There is one thing, although the House listened to it in very glum silence last night, upon which the Minister for Finance can congratulate himself, and that is, that his Budget speech, notwithstanding the references to it in the daily Press, had fewer jokes than usual.
Committee on Finance. - Financial Motions. Resolution No. 28—General (Resumed).
Debate resumed on the following motion:—
That it is expedient to amend the law relating to customs and inland revenue (including excise) and to make further provision in connection with finance. —(Minister for Finance.)
Fourteen!
Yes, but four or five were compressed into one paragraph and, furthermore, the jokes did not come in in the way they came in in the Minister's first Budget. They did not come in in the way they came in when he was imposing taxation and blisters on the people. Everybody will remember the joyful and blissful way in which the Minister imposed taxation in his first Budget. That joyfulness of manner and that blissfulness of word was singularly absent yesterday. The House was not in a position to appreciate the Minister's sense of humour yesterday. The Budget statement of yesterday suffers, like that of its predecessors, from the fact that it has passed quickly over some of the more unpleasant and unpalatable items— some that seem to the public, at the immediate moment, of great importance—and from the failure elsewhere to make clear what ought to be made clear in that long preamble dealing with the burdens on the public: the financial position of the country. Everybody is quite willing to receive with sympathy the Minister's appeal to do everything to uphold the credit of the country—both the financial credit and every other kind of credit. I am sure, moreover, that the public, like many a member of this House, are quite willing to forget that very few people have done as much, even in dealing with financial matters, apart from his military operations, to damage the financial credit of the country as the Minister for Finance has done when in another position. I think that that ought to be forgotten, and I think the country would be delighted to take as seriously meant, the appeal that the Minister now makes, that there should be nothing said to damage the financial credit of the country. May we say, however, that there should also be nothing done to damage the financial credit of this country, not merely in the statements of the Government, but in the policy of the Government?
If the Minister thinks it necessary to issue that warning the House may be permitted to ask itself why he did so. Why does he think the financial credit of the country is in any danger? Why does he think it necessary, however excellent the sentiment may be, coming even at this late hour from his mouth, to make this public recantation of his former conduct? Is he afraid that the credit of the country does not stand as high as it should? What foundation has he for that belief, if he has it? In the course of yesterday's Budget statement the House will remember that he reflected in language that we should hardly dare to use from this side of the House on the intense patriotism of our neighbours, how they had rallied to the support of the Government in a time of great crisis. He was making a similar appeal here. It was a time of great crisis undoubtedly across the Channel. An appeal was made to the ordinary taxpayer to rally to the support of the nation. The Minister for Finance thinks it necessary here to-day to make that appeal. Why? Further, he backs it up by pointing out that our securities do not stand at the same high level as the English securities, though nominally of the same value. The Minister asked why was that. He gave the answer that it is apparently because the people here have not confidence, and that is so—notwithstanding the comparatively small amount of new loans, an important factor, as the Minister ought to know, in keeping our securities even at their present level. But he confesses that it is apparent that the people have not the confidence that he thinks they should have. I suggest he should ask himself what is the reason for the difference for the greater confidence across the Channel. Why is it that the people of this country, according to the Minister's own words, have not confidence? I am afraid it is because they find it difficult to reconcile the whole financial and economic policy of the Government with one or two excellent phrases that were used by the Minister in yesterday's statement.
It will be remembered that his first Budget was called "the poor man's budget"; that it was greeted enthusiastically by his own Party as a great departure. It was at that time pointed out in criticism that only in one sense did it deserve the name of a poor man's budget, in the sense that the general trend of the Government's financial and general policy was in the direction of making most of the people poor, reducing them to the level of the very poor. A certain number of people may have grown wealthy as a result of the general policy of the Government. They are comparatively few. Anybody who looks over the economic and financial administration of the Minister and his colleagues during the last three years will be convinced that there has been a general depression of the level of comfort, and a general approach to a level of poverty that did not prevail before, and that the Minister and his colleagues must bear a large proportion —I do not say all—of the responsibility. I know that there were other factors operating beyond their control in connection with world conditions generally. Let us admit the full the influence of these factors. The fact that the Government could point to them is far from freeing them from their heavy share of responsibility. Even three years ago it was clear to anybody who took the trouble to ask themselves, not about the Budget of that year or the next following year, but of the subsequent following years, that something of the type of this Budget would ultimately come; that there were certain limits beyond which a Minister, even with the slight sense of responsibility of the Minister for Finance, could not go in certain directions, and that he would ultimately introduce a Budget which directly and openly would be a poor man's budget in the sense that it would make the poor man pay. That was inevitable. The Minister now makes his confession —though it is not a full confession— in this Budget. It is now clear that it imposes a burden on the poor, on the needy and on everyone in the country. The statement made yesterday was greeted with applause by the Fianna Fáil Party.
It got the benevolent condemnation, if I might so call it, of the Labour Party. There is a certain kind of condemnation, on the few occasions on which they leave the rest of their Fianna Fáil Labour Party, that those Labour Deputies apparently feel compelled to adopt. Condemnation coupled with benediction! Anybody who listened to Deputy Norton when speaking on the Vote for the Post Office, or to yesterday's "condemnation" of the Government could say that he did it in a most benevolent fashion, praised it, so to speak, with very faint damnation, looked upon the Government more or less as children still very, very dear to his heart, making a few mistakes, or at least acknowledging a few mistakes. That Budget has now become the poor man's Budget in the sense that it makes the poor man pay directly. Everybody could see that the increase in taxation, direct and indirect, by the Government would have to be paid for by the bulk of the people, by the poor as well as the rich. The Budget openly acknowledges that by putting taxation on the poor. There was yesterday a difference of opinion between my colleague, Deputy McGilligan, and the Minister for Finance as to the sense in which this was a Budget of the needy. It is a Budget of the needy. It is principally the needy that are called upon to make the additional contribution. Let the Minister for Finance and his colleagues carry on with their policy for a little longer and the only people capable of meeting taxation in this country will be the unemployed. This is a Budget that I can safely say would have done a great deal to wreck any other Party that introduced it, especially at a time like this, when the country is passing through such a severe economic crisis. Whether or not it shakes the credit of the Government with its followers on the Government Benches, I cannot undertake to say. They applauded the Minister's Budget speech yesterday. That applause may be a tribute to their great loyalty. It may also be a proof of their complete lack of interest, their complete carelessness as of the prosperity and the soundness of the foundations of this country. I am afraid that is what their applause meant.
I am not now going into the complicated question of the balancing of the Budget. Others will do that. But apart altogether from the temporary character, or otherwise, of the economic war, I suggest that as long as we are getting loot out of it, as long as we are collecting taxes that previously went to the payment of certain taxation and are now retained by the Government we should deal with those taxes in the proper bookkeeping manner. I am speaking now from the point of view of the Exchequer. For instance, we are still collecting taxes imposed when certain pensions were met, but we do not pay these pensions now. We are withholding that money. The question of the Local Loans is another matter that we are not properly dealing with. Taxes are still being collected, and land annuities are still being collected, or at least a certain amount of them, and these moneys are not being paid over. These items I should say would roughly amount to between £2,000,000 and £3,000,000. I have not the accurate figures by me.
Apart from the question as to whether or not the economic war is temporary, it is wrong for the Minister to attempt to borrow for bounties as long as he is getting these moneys into the Treasury. He is getting these moneys in and he is not paying out. He cannot claim items on one side of the account without acknowledging them on the other side as well. Furthermore, the country must look to the question as to whether the economic war is or is not likely to be temporary, or whether it is a charge that is likely to recur from year to year. The Government's policy, so far as one can understand it, is in favour of the assumption that the dispute is going to be permanent, and the only way in which they can hope to escape the tariffs and so the bounties is by the cessation of our exports which can be tariffed by the British Government to make good the moneys that are withheld at the moment. That must be the outlook of the Government. They are making no effort to end this war. Their policy is to keep it on. They cannot get out of the cost of it, out of the necessity for paying the bounties until they have achieved the disappearance of the bulk of our export trade. If that is so, and if that is the outlook, it makes borrowing still less excusable. If we are to do away with a large portion or the principal portion of our export trade, the country will be much less able to bear taxation in the future than it is now. For that reason, borrowing for bounties is altogether unjustifiable. There are many other items in this connection that could be questioned. But dealing with that particular item alone, I hold that the Minister is not justified in the borrowing he has indulged in.
There is one other matter, the excess profits duty, apparently on incomes earned almost close on a generation ago. Excess profits duty collection is either at a steady figure or it even goes up. That figure does not in any sense mean increased or continued prosperity in any part of the country. That is taxation of accounts and earnings long past. The fact that this figure goes up is proof of only one thing, namely, greater efficiency on the part of the collecting machine. I wonder is it the same with regard to income tax? Everybody knows as the years go by that the income tax machine has become quite efficient in its method of collecting. People who once escaped paying income tax have now been roped in. Undoubtedly, the machine is able to get more now out of the population. Therefore as to what can be gathered from the absence of any diminution, anybody who knows the increasing efficiency of that machine must know that that is a proof not of increasing prosperity in the country but of the more perfect working of the collecting machine.
One of the objections that I have always found in connection with the presentation of its financial policy by this Government is its concealment of vital matters. I had occasion to call attention to this matter on the Vote on Account. I have to complain that no longer is the Budget statement anything like an adequate representation even of the taxation side of the conditions of the country. This Budget statement does not deal with the taxes or anything like the taxes that the country has to meet and the taxes that have been put on since the present Ministry took office, and since the Minister and his colleagues took over responsibility for them. The Estimates no longer cover all activities. There are officials now employed and being continually added to all over the country who are not accounted for in the Estimates at all. Everybody who has been through the country knows that. At the present moment we are in the process of passing a Bill through the House—the Dairy Prices Stabilisation Bill. This Bill is really only one of many. It contemplates the creation of a number of new officials. They will not appear in the Estimates at all. They will be paid directly out of the revenue that will be coming in under this Bill. There are similar provisions in other Acts with regard to other officials whose names will not appear in the general Estimates. As everybody knows there has been an increase in the number of officials and when questioned about this matter the Minister for Finance says "see the numbers; compare them." That is the expenditure side of the concealment—e.g. the number of new officials who are being created daily all over the country. On the taxation side, you have an exact parallel to that. Many of the taxes the people have now to bear do not appear in the financial statement. No reference is made to these taxes except in one case where the Minister practically says "I am transferring this charge from the Budget to somewhere else." But he has not taken the charge off the shoulders of the people. The consumer or producer is still paying—or both combine to pay. There are many of these taxes. By at least a couple of million pounds, this Budget statement does not represent the real taxation situation so far as this country is concerned. In the case of butter, bacon, beef, sugar and tea, there have been additional taxes imposed, and no mention of them has been made here. All these get off the general yearly financial statement and they get concealed. They are not referred to in the Budget. Therefore, the actual taxation that this country has to meet in the way of taxation is increased to a much greater extent than the actual revenue increase shown in the Budget indicates. Under this so-called poor man's Government indirect taxation has gone up. The acknowledged indirect taxation has gone up for the last three or four years. There was always the cry that that was the taxation that hit the poor to the same amount as the rich and that it hit them, therefore, not in equal proportions. It hits the poor relatively speaking much harder than it hits the rich. That taxation is the particular type of taxation this Government have increased during their period of office —acknowledged and unacknowledged; an acknowledged increase in taxation of well over a million or more, and an unacknowledged increase of several millions in the way of the concealed taxes to which I have referred.
Naturally, that gets the support of the two Government Parties. Yet they must know perfectly well that that can have only one effect. It is making the lives of the people who have to meet these taxes more difficult; it is undoubtedly depressing the standard of living; it can only have that effect. They have gone a certain distance in the direction of direct taxes. They saw that in that they had reached the limit; that they would do more damage even to the Exchequer by going on with that; that they would paralyse the industry of the country by going further. Hence, this year they took the plunge and acknowledged openly—though not to the full extent—that they will have to tax every man, woman and child further than they taxed them before. But, in addition to what they have acknowledged openly, I complain that they have taxed every man, woman and child secretly as well in connection with these other duties I have mentioned. Some of the taxes are on the necessaries of life, such as sugar, which is more necessary even for the children than for the grown-up people. The consumers have to pay more, and that applies to practically every man, woman and child, to the poor as well as to the rich, and in proportion more to the poor. They have to pay something like 21/- per cwt. on imported sugar and on the sugar produced at home something like 4/6 per cwt. to the Exchequer, and possibly a concealed tax of about 17/- per cwt.
To whom do they pay it?
I know the Minister is fairly ignorant of the details of his Budget, but if he does not know that the people who buy sugar or bacon or butter have to pay that increase, he must be completely unaware of what has been occurring in this country and in this House for the past couple of years. The consumer certainly does not pay it to himself in these particular cases. The Minister knows well that the policy of the Government has increased these taxes beyond all reasonable proportions.
I think that is one of the greatest blots not merely on the policy of the Government, but particularly on the statement of the Minister for Finance. We might have expected that the Minister in dealing with the taxation in this country would make that quite clear. After all, the thing he should have taken into account is the taxable capacity of the people. He has always been eloquent upon that. It is not, therefore, that the idea was new to him; the idea was very familiar to him, but he never touched upon that from the beginning to the end of his speech. Anybody who knows the country knows that two things must be taken into account when dealing with the question of taxation—the prosperity of the country and the amount of taxation that the people have to bear already. There was no fair statement of the amount of taxation that is borne already, and no attempt to face the question of the taxable capacity of the country.
It is nothing short of criminal to increase taxation at a time when this country is facing an economic crisis of the magnitude of the one we are facing; at a time when the principal industry of the country is acknowledged, even by Ministers themselves, to be suffering an economic crisis; at a time when the farmers have practically the last penny screwed out of them. They are still the main source of production in this country. I am not dealing with what Ministers may hope for at some distant date from their industrial policy. At the moment the farmers continue to be the main source of production. But they have been made bankrupt as the result of the policy of the Government. That is the time when the Government determine to increase taxation, when the country is less able to bear it. These people, who were always very eloquent on the taxable capacity of the country, have imposed additional taxation for the last three years since they came into office. They have imposed more and more burdens, even though the people are less able to bear them.
There was no advertence whatever to that consideration in the Budget statement, nor was there any fair representation of the amount of taxation borne by the people at present. There was what amounts to a deliberate concealment of that particular side of the matter. In that sense again, even openly now, the Minister may claim this as a poor man's Budget; because it is the poor man that now openly bears these taxes. He would do it anyhow in the loss of employment or otherwise, when there is increased taxation. But now the Minister has openly and shamelessly imposed it, and he has got the applause of his own Party for it, and the harmless benedictions, with slight condemnation, of the Labour Party.
That Labour Party even voted last evening for an increase in the tax on tobacco. They supported the other branch of their Party in that. I have been in this House for a number of years, and I have heard the Labour Party quite eloquent on the iniquity of interfering with what was not merely one of the supreme pleasures of life, but now almost a necessity for the labouring man. That Party, or the few of them that were present, went tamely into the Lobby last night and supported the Government policy of a higher price for tobacco—at least, I gather a higher price for tobacco may not, of course, be the only consequence that may follow from this particular tax, so far even as labour is concerned.
Listening to the Minister's statement, yesterday, there were some remarks which might convey the impression that the Minister was giving reliefs. He referred to certain tariffs and taxes as no longer being remunerative. He referred to the disappearance of revenue from the operation of certain tariffs. The disappearance of revenue as a result of the operation of these tariffs made it necessary, according to him, to impose further taxation. For the moment, a careless listener or reader might go away with the impression that he was relieving the public, so to speak, of the charges they were bearing under those tariffs, and that he was simply balancing that by putting on something against it. Of course that was not so. These tariffs will remain. The public still pay, not necessarily into the Exchequer, but they pay to the full on the articles they buy under this method of indirect taxation. They are still as operative as ever as far as the paying public is concerned.
They may not any longer be as remunerative to the Minister, but the public has to pay the full amount. The revenue has fallen, but the public pays. New taxes are put on. This reminds me that the concealed taxes to which I have already referred are not the only concealed taxes that are paid by the people of this country. One of the effects of the tariff policy of the Government has been that it has put taxation on the ordinary people which nobody can accurately calculate. There may be a difference of opinion about the extent to which prices were sent up above what they otherwise may have been had those tariffs not been imposed. The bulk of the people believes that they are sent up to the full extent. Competition would secure this. After all it was on competition that the Minister's colleague, the Minister for Agriculture, relied the other day for the passing of certain benefits to the producing public so far as butter was concerned. It is on competition also—foreign and other competition—that people must rely to see that prices do not go beyond a certain limit so far as tariffs are concerned. The concealed tax is there also. It comes out of the public pocket, and it is spent on fostering the new industries that are being set up. It is paid by the public, and it is not acknowledged either in this Budget or in any other Budget. Nobody can tell even approximately what it amounts to. What will be the result of all this piling on of indirect taxes on every article that the ordinary man eats, on most of the things he drinks, and on practically everything he wears and everything he uses? What is there left now on which he does not pay tax? Mind you the ordinary person, even the unemployed as I have said, must bear his share of that burden, because what he buys is also dearer to him. What will the result be? What must the result be? It means that the real wages of the ordinary working man are bound to go down lower than they otherwise would have gone. The general trend of world prices might have operated partly against that tendency, and may, to some extent, have kept up the real wages but the trend and the inevitable result and drive of the policy of the Government is to put down the real wages of the ordinary man lower than they otherwise would have been had it not been for that policy. What must the result of that be? What must the result be when the ordinary labouring man sees that he has to pay more for his children's boots and clothes than he otherwise would have had to pay? He feels that the wages he was getting a couple of years ago are no longer adequate to meet his outgoings, and there is labour trouble. That is inevitable, and is almost a natural and necessary consequence of the policy of the Government.
The continuation of the tax on coal is quite typical of the Government. There is no reference to it in the Budget. It can hardly be debated under the Budget except in dealing with the general financial policy of the Government. There is no reference to it in the Budget statement, or in the Budget taxes. That is another tax on the people which is not discussed here. We were told we would have an opportunity of discussing it when it comes to the ratification of the pact. Again in that case there has been so much money taken out of the pocket of the ordinary householder, be he rich or poor. Remember the justification that was offered for this tax originally; it was not a revenue producing tax at all! It was to hit England! It never did hit England in the ordinary sense. It was the people of this country who always paid it, but whereas before they could have escaped it by getting non-English coal, now under this largest Republican Party—I believe that is the official designation—they are compelled to take English coal. They are compelled to pay this tax. There is no pretence now that the Englishman is paying it, or that it is damaging the English producer of coal in the slightest. On the contrary, it is kept on now as a mere revenue producing tax, to the detriment of the ordinary people of this country, and especially of those who buy coal in smaller quantities.
I have referred to the largest Republican Party. There is one thing, anyhow, to which I listened with a certain amount of pleasure in the Budget speech of the Minister, and that is the determinedly Free State phraseology about the whole lot of it on the political side. There was about it what I call a Free State tone, which even the non-Republican Party that preceded them would not dare to indulge in. That at least is a comfort to those on this side of the House. The political terminology of the speech was determinedly Free State, and nothing else. What are we having as a result of the Government policy? We are having gradually in every industry the taking over, and management to a large extent, of those industries from the ordinary people into the hands of the Government, and the consequential creation of more and more officials. They are overloading the bureaucracy of the country, and remember the more you overload it the more it will tend to develop. You are having the rapid bureaucracisation of this country as a result of every measure that is introduced in this House. That will not make for the more efficient running of the ordinary business of this country, on which ultimately the wealth of the country will depend. In their own sphere, and it is a very important one, anybody who has had anything to do with the officials of this country knows how efficient they are, and how loyal they are to whatever Government they serve. What is happening now? They are asked to undertake more and more the running of the business of this country. That will inevitably follow from the policy of the Government— and for that these officials are not suited. I referred already to some of the machinery which the Government has tightened up. I admit the efficiency of the machinery in so far as they are ordinary civil servants, but we are passing far beyond that.
Looking over the speech of the Minister I am not sure that what I am about to refer to was not one of his elaborate jokes. I can tell him anyway that it is a much better joke than the ones he deliberately made. He made references to the financial credit of the country, and, in his peroration, to the necessity for turning all our energies into the proper channels. He should have said one thing. From his previous history, from the policy of the present Government at the moment, and the policy they have been pursuing for the last couple of years, I think instead of the hammer and the loom he could have taken—and the Minister for Agriculture could hardly have objected—"the hammer and the sickle." Imagine the Minister for Finance of the present Government coming into this House and saying that he is saving the country from what is happening in Russia!
Some may admit that they have not deliberately gone in the Russian direction. But everybody knows perfectly well that their policy for the last three or four years, even if it has not been in the direction that is referred to in the closing pages of the Budget speech, has made remarkably smooth the way of that policy and of people wanting the triumph of that policy. They may profess to condemn or object to that policy as much as they like, but they certainly have contributed to the advance of such a policy and made smooth its path. The Minister referred to Soviet Russia, and the best that can be said of him is that he has acted as Kerenski did, and made smooth the path of those people by neglect of duty on the one hand, and by their positive policy on the other hand. However, it is very difficult to follow the Minister's sense of humour. His appeal for every effort to be made to keep up the credit of the country was a jeu d'esprit on his part which was much better than the others. But he indicated little change of heart. He referred in another portion of his Budget statement once more to this particular Russian tendency. The Minister, so far as shamelessness of statement is concerned—I merely mean it in that way—knows no limits. His objection to the advance of Communism is as humorous as his representation of the attitude of the farmers of the country and their ability to pay the exactions of his Government; and his bringing in of the Communistic flag on their part is still more humorous.
I presume the Minister has given some study to the history of the country to which he referred. If he did he would see the extraordinary similarity between the treatment of the farmers in that country by the Soviet Government and the treatment which his Government is meting out to them here. The analogy is most striking and is well worth his attention. There is one thing about this Budget which strikes me. There seems to have been some slight effort to lift the curtain and to bring it home to every man, woman and child in the country that they will have to pay, and pay heavily, for the policy of the Government. My objection is that the curtain is only partially lifted and remains still hanging over a great portion of the damage done by the Government's policy.
Deputy O'Sullivan expressed some wonder at the applause which came from the Government Benches at the conclusion of the statement by the Minister for Finance yesterday. But Deputy O'Sullivan apparently overlooked the fact that that applause had been led by the President himself, and that it did not mark so much approval of the policy of the Government as that "When father turns we all turn"—that when the President claps we all clap, whether right or wrong. This, we are told, is a poor man's Budget. To-day in the Library I picked up a copy of the Irish Times and started reading the leading article. Having got a certain distance down the article, I had to look again at the top of the paper to make sure that I was not reading the Irish Press. The Irish Times, to be sure, has very good reason to be nice to the Minister. They say they could not see how he could do anything else, because every impost in the present Budget lies heavily on the poor and the workers and touches very lightly those for whom the Irish Times caters. Every item in the Budget is one that will lean very heavily on the poor.
We heard Deputy Norton last evening, as leader of the Labour Party, speaking on this Budget. I was a member of the Labour Party for a number of years. During that time there were Budgets introduced that did not lean nearly so heavily on the poor as this Budget. These Budgets were introduced at a time when the workers were not so badly off as they are to-day, and when we had not so many thousands of unemployed, yet we did not find in these days a position taken up by the leader of the Labour Party that we found taken up yesterday in this House. I often sat here and wondered, and, if you like, admired Deputy Norton's very marked collection of forcible adjectives. I think it will be admitted by everybody that Deputy Norton has a rather unique collection of adjectives and that they are very forcible. But the strongest adjective he could produce yesterday from his very great stock to apply to this Budget was that it was disappointing. Imagine that being applied to a Budget that imposes heavy taxes upon the necessaries—the absolute necessaries— of life—on tea, sugar, bread, butter, coal, meat, right down the whole list of necessaries. Bread, butter and tea if it is not known to the Minister it is known to many members of his Party, and ought to be known to all members of the Labour Party, and to most members of this House, is the main food, unfortunately, of the majority of the workers, and of all the unemployed in this country, and particularly in the cities and towns. I have no hesitation in saying, from my own personal knowledge, that for six days of the week the food of the worker and his family consists of bread, butter and tea three times a day.
Nonsense.
Deputy Kelly says "nonsense"——
Mr. Kelly
Yes, absolute nonsense!
Bread, butter and tea is their food, and they are lucky if they have butter all the time. If we are going to put 4d. per pound on butter, consumed by the workers and by the poor, they will have to be content with margarine and not butter in the future.
Drivel.
It may be drivel to the Deputy, but not to many thousands of the poor in Dublin, and the Deputy knows it, because he is reputed to have a better knowledge of the City of Dublin than anyone in this House. Bread, butter and tea! What does it mean from the point of view of wages? A great increase in the cost of living, because, generally speaking, the wages in this country have been reduced in the last three years. Wages are reduced, and the cost of living is being increased and considerably increased. Let me take one item alone—the Coal-Cattle Pact. As a result of that pact the price of coal was increased to consumers by 6d. per cwt. In the ordinary workingman's home, where there is a family, they will burn at least two cwts. of coal in the week. That means an extra shilling. There is an extra 4d. per lb. on tea. People here will have to pay 1d. per lb. more for sugar than they are paying in Belfast or at the other side. There is 4d. per lb. extra for butter. I do not know what the actual increase will be on bread and flour, but I should say it will be fairly considerable. There is an increase in the price of beef, and an increase in the price of bacon. In fact, there is an increase all round, and that, as I have said, in a falling wage market. I wonder what line would Deputy Norton, as leader of the Labour Party, take if the suggestion were that there was to be a general reduction in wages of, say, 4/- per week all round? I am sure he would use very much stronger language than the word "disappointment." That is the position. It means a very definite increase in the cost of living, and a real hardship on the poor.
