of these the reasons were very different to what our writers and commentators think.

While appreciating the gestures of goodwill in it, farmers lament the smoke-screen tactics that were used and the despicable approach which made them appear as the nigger-in-the woodpile.

That summarises my comments on the way in which these increases were introduced. The article continues:

Those outside agriculture have been led to believe (deliberately or inadvertently, is open to question) that the increased taxes on petrol, cigarettes, beer, spirits, and postal services were introduced solely for the sake of farmers. Nothing could be further from the truth.

How true it is that nothing could be further from the truth. It is also a fact, as "Observer" continues to record: Emphasis has been given to the money that is to be given to farmers, as though they were to be the first to be considered. In point of fact they were one of the last. Merely because their requirements were partly met at the balancing stage the whole exercise earned the misnomer "a farmers' Budget".

It is remarkable, too, that the Minister for Finance mentions these increased costs arising in this Budget by reason of the recent wages agreement. These costs amounted to about £19 million, of which nearly £4½ million was for agriculture.

Relative to the £4½ million, Ministers partake of dinners on certain occasions. They are wont, in recent years, in referring to what the country is doing by way of support for agriculture, to keep all expenditure, whether capital or administrative, to a figure and then to say to the community: "That is what the farmers are costing." Consequently, I am entitled to put against the £4½ million the £2¾ million involved in the scheme for the eradication of bovine tuberculosis. Therefore, in effect, the net increase to agriculture is £1¾ million.

After the Minister had spoken, there was an announcement that the Agricultural Wages Board had decided that, due to the increase in the cost of living, due to the increases resulting from the turnover tax, the farm labourer was entitled to an increase of 15/- per week. We must all admit that it is just pitiable that our premier industry cannot carry an increase for its workers equal to the increase which workers in other sectors of the economy can obtain. Yet, the Agricultural Wages Board, representing employers and employees, recognised that 15/- a week extra was necessary to cushion to some extent the impact of the cost of living on the agricultural labourer.

Take a dairy farmer who employs an agricultural labourer. I have worked out the position on the basis that the farmer gets the increase of 2d per gallon for his milk. Any Deputy, whether in Government or Opposition, could inform the Minister, if he does not know it already, that the farmers do not expect to get the increase of 2d per gallon of milk. They know, through their representatives on the co-operative societies who are responsible for running our creameries throughout the country, that the costs of operating the creameries have increased just the same as they have increased for industry and for everybody engaged in the distributive trade. Consequently, it can be assumed that a proportion of the increase will be absorbed by the increased cost of operating our creameries.

Take, for instance, the increased cost of transport. Even before this Budget, these increases were alarming but the Budget pushes the spiral higher. We all know, in relation to the transport of milk to creameries and to various places where it is processed, that an amount of transport is involved. There is no doubt that the tax on petrol and diesel oil will very seriously inflate the costs of that industry, the same as it will inflate the costs of every other industry, but, in fact, more so in relation to the creameries. Then there are increased costs in relation to telephones, postage, and so on, which will also aggravate the position.

It is really an optimistic assumption to think that this increase of 2d per gallon for milk will find its way into the pockets of the farmers producing milk. However, even if it did, what does it represent to our average farmer? It represents 7/6d per week, on the average, in respect of all those engaged in agriculture in the community.

Again, let us come back to those for whom it was specifically intended, the dairy farmers. To pay an increase of 15/- per week to an agricultural labourer would require on an average for the entire 12 months, some 90 gallons of milk per week, that is, an increase of 2d per gallon on 90 gallons per week. I assume that every Deputy realises that milk is not available from milch cattle for 12 months of the year. If we deduct the lactation period of five months, the relative cost of meeting the increase in agricultural wages will absorb from 180 to 200 gallons of milk per week. The Taoiseach referred to the fact that the farming community had not been as happy as other sections. He said that the most disturbing feature of our national situation is that agricultural incomes per head were rising less rapidly than the incomes of those engaged in non-agricultural occupations. He pointed out that that disparity was tending to widen rather than to narrow. In fact it has widened further even since the Budget Statement and there is no indication that it will not widen still further according as the cost of living increases.

I want to emphasise the appalling fact that no direct taxation was necessary when so many sectors in our society received their increases at the time of the ninth round. Nobody can point specifically to a particular tax and say: "I am required to pay so much for my cigarettes, so much for my gallon of petrol, so much for my pint of beer. It is intended that the revenue will be directed towards the relief of a particular sector of the economy." This must be reserved to the occasion "which is not often" when the agricultural community gets something. I hope I have succeeded in exposing the manner in which it has been done on this occasion.

Now there is a feeling in the country that we are, and have been for a few years, disposing of some of our resources. The Minister for Finance, in answer to a Parliamentary question recently, revealed that of the £18 million opened to the public for subscriptions, of the £25 million National Loan last year, some £7 million came from abroad. We welcome the injection of foreign capital into the country, but it has also been stated quite firmly by the Taoiseach, when we sought to know in what way the economy could get a shot in the arm, that he saw no difficulty in obtaining the necessary capital within our own country.

The Taoiseach said, during his last American tour, and on notable occasions at home, that we can provide ourselves with all the money we require for our economic development. As I say, this money, which has been brought in from abroad, is to a certain extent supporting our balance of payments position and bringing some solace to the Government in the present position, in which the gap is widening so seriously—in fact it is wider now than on the famous occasion in which the people now in Government accepted that the steps being taken by the Government then in office in 1956 were neither early enough nor strong enough. In fact, they were too little and too late. Yet the balance of payments gap is wider today than on that occasion. It is true that certain weapons, which are available to any Government to correct such a situation, if it needs to be corrected, have been thrown away by this Government when arranging their permanent taxation.

It becomes extraordinarily popular for members of the Government, in relation to industry—the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Finance was quite glib on the subject—to throw overboard the old outmoded policy in relation to supporting home industry. It was stated, by way of intervention, by the Minister for Industry and Commerce, that a consequence of the drastic reduction in the support for industry would be that there would be more employment. It is some years since views were expressed by members of this Party that there could be a gradual, but not an abrupt, cut down on such industries as had been given opportunities over a lengthy period to settle down and to develop their production, their markets, and so forth. It is true we have now, with all the enthusiasm of the convert, thrown overboard the Control of Manufactures Act. As well as that, the reduction in duties has presented to some firms considerable difficulties in the manner in which it has been done.

Furthermore, we are getting no quid pro quo, for if it is indicated it was in consequence of the easement of import duties on certain items that we were getting some comparable easement in the situation relative to our exports to these countries, one could more readily understand the reasons for this rapid and drastic reduction in the rate of duties.

There was absolutely no reference to our admission to the EEC in the Budget Statement. Neither the Taoiseach nor any of his Ministers, over the past 12 months, has expressed any view in relation to our entry, but the year 1970 is dangled before us as the date by which this country, in company with Britain, will be admitted. There is nothing to sustain that view. We learn from expressions of people who are well recognised as authorities in the European situation that they cannot certainly be as definite, as the Leader of the Government is, with regard to this year 1970. We can only hope that it will be achieved more readily than the date by which it was said CIE would pay their way.

I want to say, on this question of industrial advancement, that the trotting out of a global figure relating to the number of people employed in industry will bear some examination. It is high time some of these people who have been given substantial grants and substantial inducements by way of export facilities, and so on, were made answerable for the type of employment they give. It so happens in one of these industries, in my constituency, during the past three weeks, that 50 to 70 employees have been laid off. One could understand that laying off if it were related to any market troubles, availability of raw materials or financial complications.

But no; they have been succeeded in their employment by as many trainees, so that company may now start again on the ground floor with child labour. Let us hope when they, like those who worked before them in that concern, reach the time when they will be receiving wages of which they can be proud, will not be released from employment in order to make way for this shuttle service of more trainees who can be employed at starvation wages.

We on this side of the House are very happy, in relation to the acceptance by this Government of what was the brainchild of Deputy Sweetman, the policy of encouraging foreign industrialists into this country and the complete acceptance by this Government of that policy. The Minister for Finance had the nerve, in rather light vein, to suggest to the Taoiseach that he had the formidable task of teaching the Opposition Parties. We can point to the fact that if at the moment we can afford the standard of living which we have and if we can afford the volume of imports, the industry which has played the most notable part in the export trade is the live cattle industry. That is the industry which the Party now in Government decried for so long. That industry is now contributing more to the economy of the country through exports, than any other item we export. It will continue to be so as long as we can guarantee that the marketing arrangements which were secured by another Government are brought up to date, so as to guarantee to the producers of this country that they will be given, in Great Britain, Northern Ireland and other countries, the markets necessary for them to dispose of their increased production.

There are sections of our community who have not yet received anything by way of recompense for the increases in the cost not alone of Government administration but local administration. I refer to the business people in the towns and villages and in the rural parts of the country who, in recent years, have suffered many reverses. They have had to meet the challenge of the cutprice shop and the attractions offered to the consumer by the multiple stores. The facilities offered in these multiple stores take the people from the environments of the towns and villages into the cities and larger towns.

These small shopkeepers constitute a very necessary sector in our community. They are now the unpaid taxgatherers for the Government. They are the people who, hourly, while their shops are open, and nightly after their doors are closed are obliged to do clerical work in respect of the amount of money which the Minister for Finance and the Revenue Commissioners are to get, by way of turnover tax, on their transactions during the day. Yet, these people have not obtained any relief in rates or any recognition either in this Budget, nor has there been any indication from any member of the Government of relief in years to come.

These are people who normally do not bother Departments very much. There are few occasions when they are eligible to approach Departments. If they want to modernise their business premises, they get no grants from the Department of Local Government. They have had to face increased outgoings and suffer loss of business due to very heavy emigration in many parts of the country. They have also been the victims of what was a commendable development in relation to street trading and the change over to cattle marts. They are finding it more expensive to educate their families, more difficult to get employment for them when educated. They are being called on to pay increased prices in relation to their business, increased charges occasioned by the increased costs of transport, both CIE and private, in relation to petrol and also in relation to telephones and stamps. We are rapidly reaching the situation of being one of the most expensive countries in Europe in the matter of the costs of operating our Department of Posts and Telegraphs. These are the people for whom I want to make a special case since I feel they have not been given any consideration.

I shall conclude as I resumed, by decrying the reprehensible way in which the Government have sought by their presentation of the Budget to drive a wedge deeper between the urban community and the agricultural community and implying to industrial workers and city residents that on this occasion they are being called on to pay increased taxation so as to relieve the agricultural community but that is not true. We are aware that other sections of the community got increases without specific taxes to pay for them. This treatment is resented very much by those whom the Budget allocations were supposed to help.

In addition, we have the appalling pittance set aside in the Budget for social welfare recipients. There is nothing for the contributory pensioner and only 2/6d. a week for the non-contributory pensioner. This is entirely contrary to the claims made at the introduction of the turnover tax, that it would bring in such a flow of money to the Exchequer that we should have very large sums available for social welfare recipients, for improved educational facilities, for State-aided education within the reach of many unfortunate brilliant children who, because of family circumstances, are not able to secure the education their ability would entitle them to have and who could contribute so much to the country's economy if they got that education.

There is no provision in this Budget for additional expenditure of any consequence in education other than that occasioned by the legitimate demands of the teaching fraternity as a result of the increased cost of living. It is in these circumstances we examine this Budget and we can only express considerable regret at the fact that the Government have failed to develop anything in the way of long-term proposals in relation to the country's economy. This is merely a stop-gap effort and nothing has been done other than a slight cushioning of the detrimental effects of the Government's own policy in bringing about a reduced value of money and causing such drastic and deliberate increases in the cost of living.

I do not propose to delay very long at this stage of the debate, now in its third week. There is little one can say that has not been already said but it affords one an opportunity of glancing over the records. I was just pondering on the position in which a stranger would find himself if he were to come into the Public Gallery with a view to taking an interest in investment in this country and how he would make up his mind whether we were forging rapidly ahead or going seriously downhill and actually heading for bank-ruptcy.

Both points of view have been elaborately and extravagantly put forward in this debate. The Opposition do not quite agree whether it is a deflationary or inflationary Budget. Some of them may find, like the previous speaker, nothing good in it, no long-term planning, a stop-gap effort, everything chaotic and the general position serious. We have had many Budget debates in my 13 years here and we have heard the speakers who have participated in this debate on both sides whether they have been in Government or in Opposition. We cannot be blamed if we make comparisons with previous occasions.

We are told the imposition of duties on tobacco and cigarettes is very serious in the present circumstances and that the tax on petrol will have a drastic effect on the entire economy. We are warned about the increased charges that will accrue and which will upset the whole economy. Deputy P. O'Donnell, from my own constituency, did me the honour of quoting almost entirely the speech I made in 1956 when I pointed out that the imposition of an extra duty on cigarettes was bound to hit the household budget because cigarettes had become practically an everyday purchase by every household. That is quite true. There would be little point in taxing something that would not bring in money but smoking is not the most essential part of our daily requirements. When I spoke about this extra duty on cigarettes in 1956, I was speaking on the occasion of the most serious situation in the national economy for many years. Let us look at the situation then as compared with now. When the Minister for Finance introduced the 1956 Budget, what had he to say about the economy? We must remember that was the second Budget in that year because in the previous March he had imposed levies to the extent of £3 million as panic measures aimed at putting right a serious situation which had been allowed to develop.

The previous speaker said that if in power they would not allow this or that situation to develop. The Coalition Government of that time deliberately allowed a serious situation to develop and got themselves into a serious position in which they had to take drastic action which so hit employment that it virtually created a cloud of gloom which hung over the country for a couple of years afterwards. The Minister for Finance on that occasion said there was a serious deficit in the balance of payments, that savings showed a reduction of £30 million compared with 1953 which was a downward trend for all the previous years and £27 million less than in the year immediately preceding. There was a drop in the volume of national production and the consumer price index had gone up by six points which was equal to an increase in living costs of 4.7 per cent.

That was a gloomy situation such as was never painted before by a Minister for Finance in this House. In that context and with that background, what does the Minister proceed to do? He proceeds to impose a duty of 5d a packet on cigarettes, 6d on the workingman's ounce of tobacco and 6d per gallon on petrol which, he said, was showing such a buoyancy in purchase that it could carry that amount easily. In fact, after doing that, he estimated an increase in the road vehicle tax of 14 per cent for the coming year. Now we are told, in a buoyant economy, that the smaller increase on petrol is going to ruin the whole country.

This reducing of taxation and improving every other amenity enjoyed by the public is an old game that must be well overplayed by the Opposition by now. That Budget followed the famous statement by the previous Minister for Finance, Deputy McGilligan, who said that any Minister for Finance who knew his job could reduce the cost of administration by £10 million in a year.

I did not say that.

You did say it.

If a Deputy challenges a statement alleged to have been made by him, the quotation must be given. I ask for the quotation.

I understood the Parliamentary Secretary to be giving a paraphrase.

I am giving a statement which everybody heard on the radio on the eve of an election when there was no time to question it.

I did not say that. Produce the quotation.

On that occasion reductions in taxation generally were promised and some reductions were made immediately the first Coalition came into office all of which had to be reimposed. After this promise by Deputy McGilligan——

There was no such promise. If the Parliamentary Secretary purports to quote me and I challenge him he must give the quotation. There was no such statement made by me. Will the Parliamentary Secretary produce the quotation? Of course, he will not.

Every Deputy is aware of the statement made at the time.

That is not the statement I made.

It has been repeated one hundred times in this House and never denied.

It has always been challenged and never produced. The Parliamentary Secretary is running away from it now.

Everybody knows what you said.

Everybody knows what you people said he said.

It sounded very good at the time and it was repeated every day.

Did you listen to it on the radio?

Did you hear me say what you say I said?

The Parliamentary Secretary is now purporting to quote and I want the quotation.

If the Parliamentary Secretary is quoting, as I do not think he is because I think he, is paraphrasing, it is necessary for him to give the source of his quotation.

He is not giving the quotation.

I am giving a distinct recollection of what I heard over the radio at that time. Those are the words the Deputy used.

Surely that is a quotation.

Deputy McGilligan has pointed out that he made no such statement and it is usual, if a Deputy denies making a statement, that the denial should be accepted.

Deputy McGilligan would like me to say that my memory is not good but I am not going to make any such statement.

You are not making a true statement. I shall give you the true statement if you like it. Would you like it now?

You will get plenty of opportunity to defend what you said.

What I did not say.

You will get plenty of time to say what you have to say.

And I intend to do it.

If we are to be guided by Opposition statements here, this country is in a very serious condition but I prefer to be guided by those people from outside who have taken an objective view of our economy here and who have published what the actual situation is. It is remarkable that all these people point to Ireland as being in a very healthy state of advancement at the present time. There are international organisations such as OECD and what could be more favourable than the OECD report on this country?

Who wrote it? The Government wrote it.

If the OECD report denigrated this country, as the Opposition never fail to do, it would be held out to be a great report but because it shows the country in a good light, we should not take notice of it. However, there are other reports. There are very big financial institutions all over the world whose job it is to give a service to their clients as to possible sources for investment. All of these boost the economy of Ireland and present it to their customers as one of the countries in which it is well worth while to take an interest.

I have before me a report issued by the Chase Manhatten Bank and it gives an objective survey of every country in Western Europe. It is entitled "The European Markets—a Guide for American Businessmen," and I can tell you that it highlights Ireland as one of the outstanding places in Western Europe which offers outstanding opportunities for investment in present circumstances. This report gives turnover tax in respect of every country and we are the lowest of the lot.

Austria has a turnover tax of 5.25 per cent levied on most sales except agricultural and forestry products. In Belgium a turnover tax of 5 per cent or higher applies to all merchandise transactions except retail sales. Denmark has a general sales tax of nine per cent levied in wholesale trade. In Finland a turnover tax of 20 per cent is paid on the tax included price, which brings the effective rate of 25 per cent. Certain products qualify for reduced rates, industrial machinery, 13 per cent, and fuel oil, coal and coke, ten per cent. A new overall rate of 11 per cent is proposed.

Does it give England?

It does. In France, a turnover tax is paid on retail sales and amounts to 2.82 per cent. Manufacturers, wholesalers and importers selling to third parties pay a value added tax. Its nominal rate is 20 per cent but as the tax is calculated on the price plus the tax, the effective rate is 25 per cent. A similar tax is levied on services at an effective rate of 9.28 per cent. A local turnover tax is paid on retail sales and amounts to 2.82 per cent.

In Germany, turnover taxes amount in principle to four per cent; in Greece, there is a turnover tax usually of six per cent; in Ireland, there is a turnover tax of 2.5 per cent; in Italy. there is a general turnover tax of 3.3 per cent on goods and in the Netherlands the turnover tax is generally five per cent. In Norway, the nominal turnover tax on retail sales and services, except professional is ten per cent. In Portugal, there is no general turnover tax, but there is a wide range of sales taxes levied on specific items— beverages two per cent, medicine .5 per cent, tobacco 28 per cent. An employment tax of one per cent is levied on wages and salaries. When levied, local taxes take the form of surcharges. In Spain, the turnover tax rates vary by commodity and range from two per cent to ten per cent.

What are the commodities?

In Switzerland, the wholesale turnover tax is 5.4 per cent and in the United Kingdom, the Deputy's friend, purchase taxes vary between ten per cent for clothing and household goods and 45 per cent for luxuries and consumer durables.

And they do not touch food at all.

Their food is not very cheap, if the Deputy wants to turn that up. The fact is that in this analysis of all those countries, Ireland stands out amongst the lot and is accepted as such by a financial institution of world importance which has no reason to make such an analysis that Ireland is the one worthwhile place for present day investment. These are the bitter facts which, peculiarly enough, seem to annoy the Deputies opposite when one would expect that they would be delighted and would applaud any such report from such a world institution. That is something which very few people will understand.

I do not want to deal with every speech made during this debate but some were no great credit to the Opposition. I should like to deal with one point made by my colleague, Deputy P. O'Donnell. This point should be expunged from the records, if agreement could be reached to that effect. This was a reference to the attendance by the President at the funeral of the late President Kennedy that should not have been made for the purpose of showing Government squandermania. I do not think anybody in this House should do anything but blush at the fact that the statement was made, particularly when it was referred to as a holiday. I apologise on behalf of the people of Donegal and I assure the House that the majority, if not all, the constituents would have come together, if the Government had not seen fit to do as they did and subscribed to ensure that the President would stand by the grave of the late President Kennedy.

That is a nice way to get the needle in.

I do not think it should go unnoticed. I am not a bit sensitive to criticism. At column 1844, of volume 208, for 15th April, 1964, Deputy O'Donnell said:

We were told some time ago what it was going to cost the State to send the President and his party to the funeral of the late President Kennedy.

The Official Report then goes on:

An Ceann Comhairle: I think that is administration.

Mr. P. O'Donnell: I would not say it is administration. It could not possibly be.

An Ceann Comhairle: It is not financial policy.

Mr. P. O'Donnell: It might be because we are going to send him there again for another holiday.

I do not think that type of debate gets anyone anywhere. There are plenty of things to talk about on this Budget and the general economy, without having to refer to any of those things, if they are said seriously. Perhaps this was said in a jesting manner. I do not know—I was not in the House. Deputy McQuillan chipped in to suggest that the amount should be halved so that they would keep him there and not send him back. I do not think it does any good to the Parliament or to the country, or to the image we wish to present to the world, that we should denigrate the President or anybody else in an attempt to show that the Government are being extravagant because they send people abroad on what is an especially important mission. The more intercourse there is between the peoples of the continents, and particularly between this country and the United States, the better we would like it. I believe that in their hearts the members on the other side think the same but why do they not refrain from using this at a time when it should not be used?

