The aim of these recommendations is to delete the retrospective provisions of the Bill. One debate should embrace all the recommendations. There will be separate divisions if desired.
Land Purchase (Guarantee Fund) Bill, 1935—From the Seanad.
The Dáil went into Committee to discuss the following recommendations from the Seanad:—
1. Section 1, sub-section (1). To delete in line 18 the words and brackets "(whether before or after the passing of this Act)" and to substitute therefore the words "after the passing of this Act".
2. Section 1, sub-section (2). To delete in lines 42-43 the words and brackets "(whether before or after the passing of this Act)" and to substitute therefore the words "after the passing of this Act".
3. Section 2. To delete the section.
I move that the Dáil disagree with those recommendations.
Those recommendations have drawn from the Government Deputies some most interesting reactions. Perhaps the most interesting of all is that drawn from Deputy Patrick Smith. The Attorney-General will look with pride upon his colleague, and I shall be interested to hear to-day whether the Attorney-General of this Government will endorse and adopt the language of his trusted colleague, Deputy Smith, of Cavan. In the Anglo-Celt, of Cavan, dated Saturday, January 11th, Deputy Smith is reported as follows in a discussion which took place at the Cavan County Council on the question of whether or not they should protest against the enactment of the legislation which is before us to-day:
"Mr. Smith, T.D., said that there was no change in the procedure with regard to the annuities, but Cork and Louth County Councils had taken an action in the High Courts on the question. A number of the High Court judges were now old and feeble men and the Bill now before the Dáil was an attempt to remove any ambiguities in order to ensure that those old men might not be put to unnecessary trouble."
Does the Attorney-General of Saorstát Eireann adopt that view? Does the Attorney-General recommend this Bill and the rejection of those recommendations to this House on those grounds? If he does not, will he take occasion to-day to describe Deputy Smith for what he is, and in so describing him will he arrange with the Leader of his Party, the President of the Executive Council, to tender his apologies to the people of County Cavan for having forced that gentleman on them? Or are we perhaps deluded; is that the mentality of the Fianna Fáil Party? Have they made up their minds, in accordance with the Presidential dictum, that if anyone disagrees with them let him be abolished? Have they made up their minds to abolish the Seanad because it does not agree with them, and to deride and insult the judiciary in public in order to prepare the public mind for the abolition of an independent judiciary in this country? Are we to understand in future that any judge who is not to be intimidated upon the Bench is, in the judgement of President de Valera, an old and feeble man, unfit to discharge his judicial functions, and therefore no doubt a person suitable for early abolition—suitable for abolition under a Constitution which can be amended in ten minutes by this House?
The matter before the House consists of three recommendations dealing with the retrospective provisions of a certain Bill, and not with the abolition of the Seanad or the judiciary, nor with the opinions of individual members of any Party.
And the argument put forward by the spokesman of the Government Party in Co. Cavan in defence of this Bill is that the judiciary are old and feeble men, incompetent for their work, and that it is necessary to do their work for them by Acts of this Orieachtas. I challenge the Government now to adopt or reject that argument.
Might I point out that matters which might be held to be relevant on a public platform are not necessarily relevant in this House?
If they do not reject it, let them explain to this House what the full imputations are, and reassure the country that this is not the beginning of a campaign to discredit the judiciary with a view to their ultimate abolition in order to make way for a De Valera dictator in this country. The Attorney-General has a perfectly simple task before him, and that is to get up in this House and tell us whether he adopts what Deputy Smith said in Cavan, or whether he shares my view that Deputy Smith is not fit to represent Cavan or any other county or constituency in this country. He cannot escape from that dilemma; he has got to say either one thing or the other. Those recommendations are principally directed at the retrospective character of this legislation, and I want to direct the attention of the House to a net point. It is a very important point which is slightly obscure, but it is nevertheless fundamental. There is all the difference in the world between the Executive coming to this House and saying: "A judicial interpretation of an Act has given the legislation of this country a certain meaning which we did not realise was enshrined in it. We, therefore, desire to introduce amending legislation in order to alter the Statute Book" and what the Government is now doing. They are now saying that to the person who conceives he has certain rights under existing law and who has moved to vindicate those rights against the Government in the Courts of the country:—"we apprehend that he has those rights but we are going to take care that he does not get them." That is what the Government is trying to do at the present time. That is an evil and an indefensible type of retrospective legislation; and I do urge on Deputies that though they may snatch an advantage at this moment, through that particular advantage they are going to do something that is going to establish in this country a very evil precedent. It is not the first bad precedent that they have established. I have had occasion to point out to them on several occasions that they were establishing bad precedents, but this is the first time that they have deliberately sought to undermine the independence of the judiciary. I couple this new departure with the statement of Deputy Smith of Cavan who is Assistant-Whip of the Fianna Fáil Party. I put before the individual Deputies of the Fianna Fáil Party that there is growing up in their midst a frame of mind which they may not be strong enough to curb, unless they dissociate themselves from it right at the beginning.
