I beg to move an amendment to have a new sub-section added to this section as follows:—"This section shall cease to have effect on and after the 1st day of January, 1925; provided, nevertheless, that no action shall be brought after that date in respect of anything done or omitted to be done before that date which could not have been brought if this section were still in force."
In accordance with an intimation that I gave when this Bill was last in Committee, I desire to move my amendment, the effect of which is to restrict, by a limitation of time, the very drastic powers that are given by Section 7 of the Finance Act for the recovery of debts due to the State. It will be within the recollection of the Dáil that every provision in this section was passed some time ago under an Emergency Statute for the enforcement of powers during a present temporary emergency. That statute was fought, I might almost say, clause by clause, through the Dáil, and divisions were taken against many sections in it, but I do not think there was any section in it that was fought more fiercely than the one which is now being put into the Finance Bill. Now, that Enforcement of Powers Act was justified by every Minister who supported it as a purely temporary and emergency measure. I did not vote against this section; on the other hand, I supported it, because I was convinced by the arguments of Ministers that the times required drastic powers to enable decrees to be levied and debts to be collected. The Ministry themselves recognised that the statute was one for emergency only, because they limited its duration for the very short period of six months from the date at which it was passed. As I say, everyone who supported it did so on the ground that it was for all practical purposes a war measure, that the country had got out of hand, that illegality of every kind was rife throughout the country, and that it was impossible to levy decrees in the ordinary way or for the Sheriff to hold auctions in the ordinary way for the purpose of collecting debts according to the mode of law by which they have been collected since times that none of us can remember.
It seems to me a very excessive arrogation of powers to the State when we find that these drastic powers, which were taken for six months only, in con consequence of emergency in the case of ordinary civil debts, were made permanent for the purpose of collecting debts due to the State for Income Tax and the other Customs and Duties that are dealt with in this Statute. No one will, I think, charge me with having any sympathy with law-breakers, or with desiring in any way to shield people who are trying to evade the payment of the debts which are honestly due by them to the State.
For that reason, when this Bill was before the Dáil, I supported, in a division which was taken on this Section, the enactments of this Section, because I was convinced by arguments of Ministers—I did not require much conviction—that the State was entitled to collect these debts by any means that any individual citizen was entitled to use, and that it was only fair that the State should have a longer period than the short six months that were given by the Enforcement of Powers Act, because these debts would not become due, in many cases, until after the expiration of that period, as they are in respect of the past financial year, and people have rights of appeal and rights to enable them to challenge the accuracy of the accounts furnished them, which will exhaust this six months. Therefore, unless some longer period than six months were given to the State, the powers would be practically useless to it. For that reason I cast about to form an opinion, having been given no assistance by anybody else, which would enable me to come to a satisfactory conclusion as to what would be a fair time to give the Government for the execution of debts due to them by means of these extraordinary powers. It appeared to me that as this financial year will not end until April, 1924, and that the people who owe debts which have not been collected by April, 1924, may be able to stave off execution for some few months longer, that it would not be unreasonable to let the Government possess these powers until the conclusion of the year 1924. That gives them eighteen or nineteen months as against the six that the ordinary citizen possesses for the exercise of these drastic powers of collecting debts.
Now, it is a very easy thing to say, and it was said in the arguments on this Bill in Committee, that all these powers will be shelved, that there will be no need to exercise them, but that it is a very useful thing to have them. That is a dangerous argument, and that argument would apply to every single one of the extraordinary powers which this Dáil has conferred on this Government and upon its predecessor, the Provisional Government, since they first came into office. Yet, would any Minister stand up and say that because it is a very useful thing to possess powers for interning people, without trial, powers to try people before Military Courts, and that these will not be exercised unless there is a great emergency, that, therefore, they ought to be left on the Statute Book as part of the regular law of the land? If it is unreasonable that war measures should be exercised in times of peace, there is no necessity for keeping war measures on the Statute Book in time of peace. When a new war breaks out, then let the Government come to the Parliament of the people for such powers as they think they ought to get, and the Parliament of the people will not deny them. We have not been niggardly. I do not think that the Government will suggest that we have been niggardly in giving them every power which they asked for, which they satisfied us was reasonably required by them for carrying out their duties in any existing emergency. Now, when they have relied upon the existing emergency for justifying the conferring upon them of these powers I do think that these powers ought to cease when the existing emergency comes to an end.
There is one point in it which seems to me to be actually unfair, and that is to allow the Government to retain these powers when other people are not allowed. They can levy their debts by the use of these extraordinary means, but they deny to the poor man who owes a debt to them the powers for collecting from his debtors the money with which he is to pay. Is it a fair thing that the landlord, say, who cannot collect his rents, the tradesman who cannot collect the shop debts due to him, in order that he may get the money to pay his debt to the State, is to have these extraordinary powers put in force against him which may result in ruining him, when he is unable to use similar powers to get in the money with which he is to pay his debt to the State? For that reason alone, if there were no others, it seems to me unfair that the State should have a power against the individual debtor that the individual creditor has not against those who owe debts to him. Again, it seems to me to argue a lack of confidence, not only in the people, but in themselves, that Ministers should ask for these extraordinary powers as part of the ordinary law of the land. No debts were ever more completely discharged in the past when they were levied by what was known as an alien Government than the debts that were due to the State. They were not paid out of love for the Government of the day, or from the enthusiasm that anybody has for discharging his public debts. I do not suppose that there is any tax that one pays with less avidity than a tax due to a public body, whatever it may be. That may be due to a lack of civic responsibility or not. I do not know; but I do not think anybody cheerfully paid his rates or Income Tax, or whatever it might have been. But whether he paid it gladly or not that was the kind of debt that was almost always discharged in full, and the occasions on which the Crown in the past had to resort to the courts of law for the purpose of collecting debts were infinitesimal in comparison with the resort that the ordnary citizen had to make for the purpose of collecting ordinary civil debts.