I am prepared to go by what other interested parties think and, who are in a position rightly to judge what our economy is. To those people who say there is nothing good in this Budget and who make that extravagant statement without any attempt to verify it. I am happy to say that the economy is progressing, that the financial health of the country was never better, that we are making progress which is accepted by everybody who is interested to know we are making it, and that the future looks good.

If there is one thing in the Budget which is more important than another, it is the fact that the Minister was in a position to make that important statement. That is more important to everybody from the lowliest citizen to the most important citizen in the land. No more important statement could emerge from any annual financial accounting than that, so far as we are concerned. That is a positive fact and the background of this Budget. There is no gainsaying that. I like to see advances on every front and if there is one thing we have reason to worry about, it is that the progress is not as rapid as we would like it to be. I see extra money for afforestation, for tourism, for agriculture, for education, for industry, for every sector of our economy; I should like to see more. Nothing succeeds like success, and as time goes on, we will be able to make bigger and better provision for all these things. We will move rapidly towards that ideal towards which we all aspire, to be able to give to a greater population a better standard of living, to make this State a better place in which to live.

There has been an estimated increase in our population of 25,000 in the past couple of years. It is not a great increase but it is significant. It is most important and I hope we will move on from there. If there is one responsibility more than another on any Government today, it is to ensure that the economy keeps moving ahead. That will not be done by situations such as those which led to the 1956 Budget when we had a credit squeeze and when the farmer could not draw his breath in a local bank. That will not be done by curtailing credit, by reducing hire purchase arrangements, by bringing in restrictive measures to cripple and curtail distribution and purchasing power overnight. Let us keep the economy going. Let us criticise as much as we like; let us say what should be better done; but let us not try to tell the people that they can have all this and more and lower taxes. No economist living today can substantiate in any way a silly statement of that type. Such statements should have been abandoned by now.

What was said by a Minister on the occasion of the last Budget or what a Minister will say in relation to a subsequent Budget is of no interest to me. My interest is in what the Minister proposes in the present Budget because it is this Budget that affects the lives of our people at the present time and for the coming year. I propose to examine the present position.

I believe that there are some good things in this Budget and there are others not quite so good. Let us examine the powers of the Government. In this country there are two parliaments, one a provincial administration in the north-east subject to the United Kingdom. Here, in the 26 Counties, there is complete political freedom. No one denies that. We have a republican Government here who claim complete independence of any other power and the sovereign right to decide the country's destinies.

Do we make use of that power? Have we economic independence, which is true independence? We have the Flag; we have the Anthem; we have the Army. and so forth. They represent only part of our sovereignty. True independence is economic independence. It means having the right and the means to develop our own economy for the good of all our people and the control of our own finances.

On a previous occasion when I referred to the control of our own finances, the present Minister said to me, in the best of terms: "The last plank of the Clann na Poblachta policy." The other evening, when Deputy Declan Costello was speaking on the Budget, by closing my eyes and ignoring the accent, I could imagine that it was the former Leader of the Clann na Poblachta Party who was speaking. Deputy Costello may have been expressing his own personal views. Whether the views he expressed were the views of his Party, or not, I do not know. The policy he advocated was the policy brought in here by the Clann na Poblachta Party when they came in here in 1948 and others are now beginning to realise that there was something new, something solid, something that was necessary in that financial policy for the good of all our people, not merely for a section.

The present position is that quite a number of our people are underprivileged and quite a number of our people have no incentive to improve their position when they see others becoming fabulously wealthy and they cannot move out of their unfortunate position. That anomaly is not in the best interests of the country.

Why does such a position arise? We are tied hand and foot to the British financial system. When the British Labour Party, under Mr. Attlee, became the rulers of Britain, their first act was to nationalise the Bank of England in order to give the British Government control over the credit of the country. In this country there is no nationalised bank to enable our Government to control credit to suit our conditions.

The Parliamentary Secretary to the Taoiseach referred to squeezes and the rest of it, a few minutes ago. When such things happen in Britain, they do not affect the country as much as similar happenings affect this country, this country being a smaller economic unit. When we adopt an increase in the bank rate, following an increase in the bank rate in Britain, or when there is a credit squeeze here following a credit squeeze in Britain, our economy is much more seriously affected than is the British economy. That should be borne in mind by the Minister for Finance and the Government. The Government should take control, by whatever means they like, of our finances, particularly of credit, so as to suit our conditions.

Since I came into this House, I have never criticised for the sake of criticism. Any views I put forward are put forward in the national interest only, and for no other purpose. I would seriously suggest that the Government should take control of our finances and credit to suit our particular economy.

I do not blame the Government for not having done so. Since the foundation of the State, no Government attempted to do so. When the Treaty was signed, some people did not agree with it but after a number of years, improvements were brought about. I understand that on the formation of the State, it was required that we should have 100 per cent backing for our currency in Britain. I understand that that position no longer obtains. A change was made, for the benefit of the country. In 1937, there was a further change for the better and in 1948, there was a further change, also for the benefit of this country. Now it is up to the Minister for Finance and the Government to make any further change necessary for the benefit of our people.

Unfortunately, huge amounts of money are exported from this country, both by private persons and Departments of State, and invested across the water, while, at the same time, we are offering every possible concession to foreign industrialists who come in here. In this connection, I should like to read a quotation from the Minister for Industry and Commerce which appears in the Irish Digest of March, 1964:

The principle of private enterprise is well established in Ireland. Industrial promoters are given every facility to make their own plans and take their own decisions. Among other things they are given full information about conditions in Ireland. They are helped to overcome any problems that they may encounter and they are given entire freedom in the selection of location of their projects.

In order to attract industries here, the Government are prepared to give grants, loans and special facilities with regard to income tax to those who export. However, they have taken no authority to tell people coming in here where to start an industry. I submit that, through Government initiative, the 26 counties should be taken as a unit and that the Government should arrange to have industries sited in areas where it is necessary to have factories to help villages and communities.

It has been said that if industrialists go to the western areas, they will get bigger grants. However, we are speaking about business people to whom grants do not make all that difference. Such industrialists can very quickly recoup the loss of the bigger grants from profits. Accordingly, I suggest the Government should see that factories are started in the areas where they are most needed. Such a move would be in the interests of all the people. It is no use having the eastern part of the country cluttered up with factories, and the west from Derry to Cork, left like a desert, without a factory and with failing villages.

The result is that people from the villages are going to the towns to get work, people from the towns are going to the cities on a similar quest and from the cities they go away out of the country to help the economies of other countries by their labour and their brains. I must agree that things have improved very much in certain parts of the country. I remember going down the country teaching. We had a fund out of which, every Christmas, free boots were given to the poorer children. One Christmas, the morning after he had been given boots out of this fund, a boy came back barefoot. "Boy," I said to him, "where are your shoes?""Sparing them, sir," he said.

I am glad to see we have improved far above that standard now. However, while things have improved greatly under the present Government, I submit they could improve much more with a system of financial control suited to our economy. The great blot in this Budget is the treatment of our non-contributory old age pensioners and others on social welfare benefits. I heard the leader of the Labour Party being asked: "What did you do in your time?" I do not take any interest in these things as between Fianna Fáil, Fine Gael and Labour. It does not interest me in the least, but I do say that in 1956-57 we had the food subsidies and a halfcrown then would buy three times as much as it does to-day.

I cannot understand why the Minister this year did not give twice as much to those two categories. After all, 2/6 today is worth only one-third of what it was in the time of the food subsidies. Really it is only the value of 12 cigarettes. When the pensioners came to the Minister, without any political influence or anything like that, and put their case before him, he considered it and told them what he was prepared to do. That is all the more reason why I cannot understand how, in the Budget, he allowed himself to be persuaded to give only 2/6.

Perhaps it will be said he wanted to balance the Budget. In this respect, there is nothing sacrosanct about the Budget. Take the head of a household. The family may have had a very expensive year, but they do not go hungry towards the end of it or in the following year. Perhaps a better year will make up the gap. I do not understand why the same does not apply to the Budget, why the Minister could not balance the Budget over a two-year or a three-year period, If he did, it would be to the benefit of the country. In one year recently, our cattle exports were very low and naturally affected our economy, but the following year they were up. If we took two or three years together for budgeting purposes, it would be to the advantage of the nation as a whole.

I am afraid that in this Budget we are widening the gap between the well-off and the underprivileged: we are helping to make some people richer and are putting some people in the unfortunate position of being regarded as underprivileged. We have, of course, charitable organisations coming to their aid to help them supplement their incomes. Otherwise, there would be many old people unable to buy the necessaries of life or hold their self-respect. We should not be satisfied to look on them as underprivileged. We should set out to do something about it. We should do everything possible to narrow the gap between them and the better off people.

Some of our people are very affluent, as affluent as their counterparts in America, Britain, West Germany, and elsewhere. We should not forget, however, that some of our people still have to worry about where the money will come from to buy the necessaries of life. I appeal to the Minister to make every effort in the future to narrow the gap that exists between the two classes and to put the poorer sections—the social welfare recipients, the old age pensioners, the aged and the infirm—in a position in which they will be able to retain their self-respect, in which they will not be dependent upon charitable organisations in order to supplement their incomes. Charitable organisations are for a different purpose altogether. The State should look after all its citizens. There should be a basic wage, pension, superannuation, related to the cost of living. Until that position is reached, the situation will not be satisfactory.

I am glad the farming community are receiving benefits under this Budget. The farmers deserve some recognition. I do not represent a rural constituency but it would be a poor Deputy who could not, having looked after his own constituency, then look beyond it to the national interest. I remember on one occasion asking a Minister to introduce legislation to prevent non-nationals buying more than five acres of land except for industrial purposes. I was informed by him that the position at the time did not warrant any such legislation. Since the Finance Act of 1961 was passed, I notice that between 20,000 and 25,000 acres of agricultural land, outside altogether of land sold for industrial purposes, have been sold to non-nationals. The statistics were given in reply to a question last week. I would much prefer to see 500 or 600 40-acre farms made out of such land and Irish farmers settled on them. That would benefit the nation.

I do not know how much land was sold prior to 1961 but I do know that in the 'thirties Irish land was advertised by auctioneers and others in the bazaars of India. Successive Governments must take the blame for the position. One remembers the fight that was made to get the land back for our own people and it seems paradoxical, to say the least of it, that the descendants of those who fought cannot now get land in their own country on which to live. Any action that is taken by the Government to remedy the situation will have the support of all.

Sufficient money is not being spent on education. I was a primary teacher and I am now a member of a vocational education committee. I know what is being done by the present Minister to provide more vocational schools and better vocational facilities in order to enable our children to acquire a skill and man industry here; or, if the opportunity does not offer here, to enable them to take their proper place in whatever country they may seek a living. Emigrants in the past have always had to carry the hod. We are now in a position to improve that situation and the Minister is doing good work in that regard. I wish, however, that the Government would give him more money to improve the situation still further.

I trust the suggestions I have made will be considered by the Minister. I trust that one day we will have a Government which will take the initiative and do the things that are necessary for all our people and not just for a select few. Above all, let us make a place for those who would prefer to live at home.

There is a vast increase in expenditure in this Budget— happily, I suppose, in view of the vast increase in revenue. It would, however, be a mistake to take the Budget just as it stands. It must be taken, I think, in conjunction with the turnover tax and with the 12 per cent increase in salaries and wages. If one does that, then one must immediately regard it as a political Budget, a Budget that seeks to sell something, to sell an image of the Government. I believe the image is a false one and, in projecting that image, I believe the Government are also projecting a false image of the Opposition. Government speakers have sought to make a virtue out of expenditure and, at the same time, to infer that the attitude on the Fine Gael and Labour Benches is one of a hairshirt policy and no advancement. The inference is that we are retrogressive and the Government are progressive. I do not accept that at all. I think there has been a colossal amount of window dressing.

If one takes the position of agriculture, in which I am most interested, one finds that this year the national income has gone up by £37 million. These figures are to be found in the Government's Economic Statistics published prior to the Budget. In the same period the farmers' net income—I regard this definition as inaccurate and I believe what I think is the proper definition would have the result of further increasing the reduction shown —was down by £1.1 million. In order to put the farmer and the farm worker —I believe the farm worker should also be represented in the picture—on a par with the rest of the community, they would, first of all, have to get their share of the national income in relation to their numbers or in relation to the percentage they enjoy. That would be about £9 million. If one were to give them then the 12 per cent increase, there would be another £20 million to be added to that.

If, therefore, the farmers and the farm workers were to be put on a basis of equality, a colossal increase in earnings would have to be produced. Admittedly, these earnings can come from sources other than State sources. If there is an increase in cattle prices—which stays with us—and an increase in the number leaving the land and, at the same time, the stock is preserved, several millions of this figure the farmers require would be found from that one source. It is true to say that something in the order of four or five times what was given was needed, in order to keep the farmers in line. If they are not kept in line, this country will hardly survive, because they are the best source of the purchasing power which keeps our people in employment.

Since 1959-60, there has been a decrease of 38,000 people on the land and last year several thousand more left the land. There was an increase of something in the order of 15 per cent in the net income of the people, but the farmer got nothing like that, and the value of his goods increased by only two per cent. He is selling his goods at approximately the same price as obtained in 1953. That immediately suggests that if our principal export is agriculture, something must necessarily be done about it, if we are to continue to enjoy the purchasing power at home which will allow our industries to prosper. If our balance of payments is to be kept in equilibrium, the farmer must prosper and produce more from each acre of land. If he does not, we will find ourselves in difficulties again. I think we all agree we do not want that to happen. We would have had a considerable deficit in the balance of payments this year but for the fact that there was a capital inflow of about £22 million arising from purchases of land by foreigners, investment by foreigners, emigrants' remittances, and such items.

The figures produced as "Aid given to Agriculture" are, of course, quite incorrect. A habit has become current practice over the past few years—because farmers and their organisations have become more voluble—of printing lists of the amount of State aid to agriculture and including in them absolutely everything that can possibly be included. I think it was Deputy Tully who started asking questions about this, three or four years ago. In the current Budget at Table VI, it is suggested that the amount of State aid to agriculture is £38 million. I do not accept that money provided for arterial drainage is State aid to farmers or farm workers. It is a defence of one of our national assets, and you might as well suggest it is an aid to the lady in the hat shop in Grafton Street as to the farmer and the farm worker. The figure in regard to arterial drainage is £1,665,000. An expenditure of nearly £900,000 for the improvement of Land Commission estates is not an aid to the farmer or the farm worker. Clearly, the eradication of bovine TB is a defence of our exports. We cannot pay for imports of raw materials if we do not export. In the defence of our greatest individual export, the cattle export trade, we are spending £2½ million. That is being chalked up against the farmer and the farm worker. We are spending a little money on pasteurisation plant. That helps the cooperative societies in their capital expenditure, but I cannot see how it can be charged against the farmer and the farm worker.

I shall not go down the list because I do not want to bore people with the details. The heading "State Aid to Agriculture" is, perhaps, not a misnomer if we take it as such, but it is popularly interpreted as State aid to farmers and farm workers, and that is quite incorrect. All those different things are included which do not bring any real improvement in the farmer's lot, except in a general way. The items I have mentioned are more of a defence of employment and future prosperity than anything for the farmers themselves.

I thought it a pity that the amount voted for the Land Project was reduced, and that Section B was not reinstituted. It must be repeated for the record that Section B is the section under which the poor man could drain his land and have the capital cost put on the land annuities to be paid over a long number of years. The exclusion of Section B from the Land Project, and voting a reduced amount of money in this Budget, mean that the rich man who, perhaps, could drain his land without a grant, can enjoy grants from which the poor man is entirely precluded.

We find that 24/- per ton of the subsidy on phosphatic fertilisers goes to the manufacturers. The theory is that it is to bring them up to the efficiency of manufacturers overseas. The balance of the subsidy goes to the farmers, but it is all chalked up against the farmers and the farm workers. I find that most annoying. I am certain, too, that Nítrigin Éireann Teo will be chalked against them in the Budget next year. It appears now from world trends that that project will pay over the next few years, but with so much money being spent on producing new plant in Europe, in the long term it would appear that it is hardly a good investment.

Reading the Minister's speech, we must remember that when we refer to the Book of Estimates, we find for a start that £1.6 million less is provided for agriculture than was provided the previous year so I do not take this figure of £5.2 million increase in the Budget as being correct. The net increase is something like £3.8 million. I agree with Deputy O'Sullivan when he says that this 2d. on the gallon of milk will not all go into the pockets of the farmers. The cooperative societies have to meet their extra costs. They, too, have to meet the 12 per cent.

I asked the Minister for Agriculture whether farmers supplying liquid milk in the Cork and Dublin Milk Board areas would enjoy a net increase of 2d per gallon and whether the increase would take account of any increase in collection charges, because at the moment the people supplying milk are faced with a demand for extra collection charges. I shall not read the full reply but the Minister said that he was increasing the price by 2d per gallon and if there was an extra collection charge of ¼d or ½d, it could be paid out of gross payments. In that case the 2d becomes 1½d, or 1¾d, or whatever the figure might be.

Again at Table VI under the heading "State Aid to Agriculture", there is provision for a subsidy of £6,111,000 for butter and other milk products. It is quite difficult exactly to compare the various subsidies year by year. As far as I understand, the subsidies seem to be applied as the butter is, in fact, sold and the losses are then calculated. But that does not mean that we sell exactly in each year our exact production. I just cannot see where all this £6 million will arise. On Thursday, 16th April, 1964, I asked the Minister a question as to the losses on Irish creamery butter being sold in Britain two years ago and today. He told me that the improvement was a reduction in the losses of fourpence a gallon.

Remember, on the Estimate for the Department of Agriculture, last year, the Fine Gael Party stated that, at that time, their computation—they had not the figures the Government had— meant that there was an automatic reduction in loss of 1½d. a gallon. The proposal at that time stated that the Government should forthwith give the farmers 1½d. We now find, in answer to this particular question, that the improvement is 4d. a gallon. The improvement in the butter price in Britain represents 4d. a gallon. It does not represent 4d. per gallon on all the milk produced in the country because the Minister hopes to export 18,000 tons. I think that what he thinks An Bórd Bainne will do with his blessing, is to export 12,600 tons under the agreement and get another 5,000 tons on extra quota which represents 17,600 tons, leaving the balance for export to other places. But the bulk of this export will be sold at an improvement of 4d. per gallon on two years ago. At home, I cannot see where the heavy loss on production is because they are taking up the export butter at 469/- per cwt. If we go into a shop we shall find that the price of butter is not far from that.

It is too detailed a thing and probably it would be improper on this occasion to go into detail, to estimate the losses on chocolate crumb and other milk products, but it appears to me that this figure of £6 million, as a loss on subsidy on milk products in this year, will not be reached. Nobody on this side of the House has the information, or the means of getting it, as to what an estimate of the loss would be but I believe that the figure of £6 million is a high estimate on which the Minister for Finance sought to give the farmer a low increase in price. That is my honest and considered opinion: I can be quoted here next year or during the year as being wrong. If I prove to be wrong, I shall be quite happy to withdraw at that stage but, as I say, at the moment the picture is that the Minister has an improvement of 4d. per gallon, compared with two years ago, on export improvement.

Reference to the debate on the Estimate for the Department of Agriculture last year will show the House that, within the limited information at their disposal, the Fine Gael Party said the farmers were then entitled to 1½d per gallon—and now the Minister gives 2d. This is approximately on one-third of the butter produced—a figure of 53,000 tons. I have not the losses on other milk products but, as a broad general principle, that is the situation. I hold, in fact, that the window-dressing in this particular aspect was blatant and political.

What is the position of the wage earner? He has had his 12 per cent but he had it after the turnover tax arrived. It has been calculated that the turnover tax took 4 per cent. It has been calculated that, in the meantime, a general price increase plus his income tax increase took another 4 per cent. So, now he got four per cent of 12 per cent to meet the current Budget. He has to meet increases in transport, petrol, drinks, tobacco and in all goods with a service cost. Four per cent of £10 is 8/-. I believe that the wage earner has been codded most successfully.

I believe that when the Taoiseach, on the day after the Budget in 1963, made his famous or infamous "shift to the left" speech, he intended to project this situation across the economy in the 12 months ahead. He saw the timing of the 9th round as inevitable. He saw that, by last October, we should have a natural 9th round which would probably have got around to be settled in its entirety about now, before the Budget. He decided he would try to manipulate the economy and, in so doing, to influence the wage earner for votes when he needed them. He was giving them something—not the employers of the country, not the farmers of the country who pay their 15/- per week extra now out of the 2d. per gallon, not these people — but he, the Taoiseach himself, through the manipulation first of the turnover tax, next of the 9th round increase and next of this particular Budget, was giving them 12 per cent and taking from them far less. I maintain from this side of the House that the Taoiseach was taking far more and that, if income tax and general price increases took four per cent, 8/- on £10 will not meet the present Budget impost so that the worker will be worse off now, or within the next few months, than he was before he got the 12 per cent.

Does this mean that Fianna Fáil are a progressive Government and that this is a retrograde Opposition? I hold it does not mean that Fianna Fáil are a progressive Government or that we are a retrograde Opposition because we have criticised these things. Take the situation with regard to petrol and diesel fuel. I shall mention later the miserly increase to the old age pensioners.