Now let us take the question of the unemployed. Take the position of those who are in receipt of unemployment assistance. Will not this increased taxation mean a very definite reduction in the purchasing power of what they are getting? Everybody knows that what they were receiving was small enough already—6/- a week for some of them. They will not be able to get the same value for their 6/- next week when the provisions of this Budget become effective. The 6/- will not have the same purchasing power that it had last week or the week before. That means a very definite reduction so far as they are concerned, and we have all this coming from a Government that promised better times for all classes: less taxation and more prosperity. I should say it is more taxation and less prosperity—very definitely so.
The Minister for Finance yesterday, in so far as he dealt at all with the question of unemployment, dismissed it with a few empty platitudes. There were certain schemes; and then we heard all about the great provision that was being made for social services: £250,000 for widows and orphans. I do not want to comment on the Widows and Orphans Bill itself because another opportunity will present itself for doing that. But there were two sets of figures given yesterday that struck me very forcibly when the Minister was reading his Budget statement. He mentioned the figure of £150,000 for relief works and the figure of £250,000 for widows' and orphans' pensions, making a total of £400,000. Then he told us that he is going to save or take from the old age pensioners £100,000 and £300,000 from unemployment assistance, making a total of £400,000. We get in the figures given by the Minister for Finance yesterday an idea of the Government's generosity to the widows and orphans. They are taking £400,000 from the old age pensioners and unemployment assistance, and giving £400,000 for widows' and orphans' pensions and relief works. This is the Government that prides itself on its social services. We have the two things: on the one side, the old age pensions and the unemployment assistance, and on the other, widows' and orphans' pensions and relief works. That is how the money is going to be provided, taking £400,000 from the two services I have mentioned and giving it to the other two, with not a word at all about the new taxes on tea, sugar, butter, flour, coal, tobacco, and so on. I am not at all surprised that the members of the Government Party are very silent on this Budget. If they were to become vocal and were true to themselves, then I suggest they could only become vocal by denouncing the Budget, and I believe that most of them in their hearts do denounce it. The Minister has been brought to realise that his policy and the policy of the Government has been an absolute failure. The one outstanding feature of this Budget is that it is an absolute and complete confession of failure on the part of the Government.
The Minister made an appeal to the House yesterday. He held up before us as a model to be followed the example of patriotism and the splendid civic spirit displayed by the people of Great Britain. That appeal came very well from him: an appeal to all parties to uphold the credit and the financial stability of the State, an appeal from men who by word and deed had done all in their power—had done their damnedst—to smash that credit and stability.
That is strong language.
Does the Minister not remember the statements made on the eve of the flotátion of the last loan floated by the previous Government, by the present Vice-President, and by the man who is now Minister for Industry and Commerce, as to the state of the country? Does the Minister remember reading in the newspapers on the morning that that loan was floated the statement that the then Government was on the verge of bankruptcy—that it was in the bog of bankruptcy? Was that the way to uphold the credit of the country and the credit of the State? The Minister has no necessity to ask for assistance from this side of the House to uphold the credit of the State. It is prepared to give him all the assistance he requires in that way. As soon as the Minister and the Government of which he is a member show us that they are prepared to govern, to govern impartially, to govern in the interests of the whole State and of the whole people, and not in the interests of any section of the people: that they are prepared to take measures which will enable us to uphold the credit of the State, then they will get from this side of the House the fullest co-operation that even they can ask for. But so long as the Minister and other members of the Government proceed by word and, as I have said, by deed, to damage this country and its financial credit there is very little use in their appealing either inside or outside the House for assistance, because the people will judge the Minister and the Government not by the empty words that we have to listen to now and again in this House, but by their works, and in the measure in which those works be good or bad, the response to the appeal will be good or bad.
Is the Government Party ashamed to discuss the Budget?
If the Deputy likes I shall conclude now.
We are discussing here a Budget that imposes a crushing blow on people who are already crushed by the destruction of their main sources of industry, and that purposes to put additional taxation on the country which will fall on the poorest sections of the people. That additional taxation is falling on that section of the people, I believe, for the reason that the Minister realises that he has squeezed as much money as he can out of the people who can be reached by income tax, so that when he is driven to get additional money to carry on his Government, he has to fall back upon and to collect the pence and the half-pennies and the sixpences of the greater number of the people—the poorer classes. Faced with that situation, there is not a voice raised from the Fianna Fáil Party Benches or from the empty Labour Benches to answer the points that were put by Deputy Professor O'Sullivan and Deputy Morrissey.
I ask: Can the Minister for Finance not get a single voice to support him in his own Benches? Can he not get a single voice to support him in the Labour Benches—to intervene and say what they think, in a general way, of his Budget proposals? Last night, we had the position that, reacting against what they could not face the country about, and what they could not explain to the country, the members of the Labour Party voted against the Government's proposals on such items as tea; and then, when the Government's majority was reduced to three, the Fianna Fáil Whip was put on the members of the Labour Party and, as a result, they were dragged, rebelliously no doubt, but with all the patience of people who are definitely tied to their sins, at the tail of the Fianna Fáil Party through the Fianna Fáil Lobby to put, not only additional taxation on the people—not alone taxation which would raise the cost of living to the poor, but additional taxation that would have the effect of crushing new Irish industries in the same way. It is only two years ago since we had a Labour Party, again supporting proposals of the present Government with regard to the tobacco industry in this country, acquiescing in the closing down of an establishment in this city that gave employment to 300 persons. What were the hopes raised in the minds of some of the people who, two years ago, lost their employment there? Did they not have a hope that they were going to be reinstated in that work either by Gallaher's or by some other firm taking over the same establishment? I ask the Minister for Industry and Commerce: Can he deny that the Labour Party that followed him into the Lobby here are going to crush the hope that was rising in the hearts of these people that they were going to get employment in a tobacco industry on these premises? The Minister cannot deny it, because, if he were in touch with the Irish tobacco industry in this country, he would know very well what the effects of the proposals to tax tobacco are going to be.
It is no wonder that we have empty Labour Benches here to-day. It is no wonder that we have silent voices on the Fianna Fáil Benches here to-day. The President and his Ministers have been considering the proposals contained in this Budget for a number of weeks. I wonder did any of them think on the 27th April last, when, perhaps, they were going into the conditions that existed in the country and into the question of remedying those conditions—I wonder did they think of the "Cease Fire" order that the President issued on the 27th April, 1923, twelve years ago. I wonder did they, when considering the present war situation, take into account from whom it was going to come. The Minister for Finance wound up his speech yesterday on a horrible picture of war. Europe was preparing for war, according to him yesterday. I think that what was in the heart of the Minister simply slipped out across his lips and that he simply spoke of war because war is very much in the minds of the Minister and his colleagues and that they are hoping to cover up the present deplorable conditions in Irish agriculture that they have brought about by their own policy here, and are hoping to make a success of their agricultural policy here, by the dismal and despicable prospect of a European war. I suggest that that, possibly, is the reason we heard about war in the tail end of the Minister's speech. If the Minister repudiates that suggestion, will he tell us how and when he expects a "Cease Fire" order to be given in this present economic war?
The Minister talks about the destruction of people's property by war and about the destruction of their spirit. Was there ever any war-machine sweeping through the fields of Europe, and destroying the produce of the farmers, in any way comparable to the way this so-called economic war has swept through the fields of this country and smashed down and broken the spirit of the people here? Was there ever any war in Europe that smashed down and destroyed the property and the spirit of the people to the extent that the property and the spirit of our people have been destroyed by the Minister's economic war? The spirit of our people has been broken and demoralised by circumstances that have been the outcome of the war that the Minister is engaged in at the present time—the war that the Minister's own colleagues started. The Minister need not look far to see threats of war and to see that war is advancing across the fields of Europe. He need only stand in an Irish field to-day and he will see the war that is going on all round him.
The President, hypocritically I think, but whether hypocritically or not, claimed to stand outside the beginnings of the Civil War and claimed to have certain moral grounds underneath his feet that would enable him to appeal in a "Cease Fire" order in certain eventualities. The Labour Party, equally hypocritically, in my opinion, but again, whether hypocritically or not, claimed that they stood outside this economic war and, so to speak, washed their hands of firing the first shot, which the President claimed to have fired, in the economic war. Surely, we might have expected something like a "Cease Fire" cry from the Labour Party when they see the appalling conditions that, month by month, and day by day, are being created as a result of the Government policy and, particularly, when they see the conditions brought about by increased taxation. In view of these things, surely we might have expected from the Labour Party something like a cry that it was time to stop this senseless war. But, no. We are simply told that the impoverished people of this country must pay out more taxes; that the average person in this country must be put on a kind of per capita basis, the effect of which is that there is as much call on, say, a carpenter, whether he is in or out of work, as on the rich person. On top of that, we have the sanctimonious lesson of what the Minister for Justice would call “the accursed crowd,” who, if their mouths cannot be shut in the way he and his colleagues would like to shut them, must be shut in some way, to the effect that since they are citizens of this country, the credit of which ought to be as high as that of any country in the world, they should confine themselves to statements such as the statements of citizens of any other country.
Does the Minister think that it would increase the credit of this country if all the men or women who were elected to represent the people in their Parliament shut their mouths like members of the Labour Party, and tamely followed the crack of the war lords' whip into the war lords' lobby? The Minister is not going to get the people to cease saying the things that should be said. To-day we have names being bandied around by the Minister for Defence, and charges made against some of his political opponents, that when a war was on in 1923, and when executions were being carried out, they were going around crying for peace. There are men in this country to-day who are not afraid to tell the Minister that he would be doing better for his country by going around and looking for peace than by going around with humbugging phrases on his lips, going deeper and deeper into the devastating conditions that are being brought about here. This country wants peace. If you cannot win a war by common sense, intelligence and argument, the thing to do is to sit down in the field where the war should be carried on or in the council chamber where there can be discussions. You are not going to win this war by crushing the people out of existence, by making them pay 8d. on cigarettes this year and 1/4 next year, or by paying 4d. on tea this year and 8d. next year. The Minister is not without the capacity to add two and two together.
The Deputy should have consulted Deputy O'Sullivan before making a wild statement like that.
The Minister made many wild statements.
The Minister is capable of trying to hide the true answer from the people outside or from those who criticise him here. He is quite capable of adding two and two together. I should like to ask the Minister for Industry and Commerce to open his mouth and to address himself to this subject. It is not every member of that Party has the neck that the Minister has, so that he can afford to stick his tongue into the discussion where the Attorney-General, Deputy Victory or some of the other Deputies behind him might not like to do so. I should like the Minister for Industry and Commerce to address himself to questions like these: Does he deny that our farmers have lost appalling sums in trade since his Government came into office; does he deny that our internal and external trade has been reduced by huge sums; does he deny that the number of people in receipt of public assistance has gone up; does he deny that even in counties where subsidised crops have to the greatest extent been grown, there has not been an increase in the numbers employed in agriculture; does he deny that the greatest fall has been in the provinces where the greatest acreage, of subsidised crops has been grown; does he deny that the greatest fall in agricultural wages—and there have been substantial falls—has not taken place in these areas where the greatest amount of subsidised crops are grown? He cannot deny these things, because they are shown in the figures officially published by his Department. Will the Minister for Industry and Commerce tell us what is meant by the boast of the Minister for Finance last night, that they had "embarked upon a reorganisation of our industrial and agricultural economy"? Is that the way the reorganisation of our industrial economy is going on?
In spite of the vast sums spent on the growing of subsidised crops, in spite of the great hopes of that policy, in so far as the figures are available for 1933 they show that there has simply been decreased employment in agriculture and decreased wages for agricultural workers, even in the special classes of agricultural workers that his Department takes an interest in. The Department does not take an interest in the type of agricultural worker that the county committee of agriculture in Wexford concerns itself with. That committee has declared that the average wage of agricultural workers in Wexford, in addition to meals, is 8/- per week. The Minister for Industry and Commerce takes an interest in the type of agricultural worker who in the province of Leinster was paid 24/6 in July, 1931, but whose wages had fallen to 21/6 in July, 1934. The wages of such agricultural workers as he takes an interest in and from whom his Department collects particulars between July, 1931, and July, 1934, had fallen in Leinster by 3/-, in Munster by 4/-, in Connaught by 2/6 and in Ulster by 3/-. Will the Minister say if that is the type of thing we are to expect under the boasted reorganisation of our agricultural industry, that the Minister for Finance last night told us was one of the things we were so dearly paying for? The Minister for Finance also told us that one of the reasons why he had imposed additional taxation was that owing to the rapid extension of our industrial and agricultural programme the yield from the old Customs and Excise duties had decreased. If the Minister thinks like some of the people who dodge questions that are put to them, that it would not be convenient or expedient to deal with the agricultural position, will he tell us what is the position on the industrial side that makes him think it is worth while paying the cost of the economic war for this industrial regeneration about which the Minister has treated us from time to time with long litanies of industrial development here? Like the Minister for Finance, the Minister for Industry and Commerce explained the falling off in our imports, and said that the falling off in revenue from Customs duties was due to the great industrial expansion here.
It is the custom of the Bureau of Information to watch with eagle eye any remark made that would reflect upon the well-being of this country, and particularly on Government policy. Every force known to the present Government has been used up to date, from the withholding of advertisements, threatening to withhold advertisements, and inquiries by the police to get people to desist from making statements that they do not like. As I say, a very minute search was made of the daily and local papers for anything that should be rebutted, either openly or by the more third-degree-like method of the employment of the police. Nevertheless, in spite of that care on the part of the Government, there has been no attempt yet made to reply to the statements that have been very formally made here in this House and in publications elsewhere that the result of these operations was the destruction of our farmers' incomes, a destruction which has brought about such a reduction of the purchasing capacity of our people that the consumption of very necessary articles has been considerably reduced.
Butter?
The Minister tells us that the fall in the imports of boots and shoes and clothing has resulted, I think, in a reduction of £190,000 Customs duty and that this is due to the industrial development here. But I challenged the Minister already that between the calendar year 1931 and the calendar year 1934, a substantial fall had taken place in the use of such necessary articles as boots and shoes, soap and candles, sugar confectionery, hosiery, wholesale clothing and furniture, and I based this on a certain calculation which I indicated to the Minister at the time. Very shortly after I gave the Minister that challenge we got, belatedly, from the Minister's Department the more detailed statistics of imports for 1933 and the Parliamentary Report of the Census of Production in respect of certain articles. On these figures of the Minister himself I challenged him in the case of boots and shoes that the trade fell from £1,986,000 odd in 1931 to £1,729,000 odd in 1933 or that the fall in the value of boots and shoes purchased was £256,000 or one-eighth in these years.
Would the Deputy make his point clear? Do I understand him to say that the value of boots worn by the people of this country fell by so many thousand pounds?
Yes.
Not in terms of quality?
I would like the Minister for Industry and Commerce to address himself not only to the fall in the matter of value but in quality.
I should like to be certain what the Deputy has in mind.
The Minister is going to be left in no doubt as to what I have in mind.
The Deputy is sometimes somewhat ambiguous.
We have had this fall of one-eighth in the use of boots and shoes in 1933, in the second year of the economic war. I am suggesting to the Minister that other data are available to him from which he can even now realise that the fall in the purchase of boots and shoes in 1934 is somewhat greater. I am charging the Minister and I am charging the Government with this—that they are imposing this additional taxation and that they are imposing it on that part of the population with the smallest earning capacity and therefore, with the smallest consuming capacity at the same time when their policy is to reduce them to such a condition that the sales of boots and shoes was one-eighth down in the second year of the economic war as compared with 1931.
Does the Deputy say what year?
1931. That is the year I am comparing with the second year of the Fianna Fáil Government and the economic war. The sales of boots and shoes by the people was one-eighth lower than it was in the last year of the previous Administration. In the case of hosiery the fall in value was £229,000. In that section, the value had fallen by one-fifth. In the case of soap and candles the value has fallen by £69,000 or one-eighth.
The Deputy is merely adding the import figures and the production figures together.
I am giving the net import figures and the production figures here and I am showing that the import and production figures for 1933 were less by one-eighth in the case of boots and shoes, one-fifth in the case of hosiery, and one-eighth in the case of soaps and candles than the same commodities totalled in 1931.
The Deputy does not see the fallacy of that argument.
I do not see the fallacy of that argument and I put it up to the Minister does he realise what is happening? I know sufficient about the Fianna Fáil Government to realise that if there was any fallacy in that we would have heard of it before now. I would be glad to hear of it now because if it is necessary to stop advertisements to the Cork Examiner and other local papers because they criticised the wheat policy and if it was necessary to threaten a Wexford paper that the advertisements would be withdrawn if they dared to say that the Minister for Industry and Commerce is concerned about the unemployment situation here, and if they consider it necessary to send detectives to newspaper offices to find out who is writing articles in particular papers, then I think they ought to think it necessary to find out what are the facts with regard to this matter. These are only some of the industries for which the Minister has given us this material up to the present. In addition to boots and shoes, hosiery, soap and candles we have the position that the sales of furniture have fallen by one-eighth; that the consumption of jams and sugar confectionery has fallen by one-fifth, to the extent of £362,900. In that latter industry the Minister has plenty of material at his disposal to indicate to him even now that what happened in the 1933 condition of the people resulting in smaller consumption on these lines, happened in 1934. He is not only depending upon his own statistics to realise what is happening there but except he has put as big a wall of glass between the manufacturers of this country and himself as he has put between the tram strike and himself he must know from the manufacturers in this country what condition some of them are coming to owing to the reduced purchasing power of the people.
Why does the Deputy say that?
I say that because it is a fact.
Is the Deputy contending that the cost of living is rising?
That the people have not sufficient money to consume as much of these necessary articles of use as in 1931. Let the Minister not twist. The Minister may figure out his cost of living and do it perfectly honestly, but, if I am a farmer and my income is cut to one-fifth of what it was two years ago, and if I purchase less boots and clothing, the cost-of-living figure has nothing, good, bad, or indifferent to do with it.
With the same amount of money you can buy more now than you bought two years ago or four years ago.
More of what?
Of anything.
I should like the Minister to address himself to that, because he published his census of production figures in 1933 for a certain number of articles. He might easily take one of them as a sample and give us the figures upon which he bases these remarks.
They are published.
I will be very glad if the Minister will tell us where the figures are published. If he means that he has published an index of the cost of living in the Trade Journal and that is perfect and conclusive evidence, I think we are entitled to ask him for a little more. We are entitled, if he questions what I say with regard to boots and shoes, to hear him argue that boots and hosiery, soap, candles, furniture, jams and sugar confectionery are cheaper to-day than they were.
That is not the argument. The argument is that there are more boots and shoes being bought at the present time than four years ago by at least 500,000 pairs.
The people have less money to pay for boots and shoes to-day than in 1931 and the sales of boots and shoes in 1931 and 1933 fell by nearly £250,000.
The Deputy set out to prove that the number of boots and shoes used in this country in the year 1933 was less than in 1931. Let him stick to that.
The Minister can stick to the number of boots and shoes if he likes, and he can twist if he likes, and the Minister for Industry and Commerce can dodge behind the figures he calls the price index. But why does the Minister for Industry and Commerce publish figures as to the value of boot production in this country and as to the value of the imports of boots into this country if we cannot take the money standard of these into account? What is affecting this country at present is the money position. The trouble with the farmer is, not that he has not sufficient cattle, but that he cannot get money for them; and that when he produces calves he has to kill them. The Minister for Finance at least, when dealing with his Budget, ought not to quarrel with keeping to one particular index—the financial index of things. He is not going to collect his taxes in cast-off boots or clothes. He is going to look for his four pennies on the lb. of tea, and his eight pennies on the lb. of tobacco; he is going to look for all the other imposts he has put on the people in coin of the realm.
The Minister for Industry and Commerce, as I say, has published statistics which show that the money expended by the people on boots and shoes, hosiery, soap, candles, furniture, jams and sugar confectionery has fallen by a very considerable amount in the two years of the economic war. I suggest to the Minister for Finance, too, that, from the point of view of the manufacturer and the traders who handle these commodities, the figure of cost, the money figure, is the figure that has very real implications for them. It does not matter to a shopkeeper if he sells three pairs of boots and makes 3/- on them; but it would be a much better proposition for him to sell one good pair of boots and make 6/-. I quite appreciate that the Minister for Industry and Commerce will probably have to walk down some side streets and dodge the question of cost; but the fact, nevertheless, remains that these figures are published in respect of a limited number of things, and when the figures for clothing and other matters are available, we shall probably find the same thing, because, for the year 1934, based on other figures, when we consider the figure that the Minister has given us for employment in the clothing industry, we find the same thing with regard to clothing and some other articles of general use.
If the Minister seeks to show that there is no contraction in the consumption of these articles by the people, I should like him to say whether he thinks he can, by his policy, reduce the agricultural exports from this country by the millions he has reduced them and not bring about a condition of things which, I say, the figures there show. In the year 1931 the total value of live stock and livestock products exported from this country was £27,185,900; for the year 1934, the third year of the economic war, that figure was reduced to £11,303,800. So that exports amounting to £27,000,000 were reduced to £11,000,000—that is, reduced by £15,872,000.
The Minister appeals to us to assist in establishing the credit of the country, to put it as high as that of any other country in the world, and save the people a certain amount of money by means of a conversion loan. Will the Minister deign to tell us how much money he is going to save annually by his conversion loan? It seems to me that the Minister is just running a stunt with this talk of a conversion loan. If we are to shut our mouths from this until December on the growing seriousness of the condition of things in this country, we ought to know how much the Minister proposes to save. Does he propose to save annually as much as he is again this year taking from the county councils when he reduces the Supplementary Agricultural Grant? Not only does the Minister at the beginning of this year pilfer £718,000 from local authorities on the ground that that amount of Land Commission annuities were unpaid during the previous year, but he is taking from them under his present proposals an additional £100,000 out of the moneys they got in relief of rates on agricultural land last year. Will the Minister tell us if the sum, the saving of which he thinks would warrant our keeping our mouths shut from this until December, is going to be bigger than that sum which he is pinching from the county councils to-day?
Everywhere around them the Ministry must see a further falling off of our exports, a further shutting down of our markets, and a further prejudicing of the future of the Irish farmer in external markets. They must see the cutting down of the general trade of this country. They must see the increase of the adverse trade balance of this country. They must see the increasing number of persons having to be assisted by home assistance, by unemployment assistance and by relief works of various kinds. The Minister for Finance yesterday wound up with a statement that "this nation has been given into our hands after centuries of sorrow. We dare not let it perish for lack of foresight as to what may come upon us. It must be secured against the vicissitudes of another world war, against the possibilities of famine and against the economic coercion of the blockade." This nation has been given back into our hands. It was given back into our hands, if we were capable of taking it fully, in 1922. The Ministers, as well as some of us here, have been through the movement which brought that condition of things about. We may not have had much responsibility before 1916, but responsibility came our way after 1916, when, humbly enough, men on both sides of this House bent themselves to the task of gathering up the scattered groups of our people, the scattered bits of organisations in the country, and rallying the people of this country: rallying them in the spirit of men who faced facts in 1916, took upon themselves responsibilities, took upon themselves the leadership of the people, and paid the price. Men on both sides of the House came together under those circumstances and rallied the people. Magnificently the people rallied to the work that was in front of them. They did that work and took the nation back into their grasp. The men of the pre-1921 movement had consolations even in those days which many must have felt that the men of previous movements never had. We were never taught very much of our Irish history, but we knew that people within the previous 50 years had risen up, had got leaders, valiant leaders, leaders who took responsibility, took risks, and did work, only to see the movement broken and the leaders go to their deaths with a kind of scattered people behind them, and perhaps no hope on the political horizon. I say that even in the difficulties that there then were for the people and for those who were leading them, the leaders from 1916 to 1921 had consolations which the men in previous days never had. The people helped them to bring about achievements that many of the previous movements never dreamt of, and we got the nation back into our hands. What we are now terrified of is not a European war, but that futility, ignorance and self-seeking would dash from the lips of our people the fruits of their labours up to 1921.
When he looks at the condition of our agriculturists, when he looks at the growing unemployment throughout the country, when he looks at the lack of hope spreading day by day to increasing numbers of heads of families in this country, when they think of the families that are their responsibility, and try to get work for them, does the Minister not see that he is rapidly dashing from the hands of our people to-day the nation that they got with its assets and with its spirit and with its hopes in 1921? Let us even take the nation of 1931, and what the nation looked for, and what the nation hoped for then? A promise was held out. A promise of leadership was held out to the people, leadership along constructive lines, leadership along manly lines. Even take the nation of 1931: what is the present Ministry doing with the resources of that nation, with the hopes of that nation, and with the very people themselves? We talk about the lives that are spent for Ireland, the lives that are wasted, and were wasted in internal strife here. What about the lives that are wasted in every townland in Ireland to-day? What about the growing number of people in the West of Ireland that you have had to put on 6/- a week? What prospect of employment are they having held out to them to-day, either in agriculture or in any other business? Were there more lives wasted in the disastrous Civil War here, were there more lives wasted in the years 1922 and 1923, than are being wasted in the years 1932, 1933 and 1934, or being wasted in this very year? There is more blood being really wasted to-day in 1935 than there was in all the years of the Civil War added together. Until, like the President in April, 1923, some one who either has the moral courage in spite of his past or thinks he has any other kind of a moral position, calls upon the Ministry—as they called the men who were in arms against the State in 1923—to cease fire, then we are going to go deeper and deeper into a situation that will increase the loss of useful lives to Ireland, and the loss of Irish resources.
