It was 12 at that time. The "ante" was raised later and they had to reduce it. Speaking at Rathmines, in May, 1932, the President said that they were not going to start on the lower salaries.
"With regard to the salaries between £300 and £400 I hold that those in receipt of them are getting nothing excessive."
Then, we have this leading article in the Independent of May 28th.
"The immunity was promised not merely to the lower grades, but to the middle grades of the Civil Service."
"We do not," said the President, "propose to seek economies by restricting the social services or cutting the salaries of the middle or lower grades of the Civil Service." Yet, we are told to-night that this Bill is scrupulously drawn with regard to these promises. There are other things that we were promised—increases in the social services. There was going to be a revision of the unemployment and national health insurance schemes so that the full benefits would go to those insured—the workers—but they are now cast aside in favour of cuts.
The President has paid a tribute to-night to these civil servants whose salaries he proposes to cut, amongst others. He pays that tribute to them in a peculiar way. "They are certainly hard working," and, then, as if anybody had commented on it in any serious way, he adds: "So do the Executive Council," and, then, we are told that the Executive Council do not lock up at six o'clock and go away with easy minds and come back at a certain hour in the morning. "The Ministers have the final responsibility"—that was the case in our time. It was definitely the case in our time. The President well knows that members of his Front Bench and of his back benches went about the country declaiming that Ministers were living on the fat of the land and not working. Now, the situation is changed. They work, while he admits the Civil Service do also. Then he says: "This is only for a year." The Minister for Finance has emphasised that the cuts proposed are only for a year in respect of salaries earned and paid in the coming financial year, but he did not say that, if the financial position did not improve, it would not be imperative to deal with these salaries in another year. The President, at the end thinks that "despite the attempts made"—I suppose from these quarters—"to cause discontent, the Civil Service will do their part," the Minister for Finance, in introducing this Bill, to-day, said that the proposal to reduce salaries had been referred to in the Budget statement last year. How? There was going to be an endeavour to get, by agreement during the year, certain cuts. Then, he said that he found this year it had not been possible to get that agreement, and hence these cuts were being imposed, and the President is optimistic that the Civil Service are going to bear these cuts with equanimity. His Finance Minister told him last year that he would try to get agreement about these cuts and confesses this year that he failed to get them.
What was the President's optimism based upon? They felt that the Civil Service would realise that their salaries could not continue when the country was in an impoverished state, and I think that was a good analysis of the Civil Service mind. We certainly felt in our time that it was being borne in on the Civil Service that, if a certain depression went on, they could not continue at a particular rate. I wonder why has the change occurred? Surely it is the same change of feeling that is in most people of the country who are suffering—that they do not believe that the suffering is necessary; that they are not convinced of the justice of the treatment that is being meted out to them and that they can see no hope, that after these imposed sacrifices have been made, there is any better prospect a year, three years or five years hence than there is now.
Civil servants are like most other people in this community. They do not deny what the President, in one of his attempts to cloud the position to-night, referred to as "the God-given right of the people of this country to live." Civil servants, in the main, spring from the small farming community in this country and they know as well as the President what the economic situation of that class of the community is and they know what they are suffering at the moment. Most of them have, near and around, in their family circle or their circle of relations, people who sometimes feel that the God-given right to live is being denied to them, and they are as easily able to be touched by that phrase as anybody else, but they are not going to be touched by that phrase as used by the President because they feel that whatever was the God-given right to live in this country, it has been somewhat jeopardised by the policy of the present Government.
"The economic war is not an issue," the President said, to-night. It is at the root of this Bill. We are going to save how much? Last year, it was said to be £250,000 and this year, because the scope has been somewhat widened, it is said to bring in a maximum of £280,000. It has been pointed out that that is only the equivalent of the loss of one week from the present economic war. Rate, with as much importance as can possibly be given to it, the world-wide depression and add to it the 20 per cent., 30 per cent. or 40 per cent. the folly with England has caused us, and you will get from that 20 per cent., 30 per cent. or 40 per cent. more than the £280,000 that this slaughtering of the public services is going to get you. I had thought that we were faced with a very bright prospect once the Government came into power and got their economic policy on foot. I have alluded to what the then Deputy Boland had said in relation to emigration. Does the President not remember Deputy Lemass's, as he then was, forecast of what was going to follow from their economic policy? There would not be enough idle hands in the country to do all the work that was to be done. We would have to call back some of those emigrating; not merely would we stop the tide from flowing out, but we would have to call back some of those who had gone out. The President, not to be outdone by that statement, responded with a statement that the country could support seventeen millions of people.
We have had a year of this policy in regard to unemployment. The President, on one occasion, stung by a certain comparison that was made with the unemployment that was elsewhere, said that it was forgotten by the people, who, as he said, made propagandist use of depression in other countries, that this country had in its hands a remedy against unemployment that no other country had, and we presume the remedy has been found and that we are getting the full benefits of it. We have this declaration—it is ludicrous to bring it into a debate of a serious nature—but it was promised; it was dangled before the eyes of the people and it was what misled certain people. It was part of the consideration for holding office:—
Protection of industries means more money in Ireland. Money in Ireland means more employment. Employment means more buyers. Buyers mean more buying of Irish goods. Buying Irish goods means more money in Ireland. More and more and more money—why should it ever stop?