I leave it to more experienced lawyers and to those who have a very lucid grasp of constitutional law to elaborate the evils that may flow from this retrospective legislation and I pass on to another aspect of it which will appeal to everybody who is intimate with rural conditions in this country. Irrespective of the fact that this Bill is going to lay a burden upon the rural ratepayers of this country of over £1,000,000 sterling, I want to put to the Government the question I asked them already: Where is the money going to come from? How are the people going to get it? The Government have admitted their own inability to collect the money. They cannot collect the land annuities from these people in arrears and they are now passing the duty of collecting these moneys on to the local authorities. If the Central Government, with the machinery at its disposal, cannot collect those moneys how does the Government expect that the local authorities can collect them?
On a point of order, may I say that we are not discussing in general terms the responsibility for the collection of these moneys.
I submit, Sir, that when Deputy Dillon was referring to these moneys he was only referring to the sum that it was proposed to collect this year.
I put the question to you, Sir, not to Deputy O'Sullivan.
Deputy O'Sullivan quite properly submitted another view-point. Deputy Dillon is in order in pointing out the consequences of the retrospective clauses of this Bill.
It is an old, time-honoured gag that when the barbs are going home an attempt is made to prevent the development of the argument but it will not work this time. The Minister must reconcile himself to that now. The point is that the Government cannot get the money and they have done their best. They have sought to excuse themselves for their failure by making the case that there was a conspiracy against them. But when the figures came to be examined it was found that the Government was failing to get these moneys in the constituencies where their supporters were in the vast majority. Now it is unthinkable and no reasonable person would suggest it that the supporters of President de Valera were trying to undermine the Government of President de Valera in this way. Therefore, it is clear that the failure of the people to pay is solely because they are unable to pay.
They have paid the annuities already. Why is Deputy Dillon apologising for a debt that is not due?
That is quite another story.
I have no doubt Deputy Belton will intervene in this debate——
He will have to.
Quite. When he does I would wish to hear Deputy Belton without interruptions. The reason the people cannot pay these moneys is, as Deputy Belton has interjected, that they have already paid them through the medium of the tariffs which have been imposed on all agricultural products from this country by the British. I have refrained from stressing this matter unduly, but it is common knowledge that the reason why the people cannot pay is because of these penal tariffs. They have been paying these moneys for the past 50 years and as long as they were able to pay them they paid them on the nail. They cannot do it now because their means of livelihood have been taken from them.
The Deputy is now going into the general economic position.
I have said they cannot pay them now and the Government are passing on these debts to the county councils, who are asked to collect these moneys. They are passing them on to the local authorities. It may be that the Government have some "joker" up their sleeve which is intended to provide the people with this money. Is it the other half of the coal-cattle pact that is going to pay them?
The coal-cattle pact may not be discussed on this motion.
Well, it is possible the Government have made some advantageous arrangement with the British whereby the people are going to be provided with markets for their produce which will enable them to pay these moneys. If that be true, the Government ought to tell us about it now and give us some indication as to the measure of relief the people are going to get.
The Government would not be allowed to do so in the course of this debate.
Surely if we charge the Government with trying to collect these moneys from people who are not able to pay, they are entitled to reply: "That may be so at the moment, but if you read to-morrow's papers you will see that an arrangement is being made whereby markets are being made available for these people, and they are getting free entry into those markets with their cattle through the coal-cattle pact."
The question of markets and coal-cattle pacts is not relevant to this motion.
But, Sir, the financial condition of the people will be very much affected by that.
And by many other things.
It is on the financial capacity of the people to pay that the whole opposition to this Bill rests in this regard. When I was going away from this House last December, I ventured to prophesy, from my knowledge of the country, that this year in rural Ireland Christmas would be the gloomiest and the poorest that we have had in our time. I challenge the Deputies who know rural Ireland to tell the House what sort it was this Christmas throughout the West of Ireland, the North-West of Ireland and the South-West of Ireland. I tell the Deputies that in all my experience of Christmas I have never seen the country people get so little in the way of extra comforts or Christmas fare as they got this Christmas.
They got 1/5 a lb. for their turkeys, anyway.
They did not.
