On resuming the debate, on the last day, on this motion, I had the decided advantage of the presence of the Minister for Industry and Commerce, but as soon as he got through he left. I presume he will do the same to-day. Before he goes I would like him, if he would be pleased— and I shall give way to him if he wishes —to develop the point he was making by way of an interruption which I welcomed at the time. He was comparing the produce of the British tariffs, to the British, with our tariffs to us. I think he said the produce of our retaliatory tariffs, on British goods coming in here, imposed not primarily or immediately for the purpose of helping industry here, had the effect of returning blow for blow. I believe he made that statement. I have not seen it yet in print, and I want to be perfectly fair, but I understood him to say that what we get from our tariffs, for the purposes I have said, equates with the revenue collected by the British from tariffs imposed by them in order to collect this £5,000,000.
Private Deputies' Business. - Relief of Rates on Agricultural Land.
I did not say that the amount, in each case, was the same, but I presume the economic laws that operate against us in the one instance must operate against the British in the other.
The point I want cleared up is not the working of economic laws but whether the amount produced by one set of tariffs is equivalent to that of the other?
No.
Who is losing then?
The British, of course.
So that we are in this position: the British declare publicly to the world that they have collected where we have defaulted. Now we have the statement from the Minister for Industry and Commerce that the retaliatory tariffs that we have collected here are greater than the amount of the tariffs which the British have collected on their side.
I did not say that. The Deputy is arguing the British case, but, in calculating the amount collected in tariffs by them for the amounts that we withheld, he cannot leave out of account the amount the British have paid on British goods coming in here.
Are they equal?
The sums or amounts that are paid as British tariffs coming in here, added to the sums that we withheld, must very definitely exceed the amount that they collect on their tariffs.
At the start of this fight there was £5,000,000 due. They did not fall due always at the end of the financial year, but let us take it that £5,000,000 was due at the end of the financial year. The Government said: "We will not pay," and the British said: "We will collect the money. We will hit back by operations on this side similar to the operations that are going on on the other side." The Government decided to hold the £5,000,000. The British imposed taxes on our goods and we imposed taxes on their goods. Are we holding our own? They are extracting £5,000,000 from us; they have acknowledged that they have extracted it. Can the Minister get up and say we have extracted a similar amount?
Attention called to the fact that a quorum was not present.
House counted and a quorum being found present,
Deputy Belton will resume.
Can I get an answer from the Minister before he leaves the House now? Are the Government actually withholding this £5,000,000? I am not now disputing their right or questioning their policy. I am only trying to find out what the position is. The British say they are collecting it. The Minister for Industry and Commerce said we are hitting back and imposing tariffs to counter balance the British tariffs. Can he now say to this House we are getting £5,000,000 or more or as much out of these tariffs as the British are getting out of their tariffs?
We get £5,000,000 or less.
£5,000,000 or less! I can say myself that I am pocketing £5,000,000 or less, but a terrible lot less. The Minister sees the point now. He sees the bog into which he was marching, and it is as well, before he went into the pit.
I never told the Deputy that the two amounts were the same. I pointed out that he was leaving a very large amount out of calculation.
If I understood the Minister aright on the last day—and I think he stated it to-day—we were getting from our tariffs more than £5,000,000. I understood him to say that we were getting as much as the British were getting. If we are not getting £5,000,000, are we not losing in the game, and is it not time to devise some method to counterbalance the British operations on the other side? The Minister sees the danger of answering the direct question. He says that we are getting £5,000,000 or less. Will the Minister say how much we are getting?
I would want notice of that question.
The Minister should not want notice of it, because when opposing this motion, the substance of his speech, which I can quote from memory —and which I am sure he will accept— he asked where were we to get the money to restore this grant. The British imposed a tariff to get £5,000,000. They got the money but the farming community paid it. We imposed tariffs here to hit back at the British. The Minister says the British paid all of them. I will not dispute that point at the moment, because it would not help my argument. The Minister claims that, and I give him the benefit of it. But the Government pocketed the proceeds of tariffs here.
No. I pointed out that what is true in one case must be true in the other case.
The Minister is dealing with another matter. I will come to that. I am dealing with the financing of both operations. The British got the finance they collected at the other side. The Minister cannot dispute the statement that the British got out of agricultural produce the whole of the £5,000,000 or whatever the amount was. For the sake of convenience we will call it £5,000,000 in round figures, retaliatory duties. I am differentiating between tariffs imposed here for industrial purposes and tariffs imposed merely to retaliate on the British. The counter blow is not sufficient if it did not bring in £5,000,000. The Minister is afraid to say it did; he is afraid to say it did not.
We did not get anything like that.
Therefore the British are knocking you out if they got £5,000,000, and if the same amount was not got here.
On the Deputy's calculation anything we got was sheer profit.
Sheer profit. Has not the Minister got a conscience?
No.
No. I say if he had one he would not ask the question he asked when opposing the motion, and he would not have thumped the table to drive it home. He would have thumped the table with both hands in support of the motion if he had a conscience. The money got from the tariffs was a set-off to the money the British got, and whatever was got should have gone back to the people on whose property the British collected the tariffs.
Is not this motion out of date now?
What motion?
Your motion.
These wild statements of the Minister seem never to be out of date. He is always current with wild statements. The Minister will not make wild statements by accident. I suggest that one of his wildest statements is to say that this motion is out of date. I would be glad to know that it was out of date.
Can I give two reasons?
I will give one, and it will be as short as that of Jim Plant.
The Deputy is condemning the action of the Government for reducing the grant. He should have referred to the fact that within the last two weeks we have increased the grant; and secondly he seems to have been turned down by his own Party, at the convention, when he proposed a similar motion.
No. The Minister is not getting away with that. When the Minister thumped the table and asked where were they to get the money, portion of the grant had not been restored. Only half of it had been restored. At that time it had not been restored, and the Minister could not say if the whole of it would be restored. I hope the Minister will not take it that I am throwing bouquets at myself, because it was after I started to reply to the irrelevant statements of the Minister and his colleagues that the grant was restored, this night week.
There is no reason why the Deputy should not throw bouquets at himself.