You might say that Ministries so far as their lives are of any service to this country are destroying their lives to-day by the policy they are pursuing. It is worse than destruction because not only are they showing, where there is need to do good, that individually or as a group they are doing their worst, but they are leading after them the unfortunate rank and file of their Party because they do not know anywhere else to go. They are leading after them the so-called leaders of the Labour Party who do not know where to go either, because they have neither a body of labour opinion standing behind them nor any conviction or any policy of their own. Let not the Minister for Finance talk to us about a war in Europe. Let him talk to us about a war here. Let him talk to us about what is happening in this country. Let him tell us what is going to bring back a livelihood to our farmers, and what is going to secure such industries as we have and not fritter them away as now by having the life blood of many of them taken away from them, and the industries themselves thrown into cutthroat competition one with another.
What is the Minister going to do to wipe out the growing list of unemployed in the country? That list is growing day by day and the obligation is falling upon the people to maintain them in greater numbers. The position with regard to the unemployed is at the moment worse than ever. In March, 1932, we had 90,000 people on home assistance; in 1933 we had 125,000; in 1934 we had 141,000; to-day we have 86,000 on home assistance and 98,000 on unemployment assistance, making 184,000 in all. And we have 39,000 more knocking at the doors of the offices of the Minister for Industry and Commerce throughout the country and asking for home assistance to be given them. And it is at a time like that the Minister tells us that the Government have to reduce the money that can be given to these people by another £300,000. Let the Minister tell us something about the war going on here and let him tell us what is to be done for the nation and the people who stand to-day saddled with a leadership and a Government that up to the present has done nothing but dodge its responsibilities and attempted to throw those responsibilities upon the people they deceived and duped, by their promises of energetic and constructive patriotism and statesmanship.
The members of the Government Party have waited patiently since the commencement of the discussion upon the Budget yesterday until now, in case some criticism of that Budget, or some argument relating to the policy which is embodied in it and which produced it, would need to be met. But up to now we waited in vain. Not until Deputy Mulcahy rose to speak was anything said by any member of the Party opposite, either on the front bench or on the back benches, that was of such a nature that an answer from these benches was found necessary, because the contradictions in their speeches and the fallacies in their arguments were obvious to everybody. Deputy Mulcahy, however, rose to fill the gap. Unfortunately for his Party, he has the habit of using statistics which he does not understand and has not taken the trouble to complete, and which, used in that way, are like dynamite in the hands of a child, very likely to lead to self-destruction. He put forward one argument that has to be dealt with. He said there was evidence of a falling off in the use of the articles of common necessity, and that proof of that assertion was to be found in the statistics relating to boots and shoes. He said that statistics showed there were fewer pairs of boots and shoes bought and sold in the country now than before the Cumann na nGaedheal Government was in office. At any rate, he said he could prove that fewer pairs of boots and shoes were sold in 1933 than in 1931.
Please do not twist.
I am not anxious to twist——
I said the people spent £236,000 less on boots and shoes in 1933 than in 1931, and I asked whether this matter could not be discussed upon a financial basis. The Minister can discuss it in pairs, if he wishes.
What is the Deputy's argument?
I did not want the Minister not to be clear as to what I was telling him, but the fact is that he could give me neither set of facts.
There is only one set of facts, but the Deputy is trying to prove that because of the economic depression produced by this Government fewer articles of necessity are used.
Less money is in the hands of the people to put boots on their feet.
The Deputy's argument is that there are less used, but not that there has been a fall in prices. He did not set out to prove that the price of boots and shoes is gone down and that, consequently, a smaller sum was paid in 1933 than in 1931. The Deputy's argument was that because of economic depression fewer were bought, and, in order to prove that, he brought in here figures representing the total values of all boots produced in Irish factories, and imported from abroad in 1933 as compared with 1931, without informing the Dáil, or probably knowing himself, that the decrease in the total cost of those boots and shoes did not represent, in any way, a decrease in the actual number of the pairs bought. The decrease of £250,000 to which he referred is accounted for, and more than accounted for, by the fact that in 1933 the total value of boots and shoes imported was £970,000 as compared with £1,589,000 in 1931, a difference of £600,000, but the actual number of pairs imported in 1933 was higher by 16,000 dozen pairs than in 1931. Therefore not merely were there more boots and shoes imported in that year but there was much larger use of Irish-made boots and shoes in that year, which is represented by the difference between the £250,000 Deputy Mulcahy was talking about and the £600,000. And that is the only argument the Cumann na nGaedheal Party has against the Budget. We had a number of rhetorical questions by Deputy O'Sullivan, and reiterated by other Deputies and put forward as arguments. What is the policy of Cumann na nGaedheal? This is the opportunity and time of the year when the Leader of that Party should set out, as against the policy of the Government, the policy that he and his Party stand for. They purport to criticise this Budget. It is not a popular Budget. It was not an easy one to frame.
These are not easy times. The main thing that can be said in favour of this Budget is that it represents a determined attempt to ensure that this country is going to pay its way, and that for every single item of expenditure that appears on the national balance sheet there is placed opposite an item of revenue that is going to cover it. You cannot reduce by one penny any of the taxes that have been imposed, or any of the taxes that have been carried over from other years, unless, at the same time, you are going to reduce expenditure. We could reduce taxation. It would be quite easy for this Government to come in here and tell the Dáil that, because of financial stringency, or for some other reason, we were going to drop the scheme for widows' and orphans' pensions, that we were going to put back the old age pensions on the basis on which we found them in 1931 —this would save us £600,000—that we were going to abandon the Unemployment Assistance Act that the Deputies opposite are now so fond of but which they voted against in 1933; that we were going to stop housing activities and leave the working classes in the slums and insanitary dwellings they are now occupying, that we were going to cease expenditure upon relief works for the unemployed, and that we were going to stop the subsidisation of the agricultural industry. By doing all these things we could have reduced taxation.
The Minister has stated that this Party voted against the Unemployment Assistance Act. They did not.
Of course they did.
It forced it from you.
Not merely did the Party opposite vote against it, but went to the country denouncing it. I know that they are anxious to forget that now, but the records of this House are against them.
That is not true.
The attitude of this Party was that the policy of this Government had created such a situation in the country that the Act became absolutely necessary.
That is a twist.
On the motion being put from the Chair: that the Unemployment Assistance Bill do now pass, the Fine Gael Party challenged a division and voted against it.
That statement is untrue.
The Deputy is now trying to draw a red herring across my argument. I am indicating to the Deputies opposite the manner in which it would have been possible to reduce taxation. We could not merely have avoided the necessity for imposing new taxes but we could have reduced the income tax by 1/6 in the £; we could have abolished most of the taxes upon articles of common consumption, and, in another way, eased the burden on the taxpayer by abandoning the widows' and orphans' pension scheme, by repealing the Unemployment Assistance Act, by stopping activities on housing the working classes, by repealing the Old Age Pensions Act of 1932, by the withdrawal of subsidies from the agricultural industry, by reducing the additional Agricultural Grant to the average additional Agricultural Grant given by the Cumann na nGaedheal Government, by the withdrawal or expenditure upon works for the relief of unemployment in the depressed areas: by dropping all these measures we could have reduced taxation in the manner I have indicated, and it cannot be done otherwise. There is no other way in which you can reduce taxation except by reducing expenditure.
What single item of expenditure do the Deputies opposite want reduced? It is ridiculous for the Party opposite to come in here and vote against this or that tax, or urge that the total of all taxes is too high without, at the same time, indicating their opinion as to how these taxes can be avoided. What single item of all these that I have mentioned do the Party opposite want abandoned? Which of these social services are they going to reduce if the opportunity of introducing a Budget is ever again given to them? That is what their leader should have told us. Instead of simply getting rhetorical questions and the burst of self-explanation that we have had from Deputy Mulcahy, instead of the puerilities that we got from Deputy O'Sullivan and the abusive venom that we had from Deputy McGilligan yesterday, we should have had from them some positive indication of how, in their opinion, new taxation could be avoided or old taxation removed by a reduction of expenditure.
Cease fire.
On what?
On the people.
That is the type of political wisdom we have learned to expect from the benches opposite: meaningless phrases that look well in the pages of United Ireland, but when brought into the atmosphere of this House sound ridiculous and are ridiculous. This Government has balanced every one of its Budgets. Is there any country in Europe that any of the Deputies opposite can name at once which can produce the same record of balanced Budgets that this country has produced since this Government came into office? Are there six Governments in the world to-day that have even budgeted for a surplus? These are difficult times, difficult not merely for this country but for all countries, and most countries took the easy course of budgeting for a deficit. Most Governments did not face the responsibility of imposing the taxes that were necessary to cover expenditure. We could not take that course. We decided against taking that course. We decided that it was necessary for the economic development of this country that its credit should be maintained unquestioned, and in order to maintain its credit beyond question it is necessary that the Budget should balance each year, and the Budget has balanced with a surplus.
A banker's budget.
The Party opposite have a responsibility which they are shirking, the responsibility of an Opposition in any Parliament, of justifying their votes by argument. They voted here yesterday against a number of Resolutions necessary to implement the Budget. They have got to tell us why they did it. Is it their policy to leave the Budget unbalanced? Is it their view that it is good finance not to make the necessary provision, by way of taxation, to enable revenue to be secured to meet the expenditure that will arise. Is that what they stand for? Or, if they do not stand for that, if they agree with us that this country must pay its way and that the Budget must balance: that every item of expenditure must be covered by measures designed to produce revenue to meet it, then they must equally emphatically tell us why it is they voted against the new taxes. If they think that the revenue to be derived from these taxes is not necessary, will they indicate to the House the items of expenditure that they think should be dropped? What are they? Deputy Mulcahy did not tell us; Deputy O'Sullivan or Deputy McGilligan did not tell us. Is there any Deputy on the benches opposite who knows the mind of the Party and will take the responsibility of informing this House and the country which of the social services and which of the public services they want economies on, the expenditure which they think can be reduced, and should be reduced, and if so by what amount?
Your own speeches.
Surely the Deputy does not want to stand on my feet. Let him stand on his own. The Party opposite have responsibilities even as an Opposition, a responsibility which they are shirking. They are the worst Opposition that this Parliament has ever seen.
That is saying a lot.
Or any other Parliament either.
Even in countries where Opposition Parties are subject to restrictions that do not exist here in the expression of their opinions, they would make some pretence of producing an alternative to that Budget by indicating the taxes that they would have avoided and the expenditure that they would have prevented. However, it is only reasonable to expect that the Party opposite will not be able to deal with this matter or any similar matter, in a serious way, because no two Deputies over there can agree as to what tax or duty should be dropped or as to what imposition should be imposed, and any attempt to get them to agree on such a matter might lead to another split in the Party opposite, which we are all anxious to avoid.
The only other contention made by the Opposition is that the total amount that is being taken from the public to meet these various services is more than the public can afford to contribute. However, they have made no attempt to produce evidence that that contention is correct. There are available to the members of the Opposition Party, just as there are available to the members of the Government, the statistics relating to various economic activities. If it were true that we were taking from the country, in order to meet Governmental services, more than the country could afford to pay, that fact would, sooner or later, become evident in these statistics. According to the statistics, which are available to everybody, the yield of existing taxation has been well maintained, apart from the taxes that have been imposed for purely protective purposes, the yield from which is going down because of industrial development. Statistics prove that the yield from taxation, apart from purely protective taxation, is being well maintained.
Does the Minister say that the income on Excise taxes show that the consuming capacity of the people is being maintained?
Yes, except where there is an obvious reason such as in the case of sugar.
What about beer?
The decrease that has taken place has not been merely in this year but in every year recently, and not merely in this country but in every other country.
Surely, the Excise duty on sugar did not fall? You only imposed it last year.
The Excise revenue in 1933 was £5,443,000. In 1934 it was £5,320,000, and in 1935, it was £5,555,000. The Deputy can use these figures for any purpose he likes, although I do not think they prove anything. Nevertheless, my assertion is correct that, generally speaking, the yield of taxation has not diminished.
The Minister's statement is contrary to fact.
It is up to the Deputy to prove that. The statistics show the contrary. The Deputy should prove that we are taking more from the people than they are able to pay.
I assert that what the Minister said is contrary to fact.
The Deputy should give as good a hearing to the Minister as the members of his Party were accorded.
Deputy Morrissey said that the condition of the unemployed is worse now than the condition they were in when we came into office.
I did not say that. I said that they would be much worse next week than they were before.
I am glad that the Deputy agrees with me even to that extent.
I do not agree with the Minister at all.
All I can say is that there is no evidence available in any set of statistics, whether published by the banks, Government institutions, public or transport organisations, or by any other body, that the Government is taking more from the public, in order to finance Governmental institutions, than they can afford to pay. As a matter of fact, there is evidence to the contrary. The cost of living has decreased, and is still decreasing. The cost of living index for food, in 1934, was 135, as against 147 in 1931, and on all items it was 153 in 1934, as against 160 in 1931.
Will the Minister tell us about non-food items?
I am giving the Deputy the cost of living figures generally, and showing that they decreased from 147 in 1931 to 135 in 1934. Those figures are in respect of the cost of living index for food, and, in respect of all items the decrease was from 160, in 1931, to 153 in 1934.
The Minister, I think, is endeavouring to smother the cost of food items by including the other items.
The Deputy cannot prove that. The bank clearances, which are used as the index of commercial activities, for the first quarter of this year amounted to £5,408,725, as against £5,131,808 in the corresponding period of 1934, £4,930,808 in 1933, and £4,842,975 in the same period of 1932. These figures indicate increasing commercial activity represented by a substantial rise in the weekly average of notes, bills and cheques cleared through the banks. The transport position also shows increased commercial activity. For the first 18 weeks of this year, the passenger receipts of the Great Southern Railways Company were 2.25 per cent. over last year and 6.7 per cent. over the previous year.
For what period?
For the first four months.
Does that include St. Patrick's Day?
Yes. The average goods train receipts for the same period were 9.4 per cent. over last year and 14.3 per cent. over the year before. The total receipts were 6.7 per cent. over last year and 11.4 per cent. over the previous year in the same period. With regard to the Post Office Savings Banks, the balance due to depositors on 31st December, 1934, was £5,586,000, as compared with £3,703,000 on the same date in 1931. There are more people employed in all occupations, insurable and uninsurable, than ever were employed before in the history of this country since records were first kept.
Including agriculture?
Yes.
I know the Minister would say that.
Yes, the number of people employed, both in insurable and non-insurable occupations, is greater than ever before. I have frequently clashed with Deputy McGilligan with regard to the proper interpretation of statistics of employment, but I have never yet succeeded in speaking after him in any debate. He always takes care to remain outside the House until I have spoken—particularly where there is any possibility of these statistics being discussed or any possibility of this question of employment being argued; but he comes in afterwards and repeats all the old misrepresentations about these figures, which he has often made before.
He will be here soon.
Of course, he will, as soon as I have left the House.
I suppose the Minister thinks that Deputy McGilligan is afraid of him.
Yes, he is afraid, because he has been getting away with all this misrepresentation of these figures and has been saying that the number of persons in insurable occupations, although it has increased, was very low, until he got himself into the ridiculous position that he asserted that the total number of new entrants into industrial work in this country, in consequence of all industrial activity in this country, in the last two or three years, was only 2,000.
When it was pointed out that any individual could name, without a moment's hesitation, two or three industrial concerns, which were brought into existence during that period, in which the total employment exceeded the 2,000 talked about, Deputy McGilligan got himself tangled up in another lot of figures, and endeavoured to prove from the new tangle something which was not quite clear, apparently that no additions have taken place in the number of persons in insurable employment, since this Government came into office, and that he did more in the last year he was in office to put people in employment than this Government did. The figures prove completely the reverse. For each year that Cumann na nGaedheal was in office the number of persons seeking employment in industrial work, and the number of persons actually employed continued to increase from 1926 to 1929. In 1931 the numbers began to go down. In that year, the last year Cumann na nGaedheal was in office, the full effect of their disastrous economic policy began to be felt, the natural increase in industrial employment which would have taken place, even if there was no Government, was arrested, and a decrease began to take place until the general election took place, when that Party was removed from a position where they could do any harm, with the immediate result that there was at once an increase in employment, and the number of persons seeking and getting industrial employment has become a record for each year since. The total insured population at the end of each insurance year was as follows:—1930, 284,382; in 1931 there was a decrease to 282,622; in 1932 there was an increase to 294,847; in 1933 the figures went up to 314,368; in 1934 the figures continued to rise until they reached 359,516, and, on the 4th March, 1935, they amounted to 379,694, or 95,000 higher than the numbers in July, 1931.
Can the Minister say how many got a few weeks' employment on relief works?
These were persons in insurable employment in that year. I am not pretending that they had employment for the whole year. That could not be so, because a very large amount of the industrial work available at any time in any country is of a casual nature, such as house building, the construction of factories, road work and constructional work generally. In any event, the increase did not take place in jumps but continuously over each period. If the Deputy wants to make any argument about that I will give figures based upon the assumption that all workers receive full-time employment, calculated on the actual contributions paid in respect to all workers to the Unemployment Insurance Fund. A stamp must be paid for every week a worker is employed, and a calculation on that basis gives the number of persons employed in each week on the average on every class of work. The numbers in insurable employment under the Unemployment Insurance Act in 1931 were 190,000; in 1933, 211,000, and in 1934, 217,000. Not merely must certain workers be insured under the Unemployment Insurance Acts, but all classes must be insured under the National Health Insurance Act, and calculating upon the income of the National Health Insurance Fund, the number of persons employed in agriculture, private domestic service and other occupations, excluding those coming also within the scope of the Unemployment Insurance Act, was in 1931 152,000, and in 1934 153,000. Contrary to what has been asserted here time and again by Deputies on the opposite benches, there was no decrease in such employment. There was, on the contrary, a slight increase.
If we have evidence that there is no substantial falling-off in the yield from taxation, that the cost of living has fallen, and continues to fall, that the Banks' average weekly clearances of bills, notes and cheques have risen, and continue to rise, that the amount standing to the credit of depositors in the Post Office Savings Bank has risen, and continues to rise, that the receipts from the carriage of goods and passengers on all transport organisations have increased and are higher than they were last year, when they were higher than the previous year, if we know that there are more people in employment than ever before, insurable under the Unemployment Insurance Acts, and under the National Health Insurance Act, then we have what I submit is fairly conclusive evidence that there is no foundation for the statement that the amount being taken from the people in taxation is more than the country can afford to pay. A great proportion of the amount that comes to the Central Fund from taxation goes back to the people. The amount raised in taxation to finance the Unemployment Assistance Act, the Old Age Pensions Act, and Widows' and Orphans' Pensions, Housing Acts, Relief Schemes and activities of that kind really represent a redistribution of the national income—a taking from some class of people who can afford to give in order that we may improve the lot of others in need of assistance. There is no drain upon, the nation's resources in consequence of that action. It is purely internal. It cannot affect our economic position except in a slight degree. It may possibly result in the diversion of purchasing power from one class of article to another, but in any event it must turn the utilisation of purchasing power from the class of article that could be imported to those that we produce ourselves. It is a fact supported by evidence that there is more beef, butter and more eggs and poultry being consumed at home by the Irish people than at any previous time for which Estimates have been prepared.
There is a bankrupt sale.
There are working-class families at home that for the first time for years are getting good food. No Deputy can convince me that it is a bad thing for this country when men, women and children are getting good food which they could not get during the glorious years of Cumann na nGaedheal.
There are bankrupt farmers' sales.
They pay by cheque when the sheriff seizes their bullocks.
When Deputies are so concerned about the adverse trade balance they should look at the main items in the trade and shipping statistics of last year.
It is true that the adverse trade balance rose during the last year, but the reasons for that increase would be understood by any Deputy who even in the most casual way had glanced through these trade and shipping statistics. During the course of the year there were certain changes announced in respect to the regulations for the sampling and netting of tobacco at Irish ports. There was a certain time limit. Notice of the time limit was given to tobacco importers before that change became operative and in consequence of that the importers imported huge quantities of tobacco into bond to such an extent that the existing store accommodation was totally inadequate. The figures reveal the position. The figure for 1933 of £329,000 had risen to £1,182,000 in the following year. That accounted for £850,000 in one item of our total imports. That was of no economic interest. It did not influence the revenue. It was purely an item in our statistics and it appeared there in consequence of an accidental circumstance and will be reflected in this and the following years in much lower figures for tobacco imports.
Now the other main increases which explain almost entirely the rise in the adverse trade balance are consequential upon the industrial development that is taking place and represent the importation of capital goods, the price of which is payable and properly payable out of our capital resources. Consequently it is not necessary that we should have in our visible or invisible export tables a corresponding item against these imports. The imports of iron, steel and the manufactures thereof excluding machinery was, in 1934, £600,000 in excess of the value of similar imports in 1933. The importation of machinery and electrical goods and apparatus was £700,000 in excess of the imports for 1933. The other main increase represents the results of the housing activities of the country. There have been, as Deputies are aware, more houses built for the working classes in the past two years than in the whole 10 years in which our predecessors were in office. And that fact was reflected in our trade and shipping statistics. We have imported goods required for the construction of buildings. In 1934 timber to the amount of £838,000 was imported as against £390,000 worth in 1933. A great deal of the rise in our adverse trade balance can be explained by these figures. They indicate clearly that there is no reason for apprehension.
These are the natural results of the changed circumstances here and if at any time we were to embark upon this policy of industrial development, it would be necessary to have similar transactions taking place. These items represent items of development expenditure on the part of the persons importing these goods. The man who spent £500,000 building a factory this year will not spend a similar amount next year. These items are therefore abnormal; they are consequential upon our industrial development and will, no doubt, in due course disappear. In any event this country is well able to pay for these imports and if there is any doubt on the part of Deputies opposite as to that there is no doubt at all in the minds of those who sell those goods because whenever an announcement appears in the Irish Press that a new factory is to be established we have representatives from every industrial country in the world seeking that order, because they know that the credit of the country is good. They know that we have paid our way in the past and that we will continue to pay our way in the future. All the wailings of Deputies here and the speeches they make through the country cannot destroy that credit because it is too secure in the hands of the present Government.
Some of the Deputies who spoke to-day and Deputy Norton who spoke yesterday made reference to that portion of the Budget statement which referred to anticipated economies and to anticipated reductions in expenditure in respect of the Unemployment Assistance Act and old age pensions. Deputy Norton described the action of the Government as a raid upon the persons in receipt of unemployment assistance and old age pensions. Other Deputies spoke to-day as if we were deliberately cutting down the means provided for these services in order to balance the Budget. That is not correct. The Act which provides for old age pensions is not going to be repealed or amended during the year. That Act gives a statutory right to old age pensions to the persons qualified under that Act to receive pensions. They are entitled to these pensions on the conditions set out in the Act. That Act is not to be altered by a single word or comma and every person who by that Act of 1932 and the earlier Acts, was given a statutory right to a pension will get that pension. It will be the function of this Government to see that such people get it.
It is now believed that the total amount which was estimated as required for that purpose during the year, exceeds by £100,000 the actual amount that will be spent. This is because there is reason to believe that there are certain persons who got those pensions by misrepresentation or by error and that these persons can be eliminated as it was the intention of this House that they would be eliminated on revision of the cases where such circumstances are believed to arise. The Dáil quite clearly, when it enacted the 1932 Act and the previous Acts relating to old age pensions, set out the class of persons who were entitled to them. In doing so it also conveyed the decision that none other than those persons should get pensions. The Government intend to administer the Act in accordance with the spirit of the Dáil. Their duty is to see that every person that the Act says is entitled to get a pension will get it. We expect in doing that that we will have this year to spend £600,000 more than our predecessors spend in 1931 even though we spend £100,000 less than the Book of Estimates sets out.
The same thing applies to the unemployment assistance moneys. It is not intended to reduce in any way the classes of persons entitled to receive unemployment assistance, nor will the schedule of rates payable be amended in the slightest way. If we by some fortunate device are able to provide employment for everybody who is now claiming unemployment assistance we will save £1,600,000 instead of £300,000. Nobody under these circumstances can say that we are raiding the unemployed or the old age pensioners, or that we are economising at the expense of the unemployed. It is precisely because we anticipate that there will be an increase in employment during the year in consequence of the increase in the provision for relief schemes which is made in the Budget that this saving will be effected.
A decrease of unemployment?
A decrease of unemployment and consequently fewer calls upon the amount provided for unemployment assistance to the extent that it will save us the figure mentioned by the Minister for Finance, £300,000. Certain changes have been effected already. Deputies know what they are. Two Employment Period Orders were made, and one of these periods is now ended. The other commences in the middle of July. The Act provides for these orders, and the intention of using the power to make such orders was made clear in the Dáil when the Bill was in course of passage through the House. Nobody objected to it. Everybody agreed with the principle that that power should be there and that that power should be exercised in order to ensure that in no area would it be possible for a situation to arise in which a number of people would be drawing unemployment assistance with work available of which the Department was not aware and which these persons were not attempting to seek. That work may be available on their own farms. The reason why the first Unemployment Period Order was made was because we believed that farmers owning land valued at £4 or over would, during that particular month of the year, be fully occupied upon these farms and would not be available for employment, and, consequently, could not be regarded as fulfilling the primary condition for the receipt of unemployment assistance set out in the Act. That order was made.
