When I was interrupted on Friday I had hoped to begin my speech by taking the smaller fry first. Deputy McGilligan, I am interested to notice, has left the House, much to my regret, because Deputy McGilligan, like Deputy Cosgrave, made one of the vilest speeches that this Dáil has listened to. By innuendo, by imputation, he assailed the personal honour of members of this Government.
In Committee on Finance. - Financial Motion (Motion No. 26.—Resumed.)
Debate resumed on the following resolution:—
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.)
That is untrue.
I will not accept Deputy Cosgrave's withdrawal.
I am not asking any acceptance on the Minister's part; I am merely making a statement of fact.
I respectfully suggest that the Deputy had his innings when he was slinging mud last week, and that at least he ought to have the grace to be silent now.
I will ask the Minister to produce what I said for proof.
Deputy McGilligan should not blame me if I place him with the smaller fry, among the minnows, in a party where every dab considers itself a dolphin, since the Deputy a week or two ago likened himself to a sprat, a poor sort of fish, I understand. I said on the last day that in the course of the three days' debate we did not have one useful constructive idea from the Opposition. They obstructed, they distorted, they disported themselves on the thin ice of misrepresentation and Deputy McGilligan's speech was an excellent example of what I mean. After a preliminary canter for half an hour on Wednesday evening, he spent the better part of Friday morning running around the subject of the Budget like a white mouse in a cage, but he never once got to the centre of the argument. He never once knit the issue upon the central, vital fact, what sort of a Budget would Cumann na nGaedheal have produced in the same circumstances?
We had a discussion from the Deputy about minor poets, an uninteresting subject at any time. We had a seascape of the Spanish Main painted laboriously in midnight oils. And we had a juggling feat with three sixpences. But what else had we? I am sorry the Deputy is not here. It is not often I pay him a tribute, but I wish to give him every credit that is due to him. His speech, like the ragamuffin that has just been bathed, presented an unwonted aspect. It was a little cleaner than usual, but outside this pleasing innovation, what else was there in Deputy McGilligan's speech? Like every Opposition speech which preceded it the Deputy exhibited the same callous outlook, the same utter disregard of the necessities of the unemployed. Could anything better exemplify the outlook of the Opposition than Deputy McGilligan's adoration of the three sixpences? He was panegyrical about the three sixpences which we were putting on the income tax, but he was dumb, dumb as a dead-head, about the four sixpences that the Cumann na nGaedheal Government, if it had been put in power by the last general election, would have taken off the old age pensions.
Like Deputy Blythe, Deputy McGilligan twitted us about economies we are proposing, but he was silent about the economies which would have been undertaken by a Government of which Deputy Cosgrave would have been the head, of which Deputy Blythe would have been the Minister for Finance, and of which Deputy McGilligan, if they did not determine to shift him from the Department of Industry and Commerce because of the mess he had made of the Shannon Scheme, would have been Minister for Industry and Commerce. After all, the Opposition are just as strictly pledged to economies as we are.
When the Supplementary Budget was introduced last autumn, Deputy Blythe promised that certain economies would be secured which would enable them to avoid a deficit at the end of the last financial year. Cumann na nGaedheal had ample time to secure economies. They had ten years to think over them, a familiarity with the administrative machine which the two short months that we have been in power would not have permitted us to acquire. Why did not Deputy Cosgrave and why did not Deputy Blythe make other economies before they went to the country? Let the House and the country have an answer to that question. Deputy Cosgrave did not give it in his speech. Deputy Blythe did not give it in his speech and Deputy McGilligan, who was prating about two million pounds in economies, did not give it in his speech. Why was it that we did not hear of the economies that Deputy Cosgrave's Cumann na nGaedheal Government would have made if it had been in office, and if it had to present a Budget in the present circumstances to this House? Because those economies were of a nature that could only have been made after a general election had returned them securely to office for another four years. Cumann na nGaedheal dare not face the country on the economies which they had in mind. They were afraid to submit them to the judgment of the people because the people are not so cold and so callous as they would have been in regard to the hunger and suffering which unemployment is causing throughout every one of the Twenty-Six Counties to-day. The people would have had small welcome for Deputy Cosgrave and for Deputy Cosgrave's Government if they had had the courage to carry out the economies which they contemplated when Deputy Blythe made his speech last autumn. It would have been better for them to at least have had the courage because if they had been defeated, some people might have had some respect for them.
The hypocrisy of the Cumann na nGaedheal Party disqualifies them from attacking the Budget because the economies adumbrated in it are insufficient, and I am not denying that they are insufficient, but unlike the late Government we are not budgeting for more than we can possibly hope to achieve in the twelve months before us. If we have not come to this House and said that we propose to secure two million pounds in economies in order to balance this Budget after we have been ten weeks in office—two million pounds that Deputy McGilligan, a member of the last Government which had been in office for ten years, told us they could not secure—it is because we are in earnest and because we mean what we say and meant what we said when we went to the people. We knew that nobody would believe that having to take over the machine from the late Government, having to run this country on the basis of the estimates for services prepared by the late Government, we had to find the means to keep that machine going or else shut down the Government of the country altogether. But inside the life of this Dáil, before we go to the country again, we will have shown the people that economies could have been made and not economies by way of a reduction in salaries or allowances to any officer, but economies by a complete reorganisation of the services, and these economies will justify the pledges which we gave to the people before the General Election. And it is because that, just as their hypocrisy should have kept them silent in regard to the economies, so their incompetency to criticise this Budget has left the members of the Opposition devoid of material that we have had the speeches which we did have from the two Deputies, Deputy Cosgrave and Deputy McGilligan.