The mere fact that it was a debt due to the State, and that the State could and would, at the public expense, sue a debtor and make him pay, was quite enough to make people pay in ordinary times. We know that in the past public debts, or debts due to the State, were discharged in that way, and it does seem to me to show a lack of confidence in the power of Ministers themselves to restore the country to a normal state of affairs, and in the prospects of a return to sanity on the part of the people, that Ministers should tell us that they want these extraordinary powers as a big stick to hold over the people. I have more confidence, I think, in the people than the Ministers themselves, and I have more confidence in the Ministers. I believe that at the end of another eighteen months or so, we shall have got so far on the road to ordinary civic sanity, that people will be paying their State debts as they did in the past. Surely, it is not too much to hope that the people when they are running the country themselves, and when it is being run by a Government of their own election, their own choice, their own people will realise that it is their duty to pay unwillingly it may be, and with a grumble, but still to pay whatever taxes are levied on them by the State for the purpose of carrying on the affairs of the Nation. I do not think the people, however mad they may have been for the past twelve months or more, will continue in that state of insanity. I have no doubt that there will be a great unwillingness to discharge the big load of arrears that has accumulated during the last couple of years, and it is for that reason I have supported the Government in asking for these powers to enable them to collect these arrears. People will try to get out of paying these by every kind of excuse. Excuses ought not be listened to; they ought to be taken with a firm hand, and this Bill enables the Government to do that in respect of these arrears. People have been getting up several times here, and we have lots of correspondence in the public Press in which people tell us these ought not to be collected, because of the old story we have heard so often, that the President in some other capacity, or some other Minister, said that these were not going to be collected. These excuses are being made, and if people make these excuses without any foundation for them, then I think the Government are perfectly right in taking strong powers to overcome the refusal to pay based on excuses of that kind. But when these arrears are wiped off, and we get back to the normal taxation and collect the year's revenue and the year's taxes within the year, I do not believe that these powers will be required, and if they are not required I do not believe that they ought to be on the Statute Book, as part of the ordinary law of the land. It is not creditable to any country to have to keep war measures on the Statute Book. It shows, as I say, a lack of confidence on the part of the Government themselves when they say "we cannot trust ourselves to get in the debts unless we have the big stick, which was put into our hands in the time of war to shake it over the people to make them pay in times of peace." It is for that reason, and not from any desire to help anybody who is trying to get off paying his taxes, that I think for the credit of the Statute Book we ought not to perpetuate a war measure by making this perpetual. A Finance Act must be brought in every year. If in twelve months' time it is found that no progress has been made, or that insufficient progress has not been made in getting in the £3,000,000 arrears that the President told us were outstanding for Income Tax, then I am quite sure that the Dáil will not be slow to extend these powers for another twelve months, as emergency powers, because the emergency still exists. I do not think that anything that has passed up to the present would justify the Government in saying that they have not our full confidence. We will give them any powers that they satisfy us are really necessary, but unless these extraordinary powers are necessary, I do not think the Government ought to have them.
Remember, it is not necessary to say that the Government exists here by the will of the people, and if these measures are oppressive they can be turned down. There will be no general oppression against the people as a whole which would get up a general agitation against the continuance of these powers. It is one man here and one man there who will suffer by the exercise of these powers. I have no doubt they will be exercised often, and there will be cases here and there in which the exercise by the Sub-Sheriff of the powers to take away and sell cattle and things of that sort, to seize without notice, will do grave injustice to individuals here and there. These individuals will not have the power to influence this body. One question by one man here, and one in another place will be raised, but there will be no concerted action over the whole country, and the past in every country shows that it is almost impossible to work up any satisfactory or successful agitation against the oppressive use of State powers unless it is an abuse that affects the community as a whole. No people will stand up, and no agitation will be made by the community as a whole for an injustice which hits only an odd individual here and there.
What brought about the revolution in England, the levying of ship money had gone on uninterruptedly for twenty-five or thirty years without complaint by anybody, until it was used as a means for preventing the calling together of Parliament. If an injustice so grave as that which overthrew the Stewart dynasty in the end had gone on through two entire reigns, and possibly for more, without complaint and without objection, surely it is not a very likely thing that a Government here will be overthrown because one or half a dozen individuals, even in every one of the counties under the Government's sway, happened to suffer some injustice through the negligence of a Sheriff or a Sheriff's officer? It is for that reason that I fear these powers will cause injustice, an injustice for which there will be no remedy. I do not think they ought to be continued after the cessation of the emergency to meet which they were conferred. Therefore, I beg to move that the powers conferred by the amendment in my name, the effect of which is that the powers conferred by this Section shall cease with the end of the year 1924, be agreed to. I do not know whether it is necessary to explain the proviso at the end. The Bill gives indemnity to Sheriffs for things which they have done. It would be clearly unjust that persons should wait until January, 1926, and then slap an action against the Sheriffs for something which they could not bring an action against them for before. I think the Sheriffs ought to retain immunity for all time for anything they did while the Act was in force—the same immunity which they would have while the Act would be in force.