A similar Order in respect of single men without dependents in the rural areas has been made for the harvest period. The estimate for unemployment assistance was prepared before the decision to make these Orders was announced and before the effect of these Orders could be fully estimated and, consequently, we can now deduct from that estimate an amount representing the saving to the fund which will result from these Orders. There will also be certain consequential savings because of the amending Bill which will be introduced in the very near future, a Bill which, in many ways. will remove some of the grievances which Deputies have voiced concerning the administration of this Act, and by doing so will, in fact, make it cheaper to administer.
These changes it is anticipated will effect a reduction of £300,000 in the total expenditure under that Act; but again I want to repeat that no person who, by the Unemployment Assistance Act, was given the right to receive unemployment assistance, will fail to get it in consequence of these changes; nor will there be a reduction by one penny in the scheduled rates of assistance provided for under this Act.
You are reducing them the other way by increasing the price of food.
The Budget is not merely a consequence, but an instrument of the Fianna Fáil policy. It is true that, because of the progress made in industrial development, the yield to the Exchequer from the duties imposed for protective purposes is falling away. In 1925 our predecessors imposed a tax upon boots and shoes, which did not diminish in the slightest the imports of boots and shoes. It became, in the course of years, a revenue tax. It had no appreciable effect upon production, and when I came into office I found that Irish boot manufacturers were supplying only 10 per cent. of the country's requirements, and 90 per cent was being imported. A couple of weeks ago I had an argument with the boot manufacturers. They say they are now in a position to supply 100 per cent. of the requirements. I do not agree with that. But they will be in a position to do that before this financial year closes. If Deputies opposite appreciate the difficulty of expanding production in an industry in which skilled workers are required, and for which skilled workers were not available, an industry for which we have not merely built factories and provided the equipment, but while actually doing so, at the same time trained workers, they will know what it means when it is now possible for us to say that that industry, which in 1931 was only capable of supplying 10 per cent. of the country's requirements, will in 1936 produce 4,500,000 pairs of boots and shoes—all that are required by our people.
Similarly, there was a duty upon flour imposed in 1932 which brought revenue to the Exchequer. In 1932 the Irish flour millers were only producing 50 per cent. of this country's requirements of flour and they were doing that by courtesy of the English millers who had, at their urgent appeal, agreed to an arrangement called the Millers' Mutual Association which protected them in their 50 per cent. of the trade. On 1st April this year it was my proud privilege to write a minute to the Department telling them that there was no more flour to be imported, as the Irish flour millers were now in a position to supply all the requirements of the country.
A duty was imposed in 1925 upon all wearing apparel, which was a big revenue-producing duty, but did not affect the apparel industry in this country except to a very minor extent. To-day we are able to quota most of the items of wearing apparel and gradually eliminate these items altogether from our import figures, because new factories have been built and Irish workers, working in these factories, are producing the suits of clothes, overcoats, hosiery, hats, boots, and all the other garments required to clothe the people.
The same is true of practically every industry. The decrease in the yield from these duties is not merely something we have to explain away; it is something we are here to boast about, because it represents the fulfilment of our policy, the change-over in the economic life of the country that we aimed to produce, a change that has enabled 95,000 more people to be employed in industrial work in the last financial year than in 1931. We are very proud of that. We did not embark upon that policy in the belief that it could be effected in that way without difficulty. These difficulties, including the revenue difficulty, revealed in this Budget, were anticipated by us. But we realised that the country wanted us to fulfil that policy, and the country not merely still wants us to do it, but is glad we are succeeding.
If Deputies have any doubts about the feelings of the people upon these matters they have a means of testing that feeling available to them. There are two vacancies in this House. In accordance with the practice which has prevailed in the past, we have left it to the Party opposite to choose the time they wanted to fight these two by-elections—the time most favourable to them. It is for them to move that the Clerk of the Dáil shall issue the writs. Why do they not do it? We challenge them to do it. If they are not afraid to face the Irish people in these constituencies, we shall have that motion for the writs down to-morrow or next week. If we do not have it, Deputies cannot pretend that they have any reason to feel that the Irish people endorse their attitude. Let them test the feeling of the people in both constituencies. We will meet them and fight them on that Budget, and we will beat them in both constituencies. If you do not believe me, try it on.
They cannot agree on that either.
We will guarantee they will go west if they come to Galway.
The Government do not impose new taxes with pleasure—no Government does. It is never popular to impose new taxes. The ideal position for any politician to be in is to be an Independent Deputy. When he is an Independent Deputy, he can urge additional expenditure on all classes of social services and for all purposes while, at the same time, voting against the taxes necessary to enable that expenditure to be incurred. The Government cannot be in that position. We cannot provide the people with the services for which they have asked, the services that they want, such as old age pensions, unemployment assistance, widows' and orphans' pensions, housing for the working classes, assistance for agriculture, without at the same time levying the taxes to enable us to provide them. This Budget is for that purpose. It is because this Budget is for that purpose, it is because these services have been provided, it is because the results of the expenditure can be seen throughout the length and breadth of the country in new houses, more tillage, more employment, in greater hope for the future of the Irish people, that we are proud of the Budget, and that we are prepared to face the Party opposite in any constituency or in the whole country, upon it, if they so desire.
I want to raise a point affecting the accuracy of the records of this House, arising out of the speech made by the Minister for Industry and Commerce. In the course of that speech the Minister said that the Party on this side had voted against the Unemployment Assistance Act, had challenged a division on the question "That the Bill do now pass", and that the records of this House would show it. That statement I then described as untrue. I have since looked up the records, and found that it was absolutely untrue. No such division took place, and, therefore, there is no record of it. Of course, we are accustomed to that sort of statement from the Minister.
If the Deputy asserts that, I am prepared to accept his word that the Party did not vote against the Bill. They merely spoke against it, and had not the courage to vote against it.
I told the Minister at the time that his statement was not true. He then repeated very emphatically that a division had been challenged on the Fifth Stage. It just shows what reliance can be placed on any statement which the Minister makes.
In looking over this list of taxes here I cannot discover what particular article was not taxed, but—because the Minister for Industry and Commerce had used it to the fullest extent in attempting to help his brother Minister—I presume it is the article commonly known as whitewash. The Minister has spoken in the usual method which he employs when he has a very bad case. He began by challenging us as to what we would do in particular circumstances. That is the common province of the Minister for Industry and Commerce. Then he asked "What would you have us do? Were we to take off so and so? Were we to take off some of the reliefs which we gave to some of the poor, unfortunate, common people of this country? Were we to reduce our old age pensions? Were we not to do this or that, as we promised the people?" They did not do all they promised them by a long shot.
The Deputy will never promise anything again.
They went back on some of their promises, and then they come here and say: "Were we to go back on the lot?" The Government Party were never afraid or ashamed to go back on anything when it helped themselves. The Minister appeals to the sense of this House, and says: "Would you expect us to go back on those promises which we made to the people?" The Minister is suffering from the excess of promises which he and his colleagues gave to the people three, four, five, six and seven years ago. When they were on this side of the House the speeches made by the Minister for Industry and Commerce and by the Minister for Finance were very different from what they are making to-day. It appears that Fianna Fáil Deputies have forgotten the days when it was tyranny to expect £20,000,000 or £21,000,000 from the people. The £21,000,000 could have been reduced by £2,000,000 or £2,500,000. It is an injustice for the Opposition in these days, when the taxable capacity of the people is lower than it was three years ago, to suggest that £30,000,000 could, in some manner be reduced. The Minister for Industry and Commerce, having excited himself to frenzy in his attempt to maintain some of the promises he had made, went back to his old refuge when in his greatest adversity, and he fell into the statistical trap. I venture to say that when the Minister has, in the end, to face what we will all have to face, and make a profession of his actions, instead of a Bible there will be found in the Minister's hands the latest statistical record.
On that day he will have a clean sheet.
He will have such a sheet that he will need all his statistical ability to prove that he was not wrong. Eight or ten days ago, when speaking to some unfortunate people down the country—the poor, common, innocent people—I gathered that they viewed the prospect of the coming Budget almost with equanimity. They said "Surely the Minister for Finance and his brother Ministers, who gave us or tried to give us free beef, free milk unemployment assistance, and a little help on the old age pensions, because they believed we needed them, are not going to tax us! They cannot have the heart to tax us. They will not tax us because they know we cannot afford it." In this Budget what do we find? That the very people whom the Minister for Finance and his colleagues had been placating for the last three years, the people to whom they have been offering the vilest bribes for their support, the poor, common, innocent people, the recipients of free beef, the unfortunate unemployed whom the Minister for Industry and Commerce attempts to prove by statistics are not there at all, but though they are not there they need to be provided for, are the first to be attacked in this Budget. We have a tax on tea, sugar, tobacco and wheat.
There are thousands of the common people, about whom we hear so much in this House, whose daily fare consists of tea and bread, and sometimes butter. If they occasionally indulge in a luxury it takes the form of the fragrant tobacco weed. Both their necessities and their only luxury are the principal items which the Minister for Finance attacked in this Budget. There are thousands of farmers whom Fianna Fáil does not usually designate as the common people, whose daily sustenance is, in the main, tea and bread, with sometimes a little butter and the addition of a potato. Ofttimes there is a lack of the fragrant tobacco weed because they cannot afford it.
That is all nonsense.
To add to the adversities of those people we have the additional taxes in this Budget. The Minister says that no real attempt has been made to criticise either himself or his colleague, the Minister for Industry and Commerce. The Minister for Industry and Commerce, at the end of his speech, tried to deceive himself by proving, again by statistics, all the glories he has conferred on this country by his attempt to bolster up industry. He cites as his particular example the one item for which the foundation was laid by the previous Government, and that is the manufacture of boots.
A good sound footing!
A good sound foundation was laid by the previous Government. The Minister says that, I think, 100 per cent. of the requirements of the people will be produced by the boot-makers of this country within the next twelve months. I hope that is true. I hope when he comes to excuse himself by statistics this time 12 months he will not have to swallow that, like some of the other promises made in this House.
The Minister for Industry and Commerce said that we were criticising the Government for reducing the benefits that came to the people, and he said that we were making false charges because we made these suggestions. He said there was really no change in the law as regards Old Age Pensions. Nevertheless, the Government have taken away £100,000. Some people are to lose their Old Age Pensions, and it is to be made more difficult for those entitled to them to obtain them. The law is not changed, we are told, but the policy of mercy in the heart of the Minister and his colleagues is changed, and it is becoming increasingly difficult for people in the country to get pensions of any sort. The heads of Departments are to be instructed to make it more difficult for people to get pensions, yet the Minister says there is no change in the law. There are going to be changes made in the regulations. The Government will tell their dupes there will be no change in the law but there are to be changes in the regulations, and for three, four or five months of the year many people will get no home assistance.
The one bright spot, it will be pleaded, in this lamentable Budget is the Widows' and Orphans' Pensions, but it must not be forgotten that while offering this small mite the Government are taking away ten times more by the additional taxation they are putting on tea, sugar and tobacco. The Government must remember that although they are going to provide for widows and orphans there are going to be many more widows and orphans because of the policy of the Fianna Fáil Government. Many a head of a family will have disappeared before his time, and many mothers will have disappeared before their time, because of the anxieties caused them in trying to provide for their families owing to the policy of Fianna Fáil. The Minister said this is not a popular Budget. It certainly is not. I do hope that the Minister's challenge to someone to contest this in the country will be taken up so that the plain and common people will have some opportunity of expressing themselves as to what they think of the Minister and his Budget and of the taxes on tea, sugar, tobacco and cigarettes. I wonder the Minister did not include potatoes, because practically every other thing the unfortunate people consume is affected except the common spud. Tea, tobacco and bread are taxed.
And butter?
Yes and butter.
The Deputy himself voted for that.
Because the Minister in order to keep a market for the farmers found it necessary to mulct the unfortunate consumers to the extent of 4d. or 5d. per lb. on butter. Because it was necessary for the Minister to fix a price to maintain the market for fat cattle it is necessary for the butcher to put on 2d. per lb. on the price of beef. The Minister for Industry and Commerce, like his brother Minister for Finance, wound up his speech by a comparison of this country with other countries. Well, in conclusion may I say this: that sooner or later—possibly the older members of this Dáil like myself and Deputy T. Kelly will be gone—but the younger members who are here to-day will be asked: "Where were you during the economic war?" And they will have to answer: "We were in the Dáil shoving the farmers into the front line trenches and keeping them there without any proper equipment for three or four years; and, finally, when it was necessary to call in the industrialists, and others we found ourselves beaten to the ropes and the war was over. And we were suffering for that ever since and the crippled people of the agricultural community have not forgotten us yet." I can picture Deputies, 15 or 20 years hence when most of us will no longer have any interest in mundane affairs, being asked: "Where were you during the economic war?" Well these Deputies are here now and if they are to be able to answer that question, 15 or 20 years hence, now is the time to prepare the answer by seeing that the Minister should end that war which is producing a deficit in this State and making it necessary for the Minister for Finance to tax the absolute necessities of the people in the shape of tea, sugar, tobacco and bacon.
With every succeeding Budget the Fianna Fáil Party appear to be getting more completely away from the policy on which they were first elected as a Government. The Minister for Industry and Commerce said the Budget is the instrument of the Fianna Fáil policy. I wonder if there is any supporter of the Fianna Fáil Party anywhere in the country to-day who could reconcile the policy adumbrated in the present Budget with the policy propounded by the Fianna Fáil Party in 1931-1932 and with the speeches of the Minister for Industry and Commerce and the Minister for Finance in this Dáil on numerous occasions. If this Budget is the instrument of Fianna Fáil policy where are all the economies so lavishly promised to the people? Where is the reduction in staffs in Government Departments? Where does the Budget help to increase in any way the earning capacity of the farmer and the farming community? And lastly where is the reduction of the mythical £2,000,000 we heard so much about in the days when the Fianna Fáil Party had not the responsibility of government.
The Minister for Industry and Commerce proceeded further to tell the country that they are called upon to bear the responsibility of taxes imposed not only by this Budget but by preceding Budgets as well. If we are to understand the implication clearly of the taxation in this country to-day, and the effects of Fianna Fáil policy on this country, let us examine the figures since Fianna Fáil got into office and compare these figures with the figures for the corresponding period in the lifetime of the previous Government. Let us take the total revenue collected since Fianna Fáil came into office and compare it with the revenue in the lifetime of the previous Government and what do we find? It is increased by £16,000,000. Let us proceed to the expenditure side of the account. There we find by following a similar line of comparison and taking a similar period that the expenditure has increased by £16,000,000. Mark you, that during that period the Fianna Fáil Government appropriated, or misappropriated if you like, the sum of £14,500,000 which had been paid over to the British by the previous Government in respect of the land annuities, local loans, R.I.C. pensions and so on.
The Minister also stated, in the course of his Budget speech, that the Government had embarked upon a re-organisation of our industrial and agricultural economy. Let us see, in the terms of figures, how the policy of reorganising our industrial and agricultural economy has succeeded from the purely financial point of view. Now, during the period that the Fianna Fáil Government have been in office our exports to Great Britain and to other countries have decreased by £74,000,000. Our total trade, including exports and imports, has decreased by £135,000,000. The adverse trade balance, which the Minister for Industry and Commerce made such play with to-day, has increased by over £14,000,000, and, allowing for the additional taxation imposed in the present Budget, is well over £9,000,000 and, probably, is somewhere in the neighbourhood of £10,000,000.
Is the Minister for Finance or the Minister for Industry and Commerce prepared to argue that their policy has produced any compensating advantages for the loss of trade represented by these figures? Are they prepared to argue here that the new factories which have been started in this country and the money which has been spent in the way of assisting, in a fashion, our agricultural community has brought in revenue that compensates for the loss that these figures indicate; and if they are not able to prove that their policy has brought compensating advantages representing the actual loss in trade and in revenue shown by the figures I have quoted, then it must be that the people of this country cannot bear the taxation imposed by the present and previous Budgets.
The Minister for Industry and Commerce made great play to-day with the cost of living index figures, but, as Deputy Mulcahy pointed out to him, the cost of living index figures, as revealed in the returns, do not represent the position to-day as compared with what it was before the Fianna Fáil Party got into power. Due to the fact that the income of the majority of the people of this country has been reduced by at least 50 per cent., they have been forced to make corresponding reductions in their mode of living, in their expenditure on household requirements, on dress and on the few luxuries that they had been accustomed to indulge in in the past. They have been obliged to make these reductions in order that their standard of living would conform to the reduced incomes which they are obliged to live on on account of the policy pursued by the Fianna Fáil Government.
It is clear from the Minister's Budget statement that the main source of his income is derived from Customs and Excise duties. I think that the total income from these two sources amounts to, or has amounted to in the past, about £15,000,000, but it appears that there will be a substantial reduction in the revenue under these heads in the coming years. How is the Minister prepared to make good that reduction in revenue? He has admitted, indirectly at all events, that the class of people that have been saddled with the big burden of taxation in the past are not able to bear a larger share of taxation at the present time, and consequently he must look to new sources of income in order to recoup himself for that reduction in revenue. What is the source to which he must look for the revenue which he will lose from a reduction in Customs and Excise duties? Does it not follow inevitably that, in order to make good the loss in that revenue, he will have to still further increase taxation on tea and sugar, on the necessaries of life, and on articles in daily use by the general body of the people? At the present moment there is no other possible source to which he can turn for revenue to make good the reduction that will take place under these two heads. The Budget statement seems to indicate, according to my interpretation of the language used by the Minister, that although the sugar, tea and tobacco duties have been increased on this occasion, the people of the country may look forward to even larger increases in the future, so that while we had the Fianna Fáil Party starting out with the promise to the people that they were going to take money from the rich and give it to the poor, they have now come to the conclusion, apparently, that the rich man has been fleeced as much as he can bear, and that for the future it will be the poor man who will have to bear the lion's share of taxation.
It is a question of how long the people of this country can stand the Fianna Fáil policy and the taxation involved in the carrying out of that policy. To me, at all events, it seems clear that unless there is a definite change of policy, unless there is some settlement of this economic dispute with Great Britain, there is absolutely no hope for our farming community. Let us examine for a moment, and again in the term of figures, the foolishness and folly of the policy pursued by the present Government in relation to the conduct of this economic war. Since this economic war started on the 15th July, 1932, the Government have paid out a sum of £20,500,000 in duties, bounties and so on for the purpose of saving a sum of £14,500,000. Now is there a Government in any country in the world that would regard that as sound business? Is there a Government in any country in the world that would conduct a war, economic or otherwise, involving such a loss to the people of their country? That is the actual position, that we have that expenditure of £20,500,000 per annum for the purpose of saving £14,500,000, while at the same time the farming industry of this country is being ruined. The members of the Government boast of that down the country and, indeed, in this House. They boast that they are prepared to continue this economic war to the end, no matter what the consequences to the people are. I would ask the Minister to ponder seriously the condition of the farming industry at the moment. I want to submit to him, as one who is in touch with the farming community, as one who has come from farming stock and knows and understands the condition of the farming community as well as any other member of this House, that unless there is a speedy end to the economic war there is going to be no hope and no future for our agricultural industry.
The Minister, in the course of his Budget statement, boasted of the wonderful programme of social services which the Government are carrying into effect. There can be no question whatever about it, that their programme for the development of social services is a spectacular one. In my opinion, it is far and away too spectacular and too costly for a small country such as this. There would have been some hope for a Government such as Cumann na nGaedheal carrying such a scheme of social service into effect when the conditions of trade, commerce and finance were quite normal in the country.
Why did your Party not do it?
But a scheme of that kind could not be carried successfully into effect even by that Government except over a long period of years. To-day, undoubtedly, the Government is engaged on an elaborate programme of social services at a huge cost to the country which, in my opinion, the country cannot bear. The Government is endeavouring to rush that scheme on the public boards of this country, and my opinion is that, in the course of a few years, as a result of that policy, the public boards of this country will be faced with such a load of debt, as a result of the schemes which are being forced on them at the moment in order to give effect to the Government policy, that they will be unable to bear it. It is my opinion that they cannot possibly face that burden of debt that will be placed on them as a result of the Government's policy.
I agree with a great part of the scheme of social service that the Government is carrying out, but I do not agree with the manner in which it is being carried out. I hold that it should be carried out in such a way as to spread it over a large number of years and in, so to speak, piecemeal fashion, and not in such a manner that the people of the present time will not be able to meet it. I hold that such a scheme should be based on the financial stability of the people and that it should be commensurate with their ability to pay. The Minister devotes several pages of his Budget speech to the problem of the relief of unemployment, and he stresses the very useful work which has been done by a committee of which, I understand, his Parliamentary Secretary is the head. There is no question whatever about the fact that many schemes of relief that are being carried out by the present Government are schemes of vital necessity so long as the Government insists on impoverishing the country in the way in which it has been impoverished during the last two or three years. It seems to me, however, that the Government means to embark, in the future, on much more elaborate schemes for the purpose of relieving unemployment.
I should like to remind the Minister of this aspect of the question of relief and to remind him of the importance of considering the possible effect that relief schemes, on a very big scale, may have on the people of this country as a whole. At the moment, as a result of the necessity of getting necessary or easy money, farmers are rushing in to the centres where unemployment relief is being distributed in order to get some relief. The greater the number of such relief schemes, the greater will be the rush and the greater will be the anxiety of the small farmers to get employment. If very large schemes are embarked on by the Minister, involving the expenditure of £3,000,000 or £4,000,000, they will have the effect of drawing applicants for employment from areas far away from the area where the scheme is being carried out.
I think that, in considering the question of schemes for the relief of unemployment, the Minister might consider the possibility of devising schemes for employment on the farmer's own holding, because the tendency at the present time is for farmers to leave their holdings and seek employment or relief in the centres where the relief is being distributed. The tendency, at the present moment, is to seek the easy money to be obtained on relief schemes, I think that it should be possible for the Minister to devise some scheme of improvement or development on holdings of land in this country, which would have the effect of retaining the small farmers and the small farmers' sons on their own holdings and enable them to earn the money, which is so much required, in that particular way. I believe that the present method, which has the effect of attracting farmers away from their legitimate work and from their own holdings to adjoining or far-away districts, is demoralising and is a source of danger. I believe that the effect of it is that small farmers and their sons, in future, will look to some other means of livelihood, instead of following their main and legitimate occupations.
It appears to me that, of all the Budgets introduced by the Fianna Fáil Government so far, this is certainly the worst of them. This Budget imposes a burden on the poor people of this country, which at the present moment they cannot bear. Above all things, this Budget will hit the farmers, and especially the small farmers of this country, very severely. The tax on tea, the tax on butter, the tax on bread, the tax on tobacco, the tax on sugar, and all these other taxes that were denounced so roundly and so eloquently by the Minister himself, when he was in opposition and when they were imposed by the previous Government, have now been resorted to by the so-called poor man's Government in order to bring in money and to enable the Fianna Fáil Party to carry out their policy. These taxes would not be quite so bad, at the moment, if one could feel quite sure that the Government did not intend to go any further in the direction of increasing taxation in a future Budget. However, as I explained previously, there does not appear to be any means of enabling the Government to carry out their policy except by increasing taxation on the poor people of this country. The Minister himself has admitted that the rich man has borne as much of the burden as he can possibly bear, and that, for the future, the burden of taxation must lie on the plain people of this country; in other words, future schemes must be financed out of taxation raised from the poor people of this country. In that sense, I say that the Budget is a very bad one and holds out no prospect for the people of this country except an increase of taxation on the people who can afford it least.
It was rather refreshing to find that the Minister for Industry and Commerce can be as eloquent and as aggressive in the defence of a bad Budget, such as this, as he would be in the castigation of his opponents when they present a good Budget. His speech this evening was an extraordinary one but, in many ways, not alone was the speech of the Minister for Industry and Commerce extraordinary, but the Budget statement itself marks a very great advance indeed towards sanity. We have the Minister for Industry and Commerce this evening coming in and telling us that these are not easy times: that these are hard times. The House must remember that this is the same Minister who told us quite recently, in this House, that the economic war was won and that, on every side, there was evidence of prosperity. When the Minister for Industry and Commerce has to admit that these are hard times, not easy times to live in, and that it is a hard time to balance the Budget, certainly that shows sanity. We also had the Minister for Finance making an appeal to uphold the stability of the State. We all agree with that. The unfortunate thing about it is that the Minister for Finance and his colleagues did not think of that earlier. Some things that the Minister for Industry and Commerce said call for comment from this side of the House. I do not like to say that anyone is deliberately dishonest. I will not say it. The Minister for Industry and Commerce said that a change was being brought about in unemployment assistance, that a reduction of £300,000 was about to be made, that it would not affect anybody, being due to certain causes—really to a new method of administration—and that those who originally got unemployment benefit will get it to the same extent. It is a pity the Minister did not consult the statement made by the Minister for Finance, which he said he made on the authority of the Minister for Industry and Commerce. One of the reasons which the Minister gave for this reduction of £300,000 is that:
"Unemployment upon relief works financed out of public funds in whole or in part will be confined to persons entitled to receive unemployment assistance."
In other words, one thing the Minister for Industry and Commerce did not tell us is that small farmers who are not entitled to unemployment assistance will be affected.
"As it has also been decided to introduce amending legislation effecting various changes in the Unemployment Assistance Act, the combined effect of which will reduce expenditure, I have decided, with the concurrence of the Minister for Industry and Commerce, that the figure for unemployment assistance may be reduced by £300,000...."