That observation of Deputy Kelly's throws a flood of light upon the whole situation. Deputy Kelly is a man who if he were put out on a country road would have to get someone to bring him home. He has never been out in the country, if the Deputy had not the cobble-stones of the city to guide him, he would lose his way in ten minutes. I submit that he, like many others living in the City of Dublin, does not know what is happening in the rural parts of the country.
What is happening in the country at large is outside this debate.
I submit to the House that the people are unable to pay these annuities and they are unable to pay them because their livelihood has been taken away from them by the action of the Government. I admit that the City of Dublin is enjoying the same kind of prosperity as obtained in the cities of Sydney and Melbourne just before the whole of Australia collapsed in financial ruin seven or eight years ago. If Deputy Moore or a few more of his colleagues who may be interested in questions of this kind will ask competent observers to tell them what conditions were obtaining in Sydney, Melbourne and Adelaide just before the whole agricultural community of Australia went bankrupt, they will be told that there was every evidence of business prosperity and the circulation of money in urban centres.
Does the same not apply to every other country in the world?
Precisely, and that is just what is happening here. Did you ever observe a more prosperous Christmas business in the Cities of Dublin and Cork as you had last Christmas? In rural Ireland, however, there is a very different picture in regard to the purchasing power of the people. Any money in circulation is flowing into the hands of wage-earners, permanent officials, factory workers and employees of one kind or another in the cities and towns, but the unfortunate people in the country are seeing their incomes steadily dwindling. We are being assured by Ministers for Finance, Ministers for Industry and Commerce, Attorneys-General and so forth, who abandoned the country for their own good, perfectly legitimately, many years ago, and took up their residence as professional men in one department of life or another in the City, that it is ridiculous to talk about general poverty or a decline in the standard of living. They here, living in the City of Dublin, never saw Dublin more prosperous. But they have lost touch with their own people, and they are being deluded by the completely fictitious picture which the big cities are presenting at the present time.
There is no connection between the state of affairs obtaining amongst the bulk of the population in the City of Dublin and the state of affairs obtaining amongst the bulk of the population in rural Ireland. The conditions of living for the bulk of the population in rural Ireland are sinking steadily; the people there are having to do with less and less. Life in rural Ireland and in the rural parts of every modern country in these modern times is a very tedious business. It is dull. There is very little artificial amusement for people in the rural parts such as is available to a city dweller. If this present business goes on, and if the people on the land are not only going to be condemned to a dull and tedious life, but are to have added to that tedium and dullness the anxiety of being unable to meet the demands made on them, being unable to meet their rates or taxes, unable to pay their debts or unable to buy the simple luxuries to which they were always accustomed, then I warn you that you are going to create in this country what there is not in any other country in the world, and that is a rural proletariat who will be so sick of the conditions under which they have to live that they will make up their minds that they will follow anybody who will upset the existing dispensation and offer it something else, whatever it is. They will be satisfied that nothing can be worse than the conditions under which they are existing at the present time.
Let me remind you that the rural population is the sheet anchor of stability. It is the one thing that every constitutional Government always falls back on when agitators start stirring up the population and threatening the very foundations of civilisation. Be careful, when you have gentlemen in Rathmines Town Hall exhorting communism, and when you endeavour to fall back, as you could heretofore, on the rural population, that you will not find them ready to answer: "You have reduced us to such a condition that we do not give a damn what there is in this country: bad and all as the doctrines preached at Rathmines are, they could not be worse than the results of the system you have thrust on us in the last four years."
What has happened in the last four years is not relevant to what is now before the House.
I have disposed of that, and I propose to pass on to another matter. I see Deputy Jordan there, and he is a man who comes in contact with the people and knows, of his own knowledge, and it is within the knowledge of his colleagues in trade, that their purchasing power is the measure of the people's prosperity one year as compared with another. I put it to Deputy Jordan, or to any other member of the Fianna Fáil Party engaged in business in rural Ireland, that the capacity of the people to buy is steadily declining. There are two exceptions to that declining capacity to purchase. One is in respect of cigarettes and the other is in respect of drink; and those exceptions, I submit, are due to the maladministration of the dole. There are thousands of men, and we all know it——
The Deputy must get away from general economic conditions and the maladministration of the dole or any other Government funds and concentrate on the matter before the House.