The increase in petrol and diesel fuel will hit everybody. I refuse to be put in the position of arguing against it but, as well as that, the 12 per cent wage increase has hit the bus fares. There was one thing which the Minister for Finance could have done but did not do. By his deliberate action, the situation now is that the old age pensioners cannot afford a bus ride from Inchicore into town to see a married daughter or a sister, and so on. The Minister could have given them free bus rides without any loss to the Exchequer. This was something very obvious indeed. This was something the Minister could have done without loss. It was something that would have been appreciated by everybody in the country, from the man earning £5,000 a year down, if the Minister had given the contributory and non-contributory old age pensioners free public service vehicle accommodation. He did not do it because this is not a progressive Government. This is a retrograde Government. This is a completely ultra-conservative Government dressing their shop window with high efficiency and nothing else.

Why did the Minister give the poor unfortunate old age pensioners only 2/6d? I think the Fianna Fáil Government did the right thing when they created the contributory old age pension. Before that, 2/6d used to mean £1,250,000 per year and always and ever here we were facing the fact that although we wanted to give 2/6d., 5/-or any figure that could be regarded as equitable, we could not do it because every half crown represented £1,250,000 per year. Some time ago, the Government, quite properly, in my view—I pay full tribute to them— decided to create the contributory old age pension. Having done so, they have reduced the cost of 2/6 to £730,000 per year. Why did he not give them 5/-? He did not because he is not a progressive Minister for Finance, because this is not a progressive Government, because this is an ultra-conservative Government.

Take, for instance, the public service pensioners. They got five per cent. To me, this seems quite incorrect, but may I say that there is something else which seems to me utterly impossible to believe, but which I know to be true, that a boy who got both his legs shot off in the Congo is at this moment receiving £21 a month?

That does not arise on the General Resolution. It would be a matter for the Estimates.

In my opinion, it arises, but with respect for the Leas-Cheann Comhairle's ruling, I will immediately leave it; but it is true.

It is a detail that does not arise.

It is true.

It may be but it does not arise.

It is true, and, in my view, it is another proof that this Government are not the free and easy private enterprise or progressive thinking group which they would seek to have us believe they are.

Take, for instance, the situation in relation to money. A statement was made by the Taoiseach some time ago and has been mentioned often in this House, that we could get all the money we want here, with no trouble at all. If you refer to the Capital Budget, Table I, you will find that from banks, insurance companies and stock issues, the Minister in 1963-64 got £10.9 million. In Table 3, you find that this year he expects to get £11.6 million. If you look at Table 2 in the same volume, you find that he had at the end of the Capital Budget, 1963-64, £10.5 million in Exchequer Bills, at the same time as the public demand for these Exchequer Bills had increased by £2.85 million. What does this mean? Apart from National Loans, which are good, and apart from ordinary borrowing, the Minister in short term borrowing has removed from circulation a sum of approximately £12 million per year which the banks could lend to private enterprise.

The amount to be met in the Capital Budget this year, as shown in Table 4 of the same volume, is £40.46 million. I want again to emphasise what I feel to be the selling line of the Government in this Budget and which I do not believe to be true. They would have the country believe that we on this side are opposed to expenditure. We are not. We do not object to the Capital Budget; we do not object to the national debt; but we object to bad housekeeping. We object to spending from which there is not a proper return, because we believe that if there is a return, it leaves more and more money to be expended on capital again and again. If money is wrongly spent and is not coming back, the clear situation is that it is money wasted. You have only had the use of it once, whereas, in fact, profit in the economy and expansion re-creates work and activity and this is where we reserve the right to criticise.

For instance, if some of the things the Government did had been successful, would they have been in the position of having to be so meagre about social welfare payments? Would they have had to ignore the disgraceful situation as far as health and provision for health services are concerned? I do not think so. I am not at all certain that the money they are voting here for the encouragement of industry is properly applied. The main incentive to foreign industry, and foreign capital coming in here, would in my view be a low tax rate, a free borrowing situation and an available pool of first-class labour. We certainly have the third, and the Government could have helped in this Budget with the other two. They certainly have not helped in this Budget, and in the turnover tax previously, as far as the low tax rate is concerned.

If we continue to move on the road along which we are now going, irrespective of what the Parliamentary Secretary to the Taoiseach said today, there is no doubt that we will end up with one of the highest tax rates in Europe. I do not believe they have created that situation and, furthermore, I do not think some of their expenditure on grants is properly applied. Deputy Barron mentioned the fact that he thought the Government should have had a thought for the position of new industries. I believe old and existing industries should get as high a grant rate as new industries. The adaptation rate for old industries should be as high as the rate of grants for new industries. My belief is based on the fact that I see old industries unable to expand and remaining stagnant in size and efficiency, and I believe sincerely that this is not a thing they are happy about. They want to expand but faraway cows have long horns and the new industries seem to get the credit and the thanks while the old ones are blamed because they do not produce a better livelihood for those whom they employ. I feel the situation should be that the percentage grants for adaptation of old industries should be as high as the grants for new industries.

In regard to tourism, the money voted is of course quite necessary but I do not believe the figures quoted for tourism. All you have to do is go to Westland Row railway station in July or August, stand on the platform and look at the hundreds of girls and boys returning home to the west of Ireland. You will find a much higher figure than is popularly supposed to be our tourist figure. In fact, emigrants returning home are spending money here just as tourists. The word "tourist" is a misnomer in that respect and it is a pity we are inclined to say we are so successful when we are not. It is perhaps an indication of our failure that we have a high number of our emigrants coming back and spending money here, which does help us, just as the ordinary tourist does.

The high price economy to which the Government seem to hitch their star is something which will affect tourism to a considerable extent. It is dearer to go for a holiday in Ireland today than in practically any country on the Continent. If you discount the air fare, it is cheaper to live in Spain, Italy, and parts of France than here. If you come into Dublin and go to any of the bigger hotels, in my opinion, you will pay more than in the same class hotel in London, with a few exceptions. This will hit our tourist trade fantastically. There is no commonsense about it. It is something which one might say the Government have no control over, but it is a policy which is under severe criticism in the country. The people feel the high-price economy which the Government have instituted is crippling our tourist trade and bringing about a situation in which the ordinary citizen cannot afford to go to these hotels unless he is on an expense account.

The question of State participation in industry is underlined in this Budget. You have the many operations of the State in industry. These industries must be expected to show profits, just as an ordinary industry will. There is one great difference between State industries and other industries. It is this: in a democracy we must face the fact that if there are hundreds of people employed in an industry and if the State takes it under its umbrella the industry must not be allowed fold up. I say this with the full acquiescence of the Fine Gael Party whose view is that in State industries that are not showing a profit we would be fully committed to keep everybody employed. I say this deliberately—because there was a suggestion to the contrary in a recent by-election—that there would be no question at all of cutting down development plans in these industries which have come under the State umbrella but Fine Gael would do a better job on them than the Government is doing. There would be no question of closure or of unemployment.

If we accept this situation—and that is our stated policy—it leaves us in a position to criticise. There are State industries where the Government do not seem to have worked to best advantage and do not seem to have applied the necessary effort or to have had the wisdom required. Whether it is a policy or not is something I suppose you can only think about. They do not seem to have had the success in these industries which we shall not discuss individually but which we, on this side of the House, believe must continue and on which we say we would do a better job than Fianna Fáil.

The only State company I know that pays its interest rate on investment is the ESB and it was instituted by Fine Gael. It is the only such industry that continues to pay its way. Further expansion must come from profits. The good thing about State industries is that if they are making profits these profits are entirely available to the State for inclusion in the capital Budget, thus opening avenues to greater production and expansion and more employment. Every loss we make and every failure means less profit and fewer new jobs. It does us no good to drag them around like dead cats. Fianna Fáil have a sorry record in that regard. I think the Minister and myself would agree that it is right I should go no further in that line. We do not want to injure anybody but we in Fine Gael say it is our job to see that we increase employment and hold everybody who is employed in employment. This is a democracy and if the State takes over some industry at least it must be in the power of the State to maintain employment and give a reasonable chance to people earning a livelihood. We do criticise the Government for their failures.

Finally, I fear that the Budget, while used as a deflationary instrument, will follow the line of deflationary instruments in the history of all states which means that it will bring us higher and higher price structures. I do not know if we can afford it or not. At present we seem to be extremely elastic in that regard; whether that will continue remains to be seen but I am certain that if we could have a slightly lower price structure here as compared with abroad we could really enjoy an opportunity to export. If £10 a week here meant that a man could live as well as if he had £13 in England, or £12 in France or £15 in America, it would be the perfect economic situation. This Budget, in its deflationary object, in my view is forcing things the other way. It makes it harder for us to export and if it goes on fewer people will work here and more and more in Birmingham.

That is the failure of the Budget. It has not given the farmers that to which they were entitled. It could not, because the record of Fianna Fáil towards the farmers over the past 10 years has been atrocious. The unfortunate people depending on social welfare benefits have suffered because they get a miserly halfcrown at a time when it seemed possible to give more. The Government could have given them 5/- instead of a half-crown. I do not know if that was lack of foresight or not, but they also have suffered. Another group who will suffer and who have suffered under Fianna Fáil are those in need of housing. Since 1957 Fianna Fáil have not built as many houses as were built under the previous administration although the great criticism of that previous administration was in regard to housing. Remember houses are falling down in Dublin city; temporary caravans without wheels are being built in my constituency and lorried to Dublin for people to live in who have no other homes. That is the depth to which the people have been brought by the Government and yet their skin is not on the bush for it. I know where our skin would be if we were in Government.

I freely admit that they have a best-selling line in propaganda and the best window dressing, but when you strip the whole business down the hard fact you find is that they failed. The impact of Government policy is deflationary making it harder to export. It will mean the workers will not get the 12 per cent they settled for but every cent of it will be removed. It will not give the farmers what they should get and were promised. It leaves the unfortunate poor, the unemployed and the old age pensioner in receipt of an extra half-crown with the cost of living going up by 7/- or 8/- or 10/-. This Government is a failure and I should like to see anybody produce reasons why it is not.

I should like to comment first on a couple of speeches made here this afternoon. Deputy O'Sullivan made his speech. I need say no more as we have heard it so often and it was no better than it has been in previous years. Deputy Barron is not so often heard but he gave us an interesting outline of the policy of his Party. If that policy is really as naive as that which he produced here it is scarcely to be wondered at that their strength should have dwindled to one. He was arguing somewhat on the same lines as Deputy Declan Costello for a greater move towards securing economic and financial independence. Both Deputies should by now have realised that this is an impossible idea.

Economics and finance are indivisible and the idea that the Bank of England or the Chancellor of the Exchequer are entirely free agents is just ludicrous and certainly false. No one country can fix its bank rate without considering seriously the bank rate in other countries and we are no exception. If the bank rate goes up in England and does not go up here and if there is a large disparity between the two rates it is a simple economic fact that money will be attracted out of this country to London. That is detrimental to our economy. It is exactly the same in London. If the bank rate in London is completely out of step with that in Paris or Rome, money will fly in that direction or even as far as New York. No country is economically or financially independent any more and never will be. Countries are becoming more and more interdependent every day.

Deputy Barron made reference to the social welfare benefits and stated that the amount now given to the non-contributory old age pensioners and others was grossly insufficient and did not compare with the increases given when the food subsidies were withdrawn. I thought that by now we would have heard the last of that. There is a lot to be said for food subsidies, always assuming that you have the money to pay for them, but the food subsidies should have been withdrawn by the inter-Party Government although they had not the courage to do it. That Government, before they disintegrated, had already received the report of their own Commission which advised them that the food subsidies could no longer continue. That report was suppressed but it has come out that that was the fact and it explains how that Government disintegrated in face of a problem they could not solve on their own. The reason the food subsidies were withdrawn was that they were financially impossible.

That is not what the Minister for Finance said in 1952.

That is what the Government Commission said and it has never been questioned.

It has been questioned.

It has already been pointed out that Deputy McGilligan will have every opportunity of speaking on his own. The fact remains that the food subsidies had to go because there was not the money to keep them in operation.

That is wrong.

It may be inconvenient but it is a fact. Deputy Barron went on to complain about the increasing gap between the rich and the poor. I would be the first to admit that there are some very poor people in this country and none of us on this side of the House will ever be satisfied until we can say there are no more. To say that the gap between the rich and the poor is widening every day is completely untrue.

It is not untrue.

Let us get down to the facts rather than shout contradictions across the House. I was speaking recently to one of the councillors of the Dún Laoghaire Borough Corporation and he informed me that it was becoming increasingly frequent for them to receive offers of £5 for the erection of gates in the front railings of their houses through which the tenants may drive their motor cars. Nobody could ever accuse me of disapproving of such a suggestion. I am all in favour of it. If Deputy Barron or anyone else goes around any of the corporation housing estates now, he will see an increasing number of cars parked outside the houses and nowadays the owners are prepared to take more care of them and wish to park them inside the railings.

That is because their children are grown up and are still living with them. Some of these houses have £40 a week going into them. Let us have the whole story.

The fact remains that an increasing number of tenants of corporation houses are becoming car owners. Another fact is that more and more of what Deputy Barron would call the honest workingmen are driving to and from their work in their own motor cars.

They would want to have their own cars with bus fares as they are.

If anyone says it is cheaper to run your own car than to travel by bus, he should have his head examined.

They can take some of their colleagues with them and share the expenses.

Contrary to what Deputy Seán Dunne has said, the pint is no longer the working man's sole means of relaxation. The working man's means of relaxation now is to go for a drive in his own car or to take his wife on a continental holiday. It is not only the idle rich who are now taking holidays abroad. More and more of the ordinary working people are now able to live at a standard which was quite impossible for them only eight or ten years ago. So I say quite categorically in refutation of what Deputy Barron has said that the gap between the rich and the poor is narrowing rather than getting wider and we on this side of the House will not be satisfied until it is narrowed still further.

In the Budget debate individual members of the Fine Gael Party have advocated almost everything, even though they have been contradictory. They have advocated increased expenditure on education, on social welfare, on farms and on pretty well everything. That cannot be done without money but the only thing on which they are unanimous is that in no circumstances must the Government receive any more money. Taxation must go down and expenditure must go up. There have been many criticisms from the other side about the benefits being given to the farmers because they are being unfairly treated as against the ordinary working man but Deputy Donegan has said that the farmers are not getting half enough.

The members of Fine Gael, according to whether they are speaking in rural or urban constituencies, can always say that they are supporting the people in these constituencies. If you can change your mind often enough or climb on enough band-wagons, you can put yourself forward as supporting every section of the community. Sometimes, during Deputy Donegan's speech, he seemed to lose touch with reality. He stated that the amount of aid given to agriculture was insufficient and that it was unfair to regard arterial drainage as being beneficial to the farmer and the farm worker. He went even further and said that it was just as appropriate that the cost of arterial drainage should be paid by the owner of a hat shop in Grafton Street. I cannot see how a large, or even a small, arterial drainage scheme could be held to be of any benefit to a hat shop in Grafton Street.

He went on to plead for the reintroduction of Section B of the Land Project. I had hoped that we had got over that but it comes to haunt us again because it is one of the pet hobby horses of Fine Gael, who quite disregard the fact that Section B was proved to be entirely uneconomic.

Who proved that?

The facts.

The facts in regard to the average cost per acre.

Deputy Booth should speak for his own constituency.

Section B was uneconomic and it would be far better, as has been proved, to devote the money to the subsidisation of fertilisers. It has been proved quite conclusively by the facts that what we need is not so much more land under cultivation as all arable land under the most intensive cultivation and that we can get a far greater increase and a better and more lasting investment for our money by subsidising fertilisers than by the very expensive land reclamation projects under Section B.

Make the rich richer and the poor poorer.

That, of course, is not our intention. The intention is to have an investment which will be in the public interest. Certain people certainly did make a stack out of Section B.

A Deputy

£300 an acre.

Deputy Donegan went on to make the wildest generalisations by quoting percentages. Quoting percentages is a very dangerous hobby and there are always people who are inclined to believe the person who quotes a precise percentage because they believe he must have calculated it with the most uncanny skill. Deputy Donegan said that it has been calculated that the turnover tax has increased prices by four per cent. As generalisation that just takes the biscuit. He did not say by whom it had been calculated; I do not blame him. He did not say whether he had calculated it. I do not think he would have been able to do so. He did not say whether he had checked it. He did not even say he had consulted the official cost of living index which would show that he was wrong.

The actual cost of living figure shows, just as had been foretold, that the 2½ per cent turnover tax resulted in an increase of just three per cent in the cost of living. Previous to the introduction of the tax, there had been the wildest accusations and prophecies. I remember hearing the Leader of the Labour Party saying that it would lead to rises of seven to eight per cent. This is the business of quoting percentages as if he knew, which he did not. Let us get it clearly on the record that the turnover tax led exactly as expected to a rise of three per cent in the cost of living.

The Deputy means the cost of living figure.

Deputy Donegan went on to say it had also been calculated that income tax and other charges had increased prices by a further four per cent. We can forget about Deputy Donegan when he makes these stupid statements because he is entirely unable to substantiate them and they confuse anybody who might listen to them. He said that a holiday in Ireland is dearer than a holiday on the continent. I do not know when he had a holiday on the continent or if he ever had one, but if he is in doubt, I recommend him to try one and he will find that he will be able to get a much cheaper holiday here, unless, of course, he is going to stay in the Intercontinental Hotel. But if he is going to stay in the normal tourist accommodation of the middle income group, he will have a far better holiday at home, even if he does not get as much sun, but I do not think we can hold the Government responsible for that.

When the debate opened, the general note, particularly of Fine Gael speakers, was one of surprise and alarm. Deputy Sweetman led off followed by the Leader of the main Opposition, Deputy Dillon. Both expressed surprise at the Budget and alarm at its provisions. That was playacting, pure and simple. I do not believe for a moment that either one was surprised or alarmed in the slightest. If they were it is a horrible confession of failure because every single political correspondent in the national press had forecast with almost complete accuracy the contents of the Budget. The only thing that was unexpected was the tax on petrol and fuel oil. Everything else was precisely as expected and the political correspondents, who had no information which was denied to Deputy Sweetman or Deputy Dillon, had no hesitation in forecasting what the Budget would contain and no hesitation in congratulating themselves afterwards, and small blame to them. Deputy Dillon referred to the ruthless impositions and then Deputy Declan Costello, followed to my intense surprise by his father, Deputy John A. Costello, stated that far from this being a ruthless Budget, it was not half ruthless enough and was far too conservative. That is the obvious Fine Gael policy——

Deputy Costello did not say that it was not half ruthless enough.

He said that it was far too conservative.

Do not be putting things into his mouth which he did not say. The Deputy tried that before.

It is a matter of detail. If it is far too conservative, it cannot be ruthless. You cannot be ruthlessly conservative.

A conservative Budget is often so termed.

Fine Gael speak with two voices if not more, and then you can always choose which speech to quote. Both Deputy Declan Costello and Deputy John A. Costello were asking for far greater State interference in industry. I cannot understand how this sudden outburst of socialism should have broken out in the Costello family because it seems an unlikely one in which to happen. There, again, I cannot see how the Government could be expected to have an increased participation in industry without looking for increased taxation from someone. You cannot have nationalisation without the funds to carry it out, but no explanation was given by Deputy Declan Costello or Deputy John A. Costello as to where this enormous amount of money for increased State participation in the economy was to come from.

I am at least as keen as anyone else on substantial tax reform. Generally, I think our whole tax system is entirely out of date and needs a radical new approach. What gives me encouragement is the belief, which I think is well founded, that that is also the view of the Government. The only criticism which could be levelled at the Budget is that it was dull, that it was not exciting. That was the point made by certain members of the Fine Gael Party, particularly the Deputies Costello. I would agree to this extent, that it was a dull and fairly obvious Budget but, when the Minister became adventurous in his tax policy last year, he was not received with any cheers of delight from the other side of the House.

Last year, the Minister introduced the turnover tax, which was an entirely novel approach to the whole business of raising money and it produced nothing but howls of abuse from the Opposition. Now, many Opposition Deputies are saying that we should have done the same again this year. I do not think so. It is time to let the economy get its breath back after that, which it needs to do. Any Minister who introduced major reforms every year would undoubtedly cause far too much upset in the whole economic development of the country. Radical tax reform is necessary but, for heaven's sake, let us do it at a reasonable pace so that we do not do more harm than good.

Criticism has been offered by many speakers on the grounds that the turnover tax was introduced because the traditional forms of taxation could not afford any increase. That was the fact last year but, since then, we have had the national wage agreement, which has very considerably increased the purchasing power of the wage and salary earners. If the wages of the honest working man—the same old fellow—had remained stationary, we would not have been able to raise any additional revenue by taxes on tobacco, alcoholic drinks and petrol but, during the last financial year, we did have the national wages agreement which has put sufficient money into circulation to make the traditional forms of taxation actually work for a little longer and, in addition, it was necessary, not only to raise additional money, but to have a slightly deflationary trend in view of the danger of the reverse.

(South Tipperary): When did it come into operation?

If the Deputy had been in the House all the time, with his ears open, he would have realised that taxation had already come into operation but, if he is in any doubt, I can inform him that it came into operation the day the Budget was introduced or the day after.