It is because of that fact that last week we had the most scandalous and shameful innuendoes and suggestions attacking, as I have said, the personal honour of every member of the Government. When he was head of the last Government Deputy Cosgrave posed as a pillar of discretion and responsibility. If any member, particularly if any Front Bench member of the Fianna Fáil Opposition as it then was, had ventured to make the vile suggestions which Deputy Cosgrave made in his speech——
That is an untrue statement, and the Deputy is well aware of it.
—we can all imagine —I will deal with it——
Let the Deputy read what I said.
—how the unctuous Deputy would have rent his garments and declaimed in horror at the damage which was being done to the credit of the State if the personal honour of the Government was being assailed. There never was an attempt so despicable, or so malevolent, or so deliberately and intentionally malicious as that made by Deputy Cosgrave, and there never was an attempt so cowardly. Not merely did the Deputy shelter himself behind the privileges of this House, but he even referred to some imaginary people outside this House in an endeavour to disclaim responsibility for charges which no man's mouth but his was suited to utter. I say that the charges were shameful and that they are as baseless as they were shameful.
I challenge Deputy Cosgrave to divest himself of his privileged position as a member of the Dáil and to repeat on a public platform or in the public Press what he said here in this House. I challenge him to make those charges against me personally outside this House because I am the person whose honour is being impugned by the Deputy, and I will stake that honour, I will stake my own poverty, against the honour of Deputy Cosgrave and against Deputy Cosgrave's wealth, because Deputy Cosgrave is a wealthy Deputy. He has often boasted of that fact in this House. A Dublin jury——
I am afraid that is not true either.
——of twelve men will give a verdict in my favour and against him. What I have said in regard to Deputy Cosgrave applies likewise to Deputy McGilligan. In the course of his speech on Friday Deputy McGilligan used the following words:—
Are there any Ministers or any members attached to the Government who carry on a profession of a private type and use the Government offices for private work? If so, will civil servants be allowed to engage in other work of a professional occupation and to use their offices and even their staffs in the same way?
Deputy McGilligan has taken refuge in flight. Deputy McGilligan's tactics during the last Dáil were to sit and to have the last word. I likened him then in debate to a hermit crab whose first concern was to protect his own rear. He has had to divest himself of his shell and make himself scarce. If Deputy McGilligan were here I would challenge him to say who is the member of the Government who used a Government office and the Government staffs to do his own private work? Since we came into office every Ministerial post has been a full-time post, a post occupying not merely eight hours of the twenty-four, but sometimes more than sixteen. Every minute of our day, every minute of our week—and every week one of seven days—has been occupied by Government work.
For myself, because of the manner in which I was asked to become a member of the Government I was not able to divest myself of certain professional responsibility to my clients. I am carrying on my own office winding up those undertakings, and the only interest I have in it now is to find the weekly cheque that provides wages for my staff. But our posts have been just as much full-time posts as they were in the last Government when the then Minister for Agriculture continued as a member of the firm of Shiels and Hogan, or Deputy Eamon Duggan continued as a member of the firm of Duggan and O'Reilly or Deputy McGilligan who, whilst pretending to have responsibility for two Ministerial Departments had himself called to the Bar, or Deputy Fionan Lynch who was in the same position as Deputy McGilligan, or as would have the remainder of the Cabinet if they had any other business outside politics to attend to.
Why were these personal attacks made? Because, I repeat again, the Opposition had no case against the Budget. When you have a bad case, slander your opponent, vilify him, drag his personal honour in the mud, and make the Government as despicable, if you can, as the Opposition. That is why Deputy Cosgrave told us here in the House, of what certain unnamed people were saying outside; that is why Deputy McGilligan made his attack, unctuously and full of self-righteousness, this man who, because of his base and shameless neglect of the interests of Irish industrialists, during the time he was Minister for Industry and Commerce, is going to set himself down in ease, in the Chair which is being prepared for him as a solatium for loss of office, by an English industrialist who has provided £20,000 to secure for him a pension for the rest of his life. The only thing I will say in that regard, is that, we who know Deputy McGilligan will say that that industrialist had a sardonic humour when he decided to christen that Chair a Chair of international peace.
I say that the Opposition and their tactics during the debate have shown that they have no case against the Budget. Barren of argument, void of any alternative, they came to this debate, armed with pins to scratch and squirts to bespatter, but, despite their attack, the Budget stands to-day as an advance in the economic reconquest of Ireland for the Irish. Again, think of the circumstances in which this Budget was introduced. In this House, we have comparative quiet. Deputy McGilligan may jibe and may jeer, in the role of the King's jester, and we are slightly amused. Deputy Cosgrave plays the knock-about comedian among the figures, and we laugh, and it is one of Deputy Cosgrave's more engaging qualities that he is easy to laugh at, but, outside this House, there is hunger and want and desperation amongst the people. There are children whose only provider is the garbage tin of the rich. How long could this position endure under Deputy Cosgrave's Government; how long could it endure under any other Government that would be so neglectful, so regardless of the position outside this House, as Deputy Cosgrave's Government was, and would have been, if they had been here on these benches to-day?
Let those who jeer, let Deputy McGilligan who jeers, listen to what was said by a clergyman who lives and works among the people, a clergyman who for the last four years has not driven through the people closed up in a tin box, as the members of the late Government have:
"Unless the unemployment menace is stemmed, I believe that within five years the ordered state of the community will be upset and that a social and economic revolution is inevitable. That is not only my own belief. I think it is well-founded, and the national economic policy which has been declared in this Budget is a genuine effort made by one country to rid itself of the terrible danger hanging over it in common with many other countries."
That is the justification for our Budget. Those are the circumstances in which this Budget was prepared. Those are the facts to which we had regard when outlining our scheme of taxation.
