£7,000,000 is necessary unless the Minister is going to tackle the Teachers' Pension Fund, or to make other raids of an unsatisfactory character. At any rate he paraded himself before the public, and money is required to balance this Budget, which otherwise does not balance. Right through the debate there has been comment that the farmers, who are certainly not catered for in this Budget, are as well off as ever they were; that they are not paying the British any of the annuities, and are only paying the Government half the annuities; that if their produce has fallen in price, that is due to worldwide depression, and has nothing to do with the economic war. There is one man who does not believe that. Deputy Davin, who is a strong supporter of the present Government, spoke at Mountrath on April 15th last. This is the comment that fell from his lips:—
"They were being repeatedly reminded by Mr. de Valera and his Ministers that they stood for a policy of self-sufficiency. Self-sufficiency should mean that they should devise a scheme which would provide our own people with surplus food which we were unable to sell to others."
According to Mr. Davin:
"Mr. de Valera and the Minister for Agriculture would be well advised to give up thinking of and talking politics for a week or two and see whether it was possible to put such a scheme into operation immediately, or if they could devise a better scheme."
There was this pungent comment on those who believed that the farmers do not pay any of the costs of the tariffs levied by the British:
"It was a scandalous state of affairs that they should be asked to tolerate a continuance of the existing position, which enabled cattle dealers from the Six Counties to come into the Free State and smuggle fat cattle over the Border, thereby making profits averaging about £7 per head."
How do the smugglers make £7 a head if the prices in the Northern area are as low as they are here? Deputy Maguire, who spoke last, said that the farmers in the Six Counties were just a little bit worse off than the farmers here. Supposing, as far as prices for produce go, they are only getting the same amount as is got here, or get no more or no less, how does it come that smugglers come here, buy our fat cattle and reap £7 of a profit per head? They get no bounty with smuggled cattle. According to Deputy Davin and everyone else who knows, it is true that a man who can drive cattle across the Border successfully can get on an average a profit of £7 to £8 per head. Does that mean that people in the Six Counties are paying more for them than they pay for other cattle, because they are smuggled? Where is the sense of proportion gone? We are told that bounties, at any rate, help, and are of great assistance. I say that the bounty does not come into calculation with smuggled cattle. Men have been known to trade licences for the exportation of cattle, and to pay those who hold licences more than the amount of the bounty. Having paid more by way of trade for the licence than they get in the way of bounty, they then export, and it is worth their while to export a certain number of fat cattle to the British market and get prices there, even though there is a heavy tariff against them. The Minister knows well that if there was no quota arrangement, which means that something less than 400 cattle go over where 1,000 use to go, there would still be an outpouring of cattle from this country, because of the advantage that people can still get through selling abroad. Supposing we were to take the bounties into consideration, who pays these bounties? When the Minister for Finance was speaking on the 14th February of this year on the debate on the Relief of Rates on Agricultural Land, he said:
"Deputy Dillon knows pretty well that if the local rates were made a charge on the Central Fund the farmer would have to pay them by means of increased taxation. There is no way out of the dilemma."
That drew "Hear, hears" from this side of the House. The Minister went on:
"If we make the local rates a charge upon the Central Fund the farmer will only have to take out of one pocket what at the present moment he is taking out of the other."
Apply that to the bounties. If local rates were put on general taxation, farmers, by reason of the increased taxation, would pay them in the end, according to the Minister for Finance. Supposing bounties are being paid, whatever good they are, and supposing you are getting in all the rates, which is doubtful, who pays for them? If the local rates were transferred to central taxation they would be met in the end by farmers. The same thing applies to the payment of bounties. The other side of the argument is that the English market has gone. The English market is supposed to have gone from us for ever. We have loose talk here as to what the British Government is doing to protect the farmers there, but we had a new side put on that to-night by Deputy Maguire. Deputy Maguire said that the Minister for Agriculture in Great Britain had recently lamented that the taste of the people of England was changing. I always thought our great complaint against the Minister for Agriculture in Great Britain was that he was catering, through the development of British agriculture, for his own people's tastes. You do not get frozen meat, in the main, from England. Deputy Maguire has a new angle on that. According to him, it is not the British agriculturist that is our enemy but the Argentinian, the New Zealander, and all those people who send frozen or chilled meat into Great Britain. We are told that if we do get back to the British market we shall never get back to it with the same volume of exports as we used to have. In a recent debate I pointed out that, in the year 1928, their own statistical information showed that the British consumed £330,000,000 worth of goods in meat of all types, eggs and butter. For that demand in their own country they produced goods at home to the value of £130,000,000 or £140,000,000. They had to supply by importation £200,000,000 worth of goods of the meat, butter and eggs type. At that time we were supplying about £30,000,000 worth of goods to Great Britain. That is the 1928 figure. The 45,000,000 people in Great Britain consumed £330,000,000 worth of stuff, of which they themselves produced about £130,000,000 worth. Of the £220,000,000 worth that was imported by them, we supplied just about £30,000,000 worth. Is anybody going to tell me that the situation is so changed that there is no room for our £30,000,000 worth of goods? That is what saying that the British market has gone means—that there is no room for our £30,000,000 worth of stuff. If we could get back to that £30,000,000 standard, the situation here would be considerably eased.