There is one thing certain, that if this motion had not been on the Order Paper there would be no restoration of the grant. The Minister wants to get away with an oblique answer and will not tell for what purpose the money collected by tariffs will be used. If there had been no row with England, England would only get £5,000,000, but the Minister's Government would not get the nest-egg they got out of retaliatory tariffs. As there is a row the agricultural producers have to pay the £5,000,000 to England, but when Ministers put tariffs on goods here and get the money they claim that the British are paying it. If the British take money from the farmers on the other side, and if we take it from the British in retaliation, surely the money got here should be transferred to the farmers. There is no answer to that. No one knows that better than the Minister. Perhaps we might have another surprise to-morrow morning, and the remaining portion of the grant, which was withheld, may be restored. Apart from that the Minister asked where is the money to come from. The Minister knows that in 1931 his Party stood for an increase of £1,000,000 in the agricultural grant. He will not deny that. I have the statement of his Party to support that, as set out in the speech of the then Deputy de Valera. The Minister knows, and I know, what Deputy de Valera and the whole Party did.
Deputy Belton's Party stood against it.
Against what?
The £1,000,000.
Oh, no.
Of course I mean your present Party.
When I was in the Minister's Party I gave them a direction which they followed, and they have no notion whatever of retracing their footsteps. The Minister knows that when I put it to the other side that we should meet here, I was nearly mobbed for thinking of coming into the atmosphere of Leinster House. Deputy Belton always knows the way he is going. He will not let anyone else speak for him. He will not be led by the nose. He is not a de Valerian gramophone, a Cosgravian gramophone or an O'Duffy gramophone, but one who will stand on his own legs. I will come to deal with the Minister for Education later. I have all your measures taken, and I have gowns that will fit the whole of you. I was watching the Minister closely when he thumped the table and asked where would we get the money to restore the grant. At the time I am speaking of the agricultural grant in round figures amounted to £1,200,000.
No.
Yes.
When?
In January or February, 1931, it amounted to £1,200,000.
I did not ask then where we would get the money.
No. You had not responsibility then, and you said that the other people should get the money, no matter where they got it. The agricultural grant originally, under the Local Government Act of 1898, amounted to £600,000. Out of the surplus from tariffs in 1924 and 1925—I am not sure of the year—the previous Government doubled the agricultural grant, bringing the total up to £1,200,000. That was the position when the Minister for Industry and Commerce supported his leader in the early months of 1931 for an increase of £1,000,000 in the grant. The motion was not carried. When the Budget was introduced that year by Mr. Blythe, then Minister for Finance, Deputy de Valera, as he then was, spoke against it. I am not going to weary the Minister with what his chief said on that occasion, but Mr. Blythe provided for an increase in the agricultural grant of £750,000. He said in order to do that it would be necessary to put 4d. a gallon on petrol and ½d. per lb. on sugar, and he did. The imports of sugar that year were slightly over 80,000 tons, and the imports of petrol 45,000,000 gallons. These taxes, operating over a whole year, would give about £1,000,000. Mr. Blythe pointed out that as they would only be operating for nine or ten months of that year he could not safely provide for a grant greater than £750,000. That was his explanation. There was a good deal of reason in it; reason, too, that was then accepted by those pressing for complete derating.
The Minister's Party came into power in the following year. They introduced the Budget with a great flourish of trumpets, and said they would increase the agricultural grant to the original figure of £1,000,000 by giving another £250,000. In fact, they were giving nothing because, as I have already pointed out, the taxes imposed in the previous year did not operate for a full year. In the year 1931-32 these taxes produced approximately £750,000, but in 1932-33, when the Minister's Party came into power, they produced over £1,000,000 for the reason that they were in operation over the full year. The figures relating to imports published by the present Government and issued not long ago substantiate that statement. Therefore, there was nothing to thank the Minister or his Government for. Last year, when these taxes were producing a total that should give us an agricultural grant of practically £2,200,000, the grant was reduced by £450,000, speaking in round figures. These taxes that were imposed to give an agricultural grant to that amount are still functioning, and when the grant was reduced why were not the taxes wiped out? The tax of ½d. per lb. on sugar was changed into a tax of 4d. a per lb. on tea. That, with the 4d. a gallon on petrol, was estimated to provide £1,000,000 a year for the relief of agricultural rates. The Minister for Industry and Commerce, in opposing this motion, asked where was the money to come from. I answer that it is to come from the taxes levied to yield it, and that did, in fact, yield it. I put it to the Minister that no local authority dare act as the Government have in connection with taxes levied specially to produce money for the relief of agricultural rates. A local authority dare not strike a special rate of a penny in the pound for a special service and then apply it to some other purpose. I hold that the Government have not acted fairly. I am not talking politics now. I am talking facts and the Minister cannot controvert them.
In addition, the Minister for Industry and Commerce has the sums that he is getting from tariffs. We are fighting the British now, and if I quote I am not talking politics. When the Minister and members of his Party go down the country they say: "We are doing the British more harm than they are doing us," but the Minister here acknowledges that the British are giving us a black eye every time: we cannot see that they are hitting us! we cannot hit back and if we do it is only a very weak punch that we give, with no force behind it because we are not extracting from the British, according to the Minister, what they are extracting from us. Of course the Minister is afraid to say "yes" or "no" to that. He knows that I have him whether he says "yes" or "no." If he says "yes": that we are getting as much from the British as they are getting from us, then I ask why not relieve agricultural land of the rates? He has no answer to that. If he says we are not getting as much from the British as they are getting from us, then of course he is admitting that we are losing in the economic fight. In this instance the Minister cannot have it both ways. Will the Minister venture to answer "yes" or "no?" I would like the Minister to have a little recreation in reading over his own speeches, and that he should not be so truculent when trying to put a face on a bad case here. The Minister for Finance has got the money. I have put a question to him and I would be glad to have a reply, but the Minister for Finance has not been here to reply since I got on my feet. The Minister for Education is here. I do not know how he was bilked to remain here. The Minister for Industry and Commerce cannot answer or will not answer. I remember being in the House of Commons about twenty-five years ago on a famous occasion when the late Tim Healy got up to speak. He was very anxious to get at the late Mr. Asquith, afterwards Lord Oxford, who had been briefed in the Parnell Commission. Tim Healy started like this: Gladstone is dead, Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman is on a sick bed, and now we will deal with the Chancellor of the Exchequer, so he got after Mr. Asquith. We will have to deal with the Minister for Education. All the rest of them have flown. Now the Minister for Education, in not a very educative correspondence, some years ago, down in his constituency of Carlow-Kilkenny, took up a farmer correspondent, and in three-quarters of a letter to the Carlow Nationalist, published on 30th August, 1930, and signed T. Derrig, he lets fly with both hands at the correspondent, Mr. Cogan, and your humble servant. I will not go over all the letter because if I read all the letter it would perhaps expose the Minister for Education and show that in matters of education he was nearly as lacking as he is in matters of agriculture. I will just read a sentence or two of the last and the penultimate paragraph. Here is the tit-bit of it, anyway: “The Fianna Fáil Party has consistently pressed for derating and I challenge Mr. Cogan (that was the correspondent) to show otherwise. I have already referred to the recent by-election which Mr. Cogan wisely ignored.” The recent by-election referred to was the by-election in Longford-Westmeath in which Deputy Geoghegan was returned; and he was returned to the slogan of derating. He was not returned to act as Crown Prosecutor for claims for rates, on people who were not able to pay them, at 20 guineas a day.
