I do not propose this evening to discuss at any length the statement which the Minister for Finance has laid before the House. As he has pointed out, it is necessary that the numerous Resolutions which are submitted to us should be passed before 10 o'clock to-night, and it has been usual for the House to pass the Resolutions submitted in the Budget irrespective of the view and of the action it might take later on the Report Stage. It is impossible to discuss the Budget statement as a whole without having time for consideration of it, and without discussion of the Budget statement, as a whole, it is somewhat useless to occupy the time of the House in discussion of individual Resolutions on the First Stage. I do not propose to offer to the House more than one or two remarks about the statement which the Minister for Finance has just read. If I were speaking solely in my capacity as a member of Cumann na nGaedheal, and if I were viewing matters solely from a Cumann na nGaedheal partisan point of view, I could heartily congratulate the Minister for Finance on his Budget. Taking a wider view than that, I think it is impossible to avoid deploring the decisions which the Minister for Finance and the Government have taken. We were told before the election, in advertisements issued by the Fianna Fáil Party, that they would save £2,000,000 per annum on administration and that that was altogether irrespective of savings they were going to effect by reopening agreements with Great Britain. It was indicated that as a result of that policy there would be very great reductions in the burdens on the people. It is evident from this Budget that there are not to be reductions in the burdens on the people, and that in this time of difficulty there is not to be any real seeking after economy or savings. The Government in power at the moment, cannot any more than the Government which has gone out, be blamed for the fact that, as a result of world conditions, the yield of many taxes has gone down. The price of our products has gone down, and the reduction in the price of our products has meant that less money was in circulation. That has tended to reduce the yield of taxation. The reduction in income from incomes outside has caused the yield of taxation to come down. The Government, when faced with that reduction of national resources, has not sought, and apparently is not going to seek, to reduce expenditure.
The Budget speech reveals that the cross-roads mind is still strong amongst the Fianna Fáil Party. We had in the first part of the Budget a great deal of that cross-roads attitude of mind, an attempt to deal out Party propaganda by misrepresentations of various kinds, which I need not go into at the moment, but which I will deal with at a later stage. We have no attempt made to conserve resources and to enable the country to face all the economic difficulties before it. Actually we have new burdens proposed to be thrown upon the people. I do not say that there are not things in the Budget with which I agree. I believe the making of the McKenna duties permanent is thoroughly justified. There are matters of greater importance than that with which I would agree, but the Budget as a whole seems to me to reveal that the month or two that the Fianna Fáil Party has been in office has not been sufficient to get out of their minds the irresponsibilities which grew up during the years when the cross-roads propaganda was the controlling factor in the consideration of every problem.
The Minister did not enumerate, and we have not had time to consider, the forty-three new revenue tariffs which have been proposed. We have not had any details of the cuts which it is intended to impose on the public service. I presume we will have them to-morrow. I do not know whether the Minister will, or can, circulate without delay a tabular statement showing the various changes proposed to be effected by the Budget or whether it would be possible to circulate in tabular form the proposals which he intends to take effect with regard to cuts of various kinds.