It is definitely deflationary, is it not?

So Deputy Donegan says.

And the Deputy says so also.

It has a deflationary element in it which, I think, is not altogether unwise. There is also the point that for health reasons it is just as well to discourage cigarette smoking and, similarly, for health reasons and for reasons of balance of payments, and so on, the tax on imported spirits was very justifiable.

I have already referred, as other speakers have done, to the national wages agreement itself. That, to my mind, is one of the greatest achievements of recent years. Let it be said quite frankly that this is not a Government-sponsored wage agreement. The real strength of the whole agreement was that it was negotiated freely between the Irish Congress of Trade Unions and the employers. It is a terribly exciting thing to me to see the new strength of the Congress of Trade Unions, their new ability to take a full responsibility for the development of the economy generally and new realisation that no longer are they merely a protest group but are a group very representative with a real and constructive role to play in the development of our whole economy.

Prior to the formation of the Irish Congress of Trade Unions, this, of course, would have been quite impossible but the position was that at the time of the issue of the White Paper, Closing The Gap, a national wage increase was out of the question. In fact, even any increase at all was highly undesirable. We were told in this House that that was an entirely unjustifiable pronouncement by the Government of the day but it should be placed on record again that the Irish Congress of Trade Unions was one of the first to realise that the facts had to be faced and Congress did recommend to its constituent unions that there should be a period of restraint in wage demands until national productivity had been improved. That was an act of the very greatest responsibility by the trade union movement, which should get the greatest publicity. I think the Congress was a little bit shy about seeking too much publicity about it because it was an adventurous move but it was accepted by the constituent unions. There was a restraint in wage demands by individual unions while the whole question of productivity was thrashed out at all levels.

Then the facts clearly established that national productivity had gone up and there was no possibility of anybody failing to see that and the trade union movement were the first to see it and, as a result, wage demands began to be formulated

Then we were faced with the problem of having either a further round of wage increases ruled by the law of the jungle. as had happened in all previous wage demands, or whether there could be some orderly progress. It was at that stage that the Taoiseach, very correctly, placed the facts squarely and fairly before the community and stated that productivity had increased and that there did appear now to be a reason for sharing the fruits of that increased productivity with the wage earners.

It was never contended by either of the parties to these negotiations or by the Taoiseach that the ninth round of wage increases was to make up for the increased cost of living. The increased cost of living was only three per cent and, while it was obviously something to be taken into account, it was not by any means the largest thing to be taken into account. The chief single factor was the profit-sharing element, the fact that production had increased, and it was right and fair in the view of the Government that the wage earners should receive their share of the profits.

No one other than the Taoiseach could possibly have got the Trade Union Congress and the employers down to negotiation so quickly. He did get them down to negotiate and they failed to reach agreement, and no wonder, because this was the first time a national wage agreement had ever been thought of. They worked hard and consistently and negotiations broke down. A lesser man might have thrown his hat at it and said: "It was worth trying but if the gentlemen cannot agree, we shall have to leave it and let the law of supply and demand work out its own crazy way as to which union will get the biggest increase."

That would have been highly undesirable, and the Taoiseach went back into the fray and persuaded the two parties to come together. What he said to them, I do not know and neither does anyone else, but the fact remains they came together and did thrash out an agreement to last two years. That is one of the greatest parts of it all. There are many employers, of whom I am one, who feel that as of this moment a general wage award of 12 per cent is unjustified by the increase in national productivity, but at the same time, we do feel that if the matter had been left to negotiation between the individual trade unions and individual employers in the country, it could easily have happened that the final wage increase for the ninth round might have been larger.

That would undoubtedly have put our whole system out of balance. Prices would have had to go up more steeply than they have done. It would also have made it increasingly difficult for us to compete on export markets. I believe, however, that long before two-and-a-half years are ended this wage award will have fully justified itself. As well as everything else, this breathing space will give time to the employers to plan ahead in the knowledge that they have some stability as far as their expenses are concerned. It could also enable the trade unions to concentrate more on the essential jobs for which trade unions are responsible.

I do not think trade unions should be always nattering about wages. There are other equally important and, in some cases, more important, things for trade unions to direct their attention to. There is the whole question of additional training for their members, to make them more qualified for their own particular work, to make them more readily adaptable to changing circumstances. There must be increasing activity in other spheres of the trade union movement—conditions of work, holidays and so forth. There is plenty of work for trade unions to do, apart from wages negotiations.

However, in this case, with the minimum amount of public attention, maximum efficiency and speed, a national agreement has been negotiated to last for two years, with a further period of six months for negotiation. I believe this will be the first of many agreements between the Irish Congress of Trade Unions and the Federated Union of Employers which will lead to stability in the whole economy and in trade union-employer relationship which will be the envy of other countries.

The Government have been castigated for gross mishandling of a situation which has given rise to rising prices and inflation. It sounds all right if you just say it like that, but it completely ignores the fact that rising prices and inflation are the general run of affairs in Europe at present. I should like to quote from the April issue of the journal of the British Institute of Directors, a very reasonable body. It states:

Last autumn the French Government took a series of steps designed to arrest the steep rise in prices and wages. It is by no means certain yet that the French stabilisation plan will really work.

That is as far as France is concerned. Of Italy, the journal says:

In Italy the situation is much more serious. Prices have been rising by around 8 per cent in each of the last two years. Higher incomes have helped to swell the import bill, while exports are being affected by higher costs.

In regard to the Netherlands it says:

In Holland, the latest wage settlement will add something like 15 per cent to labour costs this year.

There is the situation as far as Europe is concerned, with Germany scared stiff that the same trend will spread into her economy. We have had, nearer home, the British Chancellor of the Exchequer trying to have the courage to introduce a severely deflationary Budget but failing in the effort, even though he knew that is what he should have done. I wish to make it perfectly clear that in a developing economy, there are bound to be rising prices, a certain degree of inflation. We are not getting madly out of step with our competitors. There are those who say the ninth round will make us quite unable to compete. The figures I have quoted show that other countries have problems at least as great as, if not greater than ours: prices are going up and wages are going up and they are probably saying exactly about us what we are saying about them—"Do not press for higher wages or we shall be less competitive." We are all in the same boat.

The Government have also been criticised for the intolerable burdens which have been placed on industry. I should like to quote from some outside sources. I have not got a great head for statistics but I do like to get outside comment which I think is helpful. I was most interested to read the published reports of Irish industrial concerns and to look at the chairmen's comments on the whole economy. In his speech as managing director of Sunbeam Wolsey Limited, Mr. Declan Dwyer stated to his shareholders:

You will see that taxation has taken a very much larger slice of the cake this year, the total provision being £197,500 as against £155,000.

That is a criticism of the Government, quite clearly—taxation taking so much more of the cake. He goes on:

Nevertheless our profits after taxation and depreciation compare more than favourably with those of the previous year, showing a net increase of £15,283.

In spite of the intolerable burdens the Government have been placing on industry, that is the reaction of one man who is able to run his business, who is able, with his company and his board of directors, to take advantage of the re-equipment grants available from An Foras Tionscal. In his speech he refers with gratitude to all the help he has received from An Foras Tionscal and the excellent manner in which they have dealt with problems. One of the most interesting parts of the Chairman's address is in his concluding remarks. He had been criticising the Government for continuing to reduce tariffs, thereby increasing competition from exports, and his concluding remarks are:

Therefore, we must face the problem by further expanding our production and continuing to effect economies by improving our production techniques. It is not the first time, nevertheless, that we have had to face these problems and it would be a disappointment to my Board if next year's results were not equally satisfactory.

There is a company which happens to be well run. There are plenty of companies which are being just as well run, just as well developed, and just as well able to bear the burdens which Opposition critics say are absolutely intolerable.

Criticisms have been made here, and elsewhere, on the subject of lavish spending by the Government. I should like to quote from a statement made by the Chairman of Independent Newspapers to his shareholders and published in the daily Press. He was a great critic, probably still is, on this question of lavish expenditure and taxation:

I would like now to refer back to the question of taxation. Year after year I have commented on the continued rise of production costs, as indeed have many Chairmen of other big companies in the Republic. I have appealed to the Government to show more example by cutting down State spending but alas all to no avail. In fact the mad race continues and inflation is rampant. The Government pours out millions of the taxpayers' money. We know the appalling cost of the Avoca Copper Mines. Last year Irish Steel Holdings got a further million and a quarter pounds, in addition to the original State investment of £3½ million. Verolme Dockyard got a further million pounds, following previous State commitments of £4¾ million. These cases of continuing massive injections of public money must give rise to uneasy feelings.

That is the sort of criticism which has been made inside this House. It is quite typical, but I am disappointed that a businessman should make that type of criticism instead of looking at the whole matter as a businessman should, and as this particular chairman looks at his own business. If he were to run his own business in the way he advocates the Minister should run the Government financial business, he would not have started investing money in new equipment.

He criticises the Minister for investments in Avoca, Irish Steel Holdings, and Verolme Cork Dockyard. In his own company, the total expenditure on fixed assets amounted during the year to £174,000. The Chairman of Independent Newspapers thought that was a good thing to do. I think he was perfectly right. His company has invested a large amount of money in new colour printing techniques. It would be open to any critic of his firm, just as it is open to critics of the Government, to say: "You do not need to invest in colour printing machinery. Nobody else has got it. You are only trying to be first man in. You have grandiose ideas. Why not pay more to your shareholders?"

The total profit for the last year amounted to £101,000. That is the trading profit, after charging all expenses and making provision for taxation. That is what was available for distribution, but the company, very wisely, did not distribute anything like that. In the year it spent £174,000 on premises and equipment for colour printing alone and some few motor vehicles. Personally, I think Independent Newspapers took a very wise decision. They have invested more than a year's trading profits in something which will probably pay handsomely in the future, particularly from the long-term point of view of the interests of their shareholders. Not content with spending £174,000, in one year alone, they put aside a further £50,000 for further development of that process during the current year. I should regard that as essentially wise business forward spending and I would regard the Government's policy in exactly the same light. Why spend money on Avoca? Why spend money on Verolme? Why spend money on Irish Steel Holdings? Because they are good investments and will pay off.

But they have not. They are in the red all the time.

Not all.

All the time.

The fact remains that, if Verolme Cork Dockyard had not received such a subvention from State funds, it would be the only shipyard in the world that did not.

Anyway, it is in the red, and it is not colour printing.

The fact is that all shipbuilding has to be subsidised and Deputy McGilligan either knows that or, if he does not, then he should. He would, of course, be the first to try to forget about it because it is inconvenient. He believes, like all the others on his side of the House, that there should be no investment of State funds in interests like these. He does not believe Deputy John A. Costello or Deputy Declan Costello. He comes in here and says: "We have a perfect right to speak our mind". The Deputy should be up there as an Independent. Fine Gael are not a Party. They have no Party economic, financial or foreign policy They say the first thing that comes into their heads.

We should all slink out of this House, I suppose, with our heads down.

I think you should.

Who started Avoca?

When I started it, I was told I was selling a national asset. Now it has turned out to be a liability and not an asset. I did not put money into it.

No, but you started it, and you went around the country talking about the great thing you did.

Money only on exploration.

I think we can still make a national asset out of it.

The Deputy is very hopeful. No one else has that view.

The Deputy's Party never had any confidence in anything. They would prefer to sell out to a foreign interest rather than develop something themselves.

Another matter in relation to which we have been criticised is this import excess. Deputy O'Sullivan said today that the import excess at the moment was greater than it had been in 1956 when the special import levies had to be put on to rectify the situation that existed. There is, of course, no comparison between the situation now and the situation in 1956. The trouble in 1956 was that the import excess was due to heavy consumer spending. That is not the situation now. Here, again, I should like to get my comments from outside this House because then people will not be able so easily to accuse me of playing Party propaganda, and so on. Let us consider the statement of the Governor of the Bank of Ireland on 28th January of this year. He was commenting on this whole question of the balance of payments:

The considerable change in the composition of the import trade is worth noting. Thirty-five years ago, some 45 per cent of our imports was composed of finished goods and 47 per cent was composed of raw materials for industry and agriculture, the small balance being accounted for by some capital goods and sundry items. The picture has now been changed out of recognition. In 1962 finished goods accounted for only 20 per cent of total imports. On the other hand, raw materials accounted for 62 per cent of imports, capital goods for 14 per cent and sundries for 4 per cent.

The situation now is that we have a very steep import excess according to these figures, and coming from the Bank of Ireland, I would assume they are reasonably accurate. Our imports of consumer goods accounted for only 20 per cent of the total; raw materials for 62 per cent; and capital goods for 14 per cent.

In those circumstances, I am not worried for a moment about the import excess, because a high percentage of our imports is going into capital goods and raw materials. One of the greatest signs of health in the community has been that, in spite of the increased standard of living, there has not been a crazy expenditure on consumer items such as there was in 1955-56. People are becoming more mature in the use of their money, and men who are receiving larger incomes are far better able to handle them. The banks generally have been co-operating very well in development. Their own profits have gone up, but their advances to consumers have gone up as well. In 1960, bills and other advances of Irish banks totalled £301 million. In 1963, the figure was up to £375 million. No one can say the banks are not co-operating They are doing more business, but they are lending money to a far greater extent than ever before.

I welcome particularly in this Budget tax reliefs for those both under and over 65 years for unearned income. That is a marked change in financial policy because for very many years the Department of Finance seemed to regard unearned income almost as verging on the obscene— something which should certainly be taxed to the limit. Earned income was a good thing, but unearned income was almost rather naughty. I am delighted there is the same relief on unearned income as on earned income, because it is a further encouragement to wage earners to invest their surplus income in industrial shares. That is something which would have been unthinkable a very short time ago.

It is a most gratifying fact that the common man—if there is such a person—is now much more ready to buy and sell on the Stock Exchange than ever before. Operations on the Stock Exchange in Dublin were previously confined to a very small class of moneyed interests and individuals. That is not the case now. There have been frequent new issues of industrial shares, and they have been very carefully controlled so that smaller applicants received top priorities. The result has been the building up of a really healthy market on the Stock Exchange which never existed before. In the 1956 situation, as any stockbroker will tell you, when his customers wished to make an investment, they said to him: "I am not sure whether I should invest anything, but I will try £500. What do you advise—but not in Irish investment?" That was the general rule. No stockbroker would recommend an Irish investment, and no investor would ask to have his money put into it.

That situation has changed magnificently now. At last we have got back our self-respect, and Irish people are anxious to subscribe to new industrial issues as they come on the market. What is more exciting is to find in the financial journals in Great Britain, and in America for that matter, that Irish securities are recommended. They have benefited tremendously in recent years through the investment of money from outside. I forecast that this will increase steadily throughout the summer as the British general election gets nearer. Undoubtedly we are benefiting by all that, but it is a healthy sign of the economy generally. There are no grounds for complacency. I hope I would be the last person to be complacent.

Why have we not done more for education? Why have we not done more for the social welfare classes? I, for one, would love to have done far more for everyone, but I just do not see where we could have got the money to do it. I am very sorry that no one else could see where we could have got the money either. It would have been grand to have given 7/6 instead of 2/6 but there, again, as a wise businessman, it is no use saying: "We will give you a 25 per cent dividend this year," and the following year saying: "I am terribly sorry; we went a bit too far last year, and we are down to five per cent, or to no dividend, this year."

It is far better to have a steady rate of increase over the years. It is better for the economy and better for those in receipt of payments. If they feel there is any danger that their payments will be cut back, or if they feel there is any danger that over a long period they will be faced with increasing prices and no increase in benefits, that would be an intolerable situation. We believe, and rightly, I think, that our job is to make steady progress, and to make certain we will never cut back. We could have brought in an electioneering Budget, if you like. We could have raised additional taxation and gone on the spree and said: "Look here, we swept in, in Cork and Kildare. We are the greatest boys on earth. We are now taking you for a ride."

I do not think that would have been wise for the economy, for the Government, or for anyone. Instead, we are maintaining a slow but steady rate of progress. It is not so slow either, and it is steady. The House can be assured that every penny which can possibly be given to the social welfare classes will be given but, above all, we must make sure that our sources of income are assured, and we must plough back some of our income into the economy. That is what we are doing. We want to make sure we have enough people paying income tax, surtax, corporation profits tax, revenue duties and excise duties, to enable us to spread out the benefits over the social welfare classes.

As I have already said, the only criticism that could be made of the Government is that the Budget was too much as expected, and that it was a little bit dull. In the circumstances, and remembering the exciting events of last year, was it not better to be a little dull this year rather than to be exciting every year? I am perfectly convinced that before this time next year the Exchequer will be in a far better state than it is at the moment, and that the Minister will be able to report a surplus. In that event, that would be the time to be even more generous to those who most need help. It is not unfair at this stage to say that we have given what we can at the moment, that there is more coming, and that we are making sure of that. In these circumstances I have no hesitation in commending this Budget to the House and to the country.

Deputy Booth has treated us to the greatest series of inaccuracies I have ever listened to from any Deputy in this House. He was timid enough about the subsidies. Does anybody who was here forget Deputy MacEntee, then Minister for Finance, when he slashed the subsidies in the 1952 Budget? We all remember the phrases he used. He said that increases in salaries and wages had advanced more than the increase in the cost of living and that there were, therefore, no social or economic necessities to keep these subsidies. That was the reason they were slashed. I heard Deputy MacEntee say it. We have often repeated the phrase "the people were too well off" and it was accepted.

Is the Deputy quoting or paraphrasing?

I am quoting.

From where?

From my memory.

The Deputy objected very strongly to Deputy Brennan doing so.

I am now purporting to quote Deputy MacEntee as Minister for Finance in 1952. The quotation is——

It is all right for Deputy McGilligan to do so.

Deputy Brennan could not give me a reference. I can give my reference. It can be fortified by any number of people in the House.

Order. Deputy McGilligan, without interruption.

We were told that increases in wages and salaries had advanced farther than the increases in the cost of living. There was, therefore, Deputy MacEntee said, no economic or social necessity for these subsidies. We paraphrased that by saying that his excuse was that people were too well off. Deputy Booth, in his own smug way, talked about the credit situation. He criticised Deputy Barron who had asked that some better hold should be taken of the credit situation here. Deputy Barron was more accurate in his remarks than Deputy Booth was. There is no doubt about it that the credit situation here is very lax. I cannot understand how people who are called conservative in this country prefer to run our banking institutions as they are——

Hear, hear.

——under the conditions in which any excess money generated here is transferred to England and lodged in the Bank of England which is under the control of the British Treasury and one of these days may be under the control of a Treasury which is manned by Labour MPs. Apparently our folk would rather have their money in an institution that is controlled by an outside political Party and going out of the country, than by an Executive Council and members of the Government here.

I also remember a very important matter concerning not so much the volume of credit as its direction. I remember that in one of my last periods in Government there was a requirement for a certain amount of money from one of the banks for keeping an industrial group alive here for the development of a rural electrification area. That bank refused the money and preferred to let it go to the building of a stand for one big athletic organisation in this country. It may have been a better business investment, although they would have got the same return on their money, but they had the power to direct their credit and they directed it to an amenity attached to a game in this country rather than to keep an industrial group in good condition and to enable it to keep its employees in the number previously occupied by them and to give them good wages.

With regard to the impact of the turnover tax on the cost of living, Deputy Booth says it was forecast that that would not amount to more than 3 per cent of an increase and that the figures show it is just about that. I hope Deputy Booth will continue to say that and that he will get as much publicity as possible for it because the housewife knows differently.

I referred many years ago to what Fianna Fáil had done in 1947 when they were projecting an autumn Budget in which they proposed to tax beer, spirits, tobacco and entertainments. In those days, there was a cost of living index figure which was made up of a variety of items, including these items. Before the Budget was introduced, the Government of the day authorised the Department which was collecting the items for the cost of living to leave out tobacco and certain classes of drink. From that time on, the cost of living index figure became less and less of a real standard, less by which things would be measured. I presume it is because the cost of living index figure is not weighted in connection with beer, spirits or tobacco that you have the present increases.

It does include them.

It does not.

It does.

Wait a minute. Surely we are now going on the cost of living essential commodities figure?

The Deputy does not know what he is talking about. He is talking with the greatest assurance but he does not tell the truth at all.

I shall stake my reputation on this as against the Minister.

All right.

That change was made, and I quoted it, in the Finance Bill, 1949.

The Deputy often quoted things wrongly before.

This was never contradicted; this is quite right.

Food, drink and tobacco are included in the cost of living.

The food figures represent "essential commodities". Does the Minister tell me that tobacco and drink are "essential commodities"? He is wrong.

They are included in the cost of living.

I am talking of the cost of living index figure.

They are not.

I say "Yes, they are" and that is the reason taxes were put on beer and tobacco— because they do not show any increase on the figure.

They do show it.

If they are in, of course they show it. Deputy Booth is a businessman.

Come down to the truth on the next point.

The truth is that these things are not included in the figures as they are made up.

They are.

An instruction was given to the Department of Industry and Commerce in December, 1947. Even after that instruction had been carried out, the old figure was still maintained. It had to be maintained for the reason that there are a certain number of officials in this country who are known as transferred officers and they have certain rights which they can get for themselves in the courts. Their conditions are attached to the old cost of living index figure. For them, the old cost of living figure had been kept and I presume is still being kept but it is never revealed. To get this debate clarified, so that we shall know where we are, whether it is kept or not—the statisticians can easily make it up——

The Deputy does not want to know where we are.