I am arguing a neat point, a perfectly neat point, and that is that the people have not got the money to pay. It will be advanced against me: "How do they go to football matches or buy cigarettes?" I will be told that Dublin is booming and the people are getting plenty of money. Unless the Chair desires that we should take full advantage of the Committee Stage of the Bill and make forty speeches, my remedy is to anticipate arguments that may be advanced against me—that were advanced against me on previous occasions—and answer them now. I submit that is reasonable, and I propose to do that. I wish to avoid doing anything that would appear to be an abuse or a desire to obstruct or protract the business unduly. Surely that point will be raised, "How is it the consumption of cigarettes was never higher than at the present time? That does not bespeak a scarcity of money."
One Deputy on the Government Benches did remark: "How can you say there is a scarcity when there are so many people paying thousands of pounds to see football matches?" These isolated facts may be quoted and unless those living in the country and coming in contact with the people explain their significance, they may give an entirely false impression to the Executive Council responsible for the carrying on of the Government. I admit the consumption of bottled stout and cigarettes is as large now as it ever was—the consumption of cigarettes is larger than it ever was. The reason that the consumption of cigarettes tends to increase is because the dole money, in so far as it is being paid to young unmarried men who have no family responsibility, is being largely spent on cigarettes. That is not peculiar to this country, because the same thing is true of Great Britain, where the Imperial Tobacco Company increased their sales during the period of deepest depression and unemployment in Great Britain.
Any honest observer of what is happening in the country must admit that the purchases which a family man makes are steadily declining and that the people in the country are doing with less than they ever did with before and they are concentrating whatever purchasing power they have more on essential necessities, and what were luxuries to the country people are not now being bought or are being bought in very much reduced quantities. That is evidence of a steady decline in the standard of living of the people. That is, in my view, clear and irrebuttable evidence of the incapacity of the people to find an additional sum of £1,000,000 to finance the retrospective clauses of this Bill. One sometimes gets tired of repeating the same arguments in trying to drive home to the minds of men like Deputy Moore what ought to be understandable to a child of 14 years. But you cannot get away from this fact, that an individual small farmer in the country has a certain sum of money and that money must be used for the purchase of food, clothing and the payment of his rates and taxes and expenses. Now, you may alter the proportion of that sum which will go to each purpose, but Deputies will agree with me that the more you take out of that purchasing fund in respect of taxes, rates and expenses of that character, the less the individual farmer will have to spend on foodstuffs and luxuries and clothing. He has to buy food to live, and one legitimate object of every decent Government is to reduce the unavoidable expense of a farmer to the lowest minimum so that his surplus for the purchase of luxuries and the purpose of raising his standard of living will continually grow.
At the present time we are confronted with a situation where we have increased prices of flour, bread, tea, sugar, butter and Indian meal, which have all been advanced from 20 per cent. to 50 per cent. in price as a result of Government action. In order to buy these subsistence articles the farmer has to disburse from 20 per cent. to 50 per cent. more than before. At the same time cattle, farmer's butter, eggs, sheep and pigs are all cheaper than ever before.
Cheaper?
All cheaper than they have ever been before, and I invite any Deputy of the Fianna Fáil Party to give facts and figures to contradict that if any one of them will dare.
It is too absurd.
Everything the farmer buys has been made dearer, everything he sells is cheaper, and at the same time the county councils are looking for £1,000,000 and the Government are inviting them to get the money wherever they can get it. There is no faith in the Government in this matter. I think it was Senator MacEllin, or some other Senator, who said recently that the plain fact was that this money had to be got from somewhere, "and we are going to get it." Deputy Smith, having dealt with the judges of the High Court at a meeting of Cavan Co. Council, as reported in the Anglo-Celt of Saturday, the 11th December, when referring to the case taken into the courts by the Louth County Council, said if the council succeeds the money must come from somewhere. That is their argument. My answer to that is you simply cannot get blood out of a turnip, or water from a stone, and that when the Government is driven back to proclaiming that expedient it is proclaiming its own bankruptcy to the world at large.
I ask Deputies to open their eyes to the facts before it is too late. The Government spokesmen get up and say the plain facts of the case are there; there is no use arguing against the Bill; the merits do not enter into the discussion, the money has to be got and it must be got from somewhere. When we can prove that the Government are turning for that money to sources from which it cannot be got then the Government stands indicted out of its own mouth, of bankruptcy.
Suppose they do not get the money. Suppose we are right. Suppose that although it is to be found somewhere they do not get it and cannot get it in a legitimate way what are they going to do? I have told them before what will happen, and I ask the members of the Labour Party to watch this and see if I am not right. There is one fund out of which the money can come, and one fund out of which it is going to come, in the long run, and that is the county council estimates for the boards of health all over the country.
Out of the rates.