That was the Minister for Education, Deputy Derrig, in 1930; but in 1934 he brushes derating aside. Now, let us have a proper setting of the Ministers. When Mr. Blythe, the previous Minister for Finance, moved Financial Resolution No. 1, on 6th May, 1931— page 785, volume 3 of the Official Records of this House—Mr. de Valera arose to speak after him and said:—
"It is usual for us at this stage simply to comment in a formal way on the Budget statement made by the Minister for Finance. Every Deputy probably came into the House as I did, expecting one principal item, namely, the item which would indicate the extent of the immediate relief which the Minister proposed for the farmers. I am sure that most of us, whether we express it by our votes or not, are genuinely disappointed ..."
Genuinely disappointed! And that Party that was then genuinely disappointed has only three representatives on the benches now, and none of them even remotely connected with agriculture.
I know something about farming.
You can farm in the University when we carry you on our backs. I would like to see the Deputy milking a cow.
Many a time I did.
It would not be a cow with five legs, anyway.
If Deputy T. Kelly would milk a cow I would withdraw this motion, and it would be a sight worth seeing.
I lend myself to artistic reproduction.
Well, that would be the most artistic reproduction that was ever seen in the National Gallery of this country, and we would all be willing to pay a big tariff to see it.
Mr. Kelly
You would be let in free.
Thanks very much.
We will get away from art.
Let us have the spectacle anyway, and perhaps we will be able to get some artists to paint it for us. Mr. de Valera continued as follows:—
"I am sure that most of us, whether we express it by our votes or not, are genuinely disappointed —disappointed that after all the promises that have been made by the Government of relief for the farming community, the £1,000,000 which was specifically mentioned on previous occasions should now be cut down by one quarter. When certain elections were on and the Executive Council wanted the support of the farming community they told the electors that they realised the depressed condition of agriculture and that it was their intention in this Budget to come to the relief of the farmers."
You can really apply this to the present Executive Government although it was delivered to the last one.
"It was admitted by members of the Executive Council that our farmers were severely handicapped in competition with the farmers of Great Britain and Northern Ireland by the fact that derating operated in Great Britain and Northern Ireland while our farmers had to pay to the full all the local rates. A million pounds was promised, and now they propose to give £750,000. We have had the Derating Commission Report before us, and some of us, at any rate, expected that the one important suggestion in that report might have been adopted, and that in so far as relief was being given by way of derating a system of distribution would have been chosen by which there would have been relief given, in particular, to the smaller farmers."
Then I come on to the next paragraph which reads:—
"As to the manner in which he proposes to raise the money, with the petrol tax as a whole we have not much fault to find—at least I have not. But when it comes to the tax on sugar the position is quite different. Already, the percentage of indirect taxation, as compared with direct taxation, is very high here, much higher, I think, than in most other countries. Yet, just as when he wants economy he thinks of the old age pensions and cuts them down, so too when he wants to get £300,000 he proceeds to filch it out of the pockets of the poorer section of the community, including, of course, the farmers, particularly the small farmers. The suggestion, with which we agreed, which came from the Labour Benches when my motion was put forward in the House, that in whatever manner the money for the relief of agriculture was to be found it should not be found in a manner which would impose a burden upon the small farmer, whom it was ostensibly intended to relieve, has not been adopted."
I should like to ask the Minister opposite has it been adopted since?
The beet sugar industry, as the Deputy knows very well, has created an entirely new situation.
It has. The Deputy knows it well, and the Minister knows it well too, for he knows the perambulations of his Party around his constituency, subsequent to the period I am quoting now, when the farmers were organised not to take 48/- a ton for sugar beet with a sugar content of 15½ per cent., whereas now they are forced to take 35/- a ton for beet with a sugar content of 17½ per cent. That created a new situation in the beet growing districts of Leix-Offaly, Wexford, Carlow-Kilkenny, and the other beet growing districts, and it was a situation which was much to the detriment of the farming community. The Sugar Act put through by the Minister's Party last year provided for 17½ per cent. sugar content, and reduced the comparative return to the farmer. Surely the Minister does not argue that the farmer was compensated for that in the price of sugar. At 9/- a ton the loss worked out roughly at £5 a statute acre. For precisely the same operation the farmer will get £5 a statute acre less. An acre of beet was worth £x in 1930 or 1931, the time of which I am speaking. It is now worth £x minus £5. If there was need for £1,000,000 for relief of rates on agricultural land either in the year 1930, when the Minister wrote in the Carlow Nationalist, or in 1931, when President de Valera said in this House that Mr. Blythe's Budget, providing for £750,000 additional relief of agricultural rates, was “disappointing, genuinely disappointing,” how much more disappointing is it when beet yields £5 per acre less, and there is no hope of getting any more? That is the standard set by the Government of which the Minister is a member, and he says it has changed the whole situation. It has changed it for the worse.
What I meant was that it had changed the whole situation with regard to the taxation of sugar.
It has and made sugar dearer.
Not so far as I know.
It is as dear as it was when the price was condemned in all moods and tenses by the leader of your Party three years ago.