We have had a year of that rolling around of money in this country, and we have had the full benefit of the retention in this country of the moneys that used to go to England, and we have had our protection policy going, and we have had bounties for the main agricultural industry and, at the end of it all, we hoist the white flag—cuts.
Cuts! And over what a range do the cuts extend! Everybody has got to feel what sacrifice means, but I think most people would agree to the sacrifice if they could see what was the end of the sacrifice. If there were people who were being denied the God-given right to live, and who are now being denied in increasing numbers that God-given right to live, surely common honesty demands that instead of continuing the impoverishment and spreading it more widely, there should be a halt to get the plan exposed which is in operation, but which nobody seems to know anything about —the plan which is guiding the fortunes of this country, the plan which is going to give us happiness some years ahead. If that could be proved, and if it could be shown that after some years of sacrifice there was a prospect of better times, this country would do willingly what people like the Russians are being forced to do under stern necessity and compulsion.
The reason why there is aggravation over these cuts and over the suffering that is being caused is because nobody believes that there is a principle at the back of the whole thing; nobody believes that there is any thought-out, deliberate plan; nobody believes that anybody has thought out what the old economy was and what the new economy is to be, what the steps for the change-over are, how long they are likely to take and what the new situation afterwards will be. It seems somewhat ludicrous to be introducing these things into a debate of this sort, but they were paraded to the people. There was something of the old idea of the fortunes told at the country fairs. Fortunes were told for everybody. These things are about as good as the prophecies that were made around these fairs. We did get these prophecies. We were told about all the unemployed who were to be gathered into employment, all the emigrants who were to be called back to get work in this country, all the taxes and all the rates that were to be lowered and the better security for everybody. There was a precise promise that whatever economy was decided on it would not be such as would either reduce social services or inflict any hardships on any class of Government servants.
I took it from the Minister for Finance's speech to-day that the two million promised saving has been definitely abandoned, but I want him to say that. He finds himself in the dilemma that he must either increase his revenue, and he says that is only possible by increasing taxation, or else he must reduce expenditure. He said that preliminary estimates of revenue which were being prepared indicated that they might anticipate a substantial decline of revenue, but on the other hand there would not be such a decline in expenditure. That comes from the man who had promised two millions of a decline. And then he gives as an excuse that such a decline in expenditure could only have been secured at the cost of social services. It could be achieved, he said, by reducing social services. What is the correct position? Are we going to have a definite confession that former declarations were all nonsense, a complete sham and humbug?
We are told now that the Minister, after being a year in office, is convinced that a decline in expenditure could only be secured at the cost of social services. He designed the policy of the Government to secure economies in that way. Then he found himself in this fearful dilemma. If revenue was going to decline and if expenditure could not be reduced he had only the choice of two ways in which the deficiency might be met—by additional taxation or by reducing the expenditure in the remuneration of public servants. Everybody else knew, except the people who deluded themselves into writing that and the fools who believed it when it was written, that you could not get a £2,000,000 reduction in expenditure. We must not forget the promise that they would not reduce social services or inflict hardships on any class of Government servants.
We have got the truth in a halting way now. The Minister for Finance makes a certain statement by reason of an office which he holds by false pretences. If he said previously that the saving could only be got by reducing social services would be have been able to stand the criticisms that such a statement would have evoked? Was it his policy to reduce the social services and, if not, will he indicate where the £2,000,000 saving was to come from? That was no mere promise held out, because we have it definitely that Fianna Fáil had examined with minute care the Estimates of supply services for the current year and they were convinced that a saving of many hundreds could be made, not including such items as a sum of £1,152,000 paid in respect of R.I.C. pensions, and other similar payments not required by the Treaty. Then there was the final flourish: "The burden of taxation could be lightened by not less than £2,000,000 per year." After a minute examination and after a still more minute examination, we are now told by the Minister for Finance, who was probably behind the advertisement and got office on the foot of it, that he is in the dilemma that he must reduce social services if he is going to get any decline in expenditure, and his only alternative is £280,000 through these widespread cuts on public services of different types.
The President bases the justice of the reduction on this—he compares the position of the civil servant with the position of the primary producer. Will he take the sum that is to be saved, will be take whatever the world depression is and its effect on this country, will be take the extra amount of loss caused by reason of the trouble with England and say to the civil servants: "We could have refrained from saving £280,000 in this way if it were not for the trouble with England; even an economic depression would not have made it necessary; but the economic depression, plus that other folly, has made this necessary, and then put it to the civil servants clearly and bluntly that they have got to pay because he has called a certain tune, called it, as he admitted in this House, with the knowledge that there is going to be trouble over it, and continues to call it with no statement to this House that is of any assurance to it that he thinks the trouble is going to end satisfactorily for this country?
We just have a statement from the Minister for Finance, a warning that, although the cuts amounting to £280,000 are phrased to be for this year only, there has got to be the definite apprehension that these salaries may fall to be dealt with next year if the situation does not improve. The President has an easy way out of his dilemma with regard to Deputy Dillon's amendment. If a Private Deputy's Bill is sent down to cut the salaries of some of those who want salaries cut—and I hope it would have the backing of some one person from the Fianna Fáil Benches —he will allow a free vote on it. He will vote against it himself. I suggest a better way. Let us take some critical division in this House, say on the Budget, and have agreement before that division is taken that anybody who votes in a particular lobby for the imposition of taxation on this community is taken as agreeing to a 5 per cent. cut in his salary. That will be something of a free vote. I wonder how the back bench opposite would face up to it.