The point is that the county councils are faced with the fact that they must get this money. Many of the county councils will have the courage to say: "We will not scourge the people; it is absolutely impossible to collect this money. We have exhausted every expedient, and the money is not there." These county councils will be dissolved. Commissioners will be sent down to take their place. They will examine the position and they will find that the money cannot be got. They will examine the rates and the estimates for the rates; and then, in their capacity as commissioners of the boards of health they will face the facts, and they will take the money out of the estimate for the boards of health. If they did not attack that estimate the commissioners would have to face up to other expedients. They would have to ask themselves whether they would have to take it out of the county hospital, the surgical hospital, or out of the wages of the workmen employed by the council. But all these are vested interests and could draw public attention to their position, or the workers could get the Transport Union to start a strike. But all this trouble and bother can be avoided. There is one body in the country who cannot fight or who cannot be organised, and who by their character of destitution are not capable of vigorously protesting against their ill-treatment, and those people are the recipients of outdoor relief. It will be decided that those in receipt of 5/- must be content with 4/- and those now getting 4/- must do with 3/-. I challenge any members of boards of health, in this House, to say that they have not heard that argument already used. I challenge any such Deputy to say that when there was a proposal to reduce the board of health estimate that that point was not raised.
This Bill is going to be financed out of the destitution of the poor, because they are the one class in the country who cannot defend themselves. They are the one class whose voices cannot be heard here, for whom there will be no one to speak so long as the Government feels it essential to get this money. There is not a Deputy sitting in the Fianna Fáil Benches who does not know that. They are the one section of the community who will pay the penalty, and who because of their simplicity and destitution, will be less able to understand that this reduction is made in their relief because of the efforts that are being made to finance the Land Purchase (Guarantee Fund) Bill of 1935. It will be blamed on the county councils and on the boards of health, but the one person responsible is the one person who walks out with an accolade of patriotism. Everyone will forget that the Minister for Finance and the Attorney-General who, in their efforts to upset the courts and to deprive the citizens of their rights so as to raise for the Exchequer money that they could not legitimately collect, are taking it out of the pockets of the destitute and the poor, closing their eyes to the fact that there will come a day when the destitute poor will have no contribution to offer to Fianna Fáil. Then we will have succeeded in establishing that destitution and bankruptcy with which the country has been threatened so long and which is being forced upon it by the Fianna Fáil Party at the present time.
We should all—on this side of the House, and I hope also some Deputies on the other side—press the Government to assent to the recommendations passed by the Seanad. There are two aspects to this matter. The first is the judicial aspect. There should not be legislation of a retrospective character passed while, as in this case, an action is pending in the courts. If only for that reason, these recommendations ought to be accepted. The retrospective clauses in this Bill, in addition to encroaching on a pending case in the courts, have the disadvantage that they will impose an extra financial liability on certain people. If this House were asked to pass a Bill imposing a retrospective financial liability on practically every citizen of this State, I venture to say that not a single Deputy would vote for the proposal. If, for instance, Deputy Kelly or other city Deputies were asked to vote for retrospectively doubling the rent of every house in the city, or of every occupied room in the city, would they do so? If Deputy Kelly votes against these recommendations to-day, he will be doing something akin to that.
I do not want to enter upon a discussion regarding the economic war or other matters which have been ruled out by the Ceann Comhairle. But I do want, if I am within the rules of order, to refer to the conditions which will arise if these retrospective clauses are not deleted from the Bill. Deputy Dillon said, more or less, what I should like to say about the condition of the farmers and of the people who will eventually be affected by the operation of these retrospective clauses. The effect will really be that certain people will be asked to bear all the burden of these retrospective clauses, amounting to £1,000,000 or more. Two classes of the community will pay all of this sum. One class will be those people who, in previous years, were fortunate enough to be able to lay by a certain sum which is not yet exhausted. The man who belonged to that class was, up to now, able to pay out of these savings certain sums which other people were not able to pay—his annuities and, perhaps, his rates. To another class these commitments are so small that the payment does not materially affect them. It has been said that in Mayo and parts of Galway there are no arrears of annuities or rates. Why are there not?
Because they paid them.