I want to know the old figure, adjusted to meet the increases in such things as tobacco, spirits and beer because they are not included at the moment. Deputy Booth speaks in this House as a businessman.

A bowler hat in the bearna baoil.

I can hardly believe he would be received in any business company if they heard what he said here tonight. He wanted to make a case for the investment of money in national ventures. He mentioned the Irish Independent which has put something over £100,000 into colour printing. He said he thought that was a good investment. He compared that, then with State investment. What did he bring out as a proper comparison—investment in Avoca, in Verolme Shipyards and in Irish Steel Holdings. It is all the difference between investment and something that has shown itself to be insolvent.

We have had State investment in the Verolme Shipyard in Cork, in Irish Steel Holdings and in Avoca. When I intervened about Avoca, the Minister for Finance cross-questioned me about my attitude towards Avoca. In my time, I am happy to say, there was never one single shilling of Irish money sunk in the Avoca mines. There was about £65,000, in the first period, written off as exploration money. After much consultation with experts, it was agreed that this exploration money should be spent. At a later stage, we got a Canadian group to invest their money in the development of Avoca. The present Taoiseach, speaking as Minister for Industry and Commerce, told us we had sold a very valuable national asset. We are trying to sell that again after it has been developed to some extent. I do not think there have been any offers for it yet—none certainly that we have heard of.

The other speaker who intervened from the Government side today was Deputy J. Brennan, Parliamentary Secretary to the Taoiseach. He tried to develop a quotation of what I said over the radio before one of the elections but he distorted what I said. I never said any Minister for Finance could save £10 million. I did say that any Minister for Finance who was worth his salt could find a couple of millions, or several millions—I think that was the phrase I used—easily, and I am going to prove that the Minister for Finance has, even in this hard year, more than he pretends. I did say afterwards that if a reduction of £10 million, which the people desired, was to be brought about, it could only be by the Government refraining from intruding themselves into all sorts of domestic circumstances. There was no such promise made by me that £10 million was easy to find. I did say several millions could be got by any Minister worth his salt and I intend to prove that in a moment or two.

Deputy Brennan stands out in my mind as a person who, presented with one development which we suggested, decided to deride it. That was the time when my colleague, Deputy Sweetman, as Minister for Finance introduced the Prize Bonds. A predecessor of his, the present Minister for Health, an ex-Minister for Finance, deplored the raising of money by such means. He described it as a gamble and likened it to the Minister and the Government running a poolroom or making a book.

That was not good enough for Deputy Brennan. He said that there was a system in the country whereby when you wanted to raise the wind for any project that was in a shaky form, you resorted to what was known as a raffle. Having talked about Prize Bonds, he went on to say that there was a feeling of distrust caused by resorting to what the country thought was a last resort, the raffle. He sat behind the present Minister for Finance who is not merely continuing that raffle but is making the gamble a better one, by introducing, I think, two £10,000 prizes. I think that is a good move.

When we introduced the Prize Bonds five years ago, I was one of those who thought we should have followed the lines of the Sweepstakes draw originally where, if you remember, they gave one enormous prize and a whole lot of very small prizes. I certainly had the view, when the Prize Bonds were started, that more money would be brought in if there was one fairly big prize and a whole lot of small prizes instead of what we have at the moment. I noticed, by a stroke of irony, a Deputy asked the other day how much money had been collected by the Prize Bonds system. In the absence of the Minister for Finance, it fell to his colleague, the Minister for Health, who had derided the whole thing as a gamble and likened it to a raffle, a poolroom or making a book, to reply—and I was pleased to find— that no less than £25 million had been collected. It is growing, and may that project go ahead. It is one of the projects we introduced. It was derided but it has been accepted and is proving a success beyond what we always thought it might.

The Minister and his colleagues say they would love to do so much more but they have not the money. People do not know yet how much money the Minister has and I propose to enlighten them to a certain extent. I think it was Cicero, the Roman orator, many years ago who said he doubted if any Roman augur could pass another Roman augur in the street without winking at him. The augurs in those days made their projections of the future from the feeding of chickens and observing the flight of birds. We deal in statistics which, of course, may still be on a somewhat sandy subsoil but are a bit better than looking at the feeding of chickens and the flight of birds.

As one Minister for Finance speaking to another, I want to ask the Minister will he reveal now, before this debate ends, how much money he really had in hands, which he did not allow into the Exchequer on 31st March last.

£100,000.

£100,000 last year? The year before that it was £2,749,000 and for many years it has not been less than £2½ million. Surely it must be £2½ million? The accounts will be out in a couple of months' time and we shall get the figure then. The figure I have is for 31st March, 1963. I think it is time the public got to know that there is a vast amount of money, which is collected inside the financial year but which is not allowed to go into the Exchequer, which is held over. In Account No. 2, in the summary of the finance accounts for the financial year ended 31st March, 1963, the balance outstanding was £2,749,000. I have gone back over many years, but I have not got a full record of the accounts. It is many a year since it was as low as £2 million. It has always been—certainly in the past five or six years—about £2½ million, until this year when it was £2,749,000.

The Minister has that money on hands. I know, when I challenged this before, the then Minister for Finance, Deputy MacEntee, rode into the arena and said of course that money was there. He said that these balances provide essential relief for the Exchequer during the lean opening months of the financial year. There is a long letter he sent to one of the papers and again he reiterated this by saying: "It is only a working cash balance that must be held on hand at the beginning of each financial year." I ask the Minister has he now got further information? Is it any less than £2¾ million? I doubt if it is. If the Minister will not tell me now, we shall know it by the time the finance accounts are issued, that is, if they are not delayed deliberately, not later than September every year. There is the account for the year ended 31st March, 1963. It is under different heads, such as balance retained, customs and excise, estate duties, income tax, surtax, corporation profits tax, all down the line, and the total at the end is £2,749,077.

Lest it should be thought that what the then Minister for Finance, Deputy MacEntee, said was correct, that these moneys are required during the lean opening months of the financial year, I have also here Iris Oifigiúil, published on April 21st of this year, and it takes the accounts up to the first 18 days of the new financial year.

The situation there revealed is that the expenditure was £5,698,000 and that revenue was £8,558,000 so that even if the £3 million—and I think that by this time this figure of retained moneys or balances outstanding must be at least £3 million—were subtracted, the expenditure was £5,500,000 approximately. There was no question of lean financial months at the beginning of the year requiring the attention of anything like the moneys that have been retained over the years. This is simply a bad habit that we got into at a very early stage.

In my early period associated with the Government in Mr. Cosgrave's time, I doubt if there was ever anything like as much as £250,000 held in retention, but it grew and grew. When I became Minister for Finance, I found that the ordinary practice was to retain somewhere around £2.5 million. I spoke about this in the House and indicated that I had suggested to my colleagues that we should break that down. I did not want to remove the whole of it in one year, as I was on easy street so far as money was concerned, but I thought that possibly it could be reduced to £500,000 or so in two or three years and brought down to a reasonable total.

The other matter that had to be considered in connection with the Minister's Budget statement is what balances he has in hand. I am not speaking now of the receipts he obtained and did not pay into the Exchequer. May I say, in parenthesis, that this system allows the Minister for Finance, if he wants to do so, to produce a deficit in any year. No matter how much money he collects, he can always stop the flow into the Exchequer for the last three or four weeks of the financial year and bring about a deficit, if he wants to show a deficit. Generally speaking, Ministers for Finance do not want to show a deficit. It casts doubt on their calculations in the previous Budget and the Minister is then open to question as to what went wrong.

I should imagine the present Minister for Finance was rather inclined to show a deficit and make out he had one rather than show a surplus. Suppose he had allowed the sum of almost £3 million to flow into the Exchequer as well as other sums which I am going to mention and had shown a surplus, that surplus could easily have been £3.5 million or £4 million and, immediately, the Minister must have felt he would be up against the question: "Why did you put a turnover tax on food and clothes? You need not have done it. You could have put it on the other items such as the luxury type of clothes and food and you would still not have displaced your Budget calculations." It was almost necessary, in connection with the turnover tax imposed on the necessaries of life, that the Minister should make out that his Budget did not balance. He made that out by utilising two devices. By the first he does not allow to be paid into the Exchequer a big sum of money. The second device is what are called the "balances to be surrendered".

Again, Deputies and the public probably have no idea what goes on behind the scenes but it will be accepted as common case, as between Ministers and ex-Ministers for Finance, that one begins to think about the new Budget in the autumn of the previous year. The general run of the thing is that the spending Departments have then put up their calculations and they generally put them up in a very liberal way. At the same time, the Revenue Commissioners are closing in on the unfortunate Minister from the other side and telling him that the taxes he has already to hand will not yield anything like what is required for the coming year. In between these two, the Minister must struggle along. The spending Departments put up their demands in the most extravagant way and the Revenue Commissioners, because over the years pessimism has almost become an occupational disease with them, say the Minister will not get the money he is seeking. About Christmas, when nine months of the year have elapsed, the picture becomes clearer and at that time generally the Minister and the Department get busy.

In my time we had various screening groups and eventually I had a Budget committee helping me, first of all, to beat down the demands of the spending Departments and, secondly, to get some better idea of recent developments from the Revenue Commissioners. As the months went on, round about the end of February or the beginning of March you began to get a clearer picture. Of course, there were still judgments to be passed upon what was happening and the Minister at that point had to take the matter into his own hands. That generally meant that he cut down still further the demands made upon him by the spending Departments and he jacked up a bit the revenue he was expecting to get from existing taxes.

I remember on one occasion being rather mildly reproved by the officials of the Department because at one meeting I had with certain spending Departments I said to them that if they looked back over the records for four or five years they would understand me to be speaking accurately when I said they could not possibly spend all the money they were demanding. I remember the reproof that was addressed to me mildly by an official —was not that a dangerous thing to say? Was I not challenging the Departments to spend? My answer was that after two or three years' experience of the spending Departments, I found they always opened their mouths far too wide. There was no question of their ever being able to spend the amounts sought.

The signs are on it. I have here other statements from the Accounts of the Public Services, from the Report of the Comptroller and Auditor General for the years 1960/61, 1961/62 and 1962/63. There are what are called the "balances to be surrendered." I am not any longer on the receipts side. As I say, the Minister had receipts of £3 million in hand about which he gave no information to the public but when it comes to the spending side the Report of the Comptroller and Auditor General for the year 1960/61 shows the amount to be surrendered was £4,268,000. In the next year, 1961/62 it was only £3 million. In the last year, 1962/63 it was £4,156,000. The Auditor General gives the percentages. In one year it was 3.2 per cent of supply grants; and in the last year it was 2.6 per cent. Although the percentage was lower, the amount to be surrendered was very big, £4,156,000.

I have these sheets here and detailed accounts that go with them. These are in the Report of the Comptroller and Auditor General and at the end of the year he says that these balances have been surrendered. Now, I take last year. The important services that had to surrender balances were first, Defence. That Department was not able to spend within £783,000 of what it demanded: Industry and Commerce, £773,000; Transport and Power, £770,000; Public Works and Buildings, £211,000; Forestry, £191,000; Superannuation and Retirement Allowances, £176,000; Social Assistance, £160,000; Garda, £135,000. These are only the big items in the whole total to be surrendered which last year was £4,156,000.

May I relate that to this year? The Minister this year in his Budget statement said he was not going to make any allowance for overestimation. For many years back, he has taken £2 million, £3 million or £4 million and has justified the amount that he relies on by way of overestimation. He relates that to the amount of the expenditure. As the expenditure has gone up phenomenally this year, it is quite likely that the amount to be surrendered on which the Minister could easily count, is probably something in the region of £5 million. While I do not say the Minister should have used all that in the one year, certainly he could have taken account, in framing his Budget proposals, this year of some £5 million. I would be very much out in my calculation if it is not as much as £5 million. If, in addition to that, he has taken cognisance of the couple of million pounds he had in Exchequer receipts, he has about £7 million to play with.

Deputy Booth and other members of his Party wept and said how much they would like to see the old age pensioners getting more than a half-crown and the other pensioners, the Service pensioners, getting more than £140,000. These two, taken together, are less than £1 million. The Minister could easily have doubled the increase given to old age pensioners and he could have done what will have to be done one of these days with regard to the Service pensioners. It is a scandal to every idea of Christian charity that the Service pensioners should continue to be paid in dummy money.

These pensioners have earned, through the abatement of certain of their emoluments, a pension and that pension is vastly different now from what it was when they retired. The Minister says he is going to give them a five per cent increase which will cost the State £140,000. We are now going to make it part of our future programme that we are going to put these pensions on a real money basis. No matter when they retire, if money depreciates in value, we will adjust the pensions to make them the equivalent of the pensions they would have got had money remained stable. It may be taken as one of the matters we will now start to campaign for, just as, previously, for many years we had to campaign about arbitration. It was only when we got into control that we gave the system of arbitration now in operation, even though it seems to me that the Government are yearning for the days of yore when there was no Labour Court and no arbitration and they could treat public servants as slaves if they wished.

Years ago, we campaigned against the taxation put on in the 1947 Budget and when we got into control we removed it. We were then faced by the Minister for Industry and Commerce, the present Taoiseach, who campaigned the country during the by-elections of 1947 and the general election of 1948 on the basis that if the people wanted to have the subsidies on food and other matters maintained, they must also have to face the Government's taxation. He told the people that if they took away the taxation, they could not maintain the subsidies. When we got into power, we remitted the penal taxation imposed in the autumn Budget of 1947. The first reaction of the present Taoiseach was that that could not be done. However, when there was a debate on the matter on 9th March, 1948, he said that, having taken this taxation off, we would have to put it on again. He said that we would have to get the money somewhere or other and that there were only three main items of taxation, income tax, beer and cigarettes. We had remitted the tax on beer and cigarettes and there was only income tax left.

The Taoiseach calculated that the receipts from income tax are about £1 million for every 6d in the pound and that to recover the £5 million which we had remitted would mean an increase of 2/6 in the £ in income tax. The figure of £5 million was an under-estimation because the remissions cost something between £6 million and £7 million and if we had had to make up for that in income tax, it would have meant an increase of 3/6 in the £. That was his first facing up to the problem. During the election campaigns, he said we could not do it and when we did it, he said it would cost an increase of 2/6 in the £ on income tax.

Later on he changed his tune. On 5th May, 1948 he said that there had been a Government in office who were not afraid to face up to their responsibilities, which was to budget for a surplus which the present Minister could now enjoy and that that Government had taken a course of action which was now unpopular. On that occasion, instead of making the case that if we must have he subsidies, we must also have the taxation, he now said that they had been budgeting for a surplus. Later on again, he said that they had made a mistake in 1947 and that they had not had the ability to foresee what direction business trends would take in 1947. He said that they had budgeted conservatively and his whole attitude was that they had produced a surplus because they made a mistake. He said they had produced a surplus of £6 million because the recovery in trade in the post-war period had been much more rapid than they had thought likely.

The Taoiseach is always prolific in excuses. First of all, he said that you cannot get rid of the taxation if you want to retain subsidies. Then, when we took off the taxation and retained the subsidies, he said it would cost 2/6 in the £ on the income tax. Later he gave the excuse that his Government had budgeted for a surplus and the last excuse he gave was that his Government had made a mistake. The penal taxation was imposed in the autumn Budget of 1947. The inter-Party Government were in office before St. Patrick's Day of 1948 and they had remitted the penal taxation before that. The mistake of £6 million only took the period between December of 1947 and early March of 1948 to disclose.

I ask myself in connection with this Budget are we budgeting for a surplus or is there any mistake being made about all these proposals or where are we with regard to all these matters. When Deputy John A. Costello and Deputy Declan Costello said that there was an effort at deflation in the Budget, they were sneered at by the Fianna Fáil Party but I am glad to find Deputy Booth agreeing with them. Deputy Booth agrees tonight with that. He said it is strongly deflationary. We have been asked why people say that this whole budgetary situation is a gamble. Deputy John A. Costello did say that these proposals were deflationary in intention. Many of our Deputies have agreed, and I agree with them, that the result of this will be wild inflation. The two things are not incompatible

In 1952, when the then Minister for Finance, Deputy MacEntee, slashed the food subsidies, he did it on the ground that people were too well off; they had got advances in wages and salaries far above any increase in the cost of living and there was no social or economic reason for keeping on the subsidies and he cut them out. That was intended to be deflationary. If people had to pay for their food without the subsidies, they would have less money to jingle in their pockets and spend on other goods. The whole tendency of the then Minister's Budget was to be deflationary. What was the result? Most of the inflation from which we are at present suffering stems from the 1952 Budget. Workers had got used at that time to going to the Labour Court and we encouraged them. State personnel, civil servants, the Army, the Garda, the teachers, all had got the habit of resorting to arbitration. They knew the power they had and they used that power and they got some equation between their salaries and the new prices they had to meet without the subsidies.

The result of all that in 1952 was the fiercest inflation this country has seen. It was aided by the fact that the then Minister for Finance decided to spend, in one go, all the American money which I had left behind, the substantial sum of £24 million. He did that instead of looking to the public for a loan which would have meant, if he had got £15 million, he would have drawn £15 million out of their hands and they would not have been able to use it for the purchase of goods and the State would have used it. Instead of that there was no loan floated and no subtraction from the purchasing power in the hands of the public and the £24 million of American money was squandered in one go. Of course that was a highly inflationary movement and it had its results.

Deputy Booth talked here in a smug way about the great arrangement that had been made for two years. He thought it was a wonderful thing and in a most benign way, he patted the Congress of Trade Unions for their attitude in agreeing to this wage freeze, that there was to be the 12 per cent increase and this would end the matter for two years, with half a year for negotiations. He applauded the labour people for no longer nattering about wages and for the fact that they now had statesmen of the type Deputy Booth approved, who would make an agreement about wages and stick to it no matter what happened. I do not know how that was regarded in labour circles, but I read the newspapers and I read about people who are demanding that the tenth round must be started, and from any indications by which I can judge it is clear to me that by September of this year inflation will be recognised as being present and there will be other demands for wages increases.

If anything sparks that off, as the phrase is, it will be this Budget with its increased taxes on beer and tobacco—imported spirits probably do not matter too much—particularly when a lot of people in the country get to know that these taxes were not required and that if the Minister had not been in a deflationary mood he could have given out the moneys which I have mentioned, these balances to be surrendered and other moneys which he got that he has not revealed, and by which he could have given whatever solace he wants to give to the farmers and the others without extra taxation. Of course this is the old Fianna Fáil idea. No matter what the Minister for Finance says, beer and tobacco are not in the make-up of the present cost of living index figure. The Labour Court generally goes on the cost of living index figure and people throughout the country who get wages and salaries for services rendered to the community know it is not the cost of living index figure that counts but the cost of living that they experience in their homes that counts. They know well that this is only another Fianna Fáil adventure, in the hope that this will not show itself in the cost of living figure and therefore a bold front can be put up by any employer who does not want to give any increases in wages.

It has been said that the people have realised that the 12 per cent increase is being diminished not by three per cent in the cost of living figure but by much more, and that it is being steadily diminished. This Budget, with all its new charges, will still further diminish the value of the increase they got and notwithstanding the benign attitude of Deputy Booth, the labour people may again find themselves nattering about wages. If that position is established by autumn of this year, as I believe it will be, it will be clear to everybody that we are in an inflationary situation.

The other part of this Budget to which I am going to come is in regard to what is called the Programme for Economic Expansion. It should be called the “Programme for Emigration, Unemployment and Economic Expansion” because both unemployment and emigration are adverted to and accepted in the pages of this Programme. First of all, let us get some of the misapprehensions about this cleared up. Deputy Lenihan, one of the Parliamentary Secretaries, spoke about this booklet from OECD and said it was a critical commentary by outsiders on our situation. At column 1912 of volume 208 of the Official Report for 16th April, 1964, he spoke about “this very sensible document prepared by a group of international experts.” Our Deputy Hogan pulled him up and said that the document was not critical but Deputy Lenihan went on unabashed and quoted the list of countries given at the front of the book, that is, of countries who are part of the organisation. The list was: Austria, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, France, the Federal Republic of Germany, Greece, Iceland, Ireland, Italy, Luxemburg, the Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Turkey, the United Kingdom, and the United States.

Having given that attractive list of names, he said:

It is a realistic assessment prepared in Paris and not here.

Then he quoted from the booklet:

The authorities estimate that nearly 144,000 new jobs will have to be created in non-agricultural activities between 1960 and 1970 and this will not be easy to achieve.

Who told the authorities that we needed 144,000 new jobs? Deputy McQuillan asked: "Who are the authorities?" The Parliamentary Secretary's reply was brisk again:

"The OECD authorities, the authorities connected with this internationally accepted organisation, the most internationally accepted body in the world."

There is no doubt, that is the propaganda that is going through the country, that this is a critical assessment of our position made by all these people of all these different nationalities. Deputy Hogan pointed out immediately, in a fine speech, that the back of this pamphlet advertises this:

Each year the OECD publishes a series of economic surveys by Member countries.

In other words, this is our own assessment.

There is some system, I understand, at the moment, of long-distance telephoning, where you can bounce a voice off the moon from some satellite in space and have it heard in the United States of America. This is merely bouncing our voices off the satellite, if you could call the Organisation that, with its headquarters on the continent. This matter can be easily ended. If the Minister for Finance does not reply to it today, I propose to ask him through the medium of Parliamentary Question to do one thing for me. Will he publish in a White Paper the material he sent to this Organisation to enable them to prepare this document? I see the second sentence in this document:

The five years of the first programme witnessed Ireland's period of fastest economic growth in the century.

