On the adjournment last night I was dealing with certain remarks which Deputy Lemass had made apropos of the Budget. Inevitably there was dragged in, as we must expect always in any speech from Deputy Lemass, a complaint as to the inadequacy of the tariff on boots. The tariff on boots can be raised as soon as the boot manufacturers have come to the conclusion that the tariff is inadequate and can make a case that the raising of it will prevent the importation of boots or, better still, will lead to the manufacture of more boots in this country. If the Minister for Finance wanted revenue and was careless of how he got it, the doubling of the boot tariff would be a very easy way of getting extra revenue. Undoubtedly extra revenue would come in from the raising of the boot tariff, but the raising of the tariff at this moment would be opposed by the boot manufacturers. When people speak of the failure of that tariff, they might go a little bit deeper and somewhat more below the surface than Deputy Lemass has gone, merely with the complaint that the amount of the tariff is inadequate. If the tariff were doubled or trebled, it would mean very little advance, say, in the next twelve months in the number of boots manufactured here, for one simple reason. that there are not sufficient skilled hands to be employed in the business at the moment. It is a slow process getting people trained. It is a difficulty that the boot manufacturers have come to realise, and it is one of the points that make the boot manufacturers reluctant to press for any increase in the tariff at present. If we wanted revenue, and were careless as to the tax it was going to put on the people, it would have been very easy to get the revenue this year by doubling the tax. It would only have meant that pretty nearly the same quantity of boots that came in last year would come in this year, and that the revenue would show a very big increase from that tariff. It would be got from the people who have to buy boots brought in from outside, and who would have to buy boots from outside in the main, simply for the reason that there is not immediately any possibility of an expansion in the boot trade to meet such a demand as there would be if the tax were doubled. The best test of whether or not the tariff is inadequate is the reluctance of the boot manufacturers to make any application to the Tariff Commission for the reconsideration of the amount of that tariff.
Deputy MacEntee in his speech, which was very nearly being dragged from his attache case too late to be delivered to this House, committed himself only to three points. He made an analysis of what he called the public debt of this country, and of the moneys that have to leave the country, and committed himself to the statement that it varied from 85 to 90 per cent. of the full total that in fact was drained and that went outside. He was challenged as to one item, as to whether or not he could place the number of holders of land stock who were in fact living in this country, and failed to give any answer, but just a simple calculation, that because money at one point seems to leave the country it inevitably is spent outside the country and never returns. He piled up what he called the national debt of the country by talking of the capitalisation of certain items upon which interest charges are now being borne and seems to be under the misapprehension that there is no provision made in this year's Budget, or in the whole financial arrangement upon which it is founded, either for payment of the £250,000 to England, or for the meeting of the £134,000 for certain charges with regard to land annuities, apparently not having read the Estimate which has been passed by this House for the Land Commission and not having understood what were the calculations with regard to the payment of interest upon which the whole Budget was based. We get the Land Commission annuities talked of as if they were part of the public debt of the country.
If the Deputy has a case in that respect, why not go still further and consider the money invested in Guinness's in this country? There are payments of interest made. A large number of these payments go outside the country, and that is money that departs from the country. It is not part of the public debt, and nobody ever considered it as such. If land annuities are put in that category, why not put in the moneys paid by way of return to stockholders who hold shares in Guinness's, or any concern in the country which has outside money invested in it, and where the payments by way of interest leave the country? Why should they not be put on the same footing as the Deputy put land annuities? Why should they not be counted in as part of the public debt? If you count them in, we are not going to get merely a change in the amount of the public debt in this country, but a tremendous change in the amount of the public debt in every country.