Because their payments are so small—amounting in many cases from £1 to 5/—that they are not material to the yearly budget of the people concerned. Some of them are migratory labourers. The payment of rates and annuities would not affect a week's earnings. Some of them are in receipt of Government assistance in various forms, a very small amount of which would suffice to pay their rates and annuities. If they had not paid their rates and annuities they would probably be disqualified for the benefits which they receive. In the main, the people who are going to suffer by the passing of this Bill are the middle classes—the people who are neither very big nor very small, the struggling honest men who found it difficult, perhaps, to live before this Government played the devil with their finances, the men who, by hard work, were able to make ends meet and who when the bad times—brought on them by the Government—came, were not able to pay their annuities. If these retrospective clauses are not deleted, you will have, in addition to the huge sum of unpaid annuities which exists at present, practically an equivalent amount of unpaid rates and, eventually, the total collapse of the social services. The people who will, in the end, suffer will, perhaps, not be the ratepayers but the humble persons for whom the social services were set up, the people in receipt of outdoor relief to whom Deputy Dillon referred. They will be the sufferers. Some of them have had their relief reduced in my county from 4/- to 3/- and 2/- and others from 4/- and 2/- to nothing. Some of the labourers on the roads are unpaid for three months because the money was not there to pay them. If you heap on top of the present rate this huge sum of £1,000,000 or more, what prospect have you of collecting any rate in the days to come? If Deputy Kelly, Deputy Donnelly or Deputy Mrs. Concannon were asked to apply a retrospective liability of this character to the citizens of Dublin, would they comply with the request? They know they would not. Because this Bill affects, in the main, the hardworking agriculturists, Deputy Kelly, Deputy Mrs. Concannon and other City Deputies can view it with equanimity.
Deputy Dillon has argued—Deputy Belton argued likewise by interruption—that the farmer has paid twice. I do not want to argue that question. But if this Bill, with its retrospective clauses, is passed, he will not only have paid twice but in many cases more than twice. Remember that these retrospective clauses are going to react on the rates and in many counties the burden of rates is greater than the burden of annuities. I know of many cases in my county where the amount collected as rates is greater than the amount collected as annuities, because the valuations are higher. If on top of that you are going to place a burden on these people of from 1/6 to 3/6—in the coming years it will be more—what amount of the rate will be collected and what will be the effect on the rapidly diminishing number of farmers who are able to pay either rates or annuities? The number of people who are able to pay either rates or annuities is going to get smaller every day and the burden on the diminishing number is going to be increasingly heavy, until eventually you are going to reach a stage when local services must collapse with all the dire consequences that Deputy Dillon pointed out and which I should like to emphasise. We had the spectacle a year or so ago of the Government attempting to collect the annuities through the sheriff. There has not been so much of that of late, but a new set of circumstances has arisen. The rate collector is now seizing for the rates, and when the rate collector has collected what the sheriff left over when attempting to collect annuities, the position of many farmers will be that they will be unable to pay any subsequent annuity or rate.
If the recommendations are not accepted, the position is going to be that the increased rate is not going to be collected. The number that cannot pay, as I have already said, is increasing, and the number who will be conceivably able to pay with this added liability will be so small that the amount collected will be altogether insufficient to carry on the local services in any county. The burden of it then must inevitably fall on the people whom every Deputy would least wish to see it fall upon, the unfortunate unpaid road workers and, above all, the unfortunate people who, in the present circumstances, are in such necessity that they must get outdoor relief.
We have always had people on outdoor relief. A certain number of people always had to be provided for out of the rates, but that number has increased, notwithstanding all the other aids with which the Government has attempted to bolster up conditions. The number is going to increase every day. To my mind, it is immaterial whether the recommendations are accepted or not. There is going to be a collapse in rate collection; there is going to be increased suffering amongst many unfortunate poor people who are in receipt of relief; and there are going to be many workers unpaid if they are employed by the local councils—probably they will not be employed. At present, many of them are employed in the hope that they will get the money in two or three months' time, but they will not be employed even under these conditions if the retrospective sections of this Bill are not wiped out. I should like to appeal with all the force I can to Government Deputies at least to press on the Ministry to make this Bill less obnoxious to the people by accepting the recommendations of the Seanad. I appeal to City Deputies, like Deputy Tom Kelly and Deputy Mrs. Concannon, if an appeal is of any use——
I do not think it is.
——not to impose a burden on unfortunate country people that they would not dare to impose on city people if such a suggestion were made. Deputy Tom Kelly says he does not think there is any use in appealing to him—I do not believe there is. Deputy Kelly, for one, is an honest man. He admits that he is bound by the tie of Party considerations to vote for this even if in his heart he believes it is unjust. But there are times when Party ties should not bind any Deputy to violate his conscience. It must be within the knowledge of every country Deputy, at least, that times are such that the unfortunate ratepayers on whom this burden is going to fall are unable to meet it. That is borne out by the numerous resolutions passed by county councils within the last couple of weeks and the almost universal disapproval of this Bill. There cannot be a Deputy of any political complexion to whom it has not been brought home that this Bill is obnoxious to practically every class in the community, so far as the country districts are concerned, and to a great many in the cities, because city people are not so devoid of sense that they do not know that eventually the ills that fall on the country people are going to fall on the dwellers in the cities and towns.
