This Government is almost three years in office and during that time they have carried out a very heavy legislative programme. I think we can say that we have sat for far more days in the year than our predecessors did. We have had much more business to do. We have given many more facilities in general. The fundamental question here is whether, when a Government is returned, it is to be allowed to carry out its duties. As has been stated by the Minister for Agriculture, this is a Government which for the first time has a majority of the elected representatives of the Irish Free State. Deputy Cosgrave assured the people when this Government came in that they were to be facilitated. I would like the Opposition to show where they were facilitated. They were facilitated when Bills like the Unemployment Assistance Bill, involving very large sums of money, were being put through. The large sums involved in those Bills are, of course, mainly responsible for the taxation that the Opposition now complain of. Those Bills were allowed through the House with practically no criticism from the Opposition. There is no criticism when money is being spent, but there is plenty of criticism when money is being collected.
The Opposition are not at all consistent. The Government is consistent. The country knows the Government's policy, knows that it stands for a policy of out-and-out protection. There is no question of examination by Tariff Commissions. The Eighth Schedule, if we look at it from the revenue point of view, on which the whole of this rubbishy discussion last Saturday took place, brings in about £5,000. It concerns items like cricket balls, tennis racquets, footballs and so on. Have we not been told by the Opposition in the South Dublin Election that no tariff that is put on by this Government would be removed by them? Why has it been necessary for the past three years to hold up the work of the Government of the country by a senseless and ridiculous obstruction to a policy that they say now they favour? Not alone Deputy Cosgrave, but Deputy MacDermot, indicated that outside. There has been senseless obstruction on these items in the Schedule. There has been no criticism and no amendment of any importance or any utility.
With regard to the general propaganda against the Budget, nobody can say that the country has not got plenty of it. In two by-elections in two very important constituencies the Opposition have had plenty of opportunities and they may have more opportunities of putting their case before the public. Discussions in relation to the Budget have been going on in this House for something like three months. It is absolute nonsense to pretend that there is any stifling of discussion. The simple fact is that the business has got to be got through by a certain time. We do not mind sitting through the whole of August and September to get the business through, if necessary, and we have shown that. What is the attitude of the Opposition in regard to this financial business? We were told the Opposition were going to facilitate the Government, were going to be a reasonable Opposition and a patriotic Opposition; we were told they were going to see that the fundamental principles were carried out and that the business of the country was going to be done. Where is that Opposition at the present time?
Deputy Rice tells us the President wants a six months' holiday. Of course he does. Was it not the custom for ten years to sit for a small number of weeks in the year for one and a half to two and a half days? Have we not been trying to do the business of the country by sitting for four days each week and yet we are not able to get it done? If we give Deputies a few all-night sittings they will tell us that their health cannot stand it and they are too delicate. In any case, they have to be at home saving the hay. We are men and we prefer the humane killer. We used to hear, when business was not nearly so pressing, when the whole of the finance business, including the Finance Bill, the Budget Resolution and the Estimates were got through in about 80 hours, that Ministers had not much time to do their business. At least two Ministers of the previous Government said here that they were sick and tired of the Opposition in this House, as it gave them no time to do the ordinary business of the country.
It is all very well for the Opposition to talk in the Dáil, but it is not by talk that business is done. If Ministers are going to be detained in the Dáil for a large portion of the year, sitting four days per week, it is quite evident they cannot attend to their administrative business. That is one of the reasons why there is delay in producing legislation. The Government is put to the pin of its collar to give these measures the consideration that is necessary, thinking them out, drafting them and preparing them. We were often reminded of that fact, not once but several times, during important debates that took place here in the past. That seems to be entirely forgotten now. Did not Deputy Cosgrave, when he was President, and his Ministers, frequently tell us that we were absolutely silly to think that the real business of the country was done in the Dáil? They told us the real business of the country was done in the Government offices, by Ministers in touch with their staffs of officials, carrying out the business of their Departments.
The question is whether the Government, with the majority of the people behind them, an unqualified majority, for certain aspects of its policy, and with support even from the leaders of the Opposition, is entitled to hold up this senseless obstruction. We had to consider amendments here to every single line of the Schedule, and the whole of the Schedule was only a fleabite, not worthy of consideration, if the other issues are of such magnitude as we are told.
There is another point I would like to stress, and that is the point brought up by the Minister for Industry and Commerce, which seems to have annoyed Deputy Cosgrave. That point is that when the pressure is so great, as it has been found in every modern State, when the economic pressure, the effort to solve economic problems, to get solutions as near perfection as possible, and to get Government policy through all the stages of complicated machinery is so great, there is no Parliament in the world that could be satisfied that business is being carried on in the way it should be.
We are not living in the mid-Victorian age; we are living in an age of great pressure and it is just because Parliamentary institutions have not been able to do their work that they have been abolished, and that gentlemen in black shirts or blue shirts or red shirts have come along with their little groups of followers and laid down the law, because in these countries they feel that they have men with a will, and with at least a definite policy, at the head of affairs. This Government, as well as any other Government in Europe to-day, at any rate has a definite policy. There can be no doubt whatever about it. It is obvious to everybody. It is clear to everybody. It is the policy that we were elected on and the policy we are carrying out. We ask from these gentlemen, who would try to put other systems of government in force in this country, if the opportunity were given to them and the circumstances were favourable, to be a little more sincere in their criticisms of democratic institutions and to try to enable this Government to do its business in a proper and legitimate way.