I am sure the Minister for Industry and Commerce knows perfectly well why a reduction of £300,000 has to be made. It is being made because certain people who are now in great need are going to be excluded from public works, and because of the expected introduction of amending legislation affecting the operation of the Unemployment Assistance Act. The Minister for Industry and Commerce also told us that the cost of living had gone down, that the cost of meat had gone down, and that poor people now got meat who never got it before. That is so. But, there are other people who were well off and who produced meat and wealth who are now not able to afford meat. I know farmers in Co. Roscommon who have been refused bacon in shops because they had no money to pay for it. I know where the mother of a family burst out crying in a shop in Co. Roscommon recently because she could not get supplies of food for her family. Yet Ministers boast that meat is cheap and that the poor can get it. If so, it is at the expense of people I have mentioned who have now nothing. The Minister told us recently that there was evidence of prosperity on every side, that traffic on the railways was going up, and that Bank clearances and Post Office deposits were going up. Yet he has to admit that these are needy times and that it is not an easy time to balance the Budget. Certainly that comes very badly from the poor man's Government. I can only say that the country that pinned its faith in that poor man's Government is entitled to sympathy to-day.
We have bread, tea, sugar, tobacco social services and even the homes of the thrifty affected by this new taxation. To me the Budget appears to be an extraordinary document. I do not agree with many of the things that the Minister for Finance said, particularly in regard to securities for borrowing. First of all the Minister set out to deal with sugar. Apparently his greatest complaint is that the price of beet has been driven up to the flat price of 37/6. The Minister's outcry is that farmers growing beet are getting 37/6. Apparently that is an inflated price. The factory costs are higher than they anticipated. Another extraordinary statement appeared in the Budget, particularly when taken with what appeared in another part. The Minister refers to a sum of £550,000 "issued as a repayable advance to the Guarantee Fund in order to secure release to the local authorities of a corresponding amount therefrom." Quite recently the Minister for Local Government and Public Health boasted of that in this House and gave us to understand that this was a very beneficial thing that the Government had done for local authorities, by making a contribution of £550,000 to the Guarantee Fund in order that money would be released to local authorities. What really happened? There are three funds. There is the Annuities Fund which the Government eventually collars, the Guarantee Fund and the Exchequer. Through the non-payment of annuities a deficiency arose in that fund, which had to be met out of the Guarantee Fund. The Exchequer made a grant of the amount that was short, and after doing that the Government collared the whole of the Annuities Fund.
I asked a question recently in this House to ascertain whether the Government since 1933 had in that way appropriated £7,100,000 which farmers had paid in, plus grants withheld from local authorities. Now we have £550,000 which the Minister referred to as "a repayable advance to the Guarantee Fund in order to secure the release to the local authorities of a corresponding amount therefrom." He said:—
"This advance must be regarded as a first charge upon the unremitted balance of land annuity arrears which accrued prior to the May-June gale of 1932 which, in turn, are fully secured upon the lands in respect of which they are charged."
Is not that an extraordinary statement from a representative of the Government who felt that we were entitled to remit the land annuities; to halve the land annuities, or to wipe them out altogether if they so desired? In addition to that, he said that this should be regarded as "a first charge upon the unremitted balance of land annuities which accrued prior to the May-June gale of 1932." If we take our minds back to the 1933 Land Act we will recall what the clause in that Land Act set out. It was that the three years' annuities previous to May-June gale 1932, would be funded. The six half-years previous to that take you back to December, 1930. There was no distinction made by this House, and there can be no distinction made by any Government with regard to the six half yearly instalments which were funded. Yet the Minister tells us in this document that he is using as security the unremitted balance of the land annuity arrears "which accured prior to the May-June gale of 1932." How does the Minister take to himself the segregation of the three first half years which were funded from the three last half years? He cannot do it, and he knows it. He is either borrowing on the nation's security or not borrowing at all. This is a smoke-screen pure and simple. He tells us that the May-June gale of 1932, and the previous two and a half yearly instalments are full security on the land on which they are charged. That is a complete joke. There was a time when the land annuities were a security and a gilt-edged security for anything, but they are not now. I am not saying that they are not a security now because the people will not pay them. That is not my reason for the statement. But I want to say that once the Government interfered with the land annuities at all, once they said that an agreement could be broken up and that the man who signed his purchase agreement was not liable for the amount which had been put up, then its full security value was not there. Its value as a security against what? Then let us remember what may happen when the next Government comes into office. Suppose the next Government is a more left-handed Government than the present one, and suppose in the matter of the land annuity position they wiped out another half of them or wiped out the arrears altogether, where is the security? It is a joke. The Minister says further:—
"That they should ever become uncollectable is not to be thought of, for if they did all security of tenure and of private right and title in land would vanish in this country and we would have a position in regard to it comparable only with what exists in Communist Russia."
Thank God for that statement. That compares very peculiarly with some of the statements made by Ministers on the Government Front Benches—that a man's title to his land was the use he made of it. It was not a question of fixing the tenure. It was a question with some of the Ministers opposite that the use a man made of his land was his title to that land and nothing else. However, Ministers are mending their hands, they are getting on. In order to complete the camouflage the Minister says:—
"I do not think that those who have been responsible for withholding those annuity payments in respect of which the Guarantee Fund has had to borrow, wish to bring matters to that pass, but in any event the Government is determined for the sake of the general credit of the State to enforce payment of these moneys."
He is referring to the annuity payments previous to May/June, 1932. That was before there was any campaign against the payment of land annuities except what was originated by the members of the present Fianna Fáil Government. The Minister goes on then and he tells us that on the strength of that he is borrowing. Further on we find him going back to the annuity question again. He cannot get away from it. In page 18 dealing with bounties and subsidies he says:—
"In so far as we proposed last year to borrow £1,500,000 towards it, we have provided for the ultimate repayment of that amount by the creation of an adequate Sinking Fund in respect of the loan. We have also as additional security for its repayment an Exchequer asset in the shape of the funded annuities due in respect of the three half-yearly gales which accrued prior to January, 1934...."
Now I will be charitable to the Minister and say that January, 1934, should read December, 1933, because I think there is a mistake there. He continues:—
"all of which, of course, will be eventually collected by the Exchequer. Again, therefore, according to the normal canon we are entitled, if need be, to borrow that £1,500,000 to meet a fair part of the cost of the export bounties and subsidies, so long as the provision for these services is necessitated by the very exceptional circumstances in which we find ourselves."
Now, we have the Minister borrowing £550,000 on the security of the unremitted land annuities as he says prior to 1932. I say he cannot do that. There is no segregation of these funded annuities at all. There has not been. But he comes along then and tells us that there is a further £1,500,000 which he might also perhaps borrow on the strength of the three latter half years. He says "The items to which I have referred amount in the aggregate to £2,555,254." The peculiar thing about it is that the Minister borrowed last year on the strength of this Budget statement £1,500,000 to meet bounties, a borrowing which he says he has secured by the funded arrears of these six half-years. This year he proposes to borrow £1,300,000 on the same security, and he also proposes to borrow a sum of £550,000 or, at least, he has paid it to the Guarantee Fund with the same security. He is thus making a total of £3,350,000 borrowed on the security of what? What is the amount of the funded arrears? The amount of the funded arrears is a fund over which the Minister will have no control once he ceases to be Minister for Finance; because as I endeavoured to point out a while ago quite on the same principle his successor can wipe them out altogether. And it is on that security that he proposes to borrow £3,350,000, and he proposes to borrow this on a sum amounting only to £4,000,000 funded arrears. We have borrowed £3,350,000, and that is supposed to be good financing. We have a further indication that bounties, according to the Minister, are up. That is according to the Budget statement The provision for them is up, but according to the Estimates they are down. That is an extraordinary provision. The Minister says that they should be up £445,000 or something like that, whereas the Public Service Estimates say that they are down by £438,000. I compared the figures in both cases. The Minister uses some method of his own in calculating. Will he tell us that the wheat bounty is not going to be paid any more by the Government? No. The people are to pay that. It is not to come into the Government coffers, but it is to be paid by rich and poor alike. The bread is to carry that tax. That is the thing on which it is to be put. At least, that money does not appear in the Budget. I presume the Minister for Finance valued that to some extent.
The Minister told us in his statement of the difference between the Irish National Loan and British loans. It was very interesting indeed to hear the encomiums which the Minister passed on British patriotism. It marks an advance—a very decided advance. I wish the Minister would go down the country and say that. Speaking of the way in which these matters are dealt with in Great Britain he said:—
"The reason, I think, is clear. All sections in Great Britain vie with each other in inculcating confidence in the public finances."
It is a pity the Minister and his colleagues did not think of that in time. I remember, when the Minister was on this side of the House, the things he endeavoured to say and did say about the finances of this country. That was the time when Fianna Fáil told us that, because our agricultural exports went up and we got more money for them, we had a bankrupt sale in this country and that was evidence of it. That was the type of reasoning we had then. Of course, I admit that the responsibilities of a Minister are great; but they must be very great indeed when they compelled the Minister to alter his mind to the extent that it has altered since he became a Minister. It is rather good when he tells us:—
"There, everyone realises that to impair the public faith in the credit of the State is not good patriotism nor even good politics, and there would be short shrift for the politician or the Party which acted in the countrary spirit."
To that I say, "Hear, hear." Then he went on:—
"Our neighbours have had long experience in financial administration. They are proud of their achievements in that domain."
Very fine talk indeed.
"They hold their reputation in that regard as a great asset of their people, and when, three and a half years ago they were overtaken by adversity, they turned, not to ascribe the blame to one another, but to join with each other in an united effort to retrieve lost ground."
Does Deputy Donnelly see any significance in that? The Minister for Finance, in his straitened circumstances at present, which I regret, is like a drowning man shouting for help. The people who were responsible for that dilemma in which Great Britain found itself, went across to those people who had their heads properly screwed on and said: "Come along and help us; we will go with you and you can run the show." But the Minister for Finance wants the people to come to him and pull him out of where he is. That is what the Minister means. I certainly agree with the Minister for Finance that every effort ought to be made by everybody in this country to influence, as far as possible, the security and the stability necessary before this country can make any headway.
We have further in this Budget statement an indication that the Agricultural Grant to the local authorities is going to be reduced this year. I am sure the Minister for Local Government can hardly look very happily at a situation which envisages a thing like that. Last year the Estimates record that a sum of £1,370,989 was given as an Agricultural Grant. This year the amount is £900,989 and in his Budget statement the Minister tells us that a further £370,000 is to be added. Even that further £370,000 will leave us £100,000 short of what we enjoyed last year. I wonder does the Minister for Finance realise that the local authorities in this country are largely living on overdrafts. I do not want to say that the condition of local authorities is any worse than it actually is. I know what it is perfectly well. Surely, in the present condition of things in this country, when even the Minister for Industry and Commerce is forced to admit we have hard times and it is not easy to balance the Budget in them, it is hardly the time to make a further attack on the agricultural community. That is what is being done here—a further £100,000 is being taken off them.
There is another matter which I certainly do not follow and I would be very glad if the Minister would enlighten us on it. That is a matter relating to the Excise duty on pig carcases. The Minister in his statement told us:
"The Minister for Agriculture has pressed me very strongly to remit this duty altogether. I am not in a position to do so immediately, but I have agreed, when the board which is contemplated under the new Pigs and Bacon Bill has been set up and is fully functioning, to take steps to reduce and ultimately to remit this duty during the current year. This will cost the Exchequer £240,000 and is a remission which must be made good by a new impost elsewhere."
That, I take it, is a levy by the Pigs Marketing Board. Then the Minister said further:
"In my opinion the advantage which agriculturists will derive from the remission of the pig duty would not be lessened but rather would be increased by a tax on foreign wheat. Accordingly, I propose to levy an import duty of 6d. per cwt. on that commodity in the hope that it will recoup us to the extent of £190,000. The balance of the £240,000 will be found by an extension of the existing duty of 8d. per gallon on mineral hydrocarbon light oils to cover all mineral hydrocarbon oils used in the propulsion of motor vehicles."
The Minister for Finance was asked a question to-day and I was anxious to hear the answer. The answer was exactly what I thought it would be. This Excise duty of 10/- per pig carcase was imposed for the purpose of providing a type of stabilisation fund for the export of bacon. As far as this House knew, and as far as the country knew, the Government was not supposed to be reaping any benefits whatever from this Excise duty. As a matter of fact, the Minister told us to-day that not alone were they not reaping any benefits but that this Excise duty of 10/- per pig carcase did not cover the amount that they had to pay. Let us take it then that the Government did not reap any benefit from this levy. If the Government did not reap any benefit from this levy why does the Minister assume that the remission of the levy will cost the Exchequer £240,000? Why does he propose to impose an import duty of 6d. per cwt. on wheat in order to recoup himself to the extent of £190,000, the further balance, we were told, being recouped by a duty of 8d. per gallon on certain oils? I am afraid there is deliberate juggling with figures there. If the Minister for Finance has never benefited from the pig carcase Excise duty, and if it is to be carried on now by another authority, which is the Pigs Marketing Board or some of those boards in any case, why should the Minister impose a new tax in order that he will be able to recoup himself for money from which, according to himself to-day and according to what the country thought, he never had any benefit? It seems to me to be a rather shady way of imposing a tax, and that tax not for the purpose for which it was originally intended but for a different purpose altogether.
It was rather pathetic to hear the Minister for Industry and Commerce endeavouring to let down the old age pensioners lightly, and the manner in which he endeavoured to point out to the unemployed people of this country that they were not going to suffer. The Government is going to save £100,000 at least—and I say at the very least—on the old age pensioners, and it is going to save £300,000 on the unemployment assistance. But nobody is going to suffer! Not one! I wonder where it was all going. On the whole I say that the country—and particularly the people who pinned their faith to the Fianna Fáil Government, the Government that was going to take a little bit off the top and put it on at the bottom —has been sadly let down. The Minister for Industry and Commerce challenges the Opposition as to what is their policy. Now is the time for the Opposition to tell us their policy! If the Opposition were as dishonest as the Minister for Industry and Commerce was when on this side of the House we could easily say "reduce the army by £2,000,000; reduce the Civic Guards by £1,000,000." We could say all those things. Of course when the Minister got in the saddle all that disappeared. We could easily say all those things, but we do not say those things. The sooner the Minister for Industry and Commerce realises that that type of policy, if he calls it a policy, does not get anybody anywhere, the better it will be for himself and everybody else.
There is another new imposition which perhaps may not be taken at its true value, and that is the imposition under schedule A. The Minister for Finance has endeavoured to show that as a matter of fact he has made no material change at all in this respect, but of course he has made a very material change. The Minister could not see his way to actually increase the tax, so what he did was he increased the valuation by one-fourth. Does the Minister realise how many thrifty people in the country, and how many thrifty civil servants around Dublin, who have families, have endeavoured through building societies and in other ways to purchase their houses? He will get them all in the net this way. That is the Minister's sympathy for them.
On the whole, Sir, I say this Budget is a bad Budget, and I think the Government knows it is a bad Budget. It was amply evident from the attitude which the Minister for Industry and Commerce felt he was obliged to adopt here to-day that it was a rather sore defence he had to put up. As I have endeavoured to point out, there are matters in that Budget statement which I question. Like the Minister for Finance I want to say that the security of this country is good, and I think that nobody has done a greater disservice to this country than the Minister for Finance when he put in things as securities which are not securities at all. If the Minister wants to borrow he borrows on the security of the State or not at all. He ought not to be setting up a type of smoke screen by stating that he is borrowing on such things as funded arrears of annuities. Balderdash! He is not doing any such thing. As far as the agricultural community is concerned they certainly must view this Budget statement with sad hearts. The Government apparently came to the conclusion that the economic war has to continue, and that we must provide bounties and subsidies, but we are going to provide less than we provided last year. That is what the figures disclose. Last year it was bad enough. It was bad enough that after a certain period the Minister found himself constrained to drop the bounties from 35/- to £1. As far as I was concerned I never thought that the bounties went to the producers, but they stimulated buying, and to that extent they were good. There does not seem to be any hope of ending the situation which has humiliated the people of this country, which has demoralised the people of this country, and which has brought about a position at the present time when it pays to be corrupt and to get out of your obligations. If you want a licence to sell your cattle there is a certain way of getting it. It is not the straight way. There are levies; there is registration; there is control. Individual effort is killed. The individual characteristics of the people are being killed. With all that, we have the Minister for Finance coming in here and saying that if we want stability in this country, and if we want to get out of the rut—in which he has put us— what we have to do is to come across and help him.
On rising to discuss this particular Budget, I frankly confess that I do so with very mixed feelings. I do not really know whether to sympathise with the Minister, to condemn the Minister, or to applaud him. Anyone knowing the set of circumstances in which the Minister finds himself, and the type of insane politics which is governing both the financial and the economic conditions of this country, to the detriment of the people, and to the embarrassment of any unfortunate Minister for Finance who has got to pay for the tune which is piped by the political playboys amongst whom he finds himself, must view his efforts, be they good, bad or indifferent, with sympathy. On the other hand, if we were to examine the Budget to see exactly how taxation is to be levied, how the extra moneys are required, and from whom they are to be obtained, then our reaction would definitely be to condemn the Minister. On the other hand, again if we were to view this Budget and accept what appears to be on the surface a genuine attempt of the Minister or his colleagues to face up to hard facts, although they are desperately unpleasant, and to realise for the first time in the regime of the Fianna Fáil Party that even a Government cannot have money and spend it, without collecting it out of the pockets of the people of the country, then, one would be inclined to applaud the Minister; because the predicament he finds himself in is that Fianna Fáil as a whole have sown their crop of wild oats, and it is left to the Minister and the people outside to reap the harvest.
Again, when we examine this Budget we find running through it a weak attempt to evade the issue and a plea for sympathy, and a weak attempt to present in a new form the old position with the label "Hit me now with the child in my arms." The case in this instance is the widow, and running through the whole financial statement we find widows and orphans worked in and worked out. They are the household cat. They are blamed in this case for any hardship that may be inflicted on people or for any damage that may be done to the country. Let us keep that away from the Budget. It is a totally different question. In comparison with this Budget the cost of this proposed piece of legislation is as a drop in the ocean. It is a matter of revenue through the Central Fund; it is a matter of a couple of hundred thousand pounds and it is open to the argument that what you lose at one end you gain at the other. If widows are to get pensions then, to a great extent, the pensions are provided by a new levy upon employers and employees, and there must be an equivalent to the moneys budgeted for out of the Public Funds, either under the heading of Home Help or other sources. At all events, the cost is not sufficient to have this subject wound in and out of the Budget statement as a cause and reason and excuse for increased taxation, and vastly increased taxation.
In this particular Budget the resentment of people at being called upon to pay new taxation arises because of the difficulties people were experiencing in being able to pay the existing rates of taxation. Financial circumstances and economic circumstances in this country, to-day, are not nearly as good or as strong as they were months ago, and this is due to the antics of the politicians, and we are being called upon to pay for them now. We have an increased Army and we have an increased police force. We have all these things increased because the political leader of the Government got up a frenzy in the country on the policy that he proposed to lead the people of Ireland out of the British Commonwealth and Empire. We are beginning to appreciate now the tragedy that he has only led the Irish people out of the British market. And he has led them out of the British market with such disastrous effects that we are mulcting the taxpayer in order to build a step-ladder at a cost approximately of a couple of million pounds to help us try and climb back again into the British market.
There is no reason in ordinary times why a budget should lead to increased taxation. There is less reason in this country than any other country because to a great extent in the Irish Free State the Budget has lost interest. It used to be the centre of taxation and revenue collection every year, but since powers were taken by the Executive Council to levy taxation by order we have had, in fact, in this country for the past 12 months a budget a week —at least, 50 budgets in the last 12 months. The ordinary man in the street on seeing this shoal of new taxation ordered week after week buoyed himself up with the hope that shrinking revenue or increased costs were being met from week to week by the new taxation orders emanating from the Department of Industry and Commerce. Yet in spite of all that we are called upon to face this discussion, and to sanction new taxes which were described by the Minister himself within the last couple of years as of a particularly harsh type. We had the Minister's statement with regard to the sugar tax. With his usual eloquence and vehemence he held it up before our eyes as one of the hardest and most inhuman taxes that the mind could conceive. I do not know if the Minister's views and moods change with the seasons or alter from year to year. I do not know if the public appetite for sugar changes from year to year according to the exigency of the financial situation. But accepting the Minister's own particular views with regard to that one tax we must take it from his own lips that it is the hardest and most inhuman tax that could be imposed. So you have that new burden on the people. In discussing budgets or any other matters in this House, or in this country, for that matter, in order to score a debating point or embarrass an opponent I object most strongly to the old played-out canting phrascology of dividing the people into classes. I think that the less of that inside and outside the House the better. We have got to begin viewing the people as a whole.
That is hard on Deputy Morrissey now.
But we cannot forget that President de Valera, when there was ½d. tax imposed on sugar, in order to provide part of the cost of a derating grant, indulged in figures and looked up census figures, etc., and reckoned that that particular ½d. tax was a tax of 30/- a year on the man who had three children and twice that on the man who had seven children— £3 a year on the poorest person with a large family living in any back lane in Dublin. Then, we have 4d on tea, and the speeches that were made when the tea tax was lightened and the immense blessing and benefit it was conferring on the people and the hardship it was on the people who suffered under such a tax are within the recollection of every one of us. We were told that the people of Ireland, and particularly the poor, were unlike the people in other countries, in so far as they leant to such a very great extent on tea as a drink, as a beverage, and, to a very real extent, a meal. Taking those protestations as being sincere when they were made and taking the minds behind them as being honest when they were made in spite of that most inhuman tax, which we were told that sugar tax was and the harsh tax on a commodity which was regarded in this country as a necessity, tea, we have reimposed the tax on sugar and a particularly heavy tax on tea.
We have those two items picked out at a time when unemployment is rampant throughout the country; when wages are tumbling; when the incomes of the very poor have fallen nearly to the point that they cannot be reckoned; and when we have the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Finance telling us that if anyone in this House dared to stand between a man and a wage of 21/- a week for hard work he would be torn limb from limb.
24/- I think it was.
The Deputy was brimful of sympathy in Killbricken the other day for the poor persons with the poor wages, but he asked them to soldier on, and said that there was a better field around the corner, and that it was hard going to get there. I always read the Deputy's speeches with interest, but with wages tumbling like that and with poverty as prevalent as that, one would say it is not the occasion when tea and sugar should be picked out for heavy taxation. I am at one with Fianna Fáil in this, that perhaps the hardest Budget, the most unpopular and, according to Fianna Fáil, the most unjust and unfair Budget introduced here was the particular Budget that interfered with and took from the Old Age Pensions. We were told at that time that we should have gone over the brink of the abyss of bankruptcy before we interfered with or raided that particular payment, and yet here we have it again. In the third year of the Fianna Fáil era; in the third year of this new phase of Fianna Fáil prosperity, we have the sugar tax, the tea tax and the Old Age Pensions reduced.
I read with a certain amount of interest a lecture by a very distinguished theologian within the last couple of months and his theme was that it was unwise and unjust to build up any type of social service unless you were assured you were able to maintain it; that it was better to leave without than give to people and then take back; and that the contrast made their position all the harder and brought misery where there might not have been, and possibly was not, real misery before. What have we here? The removal of the tax on sugar and its reimposition; the removal of the tax on tea and its reimposition; and the issue of old age pensions on a generous scale and taking it back again. We have this emerging from the Budget—breaking the very poor in the Fianna Fáil political mill and as far as we have economies in this Budget or economies in this particular balance sheet, what are the economies proposed? £100,000 at the expense of the old age pensioners; £260,000 of a levy off the consumers of bread and when the Government, the central machine, the machine responsible for political purposes for the whole wheat policy, finds itself in difficulties and embarrassed because it is called on to pay for its own bag of tricks, unloading £260,000 on the consumers of bread, rich and poor. I do not go in for political mathematics like President de Valera, but if you work that down to the loaf and then apply the loaf to the family man as he did with the sugar, we might get further very interesting figures as to what that tax means and what that economy means to the poor person with the large family.
We have economy No. 1 at the expense of the old age pensions; economy No. 2 at the expense of the consumers of bread, to the tune of £250,000 a year; and then, economy No. 3—£300,000 at the expense of the unemployed. Those are there; those are three of the four proposed economies.
I wonder if the Minister in his heart really believes that that is fair play or defensible. That is the internal haemorrhage—that is what you are to extract at the expense of the family in this State. We cannot discuss this except in conjunction with the external haemorrhage, the five million odd pounds that is going to buy our way into a market that was ours for nothing before, and then you get some picture of the state of affairs in this country; you get some idea as to where the responsibility rests. We have that type of economy—the unemployed, the old age pensioner, and the bread consumer. We have that from people who bleated time and again in the past that, when the cost of Government in this country was £6,000,000 per annum less than it is to-day, the burden of taxation was such that our people could not stand it: that we had unemployment and one thing and another because we crippled industry by the weight of taxation. Was that so much hollow, insincere blather, or honest, sincere political conviction expressed here, and if it was honest, sincere, political conviction, honestly expressed, is it any harm to repeat it now; is it any harm to remind those who sit on the Government front bench of those honest, sincere statements made as late as three years ago? If those statements were neither honest nor sincere, if they were only meant to delude the taxpayer, to collect votes and to cod the people, it is time we had a confession of that because you cannot have it both ways; but, if those statements were correct and honest and sincerely uttered, then they should be as true to-day as they were then.