To come back to the kernel of this debate, to the question which has gone unanswered, and which has been left unanswered during the last two weeks almost. In the same circumstances, what would the Opposition have done? If we can judge them by their past, we can answer that question. They would have shut their eyes to the plight of the people. They would have disregarded every sign that unpleasantly reminded them of the unemployment menace. They would have continued their merry social round, posturing as leaders of fashion, patrons of sport, converting themselves into a new aristocracy, with all the faults and none of the graces of the old. And if, in the midst of these, born out of the desperation of the people, the menace of revolution appeared, they would have been quite content in the name of established order to crush it out ruthlessly with their army and under the authority of the special legislation which, taking time by the forelock, they put on the Statute Book last year.
I am sorry Deputy McGilligan is not here, because I was going to say something about him which I know, not from any confidential document, but which I will say, and he can answer me later if he dares. Deputy McGilligan jeered at what he describes as a hair-shirt Budget. I am quite sure that a hair-shirt would not appeal to the Deputy who, as a member of the last Government, refused, in connection with journeys which he took upon Government business to London, to accept the same subsistence allowance as his own colleagues in the Cabinet did. When he was in the Government. Deputy McGilligan's lot was cast in pleasant places. The luxury of the Lido, the opulence of London, the routs and masquerades of Geneva, have made the Deputy's skin so tender that he shuddered at the thought of a hair shirt. But which is the greatest safeguard against revolution? Which is of the greatest service to the people in the present crisis? Our hair-shirt Budget or Deputy McGilligan's night club diplomacy?
Last year Deputy Cosgrave told us that the social order was in danger. This year the warning is repeated, not by politicians but by priests and social workers who see the unendurable misery of the people around them. Which will afford the strongest assurance that the menace will pass and that our people will remain law-abiding and peaceful? Deputy Cosgrave's slanders, Deputy McGilligan's jokes, or the relief of the unemployed which we are providing in this Budget?
This Budget, as Deputy Davin said, will stand as a Christian Budget, and as a humane Budget. It will stand also as an honest Budget. The people know what they are paying and what they are paying for. They know what is being raised in taxation and what is being raised by borrowing. They can see how the normal Budget is being balanced and how the special provision, which has to be made to meet the abnormal depression, is being secured. Could that have been said of any one of my predecessor's Budgets? Deputy Blythe is not here, but let Deputy Cosgrave, in consultation with whom Deputy Blythe's Budgets were prepared, and who himself was at one time Minister for Finance, ask Deputy Blythe what is on the records of his own Department. Could it have been said of any single one of Deputy Blythe's Budgets that the people in this State, or any person outside this State, knew what the true financial position of the country was? Every artifice that a dishonest book-keeper could use to disguise that position, to cover it up, was employed by the late Government. But we have put before the people a plain honest balance sheet. We have concealed no loss; we have concealed no difficulty; we have concealed no debt, and no contingent liability. The people know what they are up against and we are asking them to make sacrifices in order to avert the peril which Father Ryan said yesterday hangs over this country; in order that things may go on in their daily ordered round; that men may not be turned into wolves by hunger; and that Christian principles may still prevail in this land.
Not only is this an honest Budget, it is a soundly-constructed Budget. The burdens have been fairly adjusted, and the proof of that is that no serious attempt has been made to attack the Budget in detail. Deputy McGilligan and Deputy Cosgrave did try to criticise it in some respect, but their criticism was so ill-informed as to be ludicrous. Take Deputy McGilligan's criticism. He quoted a passage from a speech of mine, the whole point of which was that an increase in the income tax should be accompanied by a revision of the reliefs and allowances. Deputy McGilligan apparently thought that I had failed to observe that principle. What are the facts? The incidence of the income tax has been so wisely re-adjusted that even to-day a single person with an unearned income of £250 pays less than he would have to pay in Great Britain with a 5/- income tax, and married couples who have an income of £300, even under the 5/- rate in this Budget, will be paying less than they were paying under the last Budget with the 3/6 rate. A married couple with an earned income of £300, under Deputy Cosgrave's régime and with his 3/6 income tax, would have paid £3 18s. 9d. Under this scale, the same couple, with a 5/- income tax, will only pay £3 2s. 6d. Again, as compared with the position in Great Britain, our married couple, with no children, with an income of £350, will pay just a little over half of what they would pay in Great Britain with a 5/- income tax, for they only pay £8 6s. 8d. here, as compared with £16 5s. 0d. in Great Britain and Northern Ireland.
Deputy Sir James Craig was mournful at the lot of the people who will have to fly from this country, by implication either to Great Britain or Northern Ireland. All I can say is that before they go let them study the income tax scale very carefully, because they will find that if they are leaving the Free State to go to Northern Ireland it is a case of jumping out of the frying pan into a much hotter fire. It is only when the income of this married couple gets above £700 that there is any difference at all between the two scales. If the income is £600 on a married couple they pay £58 15s. In Great Britain they will pay £60 12s. 6d.
But the comparison is much more favourable when we come to those with whom we are really concerned. Married people in this country who have young children whom they are bringing up, the hope and the future of this land, will find the discrepancy as between their treatment under Deputy Cosgrave's Government and ours is much more pronounced. With his 3/6 income tax and with his scale of relief devised to give relief only to the rich, the married couple with three children and an income of £400 would have paid £3 18s. 9d. income tax. Under our 5/- income tax they will pay nothing. With an income of £450 they had to pay an income tax of £7 17s. 6d. under the late Budget; under ours they will have to pay nothing. With his 3/6 income tax a couple with an income of £500 per annum would have to pay £11 16s. 3d. With our 5/- income tax they will pay less than half that—£5 12s. 6d. An income of £550 under the Cosgrave régime and the 3/6 income tax would have to pay £15 15s.; under our 5/- income tax the same income would pay £11 5s. And so on up the scale. And even as compared again with the British at £800 our married couple with a family of three children would have to pay £66 5s. as compared with £68 2s. 6d. which they would have to pay in Northern Ireland.