Was that phrase sent by our officials to the Organisation? I will take a wager that it was and particularly when I read further:

Although certain special factors— buoyant demand for exports and important margin for unused industrial capacity — were operating during the early part of the period, chief credit for this result belongs to the programme itself.

The people who sent that out were the people who prepared the First Programme and they were only giving themselves a little praise that, I am sure, they thought was well merited. They said we made a great advance, the fastest that ever was made, but do not forget, chief credit for the result belongs to the Programme itself.

In any event, here is just one document. Deputy Lenihan thinks it is prepared by the international organisation. I think it is not. The matter can easily be resolved if the Minister will put into the Library as a White Paper a copy of the material we sent out upon which this report was based and again, as I say, I will be open to a wager that we supplied, not merely the alleged facts quoted here, but most of the commentary.

The Programme itself has to be looked at. In the Programme, for me, the chief interest were the figures on page 21 where we get the anticipated behaviour of employment and productivity in each sector as shown in Table 2. You get the three sectors. First of all, there is agriculture, forestry and fishing. The second is the industrial group generally. That includes, of course, something more than industry. It includes certain other things but the main thing is industrial occupation and building and construction. The third is what is called "Other domestic". That includes such things as commerce, say, the distributive trades, and also includes professions.

The situation revealed by this table is quite interesting. First of all, it means that, if everything goes well— and there are a lot of "ifs" in that— the change in employment between 1960 and 1970 ought to be 78,000 to the good. That is divided in this way: agriculture will show a further decline amounting by 1970 to 66,000 people; employment in industry, that is, manufacturing industry and building, will have increased by 86,000. It means, therefore, if I leave out the third sector for the moment, that if we arrive at 1970 with all the background of this booklet to our advantage, everything going according to plan, we will then have got a minus 66,000 in agriculture and a plus 86,000 in industry, that is to say, 20,000 of a plus.

The third sector is what is called "Other domestic"—distribution, professions—and that is to add on 58,000. If you take those three together, the plus in 1970 will be 78,000 people.

First of all, one of the foundations is that we are in the European Economic Community and we are in the European Economic Community before 1970. Now we are part way through 1964 and there is not merely no sign of our being in but there is no movement to get us in, either into the European Economic Community or any other association which might be beneficial to us. But let me take this pamphlet at its best, that in ten years we will have got 78,000 more people employed—66,000 fewer in agriculture, 86,000 more in industry and 58,000— which of course is a very controversial item—in distribution and in professions

Suppose you take it all, if 78,000 more people are occupied in 1970, the calculation I go on to is a simple one. The natural increase in population, that is to say, the number of those people who are born and survive over and above those who die, is 26,000. Twenty-six thousand is the natural increase in the population—births over deaths. In ten years, that is 260,000. We are starting off this period with 61,000 unemployed. That means if we are to employ all those who are now unemployed and the newcomers who come in are to get into industry, we should be able to find 320,000 jobs, If everything goes right, if all the foundations laid in this pamphlet are well and truly laid, we will have got less than 80,000 into employment. That means that this booklet, as I said at the beginning should be spoken of as a programme for unemployment, emigration and economic expansion. If we take the figure for the natural increase in the population—260,000 and add 66,000 and subtract, say, 80,000 from it, that is to say, we are looking forward to emigrating or else keeping unemployed 240,000 of our people—by the year 1970 we will have emigrated or have kept at home unemployed 240,000.

Supposing we put it the other way. Supposing there is no emigration. That means that when 1970 comes, those who will be signing on at the exchanges as unemployed will be about ¼ million, instead of the 60,000 there now and again, I say, that is assuming everything good in our favour—we are to be in EEC; we are to get the benefits of increased industrial relations, productivity, export markets and all the rest; and we are to have slowed down the running away from agriculture; we are to have slowed that down so that there will only be another 66,000 who have left the farms; the agricultural population will have been reduced to 326,000. Again I make another comparison. If we do get the 86,000 extra in industry and the 58,000 in "Other domestic" occupations, the number of people gainfully employed in 1970 will be 1,136,000.

I look back over the table given in Economic Statistics—these are the revised ones—and in the year 1956 there were 1,125,000 gainfully occupied in the country. So that, if everything in this pamphlet goes right, it means that by 1970 we will just have 10,000 more people in occupation than there were in 1956. Remember, 1956, of course, was the year they called the black year and it was the year in which the population were deluded by the cry of the 100,000 new jobs that Fianna Fáil were to provide. They were to provide 100,000 jobs in five years, 20,000 a year. Now we get this projection to the year 1970 and the best they can hope for—everything going right, the EEC receiving us—is that we might have 1,360,000 gainfully occupied. There were, in 1956, 1,125,000 and, in 1955, 1,136,000 gainfully employed. Surely this means that in 14 years we have just got back to where we were, in regard to the number of people gainfully employed, in 1946. That is the best that can be hoped for.

At the beginning of the Programme, they spoke about the objectives and referred to the First Programme. At the end of that part of the booklet, at page 9, we get the heading "Meaning of Programme". It does not specify how the Programme is to be attained in total production. It is all hypothesis. There is no promise. The authors, and I believe they are home authors, said to themselves they would not be caught again by any talk about a plan. The entire First Programme was all a plan. The last sentence of this paragraph suggests it is a target, but it is an aim, not a promise. Even the figures I have given from page 21 have nothing in them which is substantial or real. It is all just an aim.

Over and over, the thing reiterates the conditions required—things must be favourable. It is all hypothesis. It means, of course, that by 1970 they hope we shall be back to the position we were in in 1956 in the matter of the numbers gainfully employed. I shall question one of these assumptions. The main assumption, right through the Programme, is that we shall be in the EEC. Now, nothing has been said about the EEC for a long time. Deputy Corish mentioned that whereas many possibilities of our entry were put forward earlier, there has been nothing about it this time.

But is not the EEC the foundation? I do not know whether there is anything going on behind the scenes, but there are four or five associations which we might try to get into—the EEC itself, EFTA, GATT and there is the British group. Ministers have been sent across to see British Minsters; they have gone to England and to the continent many times. It has been said to me that notwithstanding all the Ministerial duds we have been sending out, not a bit of good had been brought back to us. We remember when the Taoiseach took off with three Ministers and the Civil Service heads of four Departments. They picked up the Ambassador to London and an economic expert from the Embassy.

All that assemblage trooped down to Downing Street and the version that got into the papers was that they went in with bulging briefcases to have conferences with the British. They went off in a plane which arrived in London at 10.30 a.m. They adjourned for lunch at 1.30 p.m.—and I feel sure economic matters were discussed over it—and returned with the bulging briefcases after lunch. They were able to get the evening plane back and were on the tarmac at Dublin at 5.30 on the evening of the day they left. The Taoiseach was then Minister for Industry and Commerce and he was questioned about what had happened. He said he was quite satisfied and used the phrase which I have always regarded as an indication that he had been swimmingly successful. He said our real position was recognised, great goodwill having been displayed by everybody.

Of course, there were no results in the bulging briefcases. The Taoiseach might instead have made some contacts with the other associations in Europe. Anything would be better than the isolation we are enduring at the moment. We are busy now scrapping all the fortifications erected during the Fianna Fáil regime to protect industry. We are now destroying the fortifications at enormous cost to the public. We are doing that because if we get into the EEC we shall be in a free trade group. There must be free trading among all the nations participating. We are preparing for that. Inside the Community we will be subjected to the rigours of free trade and we are lowering our tariff walls by 10 per cent at stated intervals. We are making the industrialists we raised as invalids stand on their feet to withstand the rigours of competition.

We are giving greater assistance to industries for export; we are allowing people to retain profits, giving them grants in respect of machinery, buildings and the rest—all sorts of incentives. My colleagues started that in 1956 and as a proposal it was, of course, derided by Fianna Fáil. Luckily, the derision did not last. They accepted the proposals we made and the advantages that had been gained by the incentives given in the Finance Bill of 1956. How long will that last, while we are preparing to get into the EEC? I look at Article 92 of the Treaty of Rome:

Except where otherwise provided for in this Treaty, any aid granted by a member State or granted by means of State Resources, in any manner whatsoever, which distorts or threatens to distort competition by favouring certain enterprises or certain production which, to the extent to which it adversely affects trade between member States, shall be deemed to be incompatible with the Common Market.

I take these words to mean what anyone reads into them. They mean that all these export incentives of ours will be regarded as incompatible with the Common Market situation. Yet, we go merrily along, tearing down our protective barriers and giving export incentives. We are tearing down because protection is infra dig vis-à-vis the Common Market and the giving of incentives is equally condemned by the Rome Treaty.

Lest I might be accused of misrepresenting the situation, there are certain things which shall be deemed to be compatible with the Common Market. I pass over the first two because I do not think they are relevant to our consideration. There is, however, a third paragraph:

The following shall be deemed to be compatible with the Common Market:

(a) aids intended to promote the economic development of regions where the standard of living is abnormally low or where there exists serious under-employment:

There are a few other clauses which do not pertain to us at all. But is that what we are relying on? We are giving all these incentives to exports, building up something which that Programme says will be regarded as a distortion of competition, and the only excuse is that we may claim—and it is only a "may"—that this may be deemed to be compatible. We have to get the verdict of the Community on it.

If there are aids promoting the economic development of regions where the standard of living is abnormally low, or where there exists serious under-employment. I should have thought that, with all the boasting done here about conditions, when we go before the European Commission, we would ask them to have these export incentives continued because our standard of living is abnormally low or because there is serious under-employment in the country. The Government's commentator and statistician did say in an article about a year ago that he thought that could apply to the whole island. He says, of course, that it is intended to apply to areas, but his picture of Ireland, in a single sentence, was that our standard of living was the lowest in any country in Northern Europe; and he went on to say that the whole island could claim that it was an area in which there existed serious under-employment, as well as the lowest standard of living.

I wonder is it contemplated that delegates of ours will plead for a continuance of these export incentives on the basis of these two paragraphs? However it may be, that is the situation that we are apparently running into. We are pretending we are getting into the European Community and we have done nothing about getting in for months back, and it is doubtful if there is any attention at all now paid to the EEC. Earlier I quoted a statement by one of our journalists writing in a booklet produced by Córas Tráchtála. The statement was made about the time there was all the talk, when the Taoiseach was tramping around Europe and America—Deputy McQuillan said he hawked everything we had to offer, joining NATO and becoming members of this, that and the other association, and he never got a murmur from any of the groups. When he came back and was questioned, he said everything was going swimmingly; our application for membership had been received.

Our application was for full membership and nobody had said anything that made him doubt that full membership would be granted. I read comments in the foreign newspapers, and in one of the Sunday newspapers, there was an article by Miss Nora Beloff; she said that, of course, it was all nonsense; our application had simply been received. Signor Colombo, in the Italian Government, said of course our application was received, but there was no guarantee given as to what the result of the application would be.

Now, Córas Tráchtála publish a little booklet called the Exporters' Review. It is issued quarterly and in the fourth quarterly issue of 1962, they had a phrase which I quoted here before. I was challenged, not in the House but outside it, that this was unrepresentative. Of course, Córas Tráchtála is very near to being a Government Department. It certainly has a close liaison and association with Government Departments. In this booklet there is an article on the Common Market. It says:

This article, the second in a new series, surveys developments between mid-September and the beginning of December in the implementation of the Treaty of Rome and the evolution of the European Economic Community.

In the narrative it is stated:

The technical aspects of Ireland's position in relation to the Rome Treaty have been fully examined by the Council of Ministers of the European Economic Community. No decision was reached on whether to accept our request to open negotiations or await the outcome of Britain's negotiations, but the Council agreed after discussion to negotiate with Ireland under article 237 of the Treaty—that is for full membership—on the understanding that the negotiations should be opened without any guarantee as to the form of agreement to be concluded. The date for the start of the negotiations has not yet been fixed.

I take that to be practically an authoritative statement. It comes from Córas Tráchtála and its liaison with the Government is very well known. They put forward that statement, a very positive statement: our application was received on the understanding that negotiations should be opened without any guarantee as to the form of agreement to be concluded.

When I was speaking on this the last time, I used a metaphor about the Sweepstake. I said the way the Taoiseach talked one would think we had already got inside the Common Market, when all that had happened was we had put in an application for membership and that had been received. I likened him, from the point of view of our founding any policy for the future, to the man who spends £7,000 or £8,000 because he has got an acknowledgment from the Sweep that his 10/- or his £1 has been received. From the point of view of the Common Market, that is all that has happened so far as we are concerned; we have made an application for membership; it has been received. There has not been one favourable comment that I can track down to indicate we are likely to achieve full membership and, personally, I should regard it as a very serious matter if I thought we were going to be received early.

I do not think we are ready for the Common Market. I do not think, on the national dignity side, there is much difference between getting full membership with a whole lot of conditions, or a relief of conditions, attractive to us and becoming an associate member with special conditions. Being an associate member would give us more time, which we will need, in order to get ourselves ready. I have always thought it would take some time to get ourselves ready and I am more convinced of that than ever since I read what the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Finance said recently.

The Parliamentary Secretary has taken to lecturing people from the height of his attainments, whatever they may be. First of all, he says that, if the universities were streamlined, they would give better results. Secondly, he has been very critical of speculative builders, who have tried to cash in on the boom in building, with the result that they are distorting the whole wage structure in the building industry. Finally, he let off steam the other night with regard to industrialists generally. He said a great many of them had not paid not merely the ninth round of wage increases but a few before that. He talked of industrial employers who were sweating their employees and looking for the same service as one would expect from those who had got the increases. He made an appeal.

He was interrupted by Deputy Corish who said that cutting off these tariffs might be too sudden. He then said he wanted to jolt a whole lot of the employing classes out of their complacency and the words he used were: their attitude, particularly in the line of management, was medieval, Victorian and antediluvian. Yet, these are the very people on whom we are relying to bring about such an improvement in our conditions as shown by the table to which I have referred at page 21 of this book.

To return to the Budget, there is no doubt that it is intended to be deflationary. That has been said by many Deputies. It was denied, but it was accepted very particularly by Deputy Booth today. I think he used some phrase like "sternly deflationary". That is the intention. Wait until the autumn when the people realise what they are paying on food, clothes, and fuel and, in addition, the new exaction on beer and tobacco. The intention is that it should be deflationary but the result will be the same as in 1952. I think inflation is already here, and it is absurd to think that by taking away £5 million, £6 million, or £7 million, in postal charges, and charges on beer and tobacco, you can prevent the inflationary effect that is brought about by the turnover tax and the wage agreements which had to be entered into in order to put the people back in their old position. The tendency may be deflationary; the result will be as badly inflationary as it was in 1952.

The Minister for Health made a statement down the country that a serious miscalculation had been made by the Central Statistics Office, that the figure given for emigration last year was only 12,500 and should have been 25,000. Professor Louden Ryan has written a pamphlet which was read before the Statistical and Social Inquiry Society of Ireland. This is a very important document. In the footnote to the second page of that document, he said:

There were some minor adjustments in the National Income statistics for 1960 during 1962 and 1963 and substantial changes were made in the employment statistics for 1960 during 1963.

We have got a shock in connection with the Central Statistics Office because of the fact that twice now in a short time they have indicated there were serious errors in their calculations. The footnote says: "... substantial changes were made in the employment statistics ..." and the Minister for Health said there was a substantial change in the calculation of 12,500, that the figure should be 25,000. Those are two serious miscalculations. Because of their reputation, the Office should not merely be allowed, but asked, to give some explanation of how the miscalculations occurred, and to see that none occurs again.

I came across another pamphlet the other day which was also read before the Statistical and Social Inquiry Society of Ireland, in 1943. It was written by Dr. Beddy who, of course, was Chairman of the Industrial Development Authority. He called it "A comparison of the Principal Economic Features of Éire and Denmark". The figures may be out of date. It was read on 25th November, 1943—a good twenty years ago—and the calculations must have been made earlier. It is worth while looking at a rival of ours. The pamphlet begins:

Denmark is not only a smaller country than Éire but her climate is less equable, her soils are, in general, lighter and poorer, she has no coal and no water power to compensate for its absence, nor has she any iron ore or other metallic ores to serve as a basis for industrial activities. Yet, in comparison with Éire, she has a bigger population, a greater agricultural trade, a more extensive industrial system, a larger foreign trade, a lower national debt, a higher national income and a better standard of living. It is the purpose of this paper to throw some light on this unusual economic paradox.

I have not followed up all the figures, but I would venture the statement that we have not advanced any more than Denmark in the 21 odd years since. I mean that the comparison would still be against us.

Dr. Beddy recites a considerable number of benefits we have which Denmark does not enjoy. Later, at page 11, in a paragraph headed "Industrial Enterprise" he says:

It has already been pointed out that despite absence of coal, water-power or metallic ores, a greater proportion of Danish working population is engaged in industrial and commercial pursuits than in agriculture. Denmark's industry and trade are, however, closely linked with her agricultural system. They have developed so as to meet the needs of that system and have done so without tariff protection and despite proximity to two of the most highly industrialised nations of the world until today Danish industry supplies about 80 per cent of total domestic market requirements. The agricultural system is such that it involves the production, repair and renewal of large stocks of agricultural machinery and implements, the upkeep of extensive farm buildings, the importation and distribution of bulky products such as oil seeds, fertilisers, animal food-stuffs, etc., the collection, handling and exportation of the large quantities of agricultural products, and, finally, the satisfaction of most of the everyday requirements of a farming community with a high standard of living and with so marked a degree of specialisation in output that such goods as bread, meat and even vegetables are now purchased rather than produced on the farm.

He then refers to commercial and professional services and later he comes to the point about what he calls "investment in agriculture". On page 20, he comments:

If Éire is to advance towards the realisation of her true and greater economic destiny it can only be on the basis of an agricultural system involving a far more intensive utilisation of her natural resources than at present.

He says that there is more what he calls "investment in agriculture" in Denmark than there is here, and he points out that it is one of the difficulties in this country that we always speak of the farmers going into debt, and never of them investing in their own property. Up to very recently, our banks did not look on money put into the land as being an investment. The farmers were regarded as unfortunate people, eking out an existence, and going deeper and deeper into debt. The pamphlet points out that some years ago Denmark was in a worse position than we were. Denmark had a tremendous volume of assets abroad and no investment at home. Now they have repatriated their assets and are investing them at home. We think we are doing a tremendous amount this year for the farmers by decreasing their rates. That pamphlet puts our conditions into proper perspective. It is the good land that matters. I cannot see that there is any good in trying to get grand pianos made in the Shannon Industrial Estate, or that there is even any good in our looking forward to the manufacture of aeroplanes in this country. These are certainly not what I would call the utilisation of our natural resources.

It would be far better if the attention of those who are directing the affairs of the country were focused on the land, the produce of the land and the industries that may grow from the produce of that land and if they would forbear to look for all these foreign industrialists who are coming in here on their own terms. Speaking last year from the desk where the Ceann Comhairle now is, the late President of the United States—speaking to us: he was not speaking at us: we could have used the expression "in derision of us"—used that stanza from a poet of ours: "They are going, going, going and we cannot bid them stay." This Blue Book now says we are saying "Good-bye" to 250,000 of them. It is not 100,000 welcomes: it is 300,000 farewells in ten years.

Deputies

Hear, hear.

I think that I, like most other Deputies, feel that each of us should give a great deal of time and study to this debate, which covers a very wide field. But, with the ordinary affairs of our constituents and the fact that the majority of us have to supplement our income from here, it is not always possible to give the desired amount of study.

I have always understood that the phrase "From every man according to his ability and to every man according to his need" is good socialist policy. That there must be variations in the incomes of people of different scales is quite apparent and quite obviously that situation will last in this country for a great number of years. However, to have this Budget called "a farmers' Budget" by anybody with a tendency towards the left is either selfish, untrue or indicates an anxiety to make some cheap political propaganda.

I should like to quote a few words from the late James Connolly as reported in The Workers' Republic of 27th August, 1898. He said:

When the land is the property of the people ... then the aids to agriculture which science supplies but which are impossible to the poverty stricken peasants will be utilised by national administrators and placed at the service of the cultivators of the soil. The same shrewd sense which has inspired the Irish farmers to appreciate the advantages of agricultural co-operation in dairies and banks, with only their little savings to finance the enterprise, will lead them to appreciate the advantages which might be derived from co-operation on a national scale with the entire resources of the nation to equip it.

That was James Connolly's socialist policy as reported in 1898.

I should like to consider whether Fianna Fáil or the Opposition have gone towards the ideas that this man had at that time. I should like to compare some of the State aids to agriculture since the change of Government in 1957. The references here are prior to this Budget, by the way. They do not include the extra £4 million aid given in this Budget. These figures are prior to that.

To butter and other milk products, in the last full year of the second Coalition Government, the aids were £2,199,000, while under Fianna Fáil in 1963-64, they are £6,018,000. Aid to agriculture—wheat and bacon: under the second Coalition Government, nil, in both cases: now there is £600,000 for wheat and £2 million for bacon. Bacon factory grants: the previous Government could give nothing; the present Government give £18 million. I can go through the subsidies to reduce production costs — fertilisers, potash, land improvements, livestock, building grants, education and advisory services. The sum total is that the State aid has increased from £16,007,000 in the last year of the Coalition Government to £38,554,000 in 1963-64 as a result of Fianna Fáil administration. I am a Dublin Deputy. As a city Deputy——

Jackeen.