It has not made it dearer at present, so far as I know.
Has your Government not increased the tax recently on sugar by ½d. per lb.?
On imported sugar.
Was it not imported sugar that the then Deputy de Valera was speaking about in 1931?
The situation is entirely different.
Entirely different and entirely worse. What difference does the situation make to the woman running a house who has to go out and buy a lb. of sugar? Will she not have to pay the price that was condemned by Deputy de Valera three years ago? That woman probably had her husband working three years ago and now he is probably on the dole or on home help. Is her position not worse than it was? In addition, she has to pay the equivalent of the tax condemned by Deputy de Valera three years ago in the form of 4d. per lb. on tea. I am sure the Minister will not say that tea or sugar is a luxury. I think I shall leave President de Valera now.
The Minister for Education, when speaking against this motion, struck me as a man who really had no heart in what he was saying. It appeared to me that he had been rushed in here to speak. He made not a Dáil speech but a platform speech. He spoke in very general terms. In a very different way did the Minister for Finance attempt to speak on this subject—I emphasise the word "attempt." When he was getting it hard to keep his four-and-a-half-hours' oration going, he introduced a new feature into the debate. Just as he quoted figures that were accurate in their true setting but inaccurate in the setting in which they were used by him, so he introduced quotations, figures and opinions from a journal of first-class reputation. In speaking of this journal he said:—
"No one will accuse a great English financial periodical like the Economist of being unduly biassed in favour of the present Government.”
He went on to say that he would quote what that journal had to say. I suggested that what he was quoting was the contribution of a correspondent, which he denied. He went on to say:—
"I am perfectly certain that a journal with the prestige and status of the Economist, is not going to publish its considered judgment on a matter like this merely in order to conduct propaganda on behalf of one or other interest in this country or outside it. The interruption is silly and ridiculous”——
He was referring to my interruption, that this was the production of a correspondent. The Minister continued—
"even more silly and ridiculous than most of the interruptions that come from Deputy Belton. I was saying that the Economist, having pointed out that the excess of the banks' external assets over their external liabilities provided an exact measure of the net flow of funds into or out of the Free State, went on to stress that from the first quarter of 1932 to the first quarter of 1933 there was a steady net inflow of funds to the Free State amounting to more han £8,500,000. A roughly comparable figure for the United Kingdom, the Economist observer went on to say, would be £200,000,000. Then, he went further and said that the Irish balance of payments in 1933 was, therefore, strongly favourable, and he ended his examination of this position by remarking that the accumulated reserves of the Irish banks are such as to make the financial position of the country manifestly strong.
"That statement, because it is the unbiassed opinion of a competent observer, is much more important than all the vapourings of Deputy Belton or the flippancies of Deputy Dillon or the frenzies of Deputy Fitzgerald-Kenney. It is the judgment, as I have said, the deliberately expressed judgment, of a competent impartial observer."
We shall see what he did say, and it is not as quoted by the Minister for Finance. First of all, there was an interruption by me on a point of order to ask "is not the statement referred to by the Minister the statement of an individual who is paid for his job—the Irish correspondent of the Economist?” Now the heading to which I have referred already, over this information, is “Banking in the Irish Free State, by a correspondent.” Correspondents do not write for papers of this kind without being well paid for it. This is the relevant portion from the Minister's speech:—
"He went on to stress that from the first quarter of 1932 to the first quarter of 1933 there was a steady net inflow of funds to the Free State, amounting to more than £8½ million."
With that I agree.
"A roughly comparable figure for the United Kingdom, the Economist observer went on to say, would be £200,000,000. Then he went further and said that the Irish balance of payments in 1933 was, therefore, strongly favourable, and he ended his examination of this position by remarking that the accumulated reserves of the Irish banks are so much as to make the financial position of the country manifestly strong.”
He ended his examination there, it is true, but there was a gap in between which the Minister did not quote, but which I shall quote:—
"It will be seen that from the first quarter of 1932 to the first quarter of 1933 there was a steady inflow of funds into the Free State amounting to more than 8½ million pounds."
That is what the Minister has stated.
"A roughly comparable figure for the United Kingdom would be £200,000,000. The Irish balance of payments in 1932 was, therefore, strongly favourable."
Here is what the Minister left out:—
"The last return shows that this movement has now been reversed and the general belief is that the outflow has continued in the third quarter. This outflow is partly due to the direct effects of the economic war upon the balance of payments and partly, no doubt, to political factors. There is nothing, however, to show that the outflow of 1933 is at a more rapid rate than the inflow of 1932, and in any case the accumulated sterling reserves of the Irish banks are so large as to make the financial position of the country immensely strong."
Yes, the reserves accumulated before the present Government came into office which had no relevancy, I believe, to the point made by the Minister for Finance. If the Minister for Finance wanted to make a point he should have made the point that we were economically strong, not financially strong. We can be financially strong through accumulated reserves, but we can be economically weak through bad administration, and we are. The Minister quoted from a journal of world-wide repute in matters of economics and finance, but he misquoted it by leaving out of his quotation a very relevant and up-to-date matter. I might take him over another piece of it to show him the exact condition of the matters that count.
"The business of the Irish Free State banks has been subject, in the past 12 months, to influences very similar to those which have affected the Joint Stock Banks of Great Britain, with the added complications arising out of the economic war."
That is the article in the banking supplement of the Economist for the 14th October, that the Minister for Finance introduced into the House in opposing the motion, but he only quoted a few fragments to help his own case. I hope, with your permission, to give the whole of this report by the correspondent over whom the Minister for Finance stands as an authority on the condition of this country. I intend, with the permission of the Chair, to give the whole article in order that it will appear on the records of the House, even though it can only be read in the hearing of four Fianna Fáil Deputies or three on the benches. The Minister is going now.
I can go into the library and get it if I want to.
Your hearing is good and you will not require a loudspeaker anyhow. There is no Minister here now to hear the arguments on this motion after they have taken several hours to oppose it.
All your ex-Ministers have gone, too.
I am a Minister in myself.
He is one of our future Ministers.