Again I repeat if there is any income tax payer in this State who thinks he is going to have a better time in Great Britain or Northern Ireland, he had better examine the scale and let him see what he is letting himself in for before he decides to go. That is the case in regard to income tax. I do not suppose there is anyone here in this House who will get up and say that if he had prepared the Budget this year he would not have had to increase the income tax. Does anybody believe that Deputy Cosgrave would have been able, if he remained at the head of the Government, to balance the Budget this year without increasing the income tax, and without making 5/- the standard rate. I am perfectly certain that Deputy Cosgrave himself does not believe it.
That is not right at all.
I am rather sorry Deputy Cosgrave has now gone, because I have a few more kind things to say about him. I was going to talk about the surtax. Deputy Cosgrave is a great financier. He is fond of figures. But when Deputy Cosgrave starts talking about figures in this House he reminds me of a man in hobnailed boots trying to walk upon ice. He does not merely trip; he simply sprawls, and Deputy Cosgrave sprawled all through his criticism of our surtax proposals. He talked first of all about an individual, and there is not, he admitted, even one such individual in this country, with an income of £100,000. Now it is a poor case which you cannot prove by taking a typical example. In the whole of the Twenty-Six Counties there is not one individual domiciled in this State who pays the full tax in this State with an income of £100,000. Yet that is the imaginary individual for whom Deputy Cosgrave here pleads, the gentleman with an income of £100,000. He has to take gilt-edged examples when he comes to attack our Budget. He has to take an imaginary example—a creature of his own imagination—and he proceeds to deal with this hypothetical individual in these terms. He says he pays 5/- in the £ income tax; 6/3 surtax, and 2/6 which is not called income tax. I agree about the 2/6 which is not called income tax. But will Deputy Cosgrave tell me what the 2/6 is to be called? Was it simply thrown in as a make weight in order to arrive at his figure of 13/9 in the £, the rate at which he said this individual will pay taxation to the State? I am sorry the Deputy has gone. I would like to see where that 2/6 came in. I cannot understand how it does come in. It could not possibly have come in in reference to the corporation profits tax, because the standard rate of that tax is 1/6 in the £, and not 2/6.
If Deputy Cosgrave is going to make a case in figures so far as 1/- is concerned, it does not matter to him in the slightest where he gets the shilling, he will bring it in in order to round off an argument which could not stand up on the facts. How did Deputy Cosgrave, who was one time a Minister responsible for the finances of this State, arrive at this figure of 6/3 for the surtax? I think the first office which he held in the Government was that of Minister for Finance, and then possibly his colleagues found him out and turned him out. Does the Deputy who got up and talked in millions, and told us how the market value of a certain industry had shrunk from forty millions to 25 millions, who was so glib and so apt in cross-talk where figures were concerned—know how this surtax is assessed? Does he know the difference between the scale and the effective rates at which surtax is assessed? I said that we had not an individual with an income unearned of £100,000 per year in this State. I had that case examined to see what that mythical individual would pay if he ever took concrete shape and form in this country. I find that he would pay 10/10 in income tax and in surtax—not even 11/3 which Deputy Cosgrave assumed, and certainly not 13/9, which the Deputy used in order to make a false and a fictitious case against the Budget.
Then we come to the Corporation Profits Tax. Deputy Cosgrave was eloquent in defending the big corporations. What was the record of his own Government in this connection? He alleges that the additional impost which we are putting on is a crushing one, that it is going to make it impossible for certain of these concerns to compete in Great Britain, that it is going to make it impossible for the soundest banking corporation in the world—the Bank of Ireland—to carry on. What was Deputy Cosgrave's own record in regard to the big industry which he says finds a large share of its market across the water? He gave effect to the same principle of discrimination and regard to that concern as we did, and did it for the same reason. He did it for the reason that because of its refusal to maintain a register of its shareholders here this State and the people of this State lose a substantial amount in estate duties whenever an Irish shareholder in that concern dies. It was Deputy Cosgrave who in 1928 in order to secure for this country some compensation for that loss introduced this principle of differentiation. The rate of corporation profits tax was five per cent. before 1928. Deputy Blythe in the Finance Bill of 1928 brought in a section whereby foreign companies operating and carrying on business in this country, which did not maintain a register of their shareholders here, were to be charged an additional 2½ per cent. We were compelled to take this course by nothing except dire necessity, without any desire to discriminate against any section of this community; we had to balance our Budget; we had to provide for the needs of our people, and when we came to consider the increase in the corporation profits tax we were compelled to follow the precedent set by our predecessors. In order to recoup to our Exchequer some part of the loss which is occasioned by the policy which this company, for its own convenience, thinks it necessary to follow, we were compelled to increase the rate in that case from 1/6 to 2/- in the £. Deputy Cosgrave says that that additional 6d. was a crushing impost. That is an accusation against his own Government. It is a verdict of guilty against his own Government, because to make that charge, and to substantiate it, means that that 6d. was the last straw which broke the camel's back. Deputy Cosgrave does not believe that any more than I do.
Deputy Cosgrave became eloquent in his tears when he came to consider the case of another corporation, a banking corporation, which for the first time has been brought within the scope of this tax. It is the one bank which never paid corporation profits tax until now. If discrimination in taxation is an unjust principle, if it is a principle to which effect should never be given, why did Deputy Cosgrave's Government for ten years discriminate in favour of that bank? I am not attacking the bank. It has rendered very valuable services to the Government during the past ten years. But why, if every other bank had to pay corporation profits tax, was this bank privileged? Deputy Cosgrave talks about the widow's mite and about the widow's investments. Are there no widow's investments in other banks? Why did he not play the weeping walrus in regard to the widow's investments in other banks just as well as he did in regard to the bank in whose shares he admitted he advised his own friends to invest? Was that why Deputy Cosgrave was so annoyed? Was that why this bank remained privileged always? Because it was the stocking into which Deputy Cosgrave's friends put their savings. He was indignant about a tax which for some time I could not quite understand—a tax, he said, on the Currency Commission. Deputy Cosgrave got up and made a speech attacking the Budget and he did not even know what was in the Budget. There is no tax on the Currency Commission. The Currency Commission is not being used to collect a tax. Deputy Cosgrave who filled columns of the newspapers with a speech about the Budget did not know that. There is stamp duty upon consolidated bank notes. Our predecessors levied a tax also upon consolidated bank notes, only they called it a fee. But it goes into the Exchequer and is used as ordinary revenue to defray ordinary expenditure during the year. The fact that that fee is imposed is an admission that this consolidated bank note issue is a taxable article. I do not wish to say that that tax will remain always as a permanent impost.