If there is any very big change in world circumstances, if there is a new shower of wealth that has come into this country and if the capacity of the people to bear taxation has increased to such a great extent that they can bear with ease to-day what they should not be expected to bear three years ago, but that, in addition, they can bear £6,000,000 more in the way of taxation to-day, then we should hear of the change: what it is, how it took place, and when? But we have these economies: the old age pensions, the unemployed and the increased cost to the consumer of bread. We also have the Minister's speech telling us in what I regard as hypocritical phrases that, when the rest of the world was spending money on armaments, preparing for wars or defence or offence, that we here in this country were spending money in a Christian manner and on the instruments of peace:
"Which is the better—to spend what we ought upon the instruments of peace, upon the plough and the hammer and the loom, or upon fleets of the sea and air?.... Elsewhere, millions are being spent freely buying tanks and aeroplanes and gas masks. We are spending to grow wheat, to make sugar and to win turf, and we are doing this so that this generation and the children of this generation may live."
Very touching.
Hear, hear!
I should say very hollow and very untrue at a time when the towns and villages of County Cork are like a town in Flanders during the Great War, and when the Army cost, as well as the numbers in it, have been increased; when not satisfied with the standing Army of the country we have thrown out new flank allied armies, when not satisfied with the police force which we were told was too costly and excessive in numbers, twice too great for our people, we have increased that beyond recognition, when the Secret Service Vote has been increased by a considerable number of thousands of pounds; when not only the services we have, the Army and police, but the secret service agents have all been increased in numbers and cost, we have this canting phraseology about spending money on the ways of peace in order to win turf and grow wheat. I could make my fortune growing wheat if you people would pay the cost. I could make my fortune growing bananas if someone else would pay the cost, and I could easily bleat about growing wheat if the cost of doing that were to be loaded on the consumer of bread. If there is to be any great credit for the production of wheat, let the credit go to the man that pays for it. The one sleek thing that you have done in this particular Budget is to guarantee that whether the growing of wheat is a success or a failure the Central Fund will not bear the cost of providing one penny for its growth.
The Minister wound up his speech by an appeal for help and co-operation in maintaining the credit of the country and assisting in his conversion loan. That is the type of appeal that the Minister will always get a generous response to, but if there is anything calculated to undermine the credit this or of any other country it is the wheeling on our tracks of the type of taxation that is imposed here. We have these taxes that I have referred to. We have an increased income tax for householders. I believe that if the Minister wanted to get a yield, such as he expects, that it would have been better in the interests of the State and of the people to have got it from the income-tax payers direct. It might have been perfectly reasonable and not a bit unjust ten or 12 years ago to select that particular type of tax; but I wonder when the Minister was doing that if he recollected the phase that we have gone through, particularly in Dublin and in all the cities and towns, in the last ten or 12 years during which it was impossible to rent a house. No matter where the money came from, whether it was in most cases borrowed at a very high rate of interest, anyone who wanted a roof over his head had to buy his house. The position was that most people bought, either by obtaining a loan at a very high rate of interest or by a part payment down, and the balance by way of rent. The smallest and the poorest people—I am talking in the middle-class sense—are, as a result of all that, badly up against it, in this time of general financial depression, in the matter of meeting their obligations, or even to keep a grip on the roofs over their heads.
It is in these circumstances that we have this particular levy. I think it is an unwise levy. I think it is needlessly harsh when we think of the amount of revenue calculated to be derived from it. I think it is paying no superfluous or undeserved compliment to the Minister to say that it would not be beyond him to meet the equivalent of that sum by tightening up economy in internal administration. I do not expect anything like the miracles that he promised us some years ago, but with the present inflated size of the services economy does not necessarily mean a reduction in man power.
In any service, when numbers grow, the spending facilities grow and, with the growth of numbers, there is more and more-opportunity for effecting economies through a tightening up of supervision and control and through more vigilant administration.
We have a figure here in this particular Budget, as presented, which, I think, takes from the reliability of the whole thing. I would rather have a Budget, good or bad, and a financial statement, that would give people the impression at least that there was something reliable and something officially authentic about it; but we have an absurd figure in this particular finance statement that takes from its reliability in the mind of any man or child. We have this Budget finally balanced with this particular statement, "Deduct for general over-estimation on supply services £950,000." Now, in a rough and ready way, we are to deduct for over-estimation £950,000—practically £1,000,000—and then, the next line to that is: "Surplus £10,000." Well, now, that is childish. That particular type of finance statement would not deceive an imbecile—to arrive at a surplus of £10,000 by means of an arbitrary figure of £1,000,000.
Who said it was arbitrary?
Do you mean to say, as Minister for Finance, with all your experts around you—and I have expertence of those men—that the subdepartment or the service that get away with any kind of inflated Estimate for the year are supermen? In the earlier years, when there was inexperience and when there were alterations, when there was increasing and reducing of Estimates at unexpected moments, Estimates for the year ahead were anything but a fairly accurate idea of the cost of the particular service, Department, or subdepartment concerned. But surely, after 12 or 13 years of administering our own affairs, managing our own business, and paying our own account it is no tribute to the Minister's own advisers to put in that figure of £1,000,000 for over-estimation. I think more highly of them than the Minister does. I do not believe that over-estimation, under present management, could account for anything like £1,000,000. However, if the Department of Finance is capable of overestimating expenditure to the tune of £1,000,000, then I do not think they are capable of estimating a surplus to the tune of £10,000.
Sir, in the universal gloom that surrounds us in this House since the Minister produced his Budget—
The Deputy is starting on a good note.
—there is at least one amusing fact, and that is, the faces of the Fianna Fáil Deputies. The confusion, the alarm, the mystification which the members of Fianna Fáil displayed when their unhappy Minister for Finance had to read out that dreary document yesterday, is one of the richest things that ever happened in the history of Ireland. What has become of the promise: "Vote Fianna Fáil and there will be plenty of money for everybody—more money for everybody and more, and more, and more?" That has gone on for three happy years. We have had President de Valera skipping, like a mountain goat, through this country, sowing a wild oat here and a wild oat there at the expense of the public resources of this country, and now the wild carouse has come to an end, and we see it in the collapse of the social services. I remember warning members on the Government Benches that the first sign they would see of the misery and despair of the small farmers of the country would be the day when the Minister for Finance would have to recognise, in his dwindling revenue, the necessity for cutting down the social services of the country. To-day, we are face to face with what I deem to be a deplorable necessity—a necessity which reflects upon this House as well as upon the Administration which is at present in control of the government of the country, and that is, that we have to turn to the poorest section of the community for a distribution towards those moneys that were to have been provided to stand between them and starvation and destitution, in order to balance the Budget. You are doing it because you have to do it. You are turning to the poorer sections of the community because you have bankrupted every section of the community that ought to be able, in normal circumstances, to come to the help of the country. You are doing it because you cannot extract from the profit-earners of the State the money that, in normal circumstances, they would be liable for in order to help the destitute and the needy—and the Labour Party has aided and abetted you in that insanity.
Quite a number of people went around this country believing that you could continue year after year piling up the burden on the backs of the small farmers of this country and that, so long as you could delude the simple people of rural Ireland into the belief that, unless they came out and bawled "Up de Valera" they were in some way betraying the principles and traditions of this country, you could go on piling the burden on their backs and never have to suffer from what you are suffering from now. But you are going to suffer now, and the Minister's Budget of this year is only a prelude to far greater sacrifices, far greater injuries and far more violent assaults on the section of the community that ought to be the care of the Government, instead of being a source of revenue for a crazy Government. It is now going to dawn on the minds of some of the more enlightened members of the Fianna Fáil Party that they cannot destroy the sources of revenue without suffering for it in the long run. It is going to dawn on the members of the Labour Party that when the time comes to bear that suffering the people who are going to bear the sharpest share are the most defenceless members of the community. Bear in mind that the whole Fianna Fáil Party is going to have the same arguments to use against the people who legitimately complain of the cuts in the old age pensions and cuts in unemployment relief as were used for the last three years against farmers. Any woman who finds that the wages her husband brings home will not reach to the dearer tea and dearer bread will be told that she is playing England's game if she does not suffer in silence. Any old age pensioner who is denied the pension by Departmental tightening up will be told, if there is a complaint, that that is playing England's game and that he is seeking to embarrass the Government. The unemployed man will be told that he still has a crust of dry bread or that he still has a patch of ground which disqualifies him as a person who is genuinely seeking work, and if he claims that he ought to get the unemployment benefit the Oireachtas meant him to get, he will be told that he is playing England's game. If you go on long enough you will find that every man, woman, and child in this country will be told that they are playing England's game according to the standard of the Fianna Fáil Party. Everyone in the country will be playing England's game except the 76 poor fools over there on the Government Benches. Sir, as I have described the Fianna Fáil Party too dramatically I wish to withdraw the expression "fools."
The tragedy of the position is that by prostituting all that is decent in the national life of the country; by prostituting the word nationality, prostituting national records and the story of all who suffered for this country in the past you members of the Fianna Fáil Party have succeeded in deceiving a very large number of our people indeed into the belief that even remonstrating with you in your foolishness is something like treachery to the national interest. I admit that you succeeded in putting that propaganda over; but in doing so you succeeded in injuring the public life of this country and deluding the country people into their undoing. In doing that you have succeeded in reducing the country to such a position that now your Minister for Finance has introduced that Budget. I do not blame him for being ashamed of it; nor do I blame him for his mournful countenance nor for his histrionics on the radio last night.
So you listened-in?
There can be no logical defence, and there can be no reasoned argument to defend the production for which he had been responsible a few hours previously. The Minister forgot that he was not addressing on the wayside down the country a specially selected audience of goms who would cheer him when he talked of the ruined churches and roofless abbeys and Protestant succession. He proceeded to say the same thing last night that he does say on such occasions. Those who listened to him heard what the Minister for Finance has to say about the finances of this nation.
But the Minister has become respectable. He has his eye upon the Irish Times. The Minister determined that he would demonstrate his financial probity by a substantial reduction of expenditure on the Supply Services. He told his listeners that the national expenditure on Supply Services had fallen by a little more than £4,000,000. The Minister would wish to put over that fraud upon this House, though he himself steered through this House a few weeks ago the Local Loans Bill which he declared was for the purpose of taking the £4,000,000 for Supply Services off his Budget. In fact the expenditure is not reduced by one penny. The expenditure is as high in the Minister's Budget this year as it ever has been since the Free State was founded and we may look forward with a practical certainty to a series of Supplementary Estimates during the year. I know that when warnings of that kind are given the Fianna Fáil Deputies have always been inclined to say: “Oh, well, the money will come from somewhere.” The money has come from somewhere. You have borrowed and you have taxed and you have anticipated and you have converted funds from one place to another and now you are driven into the pockets of the poor. If I were during the next couple of weeks to ask the members of the Fianna Fáil Party this question: “Where is the money to come from now?”
We will find it all right.
There never yet was a dissolute son of a hard-working man, a son who squandered his father's property, who did not go down into the gutter drunk proclaiming that he would find the price of a half-pint somewhere.
The Deputy appears to be a man of experience.
I have a good experience of rakes and I know one when I see one. The Minister is also anxious to represent to the country at large that he has a comfortable surplus. That was a very embarrassing speech he made a few months before he introduced his Budget. He went down in his respectable clothes to address his respectable supporters and he told them that he was going to have a comfortable surplus. Then he found he could not produce the surplus and that his "comfortable surplus" grew more and more attenuated, until eventually on the eve of the Budget it had vanished into thin air altogether. And we actually had a week's delay while the Budget surplus was being reborn to be published on Budget day. Then there was a Budget surplus produced. I have not got the figure beside me now but the Minister came to the conclusion that the Budget surplus, when it came to be examined, was found to be substantially less than the sum he had borrowed in order to provide for export bounties on agricultural produce. Deputies will remember that last year the Minister for Finance piously declared that he proposed to borrow this sum for extra export bounties because, as he said, he could not believe that the present situation was to continue indefinitely and that doubtless this was not going to be a recurring charge. He himself declared that if it was to take on the nature of a recurring charge that no sane man could claim it as material for a Budget surplus.
Nevertheless, the Minister turns up this year and announces that he proposes to vote a similar sum this year, and his colleague, the Minister for Agriculture, proclaims that as long as he is in office in the Fianna Fáil Government, bounties will have to be paid on agricultural exports. One Fianna Fáil Minister says one thing and another Fianna Fáil Minister says another thing. I have before this likened the Front Bench to the Tower of Babel. At least the Minister for Finance should explain to us that the Minister for Agriculture does not know what he is talking about; or else explain that he has been talking of a surplus in a Budget in which he has borrowed £1,500,000 for recurring charges which the Minister for Agriculture says will remain in the Budget as long as he is in office. This year there is a Budget surplus of £10,000, while we borrow £1,350,000 for subsidies and bounties; we are borrowing £100,000 for an industrial alcohol plant. Has the word "surplus" lost its meaning altogther or what does the word mean? Does it mean that we can finance our annual expenditure out of our annual revenue? Or does it mean that when a strangely incompetent mathematician misadds a sum and gets a wrong result that the wrong result is to be known as a Fianna Fáil surplus? But for clarity, the country ought to be told that since Fianna Fáil came into office the word "surplus" has lost its meaning, and if it has lost its meaning the Minister ought to tell us what its new meaning is. He ought to tell us what meaning it is to take on in 1936 or 1937 in the year when his successors will be in office.
That is optimistic.
Surely Deputy Donnelly does not hope to come back for another term of office. The expenditure on the Central Fund and the Supply Service figures set out in the White Paper plus the money that the Minister intends to borrow for the Local Loans amounts to £36,000,000.
Is there anybody in this country or in any other country who will defend a national expenditure of £36,000,000 per annum, when our export trade is under £19,000,000? Is there any sane man in this country, or in any other country, who imagines that we can continue to spend £36,000,000 a year when our adverse trade balance is over £20,000,000? Is there any sane man in this country, or in any other country, who believes that we can continue to spend £36,000,000 a year when our adverse trade balance is substantially greater than our total exports? Is there any sane man in this country, or in any other country, who believes that we can continue to spend £36,000,000 per year when our adverse trade balance continues to mount, and the sterling assets of the Irish banks continue to shrink? Unless we are prepared to take the philosophical view of Deputy Donnelly who says "sure it will come from somewhere," is there any rational person who can imagine that this style of national finance can be carried on? I know that there are many, perhaps not innocent people, but silly people, in this country who will say: "Ah, well, you foretold trouble long ago and nothing happened." It takes a long time to bankrupt a country that was as rich as this country. This was the most prosperous country in Europe the day Fianna Fáil came into office. It had very substantial reserves laid by in the way of savings in the banks.
Surely, that is the case still, judging by the banking reports?
I think there are considerable savings still there and I am trying to persuade Deputies on the other side, that they should ask themselves after three years of squandering, and, having had three years of sowing of wild oats and buying cheap popularity, if they are content to continue spending the national resources. I ask them to realise that we are living on the accumulated savings of those who have gone before us, and that that cannot go on for ever. Otherwise, they will go down just as the dissolute son of a prosperous father, trusting to God to find the money for the next "half-one." I would not give two hoots if you went down, but the trouble is that you will bring me and everybody else down with you. I fully realise that everything we have got is invested in this country. All the property we have and all the interest we have is invested in Ireland and we sink or swim with it. We know that to our cost, when there are men like the present Ministers in charge. If it was psychologically or physically possible for me to quit this country I would go.
Dr. Ryan
It would do us all good.
I do not blame the Minister for saying that. I followed him around the country to make everyone realise what an incompetent creature he is. I am sure it would do him good if I went.
When the Deputy talks like that he should look at Deputy Belton's seat and take warning.
The fact that we have to sink or swim with Ministers makes it the harder to bear. That is the peculiar difficulty we have. The Minister, and every Deputy, knows how difficult it is for people down the country to understand that you cannot go on indefinitely spending far in excess of your income without reaping the whirlwind, sooner or later. As long as you have men in responsible positions, like Deputy Donnelly, saying that the money can be got somewhere, that it has always been got, can you blame ordinary people, who are busy about their affairs, or who are earning their living saying: "Well, if they say that there must be some truth in it"? We will go on in the same way until it is too late. The tragic part of it is that by the time that situation develops in this country, which will bring home to every man and woman where we are, it will be too late. Neither Minister nor anyone else will be able to save the country. It is because we want to put an end to that in time—and there is still time—that we want to drive into the heads of Deputies on the opposite benches the insanity of the course they are pursuing. The Minister spoke of raising the credit of the country and of raising a loan. If the Minister would only return to sanity now this country could be saved, and a measure of prosperity could be restored. They could rest assured that social services that have been set up will be maintained. There is no use of attempting to throw dust in the eyes of the people or of the world. If any country continues to spend £36,000,000 yearly, while its adverse trade balance is substantially greater than its entire export trade, and while its foreign assets are dwindling, any sane man must know that sooner or later we will burst the country.
What about the home assets?
The Deputy had better ask the Minister for Finance about that later. Let him have a chat with the Minister and ask him if he would like to see the adverse trade balance grow or foreign assets dwindling and our export trade vanishing and that we should live a la Robinson Crusoe. When the Deputy gets the Minister in his room he will be told not to be making a fool of himself and not to be saying things in public which would only destroy the credit of the country. The pity of it is that two years ago the Minister did not say that; two years ago when there were such large accumulated reserves that it would not do much harm, because there was a lot of wealth in the country. We could lose a good deal. Perhaps it has been worth while to lose a good deal to teach Ministers. They have learned a good deal in the last two years and now that they have learned, let them, for goodness' sake, put it into practice. I know perfectly well that the Minister for Finance when answering the attack that has been made upon him for taxing tea, sugar, bread and tobacco, will ask: “Where am I to get the money? Let any Deputy on the other side tell me where I can get it, and I will remit the taxation.” That is no defence. Before the Minister contemplates taxation of the food of the poor he is bound to cut out of the estimates of expenditure every item that is not absolutely essential. To drive taxation into the home of every labourer, before every nerve has been strained to make up the gap by economies, is to my mind criminal irresponsibility.
What do these taxes which have been put upon the people in this Budget really mean in terms of individual families? In the last 12 months you put a ½d. per lb. on sugar—¼d. in the Budget and ¼d. by an Emergency Imposition of Duties Order some months ago. You are going to put 4d. per lb. on tea. You have put 8d. per lb. on tobacco. In the course of the last 12 months, as a result of transactions that went on between the Minister for Agriculture and the millers, you have steadily raised the price of flour in order to prepare for the new cereals legislation through which the levy on wheat is going on to the price of flour. Then the butter legislation has resulted in an increase in the price of butter of at least 4d. per lb. to the Irish consumer—probably more. Take it as no more than that.
Take the average small farmer's or agricultural labourer's family, perhaps three children and his wife. If I allow them half a stone of sugar in the week, that will not be too much; and 1 lb. of cheap tea that will carry 4d. per lb. tax. I suppose 2 oz. of tobacco in a week to a man will not be considered too much by Deputies who would consume, perhaps, that much in two days. If his wife brings home six loaves of bread in the week for the whole family that will not be considered too much. If she adds to that 2 lbs. of butter, she will not be living in the lap of luxury. That half-stone of sugar will cost the labouring man 3½d. more than it cost before you taxed him. That tea is going to cost him 4d. more every week. That tobacco is going to cost him one penny more for the half-quarter he buys. That bread is going to cost him ½d. on every 2-lb. loaf more than he paid before. Then butter is going to cost him 8d. for the 2 lbs. more than he had to pay before. That means that he is going to be called upon to pay, at a very bare reckoning, 1/7 a week into the Exchequer of the country and that man is probably earning £1 or 21/- per week.
You are going to take from the agricultural labourers and the small farmers, in indirect taxation alone, approximately 10 per cent. of their entire income. Out of every pound they earn the Fianna Fáil Government is going to levy 2/- in indirect taxation —and that is spreading the burden. A man who earns 20/- a week and has to keep a wife and family on that, is to be cut down to 18/- and that is spreading the burden. Then the pensioner is to lose his pension.
All the pensioners?
No.
Then why use the general term?
A great number of pensioners—I do not know how many. The Minister estimates his ability to squeeze them out at £1,000,000 a year. I think that when he gets at it he will probably be able to squeeze out a few more. He is going to get authority from this House to squeeze out as many as he can by enforcing the letter of the law. What is it all for? Why are we going to take from the farm labourer, who is earning £1 per week, 2/- per week? Why is it necessary to take the old age pension from people who are 70 years of age and over? Why is it necessary to deprive men, who are willing to work and cannot get work, of the miserable payment to which they have been entitled heretofore under the Unemployment Assistance Act? Do Deputies on that side of the House ever ask themselves why?
Why have you to resort to these expedients of taxation? Because you are destroying the fundamental industry of this country; because you are making it impossible for the agricultural community to live; because you believe you can bankrupt every farmer and still maintain industries and prosperity in every other section of the community. You thought you could so successfully hoodwink farmers that you could ruin them with impunity and still intimidate them into shouting "Up Dev," even when they were hungry. But the birds are coming home to roost. I admit you succeeded in intimidating hundreds and thousands of small farmers into shouting: "Up Dev." when they wished him at the other end of the world. But while you were intimidating them, you were impoverishing them; driving them back to subsistence farming. The result is that their purchasing power has been withdrawn from the common pool of the nation's prosperity. That has reacted on shopkeepers and business men in every walk of life; and is reacting on their employees, on professional men and on the factories here in Dublin.
I do not deny that, temporarily by excluding British factories and British wholesalers, you have created a false sense of prosperity in many new Dublin wholesale companies and Dublin factories who are now doing approximately the same amount of business as they were doing in 1931 and thanking Heaven that the economic blizzard has not hit them. But they have forgotten that in the three years there has been swept out of the Irish market all the British wholesalers who were distributing merchandise here; and that while their sales have not fallen, there have been withdrawn from the country enormous sales of goods. While they may be congratulating themselves on their apparent prosperity, they do not realise that the purchasing power of the community as a whole has shrunk down to their capacity to supply it, and that the shrinking has not stopped. It has just shrunk down as far as them now, and they will begin to feel the pinch when the shrinking process goes a little beyond them.
The Minister for Industry and Commerce last night grew indignant when I asked him, in connection with the imposition of a tax of 6d per cwt. on wheat, did he realise that he had put £1,200,000 per annum on the consumers of wheat in this country as a result of his cereals legislation by increasing the price of flour in this country. We are now paying between 35/- and 36/- a sack for bakers' flour and the same flour can be got, when the British levy is put upon it, of 4/6 a sack, at 27/- in Liverpool. That represents a difference of 8/- per sack. If you assume that the annual consumption of flour in Soarstát Eireann is 3,000,000 sacks per annum, which is approximately the figure at which the Milling Commission arrived, you have an annual tax of 8/- on every sack and that is 24,000,000 shillings or £1,200,000 paid by the consumers of bread in this country. That is not in the Budget. There is no mention of that tax there. The Minister has taken it out of the Budget and turned the miller into a tax gatherer. He has done the same with a variety of other taxes.
There is no mention of the subsidy on sugar, and Deputies on that side of the House imagine that when you go through some process of abracadabra and do not talk about it the tax on sugar simply disappears. It is put out of the way and does not worry anybody. Did Deputies hear what the Minister for Finance had to say last night—that he had put sugar into the position of freedom from Excise duty but that the grower, the manufacturer and the consumer must make up their minds that, between them, ways and means must be arrived at whereunder sugar would be made available again to the Minister for the revenue which he was accustomed to derive from it?
How are the ways and means going to be devised? Are we going to reduce the price of sugar beet? I know that the poor Minister for Agriculture is kicked up the stairs by the Minister for Industry and Commerce, and is kicked down the stairs by the President of the Executive Council, but is he going to let himself be buried under this? Is he going to let the miserable 37/6 per ton be taken from the beet grower? If he is not, are we not only going to put a ½d. on sugar but another ½d. or 1d. to provide the revenue which the Minister requires, or perhaps the Minister for Agriculture is going to go down and take over the four white elephants and show the technicians there how they can be more effectively worked in the future? Perhaps those men do not know their job? I remember the Minister for Industry and Commerce—and Deputy Donnelly will remember it too—when introducing legislation for the additional beet sugar factories, explained to us that the men in Carlow were not doing the job according to modern methods at all, and that he and the Minister for Agriculture had discovered new and more efficient methods which would make the manufacture of sugar out of beet a very much more economical business, and that there would be ample scope for operating the industry without a subsidy at all. There was ample scope. There was the scope that lay between 39/- per ton for beet of 15½ per cent. sugar content, and 30/- per ton, and the difference that lay between 2¼d. per lb. and 2½d. per lb. for sugar. But we did not hear much about increased efficiency since, until the Minister for Finance took it up again in his Budget. Let Deputies remember that the talk of increased efficiency before reduced the price of beet by 9/- per ton and increased the price of sugar by ¼d. per lb. There is ½d. per lb. gone on sugar since, and now the word "efficiency" is beginning to roll around the Chamber again. Is this the prelude to another reduction in the price of beet, and another increase in the price of sugar, or do the empty Labour Benches suggest to us that steps will be taken to economise in the beet sugar factory, if not by increasing efficiency at least by reducing costs? I think the Minister might have been a little more frank in telling us what suggestions he and his learned colleague, the Minister for Agriculture, had worked out to bridge this gap which he has discovered. I think before the Financial Resolutions leave the House he ought to explain to us what scheme he had in mind in order to make sugar a revenue-yielding substance in the future. Let Deputy Donnelly go down to Laoighis and explain to the beet growers there that they have a patriotic duty to grow beet for less money and to pay a little more for the sugar that is made out of it. Let him wind up his observations by saying: "And remember that if you are not ready to do it you are playing England's game."