"Jackeen", if you wish. As a city Deputy, I should naturally prefer to see more moneys paid to the poorer people in my constituency, but, as a believer in fair social justice, I must side with the Minister in his decisions in this matter. His aim is to secure social justice for all sections of the community and not just for the sections best able to improve their lot more easily.

Half a crown.

Does the Deputy want me to go back over the Coalition's record in social affairs? Let the Deputy not get himself into trouble. I shall come to that afterwards. Even though every Deputy might not agree with every provision in this Budget, he or she must support the Minister for Finance because his part in the Programme for Economic Expansion has proved so successful. Only a fool could doubt that this Budget contains the wisdom and extra knowledge the Minister has gained while we are making this rapid recovery. Anybody who cannot see it just has not had time to study it or has no appreciation of the whole economic and social situation.

Needless to remark, the Opposition used a headline of an address by the Taoiseach when he was Secretary to the Fianna Fáil Party and the Minister for Industry and Commerce in 1955.

Clery's Restaurant.

It read: "One hundred thousand new jobs extra, provided over a period of five years, to eliminate emigration." Taking into consideration the smaller numbers of people who will be employed on the land and the natural growth rate of the population, he estimated in 1955 that 20,000 new and separate jobs must be provided and then emigration would be reduced to a level that would not cause us any social or economic concern. This is a good economic aim and one of which we can be proud. We can be very proud to say that not only did we achieve that aim this year but we beat it by more than 50 per cent—but there is not a word of praise for that.

It is not here in Ireland that we exclusively suffer from the land employing fewer people. Modern methods of farming and great earning from industrial employment have brought about this situation in every large agricultural country. In the State of Iowa, which I visited this year and last year, there is the same problem. As the land employs fewer people, they were interested in what we had here to attract industry to this country, to try to attract industry to their State. The various towns and counties compete in trying to have these industries brought to their own sector. A very similar problem exists there, except to a greater degree, as the farms are larger than they are here. Regardless of the size of the farm, as pointed out by Deputy McGilligan, it is the estimate of the Government that the number of people employed on the land will continue to fall. However, we have exceeded the target mentioned in 1955 regarding the creation of new jobs this year by over 50 per cent.

In volume 208, No. 11, column 1761, Deputy Tully said:

Since Fianna Fáil came into office in 1957, when the 100,000 jobs were just around the corner, the number of jobs has decreased by 32,000.

Deputy McGilligan went on on similar lines with this misleading statement. I think Deputy McGilligan and Deputy Tully would do the country, the Parties they represent, and themselves personally, some good by being honest in what they say here. I think I should put down Deputy Tully's statement to the fact that he never read the document and to ignorance. Having listened to Deputy McGilligan going back to what was said about Denmark and Ireland 20 years ago, I feel it is probably senile decay that is responsible. In October, 1955, the Taoiseach, then Secretary of the Fianna Fáil Party—I am speaking on behalf of the Party—put forward proposals for a full employment programme that was designed to bring about a sitaution where new and separate jobs would be provided.

This was in October, 1955, not in 1957, as Deputy Tully and Deputy McGilligan should know. In January, 1957, the former Minister made a statement under the heading "We can win prosperity" and the sub-heading was "It is the survival of the nation that is involved now". I do not know why nobody ever talks about the fact that the aims set down in the 1955 document are being achieved by more than one-half of what was aimed at in the document put forward by Fianna Fáil to fight the election, as published during January, 1957. I should like to mention a few points out of it.

The rapid and extensive deterioration of conditions since 1955 has rendered out-of-date some of the plans which were publicised then.

We can see that the 100,000——

What is the quotation?

I am quoting from a statement made in Clery's Restaurant in January, 1957.

What is the paper?

It is a supplement to the Irish Press.

That is the gospel.

Deputy McGilligan would not give quotations to Deputy Booth when he wanted them.

I have repeatedly told the Deputy that interruptions must cease.

I was asking for a quotation.

All interruptions are disorderly and must cease.

They are of such a nature as to annoy me.

I want the quotation.

The Deputy is not entitled to interrupt as indiscriminately as he is interrupting. He can choose either to leave the House or cease to interrupt.

I will leave you to it.

Hear, Hear.

Deputy Coogan withdrew from the House.

We see that "just around the corner", to which Deputy Tully referred, was a little too rich for anyone to digest. We never indicated we had a magic wand. In the second column of the supplement, to which I have referred, the then Secretary of Fianna Fáil said:

In order to reduce the deficit in 1956 the Coalition Government decided to force a lowering of living standards in that year.

That is what rising unemployment, higher taxes and prices, closed factories and contracting trade mean. That is what intelligent policy must be designed to prevent.

Fine Gael—and I will go on to this later when we get the postal charges —advocate a policy of low wages. It is one of the weak, wobbly planks their leader is trying to hold on to without the support of his Party for a long time, but I will get on to that later, when we get the Post Office charges. At another stage in this "We can Win Prosperity" document on which the Fianna Fáil Party fought the general election, it was pointed out that no expansion is possible without investment. We call the Government spending of today investment. The word from Fine Gael, in particular, is squandermania but our investment is paying off in increasing rates and the people of Cork and Kildare demonstrated that they were fully aware——

They are fully aware of an increase in the rates all right.

——of this expansion. It is quite clear from Deputy McGilligan tonight that the Fine Gael Party are opposed very strongly to State investment in industry. At a later stage in the document referred to, it was stated:

Higher wages without productivity mean higher prices, reduced sales and unemployment.

Our fight now is to preserve our living standards and we must win that fight before we can begin to think of ways and means of raising them.

We have won that fight and we are now concentrating our efforts as a Government to raise ways and means of maintaining the standards we have attained since the Coalition Government left office. We will continue to advance as fast as our economic situation will permit.

About that time also the trade union movement in relation to full employment said:

The trade union movement would accept the principle of a budget surplus for the purpose of carrying out the capital programme.

This is a very important development of opinion. It is true that to these words were added "depending of course on the taxation measures proposed".

This is one of the features which I think has kept Labour down for so long. They support State investment, any social improvements, rise in wages, and so on, but they will never tell us what taxation methods they will use to bring this about. However, I believe that the leaders of the trade union movement who have studied this document which was brought forward at the time realise now that there was some truth in it. Under the sub-heading "Belgian Social Pact", the document referred to reads:

We need to see the emergence in this country of something akin to the Belgian social pact, negotiated ten years ago between employers' and workers' representatives, to ensure that employer-worker relationships would be "founded on a basis of mutual respect and the reciprocal recognition of rights and duties".

Under the influence of that Pact, Belgium has developed a high-wage structure with full employment, but its industry is so competitive that 40 per cent of its production is exported.

That is what Belgian Trade Union leaders won for their members by urging them "to give, in their own interests, every form of collaboration in the efforts to increase productivity," and won for themselves in legislation for their closer association with the economic management of their country.

I think we are now moving in that direction and trade union leaders see the wisdom of that policy. I hope the statement made by Deputy Mullen recently reflects the thinking of the trade union movement. A similar line of thought is evident in England. Mr. Wilson addressing the General Workers Union and reported in the Daily Telegraph on the 9th July, 1962 said:

We shall have to ask for restraint in the matter of incomes but when we say incomes we mean all incomes and not alone in wages and salaries. We mean also profits... there were two pre-conditions for restraint in incomes, fairness and an economic policy based on expansion.

That is the line of policy this Government is following. It is, if you like, the swing to the left referred to last year. Social justice is certainly being handed out by the Minister in this Budget. Every man is entitled to an equal share, if possible, of the national cake.

Let us look at the other side of the story. I discussed the programme put before the people before the 1957 election. The Coalition Government, when it took office, laid down 12 points on which they would base their policy and I should like to refer to them. The first refers to the unity of Ireland with which we all agree. Point 2 recognises that the main issue in the general election was the question of prices. The Parties forming the Government, it said, were determined to reduce the cost of living in relation to the people's incomes and in particular to effect a reduction in the prices of essential foodstuffs. That was the promise; this is the performance: since the Coalition took office bread, tea, beer, whiskey, cigarettes, tobacco, coal, turf, bus fares, rent, rates, shoes, shoe repairs, medicine, soap, candles all showed an increase. There are about 150 items and I do not think it is fair to the official reporter to go through them all but that was the performance.

The third point was to reduce taxes. The Coalition collected £90 million in taxation in 1954-55 and £94 million in 1955-56. That shows an increase instead of a reduction. The promise and the performance were at variance although the promise was quite clear that taxation methods would be devised to make their programme workable.

Their fourth point was to expand agricultural production but, according to the Irish Press of Saturday, March 2nd, 1957, the latest available statistics showed that agricultural production was down by .4 per cent in 1956 compared with 1954 and that the latest index figure for agricultural prices at 93.1 was down by 13.5 on the figure for December, 1955. Again, that was the difference between promise and performance.

Point Five promised that the policy of affording protection to Irish industry would be maintained to ensure that it would effectively contribute to the expansion of Irish industry. Industrial production was down in 1957 both on 1954 and 1955 and figures available at that stage which I have mentioned showed that industrial production was down 8.6 per cent compared with the September quarter of 1955. That was the promise and the performance in industry. Point Six was to increase employment and reduce emigration. By increasing capital investment at home more work would be given to our people. There were 92,565 unemployed on February 23rd, an increase of 21,791 on the corresponding date in the previous year. State capital expenditure under Fianna Fáil in 1953-54 was £34.59 million; under the Coalition in 1954-55 it was £32.86 million. In 1955-56 it was £26.71 million and the estimate for the following year was £27.64 million. It was clear that the actual moneys for capital development, the report stated, would fall much short of that figure and it was widely admitted on all sides that emigration had never been higher. Here again we have the conflict of the promise and performance, quite a different story from that which applies to Fianna Fáil.

Under Point Seven the Coalition promised to increase pensions for the old aged, the blind, the widows and orphans and to provide retiral pensions for men at 65 and women at 60. The Coalition made two changes in social benefits. In the Budget of 1955 they provided an extra 2/6 for old age pensioners and blind pensioners and in the 1956 Budget contributory social welfare benefits were increased by 25 per cent on the basic allowances and 1/- extra on children's allowances. Two-thirds of the costs of these increases were met by increased contributions from workers and employers and the State met the other third.

The record of Fianna Fáil since it took over is that every year, inadequate as it may seem, an increase has been given to social welfare recipients. The Minister for Social Welfare can well feel proud since no other Minister for Social Welfare could boast of such progress in the past. I feel confident that as time goes on his boast can be louder and clearer.

The Coalition Point Eight was to secure the building of more houses by private and public effort and in particular by improving credit facilities and easing loan charges and the burden of deposit payments. That was the promise. The performance was such that in 1957 the building industry was going through the worst slump in living memory. Credit facilities had been tightened. I should not like to go through all this on the Budget. It is more suitable on the Vote for the Department of Local Government where, I am sure, it will again arise. I must remind Fine Gael that the housing programme was sustained at the very last minute by the sale of Government securities to help them out of a jam on the eve of a general election. Deputy Sweetman told me my reference to the sale of these securities was nonsense but on the 30th November, 1956, Deputy Sweetman is reported in the Irish Press as saying:

The public capital expenditure programme on the present scale was not being sustained by voluntary savings of the public even as supplemented by the proceeds of special import levies. The deficiency had had to be made good by sale of sterling investments by the Government and the banking system sales which had reduced these to a low level.

We can see who was talking nonsense.

Continuing with this wonderful programme of the Coalition as promised, in Point Nine, they undertook to improve the organisation of health services and expand them so that no person would be denied surgical or medical aid by lack of means. In particular, steps would be taken to provide better hospital and dispensary accommodation. What happened? The Minister for Health asked all local authorities to economise on health services expenditure and the Government cancelled contracts for building new hospitals and improving existing ones.

Every one of these points, when examined, proves that the performance gave the lie to the Fine Gael poster for the Louth by-election in 1954—"Fine Gael for Lower Taxes and Better Times". Fine Gael still believe the public are gullible enough to imagine you can have lower taxes and better times.

Reference has been made to a little Budget in the shape of the Post Office charges.

Deputy John A. Costello, in column 209, Vol. No. 1 of the Official Debates, said that the Minister is not entitled to put the outrageous charge of 5d on a letter until the efficiency of the Post Office is demonstrated. Deputy McGilligan also came in on that, although I have not got a note of what he said. Since I was elected to this House, I have always supported the cause of the Post Office workers and one of the earliest speeches I made here was about the temporary-permanent postmen, people who when their time of usefulness had come to an end were let go without pension or gratuity. They never attained permanent status. This situation has been improved considerably and I hope that my agitation has helped in some small way.

The trade unions representing the Post Office workers have been in lengthy negotiation with regard to the status claims which we in Fianna Fáil believe they are entitled to. If it means paying 5/- for a telegram instead of 3/6d. I am happy to pay it if I feel that the people concerned are getting a fair return for their work. From the speeches of members of the Labour Party on this matter that I have read, they would seem to be with this principle. As I have quoted Deputy John A. Costello, he seems to be in favour of a low wage policy. In the Irish Press this morning, we see a statement by the current Leader of Fine Gael, Deputy Dillon, in which he states that the economic structure of this country depends on our ability to export and that the Fianna Fáil policy is making it impossible to keep the cost of production down. What he is complaining about is that the people are apparently being too well paid.

Nobody in the trade union movement can object to these charges if the workers are being paid just wages. The Minister is right in upholding the agreement and making it possible for these fair wages to be paid. Fine Gael are in favour of a lower wage policy. Deputy John A. Costello and Deputy Dillon have made that clear. This retrenchment policy of theirs is one of the very wobbly planks Deputy Dillon is trying to uphold without the support of the members of his own Party. On the speeches they have made on this matter, they should be sitting here as Independent Deputies because they contradict each other time and again. In his statement here last week, the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Finance showed the vast difference there is between them.

I was surprised at the remarks of Deputy Carroll who said, as reported at volume 208, column 1900, that the increased charges of the Department of Posts and Telegraphs were unpardonable. On occasion we have had Deputy Carroll with us; generally he is with the Labour Party, but this time we have him with the low wage policy of Fine Gael. In the ranks of the people who advocate a low wage policy, Deputy Dockrell must be considered a Front Bencher of Fine Gael. In volume 209, column 316, he said that a charge of 5d. for a letter would be a great burden on the business community, that many firms did a tremendous mail order business and that they would be very hard hit. It is quite clear to me that the people most affected by the increased Post Office charges are the employers and big business people like Deputy Dockrell. He would prefer to see the Post Office workers paid low wages rather than put an extra penny on a letter going out of his firm in George's Street.

Deputy Seán Dunne at column 1874, said he was hoping that this Budget would show some hope that the people would be housed, that there would be some evidence of a departure from the inertia that had characterised Dublin Corporation and, he assumed, other local authorities He said he was hoping that some new break-through of the housing problem would be recorded in this Budget. I do not know what the Deputy wants. No matter what Government policy is put forward here and passed by this House, it will not be a full success unless we get the co-operation of all the people responsible for putting it into operation.

I will not say that Dublin Corporation failed to recognise that Government policy was working and that as long as Fianna Fáil were in office, there would be more jobs, less emigration, and more people seeking accommodation, that wages and conditions would continue to improve. This message is now getting across to the Corporation, both that Fianna Fáil are going to remain in office and that the expansion is going to continue. This is a big change from the circumstances of 1956 when we had Mr. Leo Crawford of the Irish Congress of Trade Unions, which is certainly representative of the building unions, reported in the Irish Press as saying that building was being held up on flimsy excuses and that plans were lying in the Department for periods of up to four months.

In the same paper, we find Councillor Denis Larkin, a former member of this House, stating that approval for the building of houses at Bluebell had taken four months to obtain where formerly it would take two weeks. He said that it had taken six months to get approval for the Finglas No. 2 scheme and that other plans had also been held up for six months. He said that in the case of St. Anne's, the Corporation has been spending time making report after report to the Department and that owing to the delay in securing approval for their plans, the Corporation could not complete their housing targets. That was the situation in 1956.

The Opposition now say that Fianna Fáil policy is responsible for the deplorable conditions that prevail in Dublin at the moment. I should like to quote the words of a famous American statistician, Artemus Ward, who said: "It ain't so much the things we don't know that get us into trouble: it is the things we know that ain't so". What the Opposition say just "ain't so." Fianna Fáil have made available to local authorities all the money they need for housing. A Fianna Fáil Minister has introduced comprehensive legislation into this House so that the local authorities can get on with the job more easily and with much greater speed.

In spite of all this and in spite of his urging both in public and in private, the Dublin Corporation came up with the proposal to build 750 dwellings this year. I do not know what Deputy Dunne wants because the Minister consulted the members of the various local authorities and he held up some of the Bills which were introduced. He said he would hold up the Second Stage of the Bills until everybody had time to make observations on them. He went out of his way to urge local authorities to catch up with housing and the proposal he got from the Dublin Corporation for this year was to build 750 dwellings.

To put it mildly, the Minister was rather disappointed. He consulted the responsible people in the Corporation and cut out red tape and did anything he could to avoid delay and the Dublin Corporation then proudly boasted that their target would be 1,500 houses. As a result of the Minister's personal intervention and co-operation with the local authority, the Dublin Corporation decided to double their housing output. Was the Minister for Local Government satisfied? No, he was not satisfied. He went to the Corporation again and said "Fifteen hundred houses are no good. Your excuse that it takes five years from the time you decide to build a house until it is completed is no good. I want 1,000 houses a year more than this." He was told by the Corporation officials: "We have no sites," and then the Minister went himself and secured a site. In addition to the target which he has laid down for the Corporation in the next three years, and their own building programme of 1,500 houses, he says that a further 1,000 must be built, and it does not matter what methods are used nothing must be allowed to get in the way of building 7,000 to 8,000 houses over the next three years.

What does Deputy Dunne want? Is this not a break through? Is this not a break with precedent showing an energetic Minister doing his best to spend the money which the Minister, Deputy Dr. Ryan, is raising, to see that our people are properly housed and to make up for the lack of appreciation by the local authorities of the fact that our programme as laid down is going to be achieved? They probably listen too much to the Opposition speakers and say "If Fianna Fáil say there is to be a 4 per cent expansion then if it is 2 per cent it is good". If Deputy Dunne has the time to attend the local authority—I left the local authority because I could not attend as fully as I wished to while I was a member here, and if I cannot attend to a job I would rather not take it but let somebody else who can attend have it—instead of coming in here and moaning about the Budget, let him urge on the Labour members of the local authority to see that Government policy is given effect to.

I could make similar critical remarks in this House about the haphazard carrying out of decisions by people at various levels of administration, for instance, the haphazard way in which some of the new traffic regulations are being carried out. I think it is disgraceful——

That is scarcely relevant.

I believe money is provided from the——

Administration does not arise.

Very well; I had some remarks to make on that but I shall get an opportunity later.

The Deputy will get the opportunity.

It is a great pity, after all the money that is being spent on road development and changing traffic regulations, that where we used to have two-way streets, such as Middle Abbey Street, Upper Abbey Street and Capel Street, now they are one-way streets and we have only half the street space available——

This is a one-way street.

And we had to get a foreigner to tell us what we knew ourselves. May I refer to the proposed car ferry service at Dún Laoghaire?

No administrative matters may be discussed. This is a Vote to collect moneys for the various services.

It is the administration that I am trying to deal with. It is a terrible pity that——

I cannot allow the Deputy to proceed to discuss administration.

I was just saying that it was a pity that where a car ferry was already built, we will not enter into negotiations with the trade unions to have it worked. We vote a sum of money each year for CIE and in this connection they carry out some unprofitable works. Among these is the maintenance of waterways through our cities.

I do not see how that is relevant to the motion.

It is a question of the waste of national resources.

This is a Vote for the provision of moneys for the various services. The Deputy is proceeding to discuss the services.

This is a question of national policy.

The Deputy may not argue that way. He is not proceeding to discuss national policy.

It is very difficult to find national policy.

If the Deputy had been in earlier he would know I was talking about Fine Gael policy I am concerned about the waterways because they have now been made a national issue and not a local issue. They are part of our national tourist development.

It is not a matter of a distinction between national and local. That is not the difference. The point is that we are discussing national policy.

I shall make it relevant. The balance on current external account for each year since 1950, distinguishing between merchandise and other current items, is shown in Table I of the Appendix to Economic Statistics issued prior to the Budget of 1964. It goes on to say:

Although there was a substantial increase in exports in 1963, the increase in imports was more marked and the import excess rose by over £10 million. Invisible receipts (including the balance unaccounted for) which rose by £3.9 million in 1962 showed a further increase in 1963. As a result of these changes, there was a current account deficit of £13.4 million in 1962.

Although our invisible trade and imports exceeded exports considerably this matter is being balanced, according to these statistics, as a result largely of tourism. Tourism and its development is a matter that concerns this Budget, certainly from my reading of these documents. It is felt that there is a great tourist potential to bring in money and improve our balance of payments situation by the development of our waterways. Therefore, having considered this matter, I agree that this development should be encouraged. However, as it is now a national matter and a matter of making up this trade deficit that is referred to, the State should take full responsibility for these waterways, should it be decided to keep them open.