I frankly recognise that the conditions in which the banks were allowed to make that consolidated bank note issue were outlined in the report of the last Banking Commission, but I do say that, in the present circumstances— this Budget must be related to the present circumstances and we must not think of it as if we had normal economic conditions—when we have to impose an income-tax of 5s., when we have slightly to increase the surtax throughout the range, when we have to increase corporation profits tax, when we have to put a duty on tobacco, when we were putting indirect taxation on every section of the community to the tune of almost £1,000,000 and when we were still short, where else could we more fittingly turn than to this concession given by the community and the State to the banks and ask them, in our present circumstances, in our desperate need, to forego some share—even a large share—of the profit which that consolidated bank note issue brings them? If some of the plutocrats who form the backbone of the Independent Party, if some of the wealthier men who sit on the back benches were here, I would ask them whether they would prefer to have that £90,000 out of the consolidated bank note issue left untouched or the income-tax increased even by a threepenny piece. Even if there had been a certain implied agreement in connection with this consolidated bank note issue—I am not prepared to accept that, but I am putting the case against us at its very worst—in the whole of the circumstances, when we had no other place to go, and even if we had other places to go— even if we could have increased the tax on tea or any other tax—to meet the present situation, any Government would be justified in asking the banks to forego in this year some portion of their profits and to come to the aid of the State.
Deputy McGilligan sometimes says funnier things than he knows of. The same may be said of Deputy Cosgrave. The biggest joke in the speeches of these two Deputies, who are apparently the financial experts on the Opposition Front Bench, was the statement that this "savoured of inflation" and that the only reason they could conceive for imposing this tax was that the Government had decided to "embark on a policy of inflation." That statement shows how much either of these gentlemen knows about the currency position. The bulk of our currency is not legal tender notes or consolidated bank notes but the cheque money to the tune of £114,000,000 per year which circulates through the State. The total amount of the consolidated bank note issue allocated to the banks is £6,000,000 and the amount they have already put in circulation is £5,750,000. Add that £5,750,000 to the £114,000,000 of cheque money and—I speak now merely from recollection—to the 6½ million pounds of legal tender note issue and you get about £126,000,000 of money in circulation. According to Deputy McGilligan, if there is to be any inflation at all, we are going to inflate that huge volume by something less than .02 per cent. or 1/500th. Deputy McGilligan calls that "embarking on a policy of inflation." When he is so hard driven in his attack on the Budget as to be forced to rely on an argument that is a burlesque, we can understand how sound this Budget is.
Deputy Cosgrave, in attacking the motion which proposes to make certain incomes, derived from rents, chargeable under Schedule D, said that that was a tax on business rents. He even went further and said it was a tax on house rents and on dwelling houses. Once more Deputy Cosgrave's silly criticisms indicate that he does not understand, and that he is not competent to understand what the Budget is about. He did not read the Resolution. The Resolution has no connection with house rents at all. It refers only to premises occupied for the purpose of business or a profession. Deputy Cosgrave was filled with solicitude for the poverty-stricken rich, but he was perfectly callous in regard to the poor. He condemned this tax, root and branch. What is Deputy Cosgrave defending in this House? This is the sort of thing that is going on in Dublin while Deputy Bennett is so doleful about the lot of the unfortunate bachelor. I sympathise with the Deputy. There is one cure for him, and that is to become entitled to the marriage allowance. There is, I suppose, a husband of sorts, and perhaps, the father of a family lost in the Deputy, and we are giving him every encouragement. We are making bachelorhood less attractive, and by putting a tax on cosmetics we are lessening the risks of the Deputy's courtship. I hope that, between the income-tax and the tax on cosmetics Deputy Bennett will take the plunge, and that before the close of the year we will see him marching blushing down the aisle, thick with confetti, to the tune of the Wedding March. Does Deputy Cosgrave or Deputy Bennett or Deputy MacEoin or Deputy Mulcahy stand for this sort of thing which is going on every day in Dublin —business premises, with a valuation of £205, let at a rent of £1,000 per annum, plus rates? The Opposition, I suppose, hard-driven by their Whips are going to vote against this Budget. If they vote against it, one of the things they are going to vote for is, that the person who owns property valued at £205, and who lets it at a rent of £1,000 per annum, plus rates, shall escape scot-free off £795 on assessment? While they were letting that man get off with £795 of income tax last year they put a tax of 4d per lb. on sugar, and they could have got quite a little bit out of the change which we are making this year.
Again, we had the wail about the tax on tea. Deputy McMenamin was particularly concerned about the tax on tea. He told us—and he is not over-painting the picture—about little children in the Gaeltacht who are reared on black tea from the moment they are weaned. I said that he is not over-painting the picture. That is quite true. To my own knowledge of the Blasket Islands, it is quite true. To my own knowledge of parts of the Kerry Gaeltacht, it is quite true. It is quite true in Connemara. It is quite true in Tirconaill, which Deputy McMenamin represents; but let Deputy McMenamin and any other Deputy on the Opposition Benches who is concerned about the fate of these children, let him know that when he goes into the Division Lobby against this Budget that he is going to cast his vote against a Budget which for the first time in our history provides something which, at any rate, will enable these children to be brought up on milk, instead of on that poisonous decoction of black tea that is the staple diet throughout many parts of the Gaeltacht.