Nobody has to tell them anything about beet.
I invite Deputy Donnelly to go down and tell them that. If he comes back unscathed from Laoighis-Offaly I shall be the first to congratulate him.
I would invite Deputy Dillon to grow a few acres himself.
I am well aware that Deputy Corry believes in growing anything and everything which will yield a profit, but there are still some old-fashioned people in this country who never yet took doles from any Government, British or Irish, and who would much prefer to earn their living on their own land, without help or subsidies. Deputy Corry would be amazed to discover how many farmers there are in this country of that mind. Let him realise that there are a great many people in this country who would be much happier if they were allowed to grow crops which would pay without subsidies or Government assistance of any kind, and would take far more satisfaction from earning their living in that way than from getting subsidies on beet, wheat, peat or anything else. They learned what it was in the days of long ago to be under the servitude of landlords. They have no desire to exchange that servitude for the servitude of Fianna Fáil clubs. I wonder when Deputy Donnelly was listening to-day or yesterday to the ominous words that the Minister for Finance had to say about sugar, was Deputy Donnelly asking himself: "What has become of tobacco? What has become of that crop which my friend and colleague, Deputy Corry, said would produce £60 per acre for any man who had the enterprise to grow it?" What has become of the crop that was to provide prosperity and wealth for an ever-increasing number of hardworking farmers in this country who preferred the plough to the bullock? What has become of the famous interview which President de Valera gave to the Evening Herald long, long ago, in which he said that having had the benefit of Deputy MacEntee's advice he had come to the conclusion that the proper course to pursue was to remove tobacco altogether from the purview of the Revenue Commissioners? He said that he and Deputy MacEntee had come to the conclusion that, though there might be some initial loss, the expense of supervision was so great—
I am perfectly certain that the President did not use that expression.
What expression?
"And Deputy MacEntee"—on that occasion, anyway.
I do not know if Deputy MacEntee desires to subscribe to the view expressed by the Minister for Agriculture that President de Valera is too foolish to be true. Whether Deputy de Valera, as he then was, took the trouble to consult the individual whom he has since inflicted on this suffering country as Minister for Finance, I do not know, but I assume that when he had that rod in pickle for the country at least he tried it out on himself, and, judging from the conclusions which he arrived at, doubtless he did, because the solemn conclusion he arrived at was that tobacco ought to be delivered from the tyrannical interference of the Revenue Commissioners. A loss to the revenue he clearly foresaw, but he was satisfied that what might be saved in the cost of supervision would more than compensate the Exchequer, combined with the lucrative industry which would be created on the soil. Now what has happened to President de Valera's economics? What has happened to the farmers of this country who were to be compensated for the loss of the cattle trade and the live-stock industry by the tobacco industry? That industry has gone up the spout, and are we not justified in asking ourselves: "When peat went up the spout and tobacco went up after it how long will it be untill wheat starts that weary peregrination?" When the day dawns that we have not wheat, and we have not beet, and nothing remains to us of the peat but the bags, and we have not tobacco, what are the farmers to turn to? They turn back to what President de Valera has once described as the best rural factory that could be set up in this country, and that is the bullock and the heifer.
Do the innocent and deluded Deputies on the other side realise that President de Valera, the inspired leader of the Irish people, informed a deputation recently that he had made up his mind, after consideration, that the best rural factory he could provide was the bullock and the heifer? Do the deluded followers of President de Valera realise that having whooped up wheat and beet, and peat and tobacco, he has come to see what those of us on this side sought to teach him, and that was that the traditional agricultural policy was the sound policy and if you destroy it you destroy the whole economic position of the country at the same time?
Does any Deputy on that side believe that the farmers are not now faced with bankruptcy? Does any honest Deputy on that side of the House, living amongst the small farmers, fail to realise that there is not a single one amongst them who is not poorer to-day than he was ten years ago or three years ago? Is there any Deputy over there who does not know that if the present regime continues there will not be a single farmer in this country paying his way unless he is collecting his profits in the form of a Government grant? Does the Minister for Agriculture allege that there is a single branch of agriculture to-day in which any man, no matter how hard he works, could make a living? Is there to-day any agricultural activity in which any individual could engage at which he could make a living unless that living and profit were provided by way of a Government grant?
Do Deputies realise the significance of the statement made by Deputy Smith and adopted by the Minister for Agriculture that you dare not guarantee an all-the-year-round economic price for pigs, because if you did every farmer in Ireland would go into the production of pigs and you would have an insupportable surplus? Do Deputies realise the significance of that statement, which clearly means that every branch of agriculture is reduced to such a depth of destitution that if you guarantee a man the cost of production in any branch, every farmer will immediately go into it? The Minister for Agriculture, when he blurted that out, did not realise the significance of what he was saying, but he was perfectly right.
Dr. Ryan
I never said it, in any case.
Unless my ears deceived me, the Minister and Deputy Smith said it, and when I drew Deputy Smith's attention to it he threatened to beat the head off me.
Dr. Ryan
It is a pity he did not.
He might not be able.
The Minister made that statement in this House and the Minister stood over Deputy Smith when he made it, and the Minister at this moment in the Seanad is refusing to guarantee the farmers an economic price.
Dr. Ryan
I never made any such statement, and I would like the Deputy to withdraw what he has said.
I will withdraw nothing of the kind. It is not the first statement or promise that Fianna Fáil has swallowed, and it will not be the last.
Dr. Ryan
I never made any such statement.
What statement do you deny making?
Dr. Ryan
The statement that if pigs were an economic proposition every farmer in the country would go into the production of pigs.
I said, and I repeat it now, that the Minister alleged on the Pigs and Bacon Bill that if an economic price were guaranteed to the producers of pigs all the year round the danger was that everybody would go into the production of pigs and you would have a hopeless surplus and, willing as he would be to provide an economic price at all times of the year, he could not do it.
Dr. Ryan
The Deputy has changed a good lot now, but still I did not make that statement.
The Minister said that if he provided an economic price everybody would go into the production of pigs and there would be a hopeless surplus. Deputy Smith subscribed to that view and neither of them realised the significance of the admission he was making.
Dr. Ryan
I did not make the statement.
I am glad to think that even though they did not realise the significance of it——
If a Deputy in this House says he did not make a statement, his word must be accepted.
I readily accept the Chair's ruling and will conform to it, but if the Minister——
If the Deputy purports to quote a statement he must do so correctly.
If the Minister is allowed not only to challenge what purports to be a verbatim quotation, but also to challenge an interpretation of his words and say: "Though I did use words capable of that meaning, what they actually meant was this," then it would be very difficult to pin any Deputy to a statement.
The Chair has not ruled that a Deputy may not interpret another Deputy's speech. The point is that a Deputy may not attribute to a Minister or another Deputy precise words if he says he did not use them. The Deputy is entitled to interpret a statement as he pleases.
On a particular stage of the Bill, when there was a certain reluctance to accept an amendment from me stipulating an economic price for pigs all the year round, the explanation was that if the Minister provided an economic price everyone in the country would produce pigs and you would have a hopeless surplus. I entirely agree. The fact is the Minister did not realise the significance of his own admission and it is now beginning to dawn upon him and it is beginning to dawn on Deputy Smith. I am glad to see that even the most deluded Deputy is beginning to get a glimmer of light. It is all to the good. It has taken a long time and it has cost this country piles of money, but still it is all to the good. Many people in the country say that it was not worth it and that it cost too much, but I do not agree. I think the members of the Fianna Fáil Party were a public menace until they got a little experience of Government. Their attitude in Opposition was that of irresponsible children bawling about what they were going to do. When I said to one of them recently: "What has become of this and that? How is it we have not swept all the trawlers off the sea and sold all the fish the fishermen could produce? How is it we cannot provide everyone with a pension?" he replied mournfully, "Distant cows have long horns." I sympathised with him.
I realise that many Deputies over there were deluded by President de Valera into believing that if they got into office they could work miracles and do marvels. They have now discovered they can do none of the things they hoped to do. All they have succeeded in doing so far is to break a bit of crockery and it has been a costly business to the State as a whole. The Deputies over there are chastened men; they are not so cock-a-hoop as they were, and that is all to the good. They are beginning now to realise that those who warned them some years ago to beware of the paths they were treading are not traitors and are not playing England's game. They are simply people who wanted to try to protect you from yourselves. We have protected you from some of the greater injuries you might have inflicted on yourselves or on the country as a whole, but, do the best we could, we have not been able to prevent you doing a great deal of damage to the country as a whole, although in the process of doing that you have done yourselves a great deal of good. At any rate, you have learned something and you are beginning to show some sense of responsibility. I agree that when you meet with some serious difficulties your first reaction is panic. That is to be expected. Men who have not faced their responsibility bravely are likely to lose their heads when they first come face to face with a truly awkward situation, even when that situation is of their own making.
This Budget is a panic Budget. You have lashed out in every direction in a wild endeavour to maintain a rather crippled reputation for sound finance and you have dragged into your net people who should not have been struck at. I believe that when you see this Budget in action, you will come to realise that it must be drastically amended. People may have to suffer under it for a year, but I do not believe that even the members of the Fianna Fáil Party are so silly as to imagine that many of the principles enshrined in this document could be stood over by any democratic Government, not to speak of a Christian Government. I am glad you are learning sense! I am sorry for you that you have given such an exhibition of panic when you began to meet the shadows of the impending events for which you yourselves are responsible. You may depend on all the help and co-operation you want in order to clear up the mess you have made. You will get it when you are trying to clear up the mess you have made of the administration of justice in this country; you will get it when you are trying to clear up the mess you have made of the finances of the country; and you will get it when you start trying to clear up the international relations mess you have made of this country. You will realise, the longer you are where you are, that the greater the difficulties you get into, the more generous help you will get from your opponents, but, at the same time, I think those opponents are entitled to say: "You are in a mess now; you will want help to get out of it and, for goodness' sake, turn back before the getting you out of your own mess wrecks the whole country."
I remember in my young days that when you saw something absolutely useless and good for nothing knocking around the district and when you asked what it was, you would be told: "Oh, he is a jack of all trades and master of none." When we hear Deputies like Deputy Dillon getting up here and claiming to know everything about industry, about labour and about farming—why he could even tell you how many stitches a tailor would put into a trousers—you can easily fit him into the picture. We had Deputy Dillon to-night complaining about the Budget and wailing about the position of the farmers. What was his complaint? That the farmer has to pay so much for his butter and that the farmer has to pay so much for his flour. That was Deputy Dillon's complaint to-night and we wonder when will we get some kind of a combined policy from that crowd over there. We have one of them wailing because one thing is not done and another wailing because that thing is done.
We had Deputy Dillon complaining about the people who had not got work; we had Deputy McGilligan on the same lines last night; and we had Deputy Roddy this evening raising a terrible complaint entirely. He said that the Fianna Fáil policy was a good one, that their social policy was a fine policy, but, that they were going altogether too quickly. It would be soon enough to give the grandson of a labourer at present living in a two-roomed, insanitary shack down the country, a house, but we had no business giving a house to himself. It would be soon enough to start social services in a small way and, as Deputy Mulcahy did, confine them to Dublin City. That would be a fine thing and, above all, for fear you would give employment, what in the name of goodness do you want voting so much relief money for? That was Deputy Roddy's wail to-night. There was too much money being voted for relief works; too much money being voted for housing; too many social services; and too much money being provided to see that the poor did not go hungry and that the unemployed got employment.
That was his principal complaint. On the other hand, we had Deputy Dillon and the rest of them getting up, one after the other, and complaining because we do not give them employment. Hang it, which is the policy? Which of the two do you stand for? Is it the policy under which people may die of starvation in this country and it is not the duty of the Government to provide employment for them? Or have they got a new one? Deputy Dillon spent two hours here to-night wailing and complaining. Why? Because Fianna Fáil had stepped in and seen to it that the farmer got some kind of price at least for his butter, and that Deputy Dan O'Leary was able to sell his milk.
A penny a gallon I think you told me it was worth.
And if Cumann na nGaedheal were in office, the price of milk in this country to-day would be 1½d. per gallon, and you know it.
Give us an open market for all our produce.
Yes, an open market with 76/- a cwt. for butter, and you know it. You will tell me all about it in the Lobby, but when it comes to a vote you will see Deputy Bennett trailing around after Fianna Fáil and hanging on to the tail of my coat to vote for it. Why? Because he dare not go back to his constituents in County Limerick and tell them that he voted against the Fianna Fáil policy in respect of butter, and he knows he dare not do it.
I am going back to Cork.
The Deputy is living in Dublin, far away from the poor small farmer of North Cork. We have this cry because Fianna Fáil stepped in and afforded the farmer a home market for his wheat and increased his price from £6 a ton to £9 10s. to £10 a ton. We have the complaint because there were 26,000 acres of wheat grown here in 1931 when we came into office and there are 250,000 growing this year. We have this wailing because we have given the farmer a market for £2,500,000 worth of wheat here at home. I challenge Deputy O'Leary, or any other Deputy on the opposite benches, to say that any farmer in the Free State would keep a milch cow and send his milk to a creamery for conversion into butter and sale in the English market at the present price of butter in that market, without any tariff at all. Suppose there were no tariff and you got from 58/-, which was the general price all along, up to 72/-, which I think is about the price per cwt. for butter in the English market. That represents from 1½d. to 2d. a gallon for milk delivered at the creamery. Would any farmer keep a cow to do it? I know that I would not and I am a farmer. I claim to be as good a farmer as any of the Deputies sitting on the benches opposite and a good deal better than a lot of them. If farmers did not keep cows so as to be able to send milk to the creamery at 1½d. per gallon, there would not, of course, be any calves and, in the natural course, no bullocks, so that we would hear no more noise over there. That is the position and the Deputies opposite know it. The wise Deputies over there should look before them and remember that they have got to come down to the ordinary milch cow. The farmers in the Country Limerick told Deputy Mulcahy in plain, straight and simple language, when that Bill was introduced, that they were not going to follow his lead; that they were going to break away. I do not know how they got on at the court-martial, but they tried it again the other day. Then we had the spectacle of Deputy Bennett of Limerick marching into the Lobby and holding Martin Corry by the tail of the coat fearing that he would stary away from him. Next we had what was a sneer about beet—the four white elephants and the beet. I remember a tin god in my part of the country who used to go around with the same cry that Deputy Dillon uttered here to-night that we could buy wheat and get it in here; in fact we could, as Deputy Dillon said, bring in the flour at so much per sack. Then why grow wheat and why give employment in the mills that Deputy McGilligan closed down? Why have a mill in Midleton that was working quarter time in 1932, a mill in Mallow that was working half time in 1932, and a mill in Glounthane that was closed down in 1932? Why are all three mills working overtime to-day when, according to Deputy Dillon, we can get a Canadian or an English labourer to mill wheat for us and send it over here? We have a different position to-day from what we had in 1932. We have Irish labourers working in the mills, but in 1932 they were walking around the country with hungry faces and had not any unemployment assistance to get.
We remember the phrase that men might die of starvation in this country and that it was not the duty of the Government to provide for them. That was the wail before this Government came in, and that is the policy that Deputy Dillon wants to get back to. He made no bones about it in his speech to-night. The farmers, he said, wanted to live and did not want to live on doles. What does the Deputy mean by a dole? That is what we get from Deputy Dillon here, but he will get up at a cross-roads meeting to-morrow or the next day and talk about the farmers being entitled to the cost of production. When this Government attempts to face up to the question of giving the farmer the cost of production, Deputy Dillon calls it the dole. Because the Irish farmer is getting the cost of production for his wheat that, according to Deputy Dillon, is a dole. The Deputy then talked of tobacco. Where, I ask, has the tin god gone to, and where is the fortune gone for the farmers? I imagine that the Minister for Agriculture must have been obliged to get new carpets for his office, or to lay down bran bags in it, to replace the carpets worn out by all the Deputies he had coming to him during the last 12 months looking for licences for people to grow tobacco.
And they did not get them.
The dickens mend them that they did not get them. Surely the farmer who had the pluck and the courage to go out and start as a pioneer has a right to the first goose. Why did they follow the advice that they got? Last year, in connection with beet, we had Mr. E.J. Cussen travelling around from house to house in a motor car, and God alone knows who paid for it. I do not know what organisation paid for that motor car, but he was travelling around after my heels in my constituency night after night when I was engaged holding meetings and asking the people to sign in connection with the growing of beet. While I was engaged on that work the motor cars of the broken-down bankrupt farmers pulled up at the doors outside.
The Deputy should not drag the names of individuals into the debate.
I will leave them out altogether. I say definitely that we had broken-down bankrupt farmers going around doing that. I had to travel on shanks' mare. But we had those broken-down bankrupt farmers who could not pay their annuities or rates, who could not pay anything according to themselves, driving around in motor cars after me and going to the people and asking them "Did you sign a contract for beet; that is de Valera's crop and you should not grow it at all." Then when they found that the crop was all right and that the farmers were pleased enough with the price, we had them writing like this, "Dear Mr. Corry, can you get me a couple of acres? I was misled last year, I admit it. But I will not be misled any more." Last year we had to bring in the Blueshirt farmers from Wexford to grow beet for the Mallow factory.
Dr. Ryan
There are no Blueshirts in Wexford.
They sent five Blueshirts to us on the Committee. Anyway, I do not care what you call them. We had that position—5,000 acres of beet coming in from Wexford into the Mallow factory last year. This year we were able to send them about their business. Why? Because the farmers down there are growing the crop themselves this year. They found that they were fooled when they took the advice of Cumann na nGaedheal—I do not know what name it has now, it has had so many. One time it was called O'Duffy's party.
What will we call yours?
I cannot recall at the moment all the names that it had. They adopted quite a number of names during the last four years.
Talk commonsense.
Last year you had the people in that organisation going around and misleading the unfortunate farmers, making dupes and fools of them. They were telling the farmers that if they grew beet it would never pay them: "it cannot pay you and it will not pay you; you should not grow it," and all that kind of thing. But every farmer who grew an acre of beet in the County Cork last year is going around looking for five acres this year.
Was that the case that you put to the factory?
I will do my job at the factory when I am dealing with it. That was the kind of thing you had going on last year. When the results of the growing of the crop became available, the farmers who had been told last year that if they grew it they would be bankrupted are now going around looking for five times the acreage that they had last year. The enterprising Blueshirt farmers, who would not grow the crop last year, are now asking for a couple of acres and are saying that they will grow any quantity that they can get. What has been the result of all that? We had to send the Wexford farmers back again to the County Carlow to squeeze in there and try and get back what they had lost.
You have no room for them in Cork.
We never had any room for them. We took a loan of them when we wanted them, just as when the Deputy could not find any room on the benches opposite, he moved over to a position where he has plenty of room. Deputy Dillon tried to instil into us the idea, in his reference to the farmers who have signed a three years' contract for beet—they are to get a guaranteed price for beet for three years—that in some magical way the Minister for Finance is going to wave his hand over them and that the price is going to disappear. The Deputy is a jack of all trades and master of none. Why, he knew everything about everything, from galvanised buckets to wheat, oats, barley, and even tobacco. He told us all about the price of tobacco. All I can say is that tobacco was the best paying crop that I had last year. I knocked down something around about £55 an acre out of it, which was not so bad, it paid me, and it paid me well. That is what is wrong with the Deputy and with his colleagues over there. They advised the farmers not to grow any of these crops but to stick to the bullock, just in the same way as their generals went down through the country and advised the people not to pay their annuities and to let their cattle go, and then, when the sheriff came along to seize their cattle, these leaders pulled out their cheque-books and paid the amount, plus the added costs, and the poor fool who had been led by them saw his cattle taken away. That is the sort of thing that has been going on all over the country, and that is the sort of thing they are trying to live down now.
I remember that, in June, 1932, we were told that the country was burst, that it could not last, that bankruptcy was staring the farmers in the face. Every Deputy here heard that kind of thing. As a matter of fact, if I were to bring in all the wails and moans that were made at that time by Deputy Dillon and Deputy MacDermot and the rest of them over there, you would think that you were listening to the very same speech that Deputy Dillon delivered to-night Deputy Dillon has got very small now. He is talking about the small farmers now, but I remember the time when he was here in the middle benches, now so ably occupied by Deputy Belton——
Thank you.
——I remember the time before the change of seats came about, when Deputy Dillon showed himself to be so obnoxious and obstreperous that Deputy Belton left. That was the time when we introduced the Land Bill in this House. What was Deputy Dillon's attitude then? Did he stand for the small farmer? No. The stand he took up then was the unfairness of this 50 per cent. reduction in the land annuities, because the rancher down the country, who had no annuities to pay and who had a freehold, could not get the benefit of the 50 per cent. reduction because he had no annuity to pay. Evidently, Deputy Dillon has become wiser now, and is looking after the small farmer now, and his slogan now is that the small farmer will be broke as a result of the price of flour and butter. Deputy Brennan spoke here to-night also. Deputy Brennan was bad enough, but he was not as bad as that. The Minister for Industry and Commerce showed here to-night that, as a result of the policy of the Fianna Fáil Party, there were 95,000 more people in insurable occupations to-day than there were in such occupations in 1931 when we had a Minister for Laziness and a Minister for Grass as a so-called Minister for Agriculture. Any Deputy in this House, who goes down to the country, can see what is happening all through the country. The Minister for Furze has disappeared and, as a result, the blackberry bushes and the furze and brambles that used to grow out from the hedges and meet in the middle of the field are all gone and the plough is now in and wheat is growing where the furze used to grow. That is a change, and it is a good change. No matter how these changes have been brought about, they are there to be seen by everybody.
Then, we had Deputy O'Higgins telling us all about economy. Honestly speaking, Deputy O'Higgins is the last man in this House who should speak about economy. I will only say this much, that when we started here to take a small, and a very small, portion—to my mind too small a portion—from the salaries of public officials in this country, every Deputy on the opposite side walked out and voted against it. I have not heard any of them, with the exception of Deputy Roddy, speaking in favour of such economies. I do not know what authority Deputy Roddy has to speak for his Party, but is there any member of the Party opposite willing to get up and follow Deputy Roddy's line and tell the country plainly that they do not want any more houses built, that Fianna Fáil is going ahead too fast in social services, and that the unemployment relief and widows' and orphans' pensions should be done away with? Very few of them have Deputy Roddy's courage or are prepared to go so far as to say that these social services should be done away with. That, however, was Deputy Roddy's view about the matter. There should not be any strain put on the community according to him. Public boards are suffering under a strain at present, in Deputy Roddy's view, on account of these social services. Deputy Roddy's argument was that there should not be any relief schemes nor any attempt to help out the unfortunate labourers who have been living in wretched and miserable conditions since the war and for years before that. He believes that there are too many and too big relief schemes and that Fianna Fáil should have less social services. Well, when Deputy Roddy goes down to his constituency, I hope that some other Deputies from his constituency will bring down his speech and read it out to his constituents after Mass. I know very well that I, at least, am going to add his speech to my Bible. It will be very handy to quote from so as to show the people what would happen if ever Deputy Roddy happened to come back here in office again. There are a few landmarks down in my county as a result of Deputy Roddy's administration, and they will be remembered for a long time.
That, however, is the kind of trash that we had dealt out to us all day. I have been listening to it all day except when, in despair, I would get up and go out for a while—I even spent an hour at my tea, but when I came back there was Deputy Dillon wailing and moaning about the small farmers. That is the kind of thing we have had all day—talks about the small farmers from men who know damn-all about the small farmers, men who never saw a cow milked in their lives, or, at least, never milked one themselves. Some of them never even saw a plough. If we are to hear talks about the farmers, let us hear something from a real farmer who has worked a farm himself, like Deputy Finlay over there.
I could instruct the Deputy on farming.
I know that you are a good farmer. That is why I should like to hear you, but, for Heaven's sake, do not let Deputy Dillon speak for you. I am sorry, a Chinn Comhairle, if I have wandered slightly, but when one has been listening from 3 o'clock to 9.30 to this kind of thing I think it is time for somebody to put a stop to it and allow somebody over there to tell us the policy of the Party opposite in this matter. However, I hope that they will take my advice to heart and, when they see anything new coming out in future, that will give the farmer an opportunity of carrying on, that they will not be out behind the ditches advising the farmers not to grow de Valera's crop. If they like, I will undertake to take over a Committee and give a course of lectures on it, and I can assure Deputies opposite that it would do them a lot of good. Deputy O'Leary will help me out.
I am waiting until you finish.
That is what we have had to listen to to-night. I regret to have delayed the House, but someone had to put the other side of the picture.
