The motion will be that the House adjourn until 3 p.m. on Wednesday, 5th February, 1936. It is customary to give the Chair written notice of the subject selected for debate on the Motion for Adjournment. Owing to pressure arising out of another important matter affecting the whole House, the Chair has on this occasion accepted verbal intimation at short notice and the subject selected for debate is the necessity for arriving at a settlement of the economic dispute with the Government of Great Britain.
Adjournment Motion. - Settlement of Economic Dispute.
Until what time will the House sit?
Until 2 o'clock.
It will be settled in 12 minutes.
I suppose the form had better be gone through of moving the adjournment in the usual way. It is manifestly impossible for anybody to deal adequately with the situation that has arisen and with the matters that should be brought under the notice of the country at a period of Recess, but in a word I should like to draw the attention of this House and the country to something that is happening which may have repercussions which are unexpected. Taking it as generally accepted by the rational Deputies of this House that the economic war ought to be brought to a close, I should also like to direct the attention of the House to another cause of stress under which the agricultural community, the consuming public of this country, is suffering.
It arises from a combination, not of tariffs generally, but of the kind of tariffs which the Fianna Fáil Government have been enacting since they came into office. It arises from the kind of schemes for which the Fianna Fáil Government have been responsible since they came into office. Few Deputies realise that the receipts from Customs and Excise have increased by £1,750,000 since Fianna Fáil came into office. The people paying these Customs and Excise duties are the consuming public, who are, to the extent of 85 per cent., agricultural workers and small farmers.
Let me bring before the House an example of the ordinary Christmas purchases of a small farmer—purchases which will be made in tens of thousands of cases between now and Christmas Day. These purchases will consist of 1 lb. of tea, a stone of sugar, 2 lbs. of currants, 2 lbs. of raisins, 1 cwt. of flour, and 4 ozs. of tobacco. That is a typical Christmas purchase made by a small farmer's wife in the congested areas. A labourer could not afford as much as that. This bears much more heavily on the agricultural labourer than on anyone else. A lb. of tea will cost 2/-. That is cheap tea. There was a time when country people paid 4/4 for their tea. They do not pay that now. They take tea costing from 2/- to 2/4. That tea, if from Java or Ceylon, carries a tax of 6d. A stone of sugar costing 3/9 carries a tax of 3/-, if you allow for the incidence of the beet sugar charge, plus Excise tariff. Two lbs. of currants carry a 2d. tax, and 2 lbs. of raisins carry 2d. more by way of tax. A cwt. of flour at a price of 15/6 carries 4/6 for wheat bounty. Four ozs. of tobacco cost 2/8, of which 2/- is tax. That parcel of goods will cost the farmer's wife 25/11, and, of that 25/11, 9/10 is going into the Exchequer in taxes.
Now, let us take the case of the agricultural labourer, who is earning, in many parts of the country, £1 per week. Let us assume that poverty compels him—and only poverty—to buy half what the farmer buys and do with that amount. No matter how numerous his family, they will have to do with half the amount that fills the farmer's basket. Assuming that that be true, his bill for the week's groceries is 13/- and, out of that sum of 13/-, 5/- goes into the Exchequer. That man has 20/- per week and he has got to pay rates and rent for his cottage. Nevertheless, he has to pay 5/- in tax to the Government on his food. Let us remember that that is on his food only.
Let us look at the additional expenses. I was in a country shop not long ago, standing beside the wife of a man who had just come home after spending the harvesting season in England. These are homely facts which seem a little ludicrous in this atmosphere, but they are the kind of things that are happening in the houses of the people at the present time. This woman wanted three pairs of sheets for the beds. She said quite frankly that times were bad, that her husband had just come back from England with a little bit of money and that she wanted the cheapest sheets she could get. She was told that the cheapest would be blay, twill sheeting at 1/3 a yard. "If that is the cheapest I can get," she said, "there is nothing more to be done; I shall have to take them." She took five yards for each pair—that was 15 yards of sheeting—and the bill came to about 18/9. When she paid the bill, it suddenly dawned on me that that woman, out of that 18/9, was paying 5/- tax because there was 33? per cent. duty on the sheeting she was buying.
That would be 6/3.