Deputy Moore asked Deputy Fitzgerald why did the British buy from us: was it on account of good-will or for business reasons? It was a combination of both. Somebody else asked why the British should admit us to their market. There are obvious reasons. Their taste is not changing, and, so far as the Minister for Agriculture in Great Britain has the force, he is trying to prevent it from changing in a way that would harm this country. He is trying to cater for the taste of the people and to induce them to continue their taste for fresh meat, rather than for chilled or frozen meat. The taste is there, and it is going to be catered for. That taste is going to be developed by the present Minister for Agriculture in Great Britain, and, until they get to the point that they do not want our £30,000,000 worth of stuff— and that is a long way off—that market is still there for us to acquire—a good and substantial market. It is, perhaps, proper to argue that we have got rivals for that market. We have rivals mainly for the frozen and chilled meat, but surely we have advantages to offer to Great Britain that these countries cannot offer. Deputy Fitzgerald has referred to the fact that at the Economic Conference of 1929 everyone who spoke there admitted that this country provided a better outlet for British goods than any one of their so-called Colonies. We have another advantage of which nobody should be ashamed to speak. We have our geographical position to bargain. That is not merely an asset, but it was recognised as an asset by the British Government. It will continue to be recognised as an asset by them so long as they are in the position in which they now are in the event of war. Would all the meat that Australia, Canada or New Zealand could have sent across the ocean in the days of the Great War have meant anything to Great Britain? Was it not our proximity that was of value both to us and to them? We have not lost that value, and they do not feel yet that war is so disappearing as a means of settling differences amongst peoples that they can neglect the advantages they have in good relations with us, even if they were to continue to trade, as they traded for years, by buying more from us than we bought from them.
When people say that that market is gone, they ought to have some appreciation of facts. Can anybody tell me that there is a table prepared which shows at this moment that Britain is so saturated with imports we could get our £30,000,000 worth of goods pushed in if we had peace between the two countries? Does anybody tell me that on a test as between ourselves, New Zealand, Canada or Australia, we have not many things to offer to Britain in the way of good trade relationships that none of these other countries can offer? Can anybody tell me that these two facts are not appreciated by the British themselves, and that they have not even shown their appreciation of them? Deputy Corry asked—it was one of his usual misunderstandings— what about the reply of the British recently to the New Zealand Government? That is due to a misreading of the newspapers. This matter has been debated in the British Parliament. It emerged clearly from that debate that no offer had been made. A query was put, and it was, apparently, put by the Government of New Zealand in expectation of the answer they got—almost asking for that answer. Nobody in the development of trade as between the members of the Commonwealth will get to the point that the so-called New Zealand offer was supposed to ask for —completely free trade, no barriers anywhere as between the members of the Commonwealth. We were told that we were in an extremely good position here, that the Minister had collected so much money from the people, and that he has piled up a surplus of £5,000,000. He had a surplus, we are told, in last year's Budget, and he may have so much in the way of surplus this year that he will not want to borrow. When he says that, he admits that he has extorted from the farmers vast sums whereas, in fact, he promised them remissions of a great part of their taxation. The British accounts show that the farmer of this country who used pay only his annuity is now paying the annuities lumped together, and he is paying, in addition, the £2,000,000 a year or thereabouts for R.I.C. pensions and other moneys that used not to be collected immediately from the farmer. In addition, he is paying half his annuities to this Government. In addition, he is in the position that what used to be a terminable annuity is now converted into a perpetual payment. The farmers over whom the present Government used weep about 1928 because of their terribly bad position, are now landed, with all the payments they used make by way of annuities, with £2,000,000 extra per annum which used to come out of the proceeds of general taxation, some of it coming indirectly from the farmers, and in addition, they are paying half the annuities again to this Government while they are not having the sinking fund mounting up as it used for the service of the debt and the wiping out of it in due time.
The British Government have got to this point with the farmers of the country that they are allowing in as many cattle, sheep and poultry as will pay the annuities, and nothing else. The best the Government can do in the conditions of that particular situation, which they have created themselves, is to inaugurate this campaign of slaughtering the calves of the country. This House has often heard comments full of irony and sarcasm about the way in which the Government of the United States of America burned their wheat, and how the Government of Brazil burned their coffee. This was taken as a commentary upon the economic situation in the world which led to this destruction of natural wealth.