A Chinn Comhairle, ehualamar óráid bhlásta indé ón Aire Airgid ag míniú duinn caidé an cruth a bhí ar Chisde an Stáit: an cur isteach agus an tabhairt amach a bhéas orainn ar feadh na bliana. Cinnte go leór is mór agus is trom an cúram atá ar an Aire Airgid. Caithfe sé na milliúin punt a chruinniú no sheibhtiú ar dhóigh eighinteach fá choinne na seirbhísí puiblí atá de dhith orainn. Caithfe sé tacsaí a chur orainn le sin a dhéanamh, bíodh sinn sásta no mi-shásta. Ach sé mo bháramhail nach mbéidh daoine bochta na tíre, go háithrid muinntir na Gaeltachta, sásta leis na tacsaí a leag an tAire orainn indé. D'fhulaing na daoine seo mórán le cupla bliain anuas; d'fhulaing siad go foighideach ánas agus ocras ag fanacht le fáinne geal an lae agus an El Dorado a bhí geallta dóibh nuair a gheobhadh Fianna Fáil stiúradh Rialtais na tíre seo. Indiu, mo léan, is fada ón chréachtan céirín aca. Ní fhaca, mise in mo chuimhe fhéin oiread boicteanais ins an Ghaeltacht is atá ann fá láthair. Tá an feirmeolr beag a bhí te téagrach tá cupla bliain ó soin, tá sé anois ar an chaol-chuid ag iarraidh déirce ón Stáit. Rinne an Rialtas bacach do i n-aghaidh a thola. Baineadh a ghléas beó uaidh. Níl margadh aige dá chuid eallaich no dá chuid caorach. O chuaidh stad ar an imirce níl airgead Mheiorca 'teacht chuige mar bhíodh. Ní bhfuigh sé earrái ó fhear an tsiopa mar tá an fear sin, é fhéin, lom follamh. Níl obair aige dá chlainn a d'fhág an scoil. Agus nuair atá an cás mar so ag an fheirmeóir a bhí ina sháith den tsaoghal tá seal ó shoin, caidé mar tá cruth an fheirmeora bhoicht? Tá sé “ar shop a' tséidhte” agus is cuma leis caidé éireochas do. Agus seo an t-am a chuireas an tAire Airgid mol tacsaí úra ar an fhear sin.
Cuimhnigh go bhfuil mé ag cainnt anois ar Mhuinntir na Gaeltachta. Agus in am an Togha Mhóir caidé nach ndéanfaidhe don Ghaeltacht? An talamh beannuithe sin a chongbhaigh beó teanga, nósa agus cultúr na nGaedheal! Nuair a smuaitighim ar na geallstain a tugadh dúinn agus mar táthar gá gcólíonadh anois! Ní fheicim ag Gaedheal na Gaeltachta anois ach an deóntas diomhanais agus níl sin ag deanamh mórán maithis do. Rud amháin atá sé ag déanamh go slíocach: sin go bhfuil sé ag briseadh spiorad na fearamhlachta bhí ariamh i gcroidh-thibh Gaedheal na Gaeltachta. Ní rachadh muinntir na Gaeltachta a choidhche ar lorg déirce dá mbéadh obair oireamhnach le fághail aca. Nár chóir go gcuirfí déantúisí beaga ar bun do bhuachaillí agus cailiní na Gaeltachta. Is ionnta so atá dóchas Gaedheal an teanga a leathnú amach ar fud bánta Fáil. Nach fiú oiread suime a chur ionnta is táthar a chur i muinntir na Galldachta atá 'fághail monarchan siúcra, monarchan alcóil agus go leór eile atá ceillte ar mhuinntir na Gaeltachta. Deirim arís go dtí go dtabharthar slighe bheatha oireamhnach do mhuinntir na Gaeltachta ní bheidh siad in inimh na tacsaí troma so a dhíol.
This may be a disappointing Budget to some. It is disappointing to me, though I think it is a good Budget for this reason, that I do not believe the economic situation at present warrants any other kind of Budget. If that assumption is correct, then we should get a Budget that the situation warrants. There are things taxed that it is regrettable should be taxed. However, the situation demands that they should be taxed, and it is a healthy development in our political life to find that all parties are now realising the position into which we have drifted. It is foolish for anybody to come here to score party points or to say that any section in the country is flourishing. Perhaps the best note in the speech of the Minister for Finance was his gesture in the way of an invitation for co-operation. I believe— and not to-day or yesterday—for the last three years that it will take all the people pushing one way in order to save this country and to keep it above water, because if we remain divided, pulling in opposite directions, it must continue to go down, and at an accelerated speed. This Budget, however, tries to accomplish much as a Budget and reflects the very serious position of this country.
There has been a good deal of talk about beet, and the Minister regretted that he was not able to propose a tax that he anticipated last year, when the Sugar Beet Act was enacted, of 1d. per lb. excise duty on sugar. He said that the cost of producing the beet, instead of being 30/- per ton for 15½ per cent. sugar content, had been driven up to 37/6 per ton flat rate, and that manufacturing costs had also gone up. The original figure on which the Government based a computation for the production of sugar, according to the Minister's speech, was 20/8 per cwt. If, on that basis, sugar could afford 1d. per lb. excise duty, and if, on the basis of the natural cost of production, sugar is only able to bear ¼d., am I right in assuming that the cost of production is 27/8 per cwt.? If so, it is very illuminating, and everyone who takes an intelligent interest in public affairs should weigh this quotation from an article in The Economist of April 10 very carefully:
"The report of the United Kingdom Sugar Industry Inquiry Committee, consisting of Mr. Wilfrid Greene, K.C.; Sir Kenneth Lee, and Mr. Cyril Lloyd, was issued last week. The Committee were appointed to inquire into the condition of the sugar industry in this country, with particular reference to the question of continuing the assistance which has been given to the beet sugar industry since 1924.
"The Committee preface their report with an interesting review of the world sugar industry and of the beet sugar and sugar refining industries in this country. The production of sugar exemplifies to an extraordinary degree the effects of State intervention. At present, Java, Peru and Santo Domingo are the only countries growing sugar without assistance in one form or another, and the free market for sugar is to-day less than 3,000,000 tons per annum out of a total world demand of some 26 million tons. The greater part of the supplies in the free market are dumped supplies, which makes for a very low price. This is, of course, a wholly abnormal position, but the Committee state that they ‘do not feel justified in anticipating any substantial relief from that condition in the immediate future.' The Committee express the belief that the British industry is technically efficient, but they add that ‘there seems no reason to suppose that this country is likely ever to be a specially cheap producer of beet, having regard to the labour requirements of the crop.' "
What I would draw the attention of the Minister particularly to is the next sentence or two in that article in The Economist. I ask him to weigh the words in that connection with the cost of production of beet sugar with which we are confronted at the present time. I am sorry the Minister for Industry and Commerce is not here, and I am also sorry that Deputy Corry is not here. There is nobody in this House I will give place to in defending the interests of agriculture. I would like to remind Deputy Corry and the agriculturists on the Government Benches that when the Beet Sugar Act was going through this House—whether it was stated in the Dáil then or not— it was certainly understood in the debates that the price would be 30/- a ton for beet with a sugar content of 15½ per cent. Deputy Corry told us about the farmers in East Cork who would not grow beet last year. He said they are around canvassing him this year to get their quota area.
Meanwhile the Fianna Fáil farmers on the Government Benches who were silent when the Act was going through have changed since. At that time they did not protest. They never said a word against the price that was then understood to be 30/- for 15½ per cent. sugar content, or 35/- per ton for beet with a sugar content of 17½ per cent. Now these very people, when the thing was established, led the attack on the sugar factories to get the price of beet raised. I agree that the price should be raised, but I say that that should have been done when the Bill was going through here and not when the country had been committed to an expenditure of millions and when there was no drawing back. If the factories did not get the raw material they could not go on. I hold that that was not playing the game. When the Government is putting over a business proposition why do not their supporters here deal with that in a business way? I say they did not deal with it is a business way when the Bill was going through here. The very men who accepted the price when the Bill was going through turned round afterwards and led the campaign for an increase in the price of sugar beet. When the price was being fixed here they never uttered a protest. My figures are based on what the Minister said in his speech yesterday. They are 20/8 a cwt., or £20 13s. 4d. a ton. These figures are gone up apparently now to £27 13s. 4d. a ton. I would be glad if the Minister would correct me if £27 13s. 4d. is too high or too low a figure. I built up that price on the data given the House by the Minister yesterday. I take it that that is a reasonable computation of the cost of sugar production in this country. Here is the price in England —The Economist says:—“The lowest cost of producing beet sugar in any country in the world is between £12 and £14 per ton.” It is costing £27 13s. 4d. here. What is the explanation given by the Minister for Finance, the Minister for Agriculture, or the Minister for Industry and Commerce? It costs practically double here what it costs to produce in Great Britain.
I am afraid the Deputy is mixing up two figures which are not strictly comparable. The figure £27 13s. 4d. here is the flat rate price no matter where it is to be delivered. The price the Deputy is quoting is the factory price and includes the profit and duty.
"The lowest cost of producing beet sugar in any country in the world is between £12 and £14 per ton."
Is that the cost in England?
Yes. In the Minister's Budget speech, page 6, he said:—
"When the Government decided to develop the sugar beet industry here on a scale to provide our full requirements of sugar, it had certain fundamental costs in mind. Beet containing an average of 17.5 per cent. of sugar, it was reckoned, would be available at 35/- per ton, and on this basis the total field and factory cost of producing sugar was estimated not to exceed 20/8 per cwt. On these figures, after allowing for the cost of distribution to the consumer and for an ultimate increase of about ¾d. or so per lb. in the cost of sugar to the consumer, it was assumed there would remain such a taxable margin as would enable the Exchequer to secure a revenue of about £800,000 or £900,000 from the consumption of sugar."
I take it that these prices are comparable.
Absolutely. Does the Minister deny that? Does he still deny that these figures are comparable? If words mean anything they are.
I did not get exactly what Deputy Belton was driving at, but the fact was that 20/8 was the estimate of the cost at which it should be produced. The point is that it was not produced at that cost.
The Minister withdraws the other suggestion.
No, but he is talking of an entirely different thing. When he talks of 20/8 he is talking of sugar delivered to the retailer at 20/8 a cwt. He talks then about the lowest cost of producing sugar. The Economist puts that figure at £12 to £14 per ton. The figures are not comparable. I do not want to take the Minister at a disadvantage. He is not the Minister for Industry and Commerce. He is only concerned about the financial end of it. I know his statement is built on information supplied to him and I do not want to take him short. But I want to understand the passage. If the Minister was misunderstood and says so I accept that. But it does not appear to me that the price is comparable. The passage giving the price is comparable with the passage giving the price in The Economist. I have the passage here in page 6 of the Minister's Budget speech which I read to the House a few moments ago. I admit it is quite clear enough.
Of course it is. In the quotation which the Deputy has read from The Economist there is nothing to show that the £12 to £14 per ton refers to anything except the factory costs, and the normal factory costs, I may tell the Deputy, are 12/- or 14/- per cwt. These are the works costs. They have nothing to do with the field costs.
Does the Minister suggest that £12 to £14 per ton referred to here relates to factory costs only as distinct from factory and field costs?
So far as the Deputy has read, yes. There may be more.
I will read a little more.
Now we are getting something. The Deputy was instituting a comparison between £12 to £14 per ton, and the inclusive costs of beet sugar—the field and factory costs.
To clarify it I will proceed to read further from The Economist:
"The lowest costs of cane sugar are between £5 and £7 per ton, while a number of cane-growing countries can produce very large quantities at prices much below the lowest cost of beet sugar. Assistance has been given to the domestic beet sugar industry, both by subsidy (which is paid to the factory, not to the grower) and by remission of excise. With the help of these stimuli, the production of sugar beet and beet sugar has extended rapidly. Comparing 1924-25 with 1934-35, the acreage under sugar beet rose from 22,637 to 404,000, and the tonnage of sugar produced (refined equivalent) from 24,000 to 602,000. In recent years something over a quarter of all the sugar consumed in the country has been produced from home-grown beet."
This will be interesting for the Minister:—
"During the ten years 1924-1934, the industry cost the taxpayer no less than £30,112,077 in subsidy and £10,180,000 in abatement of excise duty, a total cost of £40,292,077. The total income of the industry from sales and subsidy was only £66,940,351, so that the State assistance was 150 per cent. of the value of the sugar sold. The price paid for the beet purchased was £40,321,025— almost exactly the same as the total of assistance. In other words, the factories received their raw material entirely at State expense."
If it was not worth something as a means of national defence the sugar industry would be a very bad proposition. But it is not so much on the industrial or agricultural side I want to dwell, as the fact that during the ten years 1924-34 the industry cost the taxpayers in Great Britain no less than £30,000,000 in subsidy and £10,000,000 in abatement of excise duty, a total cost of £40,000,000. I take it from this report that this £12 to £14 per ton is the lowest cost of producing beet sugar in any country.
Is that in England?
In any country.
It certainly meant Great Britain.
The lowest cost is between £12 and £14 per ton. Earlier in the passage I read it stated that the British factories were efficient. I have not here the amount of sugar produced. I take it they were dealing with England in that report.
I do not think the Deputy can take anything like that from what he has read.
I have been trying to follow this. The Minister said "the total field and factory costs." I presume the factory has to pay for the beet and the total field and factory costs represent the price the factory paid for the beet, plus the cost of manufacturing to produce sugar. The Minister says that is not comparable with the cost of producing sugar.
With anything the Deputy has read. That is all I said— I have not said any more.
It seems to me that the total field and factory costs represent the cost of producing sugar and the Minister says that is not comparable with the cost of producing sugar. The Minister probably has some ground for that, but he has not clarified it to the House.
Anyway, I think the Minister will accept it that from £12 to £14 per ton represents the all-in cost of producing sugar from beet somewhere.
I do not know, because the factors vary in every country. The only statement I made was that what the Deputy has read is not comparable with the figure of 20/8 which I mentioned yesterday, the reason being that beet sugar is produced in very different circumstances in many countries; the factors vary in many countries and therefore the figures are not comparable.
That is a false sequence.
Taking this sentence as it stands: "The lowest cost of producing beet sugar in any country is between £12 and £14——"
That is one sentence out of a voluminous report. It only shows the amount of intelligence the Deputy is bringing to bear on that problem when he quotes that one sentence out of a voluminous report.
It is the only sentence in the report that goes right down to that point. The Minister took me up first and said that that meant only factory costs. That cannot be read into it.
If we are referring to Great Britain, yes.
That is only speculation.
It is the Deputy who made the speculation.
He only made it after the Minister had made his statement.
We will hear Deputy Belton's speech. The Minister and Deputy Fitzgerald can make comments on it afterwards.
If the Deputy will show me how it is comparable.
I adhere to the point I made that the cost of sugar production in any country that is efficient is £14 per ton—I shall leave out the £12. I have no reason to believe that it is not produced in or around that cost in Great Britain, while the cost here, built up on the information we got in the Minister's speech yesterday, is 27/8 per cwt. To bring that down to everyday comparisons, the cost of producing sugar in the one case is 1½d. per lb. and in the other case 3d. per lb. It is costing us 3d. per lb. to produce sugar here, according to what the Minister read out yesterday. I think the Minister will accept that the all-in cost at the factory here, according to the information disclosed in his speech yesterday, would be about 3d. per lb. for sugar. I think it is an absurdity for the Minister, while the costs are so high, to look for any revenue from sugar. I think, further, that his imposition of a tax of 1/4d. per lb. on sugar is unwarranted in the circumstances. The industry is not able to bear it, and it is putting too high the price of a commodity that everybody is using.
The Minister in his speech also dealt with £550,000 issued as a repayable advance to the Guarantee Fund in order to secure release to the local authorities of a corresponding amount therefrom. I do not know what he means by a repayable advance. Of course, he is aware that that amount of money was already deducted from the local authorities; that that amount of money came out of the funded arrears account, and that, for the funded arrears, grants had already been deducted from the local authorities. Here is another passage referring to the land annuities:—
"that they should ever become uncollectable is not to be thought of, for if they did, all security of tenure and all private right and title in land would vanish in this country, and we should have a position in regard to it comparable only with what exists in Communist Russia."
I made use of language similar to that in the debates on the Land Act, 1933, when the Bill was going through this House. That Act remitted arrears of annuities, and I, in common with all Opposition Deputies in this House, opposed that provision strenuously. The Minister would resent at that time if we compared that portion of the Land Bill to what would be produced in Communist Russia.
I agree with the imputation in the Minister's statement that if the farmers do not meet their obligations they are weakening their title to their property. I agree with that, but why did not the Minister act consistently? Why did he bring in an Act to relieve people of their obligations? That the land annuities should ever become uncollectable is not to be thought of, according to the Minister. I know what, in a veiled way, he is hinting at there. He should pause and think before he speaks in such stern language in his Budget speech in regard to the collecting of land annuities which have already been collected. It will not help the Minister or his successor in building up Budgets in the future if the working capital of agriculture is going to be seized now under the conditions that are produced by the policy which has been in operation here for a few years.
This explanatory table is very interesting. The Minister reckons that those volunteer halls will have a kind of reversionary value of, I think, £40,000, and he proposes to borrow on that. I should think that the cost of building volunteer halls—£81,500— should be an estimate for the Minister for Defence for the current year. I do not see the force of borrowing for it. The Minister might as well say that for some of those anti-aircraft guns which we saw on Easter Sunday in O'Connell Street——
In good company that day.
He might as well say we should borrow for those. Those halls are equipment for the army, and I do not see any justification for borrowing. We are going to save £100,000 on old age pensions. Surely the Minister for Local Government will not admit that there has been maladministration of the Old Age Pension Act? Does he contemplate saving £100,000 in the cost of the administrative machinery, or does he contemplate this saving by giving £100,000 less to the recipients of pensions? He must have in mind some ways and means of saving that £100,000. I am sure that the most severe critic of local government and old age pensions machinery would not accuse that machinery of being inefficient to the tune of £100,000 a year. No matter how you look at it, and no matter how the Minister attempts to disguise or camouflage it, it means a reduction of the amount payable to old age pensioners by £100,000 a year, and I think the Minister should be more precise in explaining how he contemplates making that saving.
As regards the wheat bounty he reduces his expenditure on that by, I think, £260,000, and he increases his revenue on wheat by £190,000. If he saves in expenditure on wheat bounty £260,000, should he not, without any wheat tax at all, have £260,000 in hands? He has not reduced any taxation by an equivalent sum. That bounty is going to be paid, but it is going to be paid by the increased cost of flour and bread. Notwithstanding the criticism which I have heard, I believe that is the proper way to pay it. I believe that all this intricate legislation about protecting the mills and the milling industry here was all wasted. What should have been done from the beginning was to insist on Irish wheat in the flour, to be certified by a Free State inspector in those mills. You would then secure that all flour consumed in this country would have to be milled in this country. You would also secure that a certain percentage of Irish wheat would be milled in the flour and you would look after both wheat and flour with the one operation.
The Minister saves £260,000 on his expenditure of last year, yet he does not reduce the taxation correspondingly. Now, there is a snag there. In addition he puts £190,000 on wheat and that means that he has £450,000 more in hands, because he is getting the £190,000 and he has not to pay it out in bounties. I want to be fair in my criticism of the Budget, but I cannot get over facts and figures when they are before me and I cannot get over thinking that there is a good deal of juggling here. We have it that £260,000 less is spent; the same amount is coming in, the same taxes are operating and, surely, there should be £260,000 to credit. The Minister says "less loss in yield from Excise duty on pig carcases and parts consequent on reduction and ultimate remission of the duty, £240,000." I think it was the first time it was made public, or was admitted in the remotest way by any member of the Government, that out of the levy on pig carcases of 10/- the Exchequer was making £240,000 a year. The levy was ostensibly put on pig carcases to help the bacon export trade, but instead it was put on as a tax to help the Exchequer. That appears from the Minister's statement and because he is losing it now he wants to impose other taxes to make good the loss. He first got it under false pretences.
I think there is some old Act under which the Minister for Finance insists that all contributions, levies and fines for breaches of the Act must be paid into the Exchequer. I think he knew what he was doing when he insisted that this levy should be paid into the Exchequer. When we innocent fellows on the Pigs and Bacon Bill Committee put this to the Minister for Agriculture, he said that it was a matter of form that the Minister for Finance insisted on all these levies and fines going into the Exchequer, but that they came back again. At any rate, the Minister is taking the lion's share of this. If the Minister gets away with not paying the bounty on wheat and gets away with 6d a cwt. duty on imported wheat, he should be well able to forego the 4d increased tax on tea and the ¼d increased tax on sugar. He should seriously consider that. The increase in the entertainment duty—the tax on cinema seats— is a matter to which I raise no objection. Deputy Donnelly and Deputy Tom Kelly will be paying their share of that and I hope they will be delighted to do so.
Then we have the increased yield from changes in the law relating to inland revenue. I have a recollection that last year we had a pretty extended debate upon the assessment of incomes under Schedule A arising out of house property. Prior to last year in this country and in Great Britain—and it is still in Great Britain and Northern Ireland—there was an allowance of 1/6th of the valuation for repairs or maintenance. Last year, our Minister for Finance discovered that that was altogether wrong and should never have been allowed, and he included in his Finance Act that tax should be levied on the full valuation under Schedule A. I remember making the case that even though he was reducing the income tax by 6d. in the £ the disallowance of 1/6th for repairs left the householder paying more in the year under that Schedule, with the tax 4/6 in the £, than in the previous year when the tax was 5/-. The Minister has gone one better this year and he has invented a new fraction. He discovered that there are five-fourths in this, so now the assessment of premises in future, according to the Minister's reckoning, will not be on four-fourths of the valuation but on five-fourths and, of course, he will not allow for repairs. I will come back to that again and I will try to avail of the presence of the Minister for Industry and Commerce with the object of getting something out of him.
Will you give us your interpretation of that marvellous fraction, five-fourths?
What was that called when we were going to school? An improper fraction, I think. It is very improper in this case. I heard somebody say yesterday that when he was going to school, if he mentioned five-fourths, he would surely get a hiding from the master and be reminded that there were only four-fourths in anything. It was left to the Minister for Finance to discover that there are five-fourths when he wants to extract anything.
In Resolution No. 10 the following is set out:—
Glazed pipes made wholly or mainly of clay or earthenware, and glazed connections (for pipes of any kind) made wholly or mainly of clay or earthenware—per cwt. 9d.
With due deference to the Minister for Finance, I would like to know from the Minister for Industry and Commerce if these pipes are made in the Free State?
They will be.
You will get them in Cork very soon.
So that in the hope that something will happen some day, we are going to tax the people for the realisation of that hope. The two Ministers who are present know that for many years there has been a controversy in this country about protection. I would appeal to those Ministers not to murder protection because the whole of this State does not believe in protection. The majority at the moment do believe in protection, and whether it is going to continue as a national policy in this country, no matter what the personnel of the Government may be, will depend upon how protection is handled now, but the putting of a tariff on any article coming into any country that was not made in that country was never conceived by any economist.
Concrete pipes are made.
Are they made in 4 inch thickness?
No.
I mean, are they made in 4 inch diameter? We have no answer to that.
Yes, they are.
I should like to ask the Deputy where they are made?
Dolphin's Barn.
That is a good guess, Deputy. There are 9 inch pipes made in Dolphin's Barn.
If you knew that, what did you ask the question for?
The Deputy is chairman of the Housing Committee of the Corporation, which, of course, is the most important body in Ireland and one of the most important bodies in Europe——
Agreed.
——and he knows, I am sure, that 4 inch bore pipes are the pipes used in all house connections.
The Pipes of Pan.
I doubt if these are made in Dolphin's Barn.
I did not want Ministers to be falling into error. If I fall into error, it is no harm.
So the Deputy gallantly came to the Ministers' rescue and I am sure we all appreciate the Deputy's chivalry.
Take care that you do not fall into the 9 inch pipe.
I made it my business to enquire to-day from large dealers in pipes and they have not heard of them being made. Neither are they aware of any glazed pipes being made in the Free State.
They are being made in Cork and will be on the market very soon.
The very best.
The Minister imposes a tariff of 9d. a cwt. Why does he impose that tariff?
As Mercutio says: "It is enough; it will serve."
That is not the point I am raising. The Minister knows that pipes are not traded by weight. They are traded by length and all the bookkeeping of dealers in those goods is done in respect of pipes of specified bore, pipe lengths and various junctions, connections, bends and traps, etc. They are all done according to the size, the patent and so on. None of them is traded in by weight and it will be very confusing in the trade. I think the Minister for Industry and Commerce, the Minister for Finance and the Revenue Commissioners will find great difficulty in working this because they are imposing a tax on a unit which is not really recognised in the trade. Has the Minister consulted architects as to the advisability of concrete pipes for house connections if they are made or is this merely a tax? Is it to help industry or is it to help revenue? It is contrary to all the principles of protection and contrary to all the principles of industrial production.
What?
Imposing a tariff on goods which the people want and which nobody in the State is making.
Deputy O'Neill said they are making them in Cork.
They will make them in Cork, of course, if they get enough for them, but they are not making them yet. The Cork people are no fools, any more than the Armagh people. I will make them myself if there is enough for them. Engineers are wondering if there is too speedy a development without any experience of the use of concrete pipes for sewerage purposes. The Minister, I am sure, is aware that concrete is porous, and I am not betraying any secret when I say that I was at a conference this week at which the question of concrete pipes of a special kind for a certain scheme, which the Minister for Industry and Commerce will probably guess, were recommended by the expert. He was emphatic that there was no concrete pipe made in this country that would fill the bill, and that was accepted, not alone by me and the other laymen who were there, but by the most expert engineers in the City of Dublin and, perhaps, in the country. The Minister for Industry and Commerce probably knows what I am referring to. It is a very serious thing if we are going to use all concrete pipes for sewerage in the City of Dublin—it does not matter so much in a small town down the country— and if these prove to be porous. I move to report progress.
Progress reported; Committee to sit again to-morrow.
The Dáil adjourned at 10.30 p.m. until 10.30 a.m. on Friday, May 17th, 1935.