I understand this matter and the Deputy does not. The tariff is calculated on the cost price and not on the selling price. One tries not to overstate a case. I want to state the bare facts, which the Government themselves must know to be true. That man had to go to England, and he had just come home that morning to meet the bills his wife and family had run up. He had to buy some things to keep the house decent and clean, and, out of that miserable purchase of the cheapest sheeting, his wife had to pay 5/- tax. I think that the industries of this country reflect credit on the country. I think that the confectionery, jam, furniture and boot industries and such enterprises, which are now manufacturing stuff as cheaply as it could be bought anywhere, should be a source of intense pride to us. I think that the men who put up these factories and promoted these industries deserve well of the country. They are a source of pride to the people, but if they are going to be confused with the sort of activity which puts on the shoulders of the poorest people an intolerable burden, then these men are going to be lumped together in an indictment of which they are not deserving. The sound, economic industries of this country ask nothing of the consuming public. They are giving them good value for their money, and all they want a tariff for is to prevent dumping or unfair competition, designed by continental, American or British firms to wipe them out and subsequently to exploit the Irish market. These men prove what I say by the commodities they are offering. There are boots being made in this country as cheap and as good as could be made by Bata of Czechoslovakia. There is furniture being made here as good as could be made in any part of Great Britain or any other country. Confectionery is being made as good as any that is made in London, and is not costing the people any more, except in so far as the manufacturers have to pay an additional duty on the sugar required for the manufacture. So far, however, as the confectioners are concerned, they are not asking any more than outside manufactures. So far as the woollen merchants are concerned, I say our woollen merchants do not want a tariff because they have nothing to fear from foreign competition. The Irish woollen mills are producing better woollens than are being produced in Great Britain.
These industries were built up on a moderate tariff. The manufacturers had to build up their organisations in the constant knowledge that they had to be reasonably competitive or foreign manufactures would flow in over the tariff wall. These tariffs gave a chance to the manufacturers to go around to their men and say: "There must be no lying down on the job. We are able to do the work but there must be no lying down behind a 100 per cent. or a 75 per cent. tariff. You have got to turn out the stuff and, if not, there is a Government in office which will come down like a hundredweight of bricks on us if we attempt to exploit the buying public." Can we say that the present Government is applying that test to the tariff problem? It is not. It is placing terrible charges on the poorest section of the community. It is bringing into odium honest men—the industrialists of this country, who do not want tariffs of that kind but merely want the opportunity to show the world that they can produce certain classes of merchandise as well as, and perhaps better than, any other country. Therefore I say that the present tariff policy of the Government is injuring not alone the consuming public but the manufacturing class itself. The President and every responsible Minister knows that there are individuals sheltering behind tariff walls of 100 per cent. and 75 per cent. who are not giving value to the people of this country for what they are getting. That is not right and it is introducing an element into debates here which is obscuring the merits of industries brought before us. There are industries in the setting up of which we should all be glad to co-operate but we feel profoundly that a reckless tariff system which puts a tariff on one commodity on Monday and on a raw material on Tuesday without any regard to the repercussions which one tariff may have on another is perfectly worthless from the industrial point of view. Deputies will say that the Minister for Industry and Commerce would not impose a 75 per cent. tariff if it were not necessary to establish an industry.
I am bound to draw the attention of the House to this fact: that you can use, as an excuse for putting on a tariff, a little workshop in a back street; but these returns show what those tariffs are producing. They are the Finance Accounts of Saorstát Eireann, and the tariffs at present in force and the excise duties combined are producing £1,250,000 more for the Exchequer than they were producing for the Exchequer this time five years ago. One cannot blame the Minister for Finance, when he is at his wits' end to find money for folly, co-operating and conspiring with the Minister for Industry and Commerce to silence Opposition criticism of that kind of excessive taxation by saying that these tariffs are not designed as taxes but that they are designed to protect Irish industry; but when the Opposition criticises these tariffs, the accusation is made that they are trying to sabotage Irish industry. I say that that is dishonest. I say that it is doing a disservice to industry in this country and a disservice to the people of this country, because they are being made to couple in their minds the sufferings and privations they are enduring with the promotion of Irish industry. I say that a good standard of living for the people of this country is not inconsistent with the promotion of Irish industry. The promotion of Irish industry is not inconsistent with a higher standard of living for every worker in this country.
It will be admitted that we are bound to have differences about individual tariffs—whether one tariff is better than another and so on—but we need not have any argument on the fundamental principle that we all want Irish industry to thrive and prosper and progress, and that we are all prepared to use the tariff weapon with that end in view. We will not stand, however, for the use of tariffs for the purpose of taxing the food and necessities of the poor, nor will we stand for the false argument that any impatience with a tariff of that character is an attempt to sabotage Irish industry. I urge, therefore, on the Government that, between now and next February, they should reconsider their attitude on this whole problem and approach it in the future with more thought for the people who are suffering as a result of these indiscriminate tariffs and with a more rational disposition towards the whole problem.
The Dáil adjourned at 2 p.m. until Wednesday, 5th February, 1936, at 3 p.m.