I have been assailed by Deputy Sir James Craig because I am taking something out of the Sweepstakes. It has been suggested—it has not been said here, but said outside—that I am robbing the hospitals. It is quite true that I did indicate to the Hospitals Committee that it would be necessary for me to get about £650,000 out of the Sweepstakes, and I did propose to take it in a way which would have reduced the burden on the hospitals to about 6 per cent. I did propose to take it off the whole pool, and when the Emergency Committee heard of this they came to me and made representations, and because I am not like Deputy McGilligan, because I am prepared to change my mind if a case is put up to me, because I was not going to say that the members of the Emergency Committee of the hospitals were not better or more competent judges in this case than I was, I accepted their suggestion that, instead of making a levy on the whole pool, I should restrict myself to the hospitals' share.
If I had done it my way, the hospitals, it is true, would have suffered, but they would have suffered very much less than in the way in which I have done it at the instigation and at the request of those who are competent to speak for the hospitals. I have on my files a letter telling me that rather than have it done my way, they would prefer I should take the whole of the money I required out of the hospitals' share, and Deputy Bennett, Deputy Doctor Myles Keogh, and a number of other Cumann na nGaedheal Deputies who went to the hospitals' meeting and tried to make political capital out of that were as well aware of the fact as I am. I do not believe that because we have done that, it is going to injure the future of the Sweepstakes one whit, and those who are running the Sweepstakes do not believe it either, and they are as good judges on this matter as those who are trying to make political capital out of it.
If you ask me is it right to take this money from the Sweepstake I have no hesitation in saying "yes." For a considerable time there has been a public demand to devote some part of the proceeds of the Sweepstakes to other public uses of a humanitarian character. We have had meetings called at which resolutions were adopted asking that a share of the funds should be allocated to the purpose of housing. It was even suggested that some part of it might be utilised for the provision of relief. I am not going to explore one form of charity more than another, but I take the liberty to remind the House that the divine injunction to feed the hungry, to clothe the naked, to harbour the harbourless takes precedence over the injunction to tend the sick. It takes it for this reason, that when you have removed the causes which fill the hospitals, which fill them to overflowing, when you have removed the evils, relieved malnutrition, when you have cured the unhealthy living conditions, the burden and the strain upon your hospital accommodation will be very much less and, therefore, on the grounds that prevention is better than cure, I have no hesitation in taking the share of the Hospitals Sweepstake which I am taking and in using it for the purpose for which we are employing it, to relieve hunger, to relieve distress, to relieve want in our midst. It is no violation of the precepts of charity and it is no dishonest act to do that. I have said that I do not think that what this Government is doing will injure the Sweepstakes one whit because the big thing will still remain, the big thing that attracts plungers in every part of the world—the glitter of the prizes and the number of prizes which are beyond comparison with what is done in any other country. No matter what is said now, I still believe that when it comes to taking a chance our friends across the water will be ready to take that chance if they see the prize is quite worth while.
Of course the Budget has its defects. Any Budget which imposes taxation must have its defects, but we shall remedy them as far as possible. In the Committee Stage if any proposition is put up in a reasonable way which will meet the convenience of the public and will not eat into the revenue which we must secure, we are perfectly prepared to consider that in a non-Party spirit. It used to be a great cant with the Opposition when they were the Government, that they were holding the middle of the road. The Opposition, regarding this Budget, complain because it imposes direct taxation on the rich, and the Labour Party because they think it imposes indirect taxation on other sections. I deplore that I had to tax anybody, but what was the alternative? We were faced with an expenditure of £26,794,000 and we had an estimated revenue of £23,310,000. To meet that deficit it was a case of balancing or borrowing. And because borrowing costs twice as much as balancing, because it mortgages the future, because it eats into the reserves for the social services, I balanced. Would the Opposition have balanced? It would have been new if they did. In the whole ten years that they have been in office they had never balanced their normal Budget. In a part of his speech here in the House and in speeches elsewhere Deputy Cosgrave made much play of the estimate of £1,395,000 which I made of the deficit. I say and I repeat, an estimate, because it was only an estimate made under extreme pressure. When I checked the figures I found that a certain ex gratia payment in respect of death duties in a certain estate amounting to £200,000 had been classified as abnormal revenue, and I gave my predecessor credit for that. And I said: “This is normal revenue”; and I reduced the estimate of the deficit from £1,395,000 to the actual figure of £1,195,000. And that figure has gone unchallenged during this debate. Why did Deputy Cosgrave draw public attention to the £1,395,000 which he knew was an estimate and which he knew could have been nothing else but an estimate? Because he was afraid to challenge the £1,195,000. That figure has gone unchallenged by the Opposition because it is unchallengeable. That was the heritage into which we entered on the 9th March last, with the prospect of an additional deficit of £3,410,000 for the current year. What would the Opposition have done with that problem before them? I again come back to the opening of my speech. I again come back to the kernel of this whole discussion, to the centre of the whole problem, to the root that cannot be overlooked. What would the Opposition have done if they had a deficit of £3,410,000 staring them in the face? How would they have met that deficit—this Government of stucco-business magnates? Deputy Cosgrave described the present Government as a Government of non-business men. What was the last Government? If the decay and the decline of Irish industrial concerns, of Irish agriculture under their Government is any indication of what they were, it is that they were a Government of kill-business men. There they are sitting in that front bench, cast your eye along it. There is Deputy McGilligan who sits in the corner. He has ruined a few businesses. Did he ever make one or did he ever run one? There are Deputy Lynch, Deputy O'Sullivan, Deputy Fitzgerald-Kenney, Deputy Blythe, Deputy Cosgrave. Except blunders, did any one of them ever make anything? Except hair, what did any one of them ever grow? And except to sell two public houses and buy some Guinness shares, what commercial undertaking did any one of them ever undertake? How would the kill-business men have dealt with this deficit? They would have increased the income tax and the corporation profits tax, and they would have taxed the banks. They would have had to do every one of these things in some measure, and then they would have decreased the old age pensions, stopped housing, decreased unemployment reliefs, and in this year when the wells of private charity are drying up they would have allowed starvation to balance their Budget.