The article goes on:—
"Since these banks maintain their reserves mainly in London they have fallen under the influence of the Bank of England's ‘expansionary' policy and, as will be seen from the customary tables printed herewith, their holdings of cash have risen for the second year in succession. Unfortunately, opportunities for increasing the item of discounts, loans and advances, have continued to be lacking, and the banks have been forced to increase their investments, in spite of the low yields now prevailing."
Even our fourth National Loan would not induce them ordinarily to subscribe £6,000,000. Deputy Kelly knows that with the goodwill and the prestige of the majority party in the Dublin Corporation, the Corporation was able to get its money.
I do not know anything of the sort.
The article goes on:
"As was only to be expected, these conditions have been reflected in a decline of the profits earned by all but one of the banks. Dividends have been correspondingly reduced, that of the Bank of Ireland falling from 17½ per cent. to 14½ per cent., while the other banks have reduced their distributions by ½ per cent. or 1 per cent.
A valuable new source of information on Irish Free State banking has become available in the last 18 months in the form of ‘Banking Returns' published by the Currency Commission. These returns refer to the eight banks holding shares in the Commission—that is, the six Free State Banks and the Ulster Bank and the Northern Banking Company— and also the National City Bank, which is a subsidiary of the Bank of Ireland. The returns are issued quarterly, and represent an average of monthly returns furnished by the banks to the Commission. Their particular interest resides in the fact that they show the chief items of assets and liabilities divided according to their location in the Free State or ‘elsewhere' (which, of course, includes Northern Ireland as well as Great Britain). Six of these returns have now been published and are summarised.... It is obvious that capital and reserves and also the internal accounts of the banks must have been distributed on some conventional basis which has not been revealed. Apart from these items, the returns illustrate the dual nature of Irish banking in a striking manner. It will be noticed, for example, that, roughly, a quarter of the deposits of the nine banks included in the returns are situated out of the Free State;"
I would like to draw Deputy O'Kelly's attention particularly to this——
Mr. Kelly
I am not O'Kelly. My name is plain Kelly, and you ought to know it by this time.
——Deputy Tom Kelly, who is Chairman of the Housing Committee of the Dublin Corporation, and who knows the need for houses in the City. He knows also that the one problem in order to get those houses is money. Now, a quarter of the deposits of the nine banks that are the member banks of our Currency Commission under this Republican Government—the people's Government—are situated outside the Free State. How does that go?
"Nor is this due solely to the inclusion of two Belfast banks, as every one of the other banks (with the exception of the National City Bank) does business in the United Kingdom, and one of them, the National Bank, has an extensive business in England."
Even Martin's Bank is not mentioned.
"Cash is held as to one-third in the Free State and as to two-thirds elsewhere." These are our Irish banks under a Republican Government, and the Republican Minister for Finance had the temerity to quote from this article spicy little bits that had no meaning, or the reverse meaning from their original intent, when divorced from the context.
Mr. Kelly
What has this to do with the motion?
It has to do with the reply of the Minister for Finance.
Mr. Kelly
It is your motion I am talking about.
This shows the real kernel of the financial and economic situation here. The cash held in the Free State is only one-third of the cash held by those banks, and the remainder is outside the country.
On a point of order. This is the first time in the history of this House when the Government Benches were left vacant. A previous Ceann Comhairle ruled the House out at least on one occasion because of the failure of Ministers to have the courtesy to remain in the House in order to reply. From the point of view of the dignity of the House, and out of respect for the members of the House, I think this House ought now to stand adjourned. I think it is an unheard of proceeding in any assembly in the world that the Government Benches should be left unoccupied. I think it is unheard of that the Fianna Fáil Benches at 1 o'clock on a Friday should be left with only a lady member. There is not another member of the Party present on that side of the House.
That is not a point of order. The Chair has no control over the Government, no control whatsoever. The Chair has no control over any individual member of the Government. There is no precedent, so far as I know. The Deputy might quote me one or give me a reference if there is a precedent for adjourning the House. I have no knowledge of any occasion on which the House was adjourned because of the absence of members of the Government.
I was so surprised and so amazed that I had not time to go to the Library to look up any references; but the Clerk is there and I will ask him to give you the reference to the occasion when the then Ceann Comhairle, Mr. Michael Hayes, adjourned the House in the absence of Ministers; there were no Ministers present to take a note of members' comments. I say that in respect to the Chair and the House it is not right that the Fianna Fáil Benches should be left empty. If the Chair cannot see its way to deal with the matter, I would ask, out of respect for this assembly, that the House should stand adjourned and that the members should leave the House.
Mr. Kelly
The Deputy has been out all the morning and he has just hopped in; let him hop out now.
The Deputy has made his point. The Chair has no control in the matter whatsoever.
I would ask Deputies not to listen any further.
I cannot allow Deputy Byrne to create disorder in that fashion.
It is not disorder.
Deputy Byrne will sit down and cease speaking. He suggested that members should leave the House.
The Government Ministers have left, and also the Government supporters.
That is gross disorder. I will not hear Deputy Byrne further on that matter.
You asked me for a precedent.
Deputy Byrne will sit down. If Deputy Byrne attempts to speak again on this matter I shall have to ask him to leave the House.
That was done before with other members. I will ask you to look at the Government Benches. All the Fianna Fáil Benches over there are empty.
I think the House should be counted.
Attention called to the fact that a quorum was not present. House counted and, a quorum having been found present,
Deputy Belton.
I was quoting from the article that has been in effect misquoted by the Minister for Finance. I was at the point that cash is held as to one-third in the Free State and as to two-thirds elsewhere. A Leas-Chinn Comhairle, I think when a Deputy is speaking the Parliamentary Secretary should not turn his back to the Chair, and to the speaker. I want to draw your attention to the fact that Deputy Hugo Flinn has his back to the Chair, and his hands in his pockets.
The Deputy has his hands in his pockets.
The matter of this motion is of the most paramount importance to the country. It would be well in the interests of the country, and of the matter itself, to have it expounded in full here, and to have all the misstatements, accusations and concoctions of the Ministers and Deputies of the Government Party who spoke against it replied to and exposed. Though this is an entirely agricultural motion, and though we have a Government in power that claims to be doing so much for agriculture, I have been speaking for a considerable time on this motion without a solitary Minister of the Government being here, and without a Parliamentary Secretary being here. Deputies laugh at that; Deputies who bought the farmers' cattle laugh at that. Deputies who acted John Brown last Friday laugh at that.
And will again every time.
Up Tipperary now.
Up Tipperary.
They laugh at that. There was no Minister present. I do not see what use there is in going on with this debate when Ministers show so much discourtesy and so much disrespect to the House. This motion was handed in by me on 23rd March last. It appeared on the Order Paper on 24th March last. It has been on the Order Paper since. During last year Private Members' time was taken and used for Government business, and we did not get an opportunity of disposing of this motion. Now when it did come before this House we had Ministers rambling for four or five hours speaking on this motion, showing their disrespect and contempt of the largest section of the people in this country—the agricultural community. Then when it came to replying the Ministers again showed their disrespect and left the House. Some Deputies have come in, though they have been elected by farmers' votes, to laugh at the idea of this motion. I do not know whether we have such a freak in public representation as this, that it is not worth while for anybody to trouble about the events as they come along, only let the events proceed on their course, and let the people get the full force of the adversity of those events. As a result of the injustice that this motion was put down to repair—and which the Government has within the last week half repaired because of the force of the case made for it—Deputies, while being paid to represent their constituents, this day week left this House and went and bought the cattle of the farmers, cattle seized as a result of the injustice which this motion wants to remedy. They come into this House now and laugh at this motion, and their consciences will not prick them. For an hour afterwards they were trying to get their money out of them but they did not get it. Deputy Seán Hayes can answer in Tipperary——
I did last Sunday.
We will pass from that, and get back to the motion.
Do not take directions from Deputy Byrne. Talk on your own.
On agriculture, I cannot direct anybody. I think the Deputy knows that.
There are a lot of them paying rates since down there, I notice.
"It may be assumed that the one-third held in the Free State is ‘till money,' and that an equivalent amount is held in cash at external branches. In this case, slightly more than half of the total will represent balances in London."
Half the cash in the Irish banks is held in London under a Republican Government ! Now, up the Republic!
"Money at call and short notice, as might be expected, is almost entirely external."
That is why we cannot get money to build houses for the Dublin working classes.
"One of the more surprising revelations of the return is that Free State bills are more than twice the total of external bills."
Where is the financial buoyancy?
"Free State bills are probably mainly accommodation paper rather than trade bills."
Not trade bills! It is the hard-ups that have bills from the Irish banks.
"And the external bills probably arise in a similar way from the Ulster business of the banks. It is evident, however, that the Irish banks are not at present purchasers of bills in the London market, although the returns suggest that they may have done so on a small scale in the past, when rates were more remunerative. Loans and advances are lower proportionately in the Free State than the ratio of internal and external deposits might have suggested—
The Minister for Finance did not read all this matter, which shows the depressed conditions of this country
—this is doubtless due to the more industrial character of the Ulster business. Finally, investments are preponderantly outside the Free State, as is inevitable in view of the lack of Free State securities of a type suitable for banking investments. It is noticeable, however, that the Free State investments have shown a steady tendency to increase."
The Minister for Finance quoted a couple of sentences out of that which he thought would suit his book. He did not quote it all, but I have read it all, and it is the most effective reply that could be given, especially in view of the setting in which the Minister gave the quotations.
The journal says that the country is in a sound financial position.
Thanks to the accumulated reserves of previous years. You or I might be in a sound financial position in respect of our business, but we might still be running our business at a loss at the moment. We might be in a sound financial position, but we might be in an unsound economic position, and that is the position of this country.
None of us understands that.
If none of you understand that, and you speak for that party over there, you have a damn cheek to come into this House at all.
Why did you ring the bell to bring us in?
It is not the bell brought you in, but the way you fooled the people down the country.
Do not mention it. Come down the country if you want a straight fight, and name your day. This is the second invitation I have given the Deputy.
What we want is the motion and not fight.
Do not imagine you will get away with that at all.
If the Deputy is such a fighter when he is selected by his constituents to take the ring, this House is the ring he should take.
You can get out of it any way you like, but come down the country any time you want to. That is straight talk.
This is the ring the Deputy was selected to come into and to fight in, and he had to be sent for twice to come into this House during my address this afternoon.
It is a treat to listen to you, without a doubt. You are educating me.
It would, I am sure, be a treat to listen if the Deputy had enough intelligence to understand.
He is smart enough for you.
But if any speaker speaks above the Deputy's head, I am sure that it is not a treat to listen.
You do not deserve a lot of credit for speaking above my head. Look at me. You are not blessed with a lot more yourself, God help you. I stand as high in the people's eyes as you do.
The position has been well and forcibly put by speakers on this side who have gone before me. There are, in fact, two cases. There is the irrefutable case for the continuance of a grant of £2,200,000 every year for the relief of rates on agricultural land, even if no dispute ever arose with England, because the £600,000, the original agricultural grant, was part of the title which our fathers and grandfathers had to the land. The landlord contracted to pay half the rates on agricultural land. That was made a statutory obligation on the Government by the Local Government Act of 1898 and that accounts for £600,000 of the agricultural grant. The next step, when we had a Government in this country and when tariffs were imposed which increased the price of certain commodities to the agricultural community, was that the then Minister for Finance, in 1924 or 1925, increased the agricultural grant by doubling it, out of moneys made available by the proceeds of those tariffs. That accounted for £1,200,000 of the then agricultural grant. In 1931, taxes were imposed, ½d per lb. on sugar and 4d a gallon on petrol, to produce £1,000,000. These taxes are there still with the difference that the tax of ½d per lb. on sugar has been changed to 4d per lb. on tea. That placed on the Government an obligation to produce every year, £2,200,000 for the relief of rates on agricultural land and if, in the wisdom of this or any other Government, it was considered that agriculture was not entitled to so much or any relief, nobody could question the right of the Government to reduce that relief but if they do want to reduce that relief, why not reduce the taxes that were imposed to produce this money for the Exchequer? They do not reduce any of these taxes. They are still functioning, still producing and yet the grant was cut.
That is the case for the agricultural grant if nothing had happened. That is the case if no economic war with England had happened and that is the case made by President de Valera in this House on the 6th May, 1931, when urging that the farmers of this country were entitled to £1,000,000 increase in the agricultural grant to make it £2,200,000. That was when there was no economic war with Britain; when there was no curtailment of our exports to Britain or anywhere else; when Britain was on the gold standard and when our money could buy in any market in the world, which it cannot do to-day. We get fewer pounds for our stock to-day than we got in 1931, and super-imposed on that, we have the English import tariffs and again, on top of that, the pounds that we get are worth only 12/- in gold money. We have to use these paper pounds worth 12/- to buy in gold-using countries like Germany and France. We import German coal with paper money worth only 12/- out of 20/- of its face value. That is the unanswerable case which is staring anybody who applies himself to a study of the position at all in the face. It cannot be controverted.
You have an economic war and its consequences. I do not want to go into consequences or into the matter of what we are losing here or anything like that at all. In summarising I just want to deal with the points that the Minister for Finance admitted and later refused to admit. He refused to-day to answer a question that I put to him relevant to this matter. The payment of the annuities was discontinued by our Government. British tariffs were imposed for the purpose of collecting those withheld payments. It is not denied by the British or by our Government that the British are collecting the entire of those payments. The Minister for Industry and Commerce could not contradict that and he had to admit its truth here to-day. The British said "we have got the full payment of these moneys from the Free State." None of our Ministers could get up and say "no, you have not, you have got something less." To-day the Minister for Industry and Commerce in respect to the retaliatory tariffs imposed by our Government as a return blow to the tariffs imposed by the British owing to the non-collection of the annuities, agreed first that these were a full set-off and had produced as much for us as the British tariffs had produced for Britain. Then, afterwards, he said the tariffs imposed by us on British goods had produced something less. However, they must have produced something anyway and that something is a further amount of available money that should go really not alone for the restoration of the part of the agricultural grant that has been withheld but that the farmers ought to get further relief on agricultural land.
From any angle from which the matter is viewed there is no reason why any Deputy in this House should vote against this motion. None whatever. This money is due to the farmers according to legislation and, secondly, it is due in respect of the taxes that have been imposed on the farmers to provide these grants. Deputies and Parties in this House should, according to their wisdom vote for or against the motion to give relief of rates on agricultural land. Some of them have voted to withdraw all relief of rates. But to be consistent they should say that before they would give their vote for such a motion, the taxation imposed on the people of this country to provide the money which is being raised by these tariffs, should be repealed also.
Here you have the position that though the grant is reduced the taxation to provide £2,200,000 is still functioning. Last year that sum was reduced to £1,750,000. This year the county councils got instructions from the Minister for Local Government and Public Health that a similar grant would be given this year and no more, while, at the same time, the taxation imposed to provide these grants is still operating. People are still paying 4d. a lb. duty on tea and 4d. a gallon extra on petrol and they are paying tariffs on all sorts of imported goods. The original £600,000 given as an agricultural grant was a statutory obligation on the Government so as to provide half the rates on agricultural land. Now we have the extraordinary position that in addition to those moneys the £5,000,000 that our Government is collecting, she is using every avenue and every source of revenue that the previous Government used in collecting the annuities and, in addition, there are the £2,000,000 over and above due to Britain and withheld. Britain has acknowledged that she has extracted all that money. She is extracting it from the agricultural community. That is a further reason why this agricultural grant should be restored and the whole of the rates on agricultural land discontinued during the operation of this economic war.
It would take me a week to answer all the points raised by the Ministers, who apparently spoke on this motion because they did not know their subject. I do not want to follow the Ministers into their irrelevancies. I do, however, want to answer the Minister for Finance in what was not an irrelevancy or something that he misunderstood or misrepresented but something that he invented. The Minister for Finance stated that Deputy Belton was responsible for what he alleges. I will give his words. They are in Volume 50, No. 6, columns 1726-7—
"Mr. MacEntee: I want to say further that any reduction that exists in bank profits has been due almost entirely to the increased taxation which those undertakings have had to bear and not to any difficulty they have experienced in collecting amounts due to them by their debtors. I was talking about the rates of agricultural wages in this country. I was saying that if there was any reduction in agricultural wages, it was only part of the deliberate and organised ramp that has been undertaken by members of the Opposition Party, a ramp similar to that which was set on foot as a result of a conference here of leading supporters of Deputy Belton and his associates, who came together and began to consider what elements in agricultural production at the present moment were showing a substantial return to the farmer and who arrived at the conclusion that amongst them was milk. They decided that the price of milk in certain areas must be brought down to an uneconomic level and approached certain large dairying undertakings in the vicinity of the city to get them to reduce the price of milk in order that they might be able to turn round and say that the farmer is not getting in 1933-4 the price for milk that he was getting in 1931-32."
That is a deliberate and obnoxious concoction by the Minister for Finance. I challenge the Minister on the matter.
"Mr. Belton: Will the Minister name the date of this conference. Will he name the time and place that the conference took place? Will he name a solitary individual that was at the conference?
"Mr. MacEntee: I am going to say this that Deputy Belton was the mover in the whole thing——"
"Mr. Belton: Deputy Belton denies that he knows anything about such conference. I never attended a milk conference in my life."
That is true, but there is this qualification:—After the Fianna Fáil Party came into power, that was in 1932, milk depots were introduced by them into this city at which milk was sold at a price subsidised by the Government. It was sold at a price that was below the wholesale price of milk and below the cost of production.
And given to the poor.
It was below the cost of production. Deputy Kelly will not sell old clothes below the price at which he bought them or what they cost him.
I do not sell old clothes. I sell books.
The Deputy will not sell books at less than what they cost him. Will the Deputy give a book to the poor at less than the price at which he bought that book?
I might or might not.
Neither would I, and neither would anybody. We can give charity if we can afford it, but in trade we sell nothing below the cost of the article. We could give an article away for nothing if we could afford it. In lots of cases it is the duty of a person to give away something in charity, but you cannot have charity connected with business in that way. If you are running a business it must be run as a business, and if you want to give charity you give charity away from and apart from your business. You cannot help the poor in business. If you are selling an article across the counter, rich and poor must pay the same for it. No trader has one schedule of prices for the poor and another for the rich. This institution was set up to sell milk below the cost of production.
To the poor.