That would not be a matter for discussion on a Budget debate.

That is in relation to Economic Statistics before me. There is one thing certain, the ratepayers of Dublin will not pay for it. It is a matter of national importance.

It may be of national importance but it is not relevant to the Budget.

It is a matter of balancing the Budget; the Budget cannot be balanced without it. However, I shall depart from that subject. We can all be rather pleased that we are participating in the World Fair. This is a way of raising revenue and encouraging the sale of our goods abroad. This, of course, is the aim of the Government and we hope, as has been the case in Belgium, to which I have referred, the day will come when a much larger percentage of goods manufactured here will be exported.

I was interested to receive from Mr. Tom Cogley, P.C., the official programme of the first World Fair in America, in 1904. It is a colourful document. I should like to take this opportunity of congratulating the people responsible for the booklet that will be available on the Irish stand at the World Fair. It is an admirable piece of work.

Is that the other book—second facts about Ireland?

It is an improvement.

Deputy McQuillan, who has made the aside, could be put down as saying that we are not giving enough to the farmers. That is what his speech boils down to. That is at column 1920, Volume 208.

I should like to conclude on this note, that we have achieved good national expansion. It is unpleasant that taxation had to be levied to try to get social justice for all our people. This has not been opposed by the Labour Party. In so far as the extra charges for the Post Office are to pay the £2 million required to pay the Post Office employees' award, I do not think it could be opposed by the Labour Party, particularly having regard to the statement by James Connolly which I read earlier. I do not think it is opposed on the basis of giving this share to the farmers in order to secure social justice. But I should like to say that warnings have been issued by prominent labour leaders in England and by our own Minister for Industry and Commerce, in Cork, some time ago, and also by Deputy McGilligan in his speech tonight, that it is expected that by 1970 there will be 66,000 fewer unskilled workers, if you like, or agricultural workers.

They are not unskilled.

People without a particular trade.

They have.

I am not talking about the farmers—the casual worker, the road worker and so on.

He is a very skilled worker.

It is a small technical point. The point that has been made by our Minister is that the proportion of unskilled workers that will be required in future will be far less than it has been in the past and in this connection we must do everything we can to persuade families, where they can afford it, to keep their children at school to pursue technical courses, to learn some trade or profession. Fianna Fáil have taken the lead in this.

Why does the Deputy say: "Who can afford it"? Why should not every child who has the ability, have the opportunity?

Deputy McQuillan is misunderstanding me. Some people send their children to work for the sake of the money they bring in, not thinking of their children's future. This is something we should combat.

The Deputy should make it clear.

In an effort to combat that and to encourage children to take higher education, scholarships awarded for post-primary education are three times what they were during the period of the Coalition Government. The number of trained teachers has been increased by 664 since 1958. In the past five years, 412 new national schools have been built and 279 improved—double the average of the years before 1957. The aim is to raise the school-leaving age. We should as far as possible educate our constituents to try to get their sons and daughters —their sons in particular—into trades because, with automation and modernisation of methods of production, the unskilled worker will find it very hard to get employment.

The Budget debate has been properly referred to by Deputy Lemass as something that needs study but we have had a succession over the years of these dreary, unimaginative and uninspired Budget Speeches of a Fianna Fáil Government that defy study. One nowadays takes a Budget to be the instrument of expression of Government policy and the instrument by which we are meant to glean future plans or some ideas for progress. If one is to assess this Budget on that basis, it may well be described as drab, dreary and unimaginative.

I was rather tickled by the naive way in which Deputy Booth tried to justify taxation, which I hope in the course of my speech to prove absolutely unnecessary. He suggested it was a kind of dull palliative to what he described as the venturesome policy of the Government in last year's Budget, with their turnover tax. Some people have erroneously suggested that this Budget was mainly designed to ameliorate the lot of the Irish farmer. It is true that some belated gesture has been made in this Budget to offset the unwarranted, unjustified and completely ill-conceived levies that were put with rather indecent haste on the dairying industry and the reaction to it, if it were based on a realistic approach, would be much milder than all the shouts we hear from the rural representatives in the Fianna Fáil Party.

Before coming down to the blunt reality of lack of initiative and lack of constructive thought in Government circles, one must consider the modern concept of budgetary proposals by a Government. I have shown my teeth in relation to this stagnation, stultification and artefaction that we find in Government thinking, but we must get down to grips with the future and try to imagine what future is to be gleaned from this Budget. We hear on all sides tremendous cries about the necessity for increased productivity to enable us to deal with what Fianna Fáil might describe as our developing economy but what we, as realists, know to be a very difficult and unwieldy scheme, devised by whom we do not know. Certainly before I am finished, I hope to put a rather white face on this alleged progressive plan for further development.

This Budget is simply and plainly a dreary one, in which there is no global concept of the problems we have to face and no suggestion of a developing integration of a policy that can hold any hope for the expansion necessary to maintain our standard of living, to increase employment, if we are to arrest the haemorrhage of emigration. I was very pleased this evening to listen to the very clear, unequivocal exposition of all the subterfuge that is in this Budget by Deputy McGilligan.

I was always aware of the fact—the Minister will find it impossible to controvert it—that there are tremendous undisclosed sums of money that have not yet come into the Exchequer, a tremendous amount that can reasonably be dealt with on the basis of over-estimation, that have been deliberately culled out of the financial picture this year for the purpose of creating an artificial situation financially, to enable the Government to show their vindictive teeth because of their temporary success in the by-elections.

When the Government find themselves i gcrua-chás, they have to use all the subterfuge available to the Minister for Finance. I feel now, as I have always felt, that the Fianna Fáil outlook on all financial problems is to impose the bludgeon of taxation, never to provide the incentive of expansion and never to aim at a buoyancy of revenue.

In this year, the Minister had substantially more benefit than he anticipated from the turnover tax. Withheld from payment into the Exchequer, at a conservative estimate, is something between £2,750,000 and £3,500,000 in that respect. It has not been disclosed yet what the final intake was in March from the turnover tax. What the Minister for Finance has to play around with in excess of the figure adumbrated by Deputy McGilligan was, I would say, £2½million—£10½ million instead of £8 million.

Is that not deliberately creating an artificial situation in which he could impose new taxation on the old hardy annuals, beer, tobacco and petrol? It is most interesting to look back on our experience of Fianna Fáil Government since the black second Budget of 1947. Their thoughts always fly back to the gross insult offered to them when Deputy McGilligan was first Minister for Finance in the inter-Party Government. With one stroke of the pen, he got rid of all that black taxation and set about ameliorating for the first time in years the lot of the social welfare groups.

That has always been, for some queer reason, a monument in the mind of Fianna Fáil and their financial thinking. They always come back with their repetitive "we shall teach you" attitude, again to impose taxation on these commodities. Even though the Minister for Finance tried to prevaricate today, there is no doubt that the new cost of living figure has been designed so that the impact——

That is absolutely ridiculous.

Of course, you are completely ridiculous.

After all, you have suddenly become the doctrinaire of the university. Ní buan tusa in aon áit.

We know it all now —more pontificating, a little more nonsense.

You have got to sit there and listen to it.

Not to your inaccuracies.

You can prove they are inaccuracies. The fact is that the change came about when they imposed the famous black Budget——

For goodness' sake, the Coalition put 6d. on cigarettes and 3d. on petrol in their last year. Talk sense.

My poor boy, my new university acolyte——

It is so seldom we see you here——

You must be getting blind. To come back to the Budget and to get away from the Parliamentary Secretary's pronouncements in public places—he is the new neon sign for future thought and development in his Party—where in this Budget is there any constructive thinking from the expansionist viewpoint? Have the Government not yet learned that taxation and expansion are not self-encouragers, and that if you want to develop, as one part of the Government will say, the Minister for Industry and Commerce, you must give encouragement. The Minister for Industry and Commerce will say we want to improve technique, improve equipment and modernise plant. All these things cost money. All these aims need to be encouraged. The manufacturer and the primary producer need to be encouraged. Side by side with that encouragement the primary producer and the manufacturer are bludgeoned with taxation. I cannot understand how the Government can expect to have it both ways.

We are told that if this ill-conceived Blue Book of Fianna Fáil is to come to fruition in 1970, we must have a substantially increased intake of workers into industry to balance the very large falling-off in agricultural employment and to stem what has become apparently a recognised permanent feature of our economy, namely, emigration. The Parliamentary Secretary may get as hot as he likes under the collar but the fact of the matter is that this unwieldy, dreary production by the Minister for Finance gives no indication of any long-term plan, any long-term encouragement of expansion, any long-term scheme of gradual development to absorb more and more technically trained people into employment. There is no provision, as has been said by many speakers, outside of the general plan for education in this Budget, for the speeding up of the specialised training, the highly technical and scientific training so essential for the consolidation, expansion and expert efficiency of industry in the future.

On the agricultural side, the tragedy is that the Government's plan shows nothing other than a degree of expediency to deal with the situation they have allowed to develop under their very noses and which has now reached an impasse. There is no plan to show the particular direction the expansion we want in agriculture should take, the particular type of animal husbandry best suited to the markets into which we will have to break. There is no indication of what effort will be made to get market research and market expansion properly handled. There is no indication of any overall plan to ensure if our farmers go into rapidly expanding production, in the line of either sheep, pigs, cattle, or anything else, there will be a constant remunerative market readily available to them. There is nothing to show that we will not again run into the difficulties we experienced before; if farmers expand pig production there is nothing to ensure that they will not suffer a loss because of over production.

The time has come when we should be doing some real planning for the future. The Budget is an instrument through which we should get some indication of that plan and the financing of it. What is this Budget? It is bereft of imagination. It is bereft of constructive thinking. It is a drab, dreary reiteration of the old-time tax increases. Last year we were told that the old methods of taxation had reached saturation point. That was the excuse for the turnover tax. The gimmick worked. This year, the Government were afraid to interfere with that tax; they were afraid to increase it because of the warning by the Opposition that the child they had conceived might grow. What did they do? They reverted once more to the most orthodox type of taxation.

It was interesting to hear Deputy Booth, a businessman of consequence, describe this type of taxation as possibly good for another year, commenting that the whole method of taxation would have to be reviewed. What is there in this Budget to suggest that there is any idea of getting away from archaic methods of taxation and disabuse Government minds of the idea that there is a saturation point in the taxation one can levy on certain commodities? I have no doubt there would be a tremendous upsurge of enthusiasm and an improved morale if we had a Government which produced a Budget that was an integral part of a plan, demonstrating clearly why taxation was necessary and showing how the taxation so raised could be used to raise living conditions, educational conditions and social conditions generally.

We undoubtedly need a tremendous improvement in education. I regard money raised for the advancement of education, particularly technological and scientific education, as money well invested, not only in the future of our people but in the future of industry as well. I should like to see the Minister coming in in an honest way, disclosing the surplus millions he will have by the end of the year, and stating that these surplus millions are to be used to lend further impetus to the very creditable efforts of the Minister for Education in his drive to improve education.

I believe we have been completely dishonest with the social welfare classes and pensioners generally in this Budget. There is about to come into the kitty money that would have given belated justice to these people. There are large groups of pensioners whose lot is not very far removed from destitution. No body is more aware of that than the Government themselves. I believe that in dealing with the social welfare classes we should strain the purse to ensure that no serious economic impact will bedevil their situation, particularly the situation of the old, the infirm and the blind. This Budget could have dealt much more generously with these classes. I contend and assert it could have been done without raising a shilling from taxation. I feel that, for some esoteric reason of his own, the Minister is trying to build up some surplus for whatever purpose may ensue, either before the next Budget or in the next Budget.

It is interesting to analyse the present situation. I remember being derided in this House by the Taoiseach when I told him bluntly and forthrightly that Britain would not get into the Common Market, never mind ourselves. I remember some 12 months later when that was proved to be only too true. What is the situation now? Where are we going? Are we making any serious effort to get into the European Economic Community? Have we got beyond the stage of posting our application? Has any steering committee, any sub-committee, or any committee of the EEC got down to considering our application? Or is it to remain as the carrot that is being dangled unrealistically in our present economic situation?

A question was posed by Deputy McGilligan which I should like to reiterate. What consideration has been given at Government level to the alternative associations that are in existence? Is some sub-committee of the Government, or some inter-Departmental committee, seriously considering what the situation is in regard to our economic future? We have to appraise that in the light of the rate of efficiency and improvement we must have in industry, and expansion of production. Unless we can assess and appraise the time that is necessary for that particular facet of development, how can any Government consider a stimulus by way of tax relief, or grant, or replacement loan, to give to industries to gear them for that type of development?

There is no doubt at all that in the modern concept, methods of production and expansion are changing with extraordinary rapidity. Power motives are changing and methods and technique are changing. If our industries are to keep abreast of this ever-changing mood, they must be very vigilantly trained and modernly equipped. If we have, year after year, Budgets that deny that forthright thinking, that deny that impetus, that deny that expansionist, integral, global development plan, then our industrialists will be uncertain and unable to finalise or canalise their development.

These are the problems with which the Budget should deal. If we are going to plan for a greater intake of people in employment, for greater production in agriculture, we must do so in a progressive manner so that people will be able to see the plan, understand it and go with it. What are the basic essentials necessary? If we get down to a serious analysis of the difficulties, they are twofold, but, at the same time, complementary to one another. I have always felt that, while we may have to envisage a time when industry will have to absorb more and more of our people, will have to expand to absorb more and more of our trained personnel, at the same time, we must never lose sight of the fact that we have to plan our industrial expansion, our industrial efficiency and our industrial methods in the realisation that we are basically and economically an agricultural country, and that we should be planning to integrate, so far as possible, in our industrial expansion the corollaries of our agricultural industry from whence we can supply a very substantial part of the raw material ourselves.

That is one of the reasons I have always been a complete and unqualified advocate of rapid industrial development. I have always felt, looking at our import and export lists and the immense volume of wood products and wood by-products that we import, that there is a tremendous field in which we should foresee the ultimate development of that industry in its complete potential from wood pulp to wood clippings. I have always felt the situation should be kept well in hand and that we should plan, not as an expediency measure or as an isolated measure for parts or facets of that industry, but that we should be able to progress in the normal way with Government guidance, subvention and aid, and Government technical assistance to a situation in which we would know exactly what targets could be reached and what methods should be used to reach them.

One expects to get that type of directive from the Government, and one expects to get the basis on which this development could be integrated in the Budget statements of the Government from time to time. I am trying in a completely dispassionate way to analyse the present Budget on that basis. When I say I find it wanting, that is a complete understatement. We have evidence of no new departure, of no initiative, no courage in an expansionist way. Even though we may have got in this Budget—and I admit it as a representative of a very big milk producing area—some palliative, we still have not got the type of statement that would give the co-operatives and the various representative groups, an integrated plan which would ensure the progressive improvement of the lot of the farmers working on the land of Ireland.

As I said earlier, it is an accepted measure to deal with a situation that should have been dealt with over the years and, in particular, over the past 12 to 15 years. It was apparent to everybody who had any eye in their head at all that the situation in relation to milk, butter and uneconomic price needed a reappraisal, a re-investigation, and, added to that, needed the infusion of new ideas, new by-products, new everything, to enable an appraisal to be made as to what extent we could improve by export the general price level to be received by our dairy farmers.

At the same time, over that period, we have seen the vicissitudes that the farmer has suffered in certain types of production. We have seen him respond to an all-out call for development in one phase of his industry and suffer the slump prices because of his increased effort. We have seen, over all that period, as I have said before this Government chasing rainbows for exotic markets with no proper research or development or no planned expansion of the market that is most readily available to us. Even though it may have been derisively condemned in the past, there is no doubt at all about it that it is the mainstay of our exports. There is no doubt in my mind that if we had concentrated our efforts on proper development of that market we would be in a far stronger bargaining position with them now than we have been heretofore.

I should like to know why it is that, with Britain now looking for our butter, we cannot get our butter quotas increased and stabilised. I am aware, and I think it is generally known to people who represent creamery areas, that the British Government have indicated that they are prepared to take a considerable tonnage more than the quota they have allotted to us for this year but, at the same time, they are not prepared to give us the increased quota. In other words, have we left ourselves in the sorry position in Irish agriculture that they can have it at both ends? If they find difficulty in getting supplies of butter is it the position that we will graciously accede to their request and then, if the situation becomes fluid in the world market, will they retaliate by limiting us to our new quota?

These are the problems that the one Government instrument of policy announcement and expansion, the Budget, should deal with. Instead, what have we dealt with? Instead, what is the outcome of the present great economic plan? Stultification and atrophy are the words that come most readily to my mind in describing this dreary, drab projection on the future economy of the country, a Budget that can only conceive increased taxation on the old hardy annuals of beer, tobacco and petrol. It does not appeal to anybody's imagination.

The reasons given for the increase in taxation have less appeal and the denying of justice to State pensioners is certainly, to put it mildly, a negation of basic human justice. The people in that category have reached a stage where it is impossible for them to help themselves in any way. They are in the very same winter of life. There is no relation now, in money value or in purchasing power, between their pension and the value of the money at the time they earned that emolument.

Mind you, too readily do we forget the type of service given by these people in the formative and early development years of this State. I feel that it would be impossible for anybody other than the well-drilled—in fair play, that is what they are—well-drilled, mentally and physically, Party of Fianna Fáil to support such a Budget as this at this time.

I should like the Minister, when he is replying to this debate, to deal with the suggested sums of money that may be coming into the Exchequer or payments that he may subsequently be in receipt of and to let us know what is the potential figure, taking these facets into consideration and allowing for over-estimation, that he could hope for in the coming year and then to equate that to the surplus he could have had rather than to the deficit he showed when he came here to look for increased taxation. Is the miserable contribution that he made to the social welfare class the maximum of the State's bounty available? Will the Minister review what moneys will flow into the Exchequer or what further receipts may come during the year with a view to giving, if possible, a further interim increase to those people? There is no good in people trying to tell anybody of experience of this class that this is going to offset the increases in the cost of living that have been their lot over the past 18 years.

It was interesting, during the course of this debate, to hear all the eulogies paid by Fianna Fáil to the Labour Party and to the Congress of Irish Unions because of the fact that, at national level, agreement on wage increase was reached. It is a good thing we are adult enough to be able to arrive at that situation but I should not like the Minister or his Party to be under any illusion. Never did any class of people more sorely need that increase to offset the upsurge in the prices they had to meet before and since they got it. I should like any member of Fianna Fáil to approach realistically the wife of the decent workingman, the tradesman, and ask her now at the end of April whether she can get as much value for her money, plus 12 per cent, as she could get before the impact of the turnover tax and subsequent increases. I bet he will get the answer we get, that it is no good.

The increase of £1 or 30/- a week has been completely lost in the multitudinous range of increases in the price of every type of household article, essential foods, soaps and detergents and cleaning materials and clothing. You will be told quickly and unequivocally that it may well happen if the present tendency is not arrested, even though the Congress of Trade Unions were honest in their agreement with the employers, they will be forced by the exigencies of the circumstances and the difficulties of their members to seek a readjustment of that agreement.

This is all being done in the light only of expediency thinking and no real planning. You get Government speakers at both ends of the see-saw. We have the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Finance jolting industrialists out of their apathy while the Minister for Industry and Commerce is telling them of the necessity to replace machinery, modernise all equipment and improve their techniques. We have a Government whose only thought is: where can we let the taxation grab fall to get in a bit more?

When he spoke about this Budget as deflationary, Deputy Booth may have believed that it was such or intended to be such. Possibly it was, but there is no doubt that because of the lack of control of prices of essential commodities, before the year is much older, we shall have to face the casting aside of any deflationary philosophy that may be in the Budget and we will have a definite inflationary tendency. If prices continue going up unrestricted, I do not think anybody could justify a wage peg. Even though the 12 per cent increase may have served a purpose on the occasion of the by-elections in Cork and Kildare, the dissemination of truth among the uninitiated has been extraordinary and nobody now realises better than the worker that there were many pitfalls in the alleged increase and to a large extent it was an amelioration of a retrospective situation rather than of the present one.

With our sense of responsibility as public representatives, we must ask the Government what is in this Budget to give the impetus to what they call their Second Programme for Economic Expansion? What is in it for the emigrant looking towards home in the hope that his skilled labour and his experience might some time find a worthwhile place there for him to maintain his family? What is in it for the person forced off the land to seek a living elsewhere? Or for the growing family anxious to improve their standard of education, technical knowledge and skill? Is there anything in the Budget to show that thought and dynamic effort which might effect an arresting of the trends we all deplore? What is in the Budget to show any industry the road for the future? What is new here to encourage expansion, encourage greater output per head by the working man? What is there to encourage substantially increased investment in modern plant and buildings? What imagination, thought or effort is here to stimulate the person thinking on the lines the Government want him to think when one end of the see-saw is jolting out of complacency inefficient industry and the other trying to wheedle development on the basis of machinery replacement and increased unit efficiency?

Above all, in the context of development where is the plan that will encourage the Irish farmer, with a son growing up on the land, to greater and more sustained effort in husbandry? Where is the assurance for him of an expanding market? Where is the assurance of a floor level to prices which will ensure an economic return for his labour? Where is the assurance for that unit that we all speak nostalgically about in our solicitude to maintain it—the small farm unit, of the farmer, his wife and son?

Progress reported; Committee to sit again.
The Dáil adjourned at 10.30 p.m. until 3 p.m. on Wednesday, 29th April, 1964.
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