Let the Opposition not prate about economies. As I said in the beginning, they had ten years to make them. Last October they promised them. When we came into office where were the economies? That was an admission that so far as they were concerned they were powerless to do anything to relieve the burden upon the people. The Opposition would have had to tax heavily, and to tax as heavily as we, or else they would have been compelled practically to dispense with the social services. And in that regard no mere cut would have sufficed. Even a cut in the old age pensions—and that it was under consideration is clear—even a cut in the old age pensions from 10s. to 8s. per week and even the wiping out of the 2s. a week pensioners altogether would have only brought £500,000 to them. But it would have meant a great deal of hardship and a great deal of want and a great deal of suffering to the great mass of the aged poor of this State. They could have taxed, they could have cut the social services, but there is one thing that the last Government could not have done, strange as it may appear—they could not have borrowed. We heard a great deal about the credit of the last Government. But I repeat that there is one thing that the last Government could not have done—it could not have borrowed again to meet its Budgetary deficit. When we were on the Opposition Benches we used to criticise the Budgetary methods of the last Government. Of course little attention was paid to that criticism outside, but there was a quarter just as concerned as we were with the queer way in which Deputy Blythe and Deputy Cosgrave and the rest of them used to balance their books. Last year I drew attention in a speech to the fact that certain elements in this State were not satisfied with the Budgetary position.
Not satisfied with the way the Government was handling the public finances Deputy Cosgrave or President Cosgrave as he then was came out with one of his most unctuous denials. Again I was told that I was injuring the credit of the community.
I know now and I have evidence here to substantiate it that when a loan of £800,000 was being negotiated in September last, the whole question of the Budgetary position of the Free State was brought into examination and was adversely criticised. That is why I say that there is one thing Deputy Cosgrave's Government could not have done. The one thing possibly that was driving them was that their rich friends and their wealthy supporters would not let them increase taxation. The one thing that was driving them to cut the social services was that they could not borrow any more. Their credit as a business Government was gone and would disappear.
We can borrow for sound constructive national purposes because we have let everybody see that we are prepared to pay our way and to meet our recurring obligations out of revenue. The fact is that after ten weeks of this Government the National Loan is standing higher to-day than it was when we came into office, and, notwithstanding the criticisms which the Opposition has launched against this Budget, the National Loan has gone up. That shows that the thinking people in this State are satisfied, with Fianna Fáil in power, that, at least, public finances will be honestly, conservatively and carefully administered, and that there will be no attempt by dishonest book-keeping and by the cooking of figures to hide the truth from the Irish people.
I suppose Deputy Cosgrave's speech is what is known in American politics as the key speech. His speech was one long wail for the plutocrat. The Fianna Fáil Government and I are enemies neither of the rich nor the poor. All members of the community will receive the most careful attention and consideration according to their necessities. I should like that we had many more rich in this country provided that we had many fewer poor. If the rich give wisely, give generously, and encourage enterprise, enthusiasm and talent within the State, there are some things they can do better than the State itself can do. But in the hour of necessity I shall not hesitate, and the Fianna Fáil Government will not hesitate, to tax the rich so that it may spare the poor. Would Deputy Cosgrave have done that? Would anybody listening to his speech, or the speech of Deputy McGilligan, or the speech of Deputy John Marcus O'Sullivan, believe that they would do it? Deputy Cosgrave, in his speech, was raucous about income tax, hysterical about surtax, and almost diddering about corporation profits tax. But he was dumb and silent about the poor. And there is no man more responsible for the position in which the poor and rich in this community find themselves to-day under this Budget than the Leader of the Opposition, Deputy Cosgrave. Had it not been for him there would have been a considerable amount of money available in this country at this moment to have balanced our Budget and to have relieved the whole community of the burden of taxation which in the discharge of our public duty we have had to impose upon it.
We have been twitted by Deputy Blythe that we promised to do everything out of the land annuities. We did not promise to do everything, but we did undoubtedly promise to do a great deal and we will do a great deal because we are honest men. If we find ourselves in present circumstances unable to do everything that we expected to be able to do and that we hoped to be able to do when we asked the people to make us responsible for the government of the country—if we are not able to fulfil those pledges to the letter at this moment, why? I am sorry Deputy Blythe is not here. I would like to pay a tribute to him, one which he deserves, a tribute to his sense of comradeship and Party loyalty. For five years at any rate, Deputy Blythe has borne the odium of having put his hand to the document known as the Ultimate Financial Settlement. We find now that he was not primarily responsible for the thing at all and that the man who made him a stalking horse, the man who sheltered behind him, the man who talks about pacts, agreements, treaties and honourable obligations, who did sign that document was Deputy Cosgrave, the man who, in his first flight as an international statesman, hied himself across the water and, in some sort of secret huggermugger with his allies, and with his masters there, gave them a pledge of his affection, a love child, which he brought home and buried deeply in the archives of this State, and kept there until Mr. Thomas disinterred its dishonourable bones and held it up as the one claim which Great Britain has to the £3,000,000 which we pay every year into her Exchequer.