I suppose it is idle to appeal to Deputies who are so bound by Governmental Whips that they will accept almost any legislation no matter what havoc it plays with the finances of the State, what misfortune it brings to any unfortunate agricultural worker or holder, or what suffering it brings to any poor, needy person in receipt of outdoor relief, or to the sick poor. At the present time, when people are in a desperate position, there should be someone man enough or woman enough to stand up and say: "I stand for Party discipline to a certain extent, but the limit has been reached," because the limit has been reached. Before the debate closes, I hope that we will have some expression of opinion from some Fianna Fáil Deputies and that they will join in our appeal to the Government that the retrospective portion of this Bill is wrong from the moral point of view because it interferes with a case pending in the courts—I do not want to elaborate that, because it has been elaborated before—and that the recommendation should be accepted primarily because of the financial burden that this will place on people who are already in such a condition that they are unable to meet their current liabilities, not to speak of any retrospective addition.
As one might anticipate from what has already happened in the course of the discussions on this Bill, we have had from the Deputies who have already spoken a protest against these sections on the ground that they interfere with the decision in a case pending in the courts and on the ground that retrospective legislation is something almost unprecedented and very highly objectionable. I am not going to go over the ground I went over in this already explaining to Deputies my views as to the occasions upon which retrospective legislation is justified. I should like, however, to advert to this fact, that the recommendations we are discussing were moved in the other House by Senator Blythe. In the course of a rather cautious statement on that he said that there were circumstances in which retrospective legislation might be justified. At column 1560 of the Seanad Debates of 31st December, 1935, he is reported as saying:
"There have been very many Bills with retrospective clauses, and, as Senator Johnson has said, there will occasionally have to be Bills which operate retrospectively, but retrospective legislation should only be resorted to in case of necessity, and it would require some very serious reason to necessitate such legislation in the circumstances which prevail at present to take a case which is actually at hearing out of the hands of the court."
The caution displayed by the Senator in his remarks is probably due to the fact that he had in mind a discussion on a retrospective piece of legislation, or a Bill which was in the process of being converted into a piece of legislation in 1931, when he had to face from the Opposition of the day criticism on the ground that the legislation which he proposed was retrospective in character and interfered with a case then pending in the courts. I referred in the discussion here in the House on the Committee Stage of this Bill to the defence which Senator Blythe then made for his introduction of a section with retrospective effect into the Finance Act, but the circumstances so closely resemble the position with reference to the cases now pending before the courts and the proposals embodied in this legislation that I should like to refresh the minds of the House on them, and particularly the minds of some Deputies who sit opposite and who voted for the retrospective legislation then introduced. It was discovered in 1931 that a section of the 1925 Finance Act had not the effect which the Revenue Commissioners believed it had during the intervening period from 1925 to 1931. They were claiming from the executors of certain estates six years' arrears of income tax, and somebody had the hardihood to challenge it in the courts. It was challenged and went before the Circuit judge, Judge Shannon. Judge Shannon held that the interpretation placed upon the Statute by the Revenue Commissioners was wrong. A case stated was asked for, and while the case stated was pending in the High Court, the Finance Bill came along.
Senator Blythe—then Minister for Finance—and the Government of the day introduced a section retrospectively to validate all that had been done by the Revenue Commissioners. In the course of the discussion on the section, Deputies who were here on that occasion will recollect that no attempt whatsoever was made to justify the introduction of this bit of retrospective legislation on the ground that the House had intended to enact the legislation in the way that Senator Blythe wished to have it. No case was made such as we have made here. We have made the case here that this is a perfectly honest piece of legislation in this way, that, at the time the Land Bill was before this House, this House and the other House—and this House when the views of the other House came back here before it—acted on the assumption that the law as now intended to be embodied in the Bill before the House was in fact the effect of the Bill then before the House. Senator Blythe made no such case in introducing his bit of legislation. In the discussion he defended it and answered the charges which were made against it. Apparently he must have forgotten all he had then said when he had the hardihood to introduce those recommendations in the Seanad. As reported at col. 1376, vol. 39, Official Debates—I think I quoted this passage already on the Committee Stage of this Bill—he said:
"Deputy O'Connell raises the point about cases where there was a decision in the Circuit Court. I am really in doubt about that matter. He really only got a Circuit Court decision and there would have been an appeal to the High Court and another to the Supreme Court, and there is a great difference of opinion amongst counsel as to what would be the result."