To sell milk below the cost of production subsidised by the State. The poor, who are the showboards of so many Deputies, were working people and their families who could not get work; and these were increased by the setting up of these milk depôts, because the people who were making a living out of selling milk in Dublin at a reasonable cost were driven out of business. I was not one of these. The Minister for Finance accused me of being responsible for a conference which was held. What I said here is quite true, that I was never at a milk conference as such. What I meant when I said that here was that I was never at a milk conference in my private capacity. This matter was taken up by the milk producers of Dublin and the vendors of milk came into it. The vendors said to the producers: "We will co-operate with you if you want us, but if you do not we will get out; we do not care whether milk is 1½d. or 1/- per pint across the counter. If it is 1/- per pint we can pay such-and-such a price for it; if it is only 1½d. a pint we will pay a less price for it and have our profits all the time; but you lose as producers if you do not get a good initial price for your milk." A considerable number of the milk producers live in the County Dublin and the land for grazing that the milk producers take in the summer is situated in the county. The County Dublin Committee of Agriculture, therefore, was asked to co-operate in this conference, and, as Chairman of that Committee I was selected to represent them at the conference. That is how I came to be at the conference. As far as my statement denying ever having been at a conference is concerned, it was inaccurate to the extent that I went there in a public capacity. What I had in mind, and what the accusation of the Minister for Finance conveyed to me was, that I was at a milk conference in a private capacity. I was not. The Minister for Finance said that I went around to people to cut down the price of milk. The Minister was trying to queer my pitch, not with the poor but with the producers, and said that I went around to get milk vendors to reduce the price of milk, but I did not.
Attention called to the fact that a quorum was not present.
House counted and a quorum being found present,
Deputy Belton may resume. I do not know if he desires to have a division taken on his motion to-day. If he does it would be advisable for him to conclude soon. Of course, that is a matter for the Deputy himself.
I was dealing with this question of the milk conference.
Mr. Kelly
The Deputy does not want a division to-day.
That is left by the Ceann Comhairle to the Deputy to decide.
Mr. Kelly
You were asked a question.
The Deputy will decide when it suits him. This conference did take place. Before I was sent there by the Committee of Agriculture deputations waited on the Minister for Agriculture and had consultations with him. I am informed that he denied that the Government was behind the Newmarket Dairy people in underselling and undercutting milk producers in Dublin who were paying trades union wages to their employees. Now it is well to remind the Minister for Finance that this terrible milk conference that took place, that was organised by me to create such havoc among milk producers, was not in fact organised by me. I have no practical interest whatever in milk. I only possess one cow, so that the price of milk does not matter very much to me. But it did matter to the Chairman of that conference, Mr. Peter Reilly, Newtown, St. Margaret's, who is a strong supporter, in Co. Dublin, of the Minister for Finance. If there was any villain of the piece, and I am not saying there was, Peter Reilly was the villain of the piece. I know Mr. Peter Reilly for a number of years, and I do not think that he would be guilty of any piece of villainy or anything of that kind. He is the Vice-Chairman of the local Cumann of Fianna Fáil, and he is the man who organised all this terrible business.
So we have some farmers in our Party.
No, dairymen, and you are subsidising them. The Deputy opposite never made such a mistake as to become a farmer.
I was and I did not get out of it the way you did.
In College Park, perhaps. At this conference there was a supporter of the Fianna Fáil Party, and he was on a deputation to the Minister.
Does the Deputy think that we are on that conference now?
I was accused by the Minister in connection with that conference.
Quite right, but I think the Deputy will agree that he has got scope enough up to now to controvert the Minister without going into the composition of the conference.
I am only going to read a quotation from the statement of the Minister in which he said: "They decided the price of milk, in certain areas, must be brought down to an uneconomic level, and approached certain large dairy undertakings in the vicinity of the city to get them to reduce the price of milk, in order that they might be able to turn round and say that the farmer is not getting in 1933-34 the price he was getting in 1931-32." I think I am in order in answering that, and I say that that is absolutely false. What did happen is this. This supporter of Fianna Fáil got fed up with Fianna Fáil over the way they were handling the milk question. He was supplying to a large milk undertaking in Dublin 90 gallons of milk per day. The buyer of that milk was got at by Fianna Fáil and he was told one evening when he came in with his milk not to deliver it any more. That man telephoned me, and I telephoned a friend and told him what Fianna Fáil was at, and I am glad to say that I got that man to take the milk, and that the milk is still being supplied to that customer, in spite of Fianna Fáil.
The Minister for Finance is terribly afraid of anyone appearing on the scene, but he will not succeed in keeping people off the grass in County Dublin. The Minister made many attempts to get in in County Dublin, but he never got in there until he got in on my back. I hope at another time to help to keep him out. He made a statement about a strike, and he chopped and changed in his charge as to whether I bought, or brought, guns into the County Dublin in order to settle the strike, which was absolutely untrue. Of course, his object in that was a political one, to sour the Labour Party, which forms a very large population in County Dublin. What are the facts? That strike was engineered and planned by two gentlemen who were on the Minister's platform at the last election. They are both personal friends of mine and very decent men— Jimmy Cuffe and Paddy Kettle. That causes a smile on the other side. When I said they are decent men, I mean they are decent men as far as Fianna Fáil men go. One must qualify the statement in that way. No matter what they are, and Deputies opposite can classify them as they like, they were responsible for that strike or lockout or whatever it was, and they were on the Fianna Fáil platforms at the last election. I am not saying anything against these men; they are personal friends of mine still. I never had any transactions with them, but I do resent the Minister for Finance putting me into other people's shoes. I will not be put in that position for anybody. When that strike was taking place three men came into my yard and said if I did not lock out my men, and if I put my horses on the road on the following Monday they would be shot. "That settles it," said I. I put my horses on the road—16 of them—on Monday and brought manure from Drumcondra, and before the week was out the whole bubble was burst. Any time the Minister for Finance wants to take that up with me, in the Dáil or on the spot where the scene was enacted, I shall be ready to meet him. I shall repeat that statement to-night in Balbriggan inside a blue shirt. Another point made by the Minister for Finance, in going through his theatrical display, was to describe, in his fertile imagination, a scene at the Fine Gael Ard Fheis. I am going through the gamut of his policy. I move the adjournment of the debate.