When this issue was being fought on the hustings and in the Dáil we heard nothing about this agreement. We heard a great deal about the other things but when the cupboard was opened up the British did not rely on the law of 1920, or on anything which preceded the Treaty; they did not rely on the Treaty, and they did not rely, like the hypocrites opposite, on the Ten Commandments. They relied on a certain agreement to which Deputy Cosgrave put his hand when he was Minister for Finance for this State in February, 1923. The sole claim the British ever could advance to take these annuities from us was that document, and was nothing which is on the Statute Book of this House, or on the Statute Book of Great Britain; nothing which is written into the Treaty. It was something which was written in secret and kept secret by Deputy Cosgrave for almost ten years. If we are not able to do everything in regard to the land annuities at this moment, I am not despairing that we will not do it, because if certain statesmen act like John Bull in the Canadian china shop, this problem, and this difference, may find a settlement in a speedy and satisfactory way. If we are not able to do everything that we hoped to do out of the land annuities, again, I repeat, whose fault is that, and why?
It ill becomes Deputy Blythe, Deputy Cosgrave or Deputy McGilligan to refer to this question. Deputy Cosgrave is good at telling us what people are saying outside. He is one of these politicians, one of these gentlemen whose motto is "nothing for nothing." I would like to know from Deputy Cosgrave whether it was the Earldom of St. James's or the Dukedom of XX, or maybe a reversion to the Phoenix Park, if that has not been already hypothecated to Deputy Alfy Byrne, that was held out in return for this same agreement? At any rate, there it was kept secret, and since the question of the land annuities is still in suspense we had no alternative, if we were to balance the Budget and put the finances of this State upon a sound basis, except to provide the money that was required out of taxation.
I say again that the Budget stands to-day as a Christian Budget, as a humane Budget, as an honest Budget. Deputy Blythe admitted that at this moment, when unemployment is the greatest menace that confronts the State, this Budget would give employment in many directions. He did say there was a rise in the cost of living. There may be for the few, but there will be employment and a living for many who, up to now, have only had death by slow starvation. It may be some people will be deprived of their luxuries. It may be some opulent folk will have to curtail their expenditure, but, at any rate, under this, the first Budget introduced by a Fianna Fáil Government, there will be bread for the people.
Question put. The Committee divided: Tá, 71; Níl, 59.
Tá
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Aiken, Frank.Allen, Denis.Bartley, Gerald.Beegan, Patrick.Blaney, Neal.Boland, Gerald.Boland, Patrick.Bourke, Daniel.Brady, Bryan.Brady, Seán.Breathnach, Cormac.Breen, Daniel.Briscoe, Robert.Browne, William Frazer.Carney, Frank.Carty, Frank.Clery, Mícháel.Colbert, James.Cooney, Eamonn.Corry, Martin John.Crowley, Tadhg.Curran, Patrick Joseph.Davin, William.Derrig, Thomas.De Valera, Eamon.Dillon, James M.Dowdall, Thomas P.Everett, James.Flynn, John.Flynn, Stephen.Fogarty, Andrew.Geoghegan, James.Gibbons, Seán.Gormley, Francis.Gorry, Patrick Joseph.Goulding, John. |
Harris, Thomas.Hayes, Seán.Hogan, Patrick (Clare).Humphreys, Francis.Jordan, Stephen.Kelly, James Patrick.Kennedy, Michael Joseph.Keyes, Raphael Patrick.Kilroy, Michael.Kissane, Eamonn.Lemass, Seán F.Lynch, James B.McEllistrim, Thomas.MacEntee, Seán.Maguire, Ben.Maguire, Conor Alexander.Moane, Edward.Moore, Séamus.Murphy, Patrick Stephen.Norton, William.O'Grady, Seán.O'Kelly, Seán Thomas.O'Reilly, Matthew.O'Rourke, Daniel.Powell, Thomas P.Rice, Edward.Ruttledge, Patrick J.Ryan, James.Ryan, Robert.Sexton, Martin.Sheridan, Michael.Smith, Patrick.Traynor, Oscar.Walsh, Richard.Ward, Francis C. (Dr.). |
Níl
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Alton, Ernest Henry.Anthony, Richard.Beckett, James Walter.Bennett, George Cecil.Blythe, Ernest.Bourke, Séamus A.Brasier, Brooke.Broderick, William Jos.Brodrick, Seán.Burke, Patrick.Byrne, Alfred.Byrne, John Joseph.Coburn, James.Collins-O'Driscoll, Mrs. Margt.Conlon, Martin.Cosgrave, William T.Craig, Sir James.Davis, Michael.Desmond, William.Dockrell, Henry Morgan.Doyle, Peadar Seán.Finlay, Thomas A.Fitzgerald, Desmond. O'Donovan, Timothy Joseph.O'Hanlon, John F.O'Higgins, Thomas Francis.O'Neill, Eamonn.O'Reilly, John Joseph.O'Shaughnessy, John Joseph.O'Sullivan, Gearóid. |
Fitzgerald-Kenney, James.Good, John.Gorey, Denis John.Hassett, John J.Hennessy, Thomas.Hennigan, John.Keating, John.Keogh, Myles.Kiersey, John.Lynch, Finian.MacDermot, Frank.McDonogh, Fred.MacEoin, Seán.McMenamin, Daniel.Minch, Sydney B.Mongan, Joseph W.Morrissey, Daniel.Mulcahy, Richard.Murphy, James Edward.Myles, James Sproule.Nally, Martin.O'Brien, Eugene P.O'Connor, Batt. O'Sullivan, John Marcus.Reidy, James.Reynolds, Mrs. Mary.Roddy, Martin.Thrift, William Edward.Wolfe, Jasper Travers. |
Tellers:—Tá: Deputies G. Boland and Allen; Níl, Deputies P.S. Doyle and Bennett.
Motion declared carried.
The Dáil went out of Committee.
Would the Minister say when it is proposed to take the Report Stage of the Resolutions?
On Wednesday of next week.
And there will also be taken on Wednesday of next week the three Resolutions recently approved by the House dealing with boots and shoes, woollens and worsteds and blankets?
Yes.
Ordered: That the Report Stage of the Financial Resolutions be taken on Wednesday, 1st June.