As a matter of fact the case stated was pending at the time.
"In certain cases if there was not a great deal of money involved we would wait until the Supreme Court had finally decided the matter and we would not bring in any legislation while the law was unsettled."
There are certain Deputies listening to me who have paraded into the lobbies——
Did the Attorney-General vote against it on that occasion?
The Attorney-General
The Attorney-General is in the happy position that he was not in the House at the time. Senator Blythe went on to say:
"This is a matter that involves big sums. The revenue would be held up by people who would await the outcome of the litigation and revenue would have to be found by other means. It would perhaps be a couple of years before a decision would be obtained and revenue which ultimately would prove to be payable would be held up during that period. We act really before there is a final determination as to what the law is on the matter."
Deputy O'Sullivan was one of the Deputies who went into the lobby in favour of this section, and there we have a clear statement from the Minister for Finance as he then was: "We act really before there is a final determination as to what the law is on the matter." I have been attacked in the Seanad as standing over something which is almost unprecedented and most reprehensible for a lawyer to do. Senator Blythe's statement goes on:
"In the particular case that was before the Circuit Court, the amount involved was not large."
Later, Senator Blythe explained that the sum involved would at most amount to £100,000. According to Deputy Dillon the amount involved here is a million pounds. If Senator Blythe felt that he was then entitled to come here and intervene while legislation was pending, and when the amount involved was £100,000, surely we have ten times a better case to come here when the amount involved is a million pounds. I have been told that we are interfering with the courts. Senator Johnson in the Seanad raised his hands in horror at a passage in a speech of mine here, which he quoted, in which I said that this House had the right to pass such legislation as it thought fit. He really wondered did I mean it had the right——
Were those your words?
The Attorney-General
——or did I only mean that it had the power.
Those are not the exact words.
What were the words which the Attorney-General used in this House? My recollection is that he said this House had the right to interpret what the law was. I may be wrong.
The Attorney-General
The passage which Senator Johnson quoted from my speech, and which I take it is correctly printed here, is as follows:
"If, as has frequently happened, the House has not made clear by its legislation what precisely are its intentions, then this House has the undoubted right during any stage of litigation, either before an action is commenced, during the hearing of the proceedings, or after an action has been concluded, to say what, in its view, the law was intended to be."
That startled Senator Johnson so much that he hoped what I meant to say was not that it had the right, but that it had the power. I argued here in this House and pointed out to this House that this is the supreme law-making Assembly. The courts are there to interpret the law. I never said they were not. In the case in which the last Government felt itself bound to come to the House they were faced with the fact that the Circuit Judge had held that the view upon which the Revenue Commissioners had been acting for a period of six or seven years was not what the House intended the law should be, and Senator Blythe and Deputy Cosgrave —then President Cosgrave—came here and stood over legislation declaring what the law had been intended to be by the House in 1925. They were not able to advance a single quotation from the debates on the earlier Acts to justify them in saying that the House had so intended the law to be.
Would the Attorney-General bear with me for a moment?
The Attorney-General
I am rather afraid of Deputy Cosgrave's bona fides in wishing to interrupt me, but if he desires to do so I will give way.
That is the first time I heard the Attorney-General raise this case.
The Attorney-General
It is not too late, I hope.
It is rather late in the day now.
The Attorney-General
I think Deputy Cosgrave was not here during all the time I have been speaking. I referred to the fact that, in regard to the quotations which I have just given from Senator Blythe's speech, I had already given them during the Committee Stage in this House.
Unfortunately I did not know that.
The Attorney-General
If the Deputy had read the Dáil debates he would have seen it there.
I would like to have had a little earlier notice that this case was going to be cited. The other cases I have dealt with to the satisfaction of the House. This is new to me.
The Attorney-General
Not to the satisfaction of the House because the House did not adopt the argument.
Reluctantly.
The Attorney-General
This passage is worth quoting, though it may take Deputy Cosgrave by surprise. It is from the Official Report of the 2nd July, 1931, and the speaker is Mr. Blythe, the Minister for Finance, now Senator Blythe. He said:
"With regard to the question of respect for the courts, no disrespect is involved in amending the law, whether amending the law retrospectively or not. Very frequently people discover, as a result of the courts carrying out their function of interpreting and applying the law, that the law contains something which it was not generally believed to contain and steps are taken to amend the law. Sometimes it is amended only for the future. There are cases where there are strong reasons for amending it retrospectively, but there is no disrespect for the courts in that."
Senator Blythe seems to have