We were saved that here until this year. There was no deliberate destruction of wealth until the Government this year decided that the only way in which it could save, not the farmers but to an extent the debacle to which they had led the farmers, was to inaugurate this scheme of paying a price for the skins of the calves. If the Minister could give us any hope, even in this fantastic Budget of his, that there was going to be any better productivity in the future, then it would be easier to bear the continuance of this £4,000,000 increased taxation which he put on the first year, continued the second year and proposes to continue now. Where is the productivity? Is there any better employment in the country than there had been? The Minister for Industry and Commerce may juggle with figures as much as he likes, but after two years, with larger tariffs, he is not getting as many people into insurable occupations in this country as there were in the last year of the Cosgrave administration when, with lighter tariffs, more people were got into insurable occupations. His last returns showed that, apart from the number which had gone into insurable occupations, the draw on the fund—that is, the draw by the number of people who intermittently went out of occupation—had gone up. It had gone up by 100,000. The next year it went down by 20,000, but it is still at 80,000 over the last year of the Cosgrave period of administration.
We are told about new industries. Are we to have an explanation set against the boast by the Minister of the new industries something that will explain the yield of £1,600,000 in Customs duties last year? We have got to get the sum total of the new factories, the wages they pay, and to what extent they have increased the purchasing power of the people. We want some explanation, if there are so many people newly employed, as to how it is that the income tax yield is calculated at nearly £900,000 less than it was in our normal period? What approach has there been to bringing about these new economies that they promised?
During the Cumann na nGaedheal administration, out of every 1,000 people in employment there were 530 employed in agriculture and 130 in industry. Is there any change in that? There is a change to this extent, that there are not 530 out of every 1,000 people now in employment employed in agriculture. A considerable number of those formerly employed in agriculture are on the dole. If it were a transition stage one would not mind. Where is the approach to the new situation in the 60,000 to 80,000 for whom the Minister found it necessary to confess that he could not get employment last winter! He therefore found it necessary to introduce this system of a dole for the people who were knocked out of employment on the land—people who could not find other employment and who were not earning anything.
Deputy Maguire talked about the way in which the poor and the unemployed have been catered for. But they are not getting what they were promised. It was work that was promised and an increase of productivity and industrial activity. It was not that people were to receive money for doing nothing, not that these people wanted to do nothing, but because the Government had not found anything at which to put them. Is there any satisfactory feature to which the Minister can point in relation to this year's Budget? What are the chances of taxation coming down soon? Supposing we continue next year with these £4,000,000, thus making £16,000,000 in the four years, what then? We say nothing about getting back the £2,000,000 that we were told by the Ministers opposite could be saved to the country in taxation. What is the chance of taxation being kept even as it is? Is there any indication now that any of these increased demands will stop soon? Are the Government aware that they would get a better yield by way of revenue through lower taxation if there was increased productivity? Is there any sign of increased productivity? The only thing we can see is that the income tax has yielded £800,000 less than was expected. There is no sign there of industrial activity. The Minister proposes to meet taxation by borrowing this year for certain items in his Budget. There has been so much money put into local loans for the sake of giving employment. We presume that money has been spent usefully for employment. Then there are the housing grants. All these things were to lead to better employment, even if not to an increase in industry. But it was a transitory thing. Even with all that, there is a bigger draw on the Unemployment Fund than ever before. And the payments into that fund do not represent any big additional number of people having found employment at industrial work. If that is the situation when we are putting so much money into local loans, what is it to be when that money stops filtering in? Is that to go on? How are we to find money to put into the Local Loans Fund in the coming years? How is it to be got? The Minister tried to get £6,000,000 last year and he failed to get it. The Minister admits that it was those people who were not politically affiliated with him who helped him to get that loan. They have got the Minister's thanks for coming to his rescue. If the Minister is not going to get this money next year by borrowing, where is it to come from? He took sixpence off the income tax this year. Is it not clear that that was rendered necessary by the yield last year? Is it not clear that taxation has got to the saturation point? The Minister was forced by circumstances to reduce taxation by 6d. He still has an extra 1/- on the income tax; the two sixpences that he put on still remain. There will be no better yield from the tax next year and the indication on the White Paper was that it was estimated by the experts at much lower than ever before. It will be up by about £100,000.
Where does the Minister found his phrase about increased revenue, about everything being buoyant, about there being prosperity, when the ordinary test, the biggest test, the income tax test, proves conclusively that the money is not there? The business is not there to yield the return. The Minister has met with failure in the matter of taxation. He made one failure, for reasons that he may desire to explain, in the matter of borrowing. He is between those two points in the dilemma. Can he tax more? It may be through customs. It may be the industrial system here is yet so incomplete or so poor that necessaries have to be got in from England and, in an indirect way, the Minister may get some money from taxing these articles, but direct taxation is failing him. If he cannot tax any further he cannot make reductions and, with the lot of the unemployed swelling, it is doubtful if there is any saving to be made on the expenditure side. He is then faced with borrowing. There is a sum of £7,000,000 to be met in some way other than by taxation. £13,000,000 in two years—that soon comes to the saturation point, too. And that is not for the reason that the Minister for Industry and Commerce said, that there is so much industrial activity that people have not money to put into Government loans, but simply that there is not the money here amongst the people. Those are the two things that will teach the Minister a lesson about economy, the economy that he so often preached from here and that he now so definitely dishonours since he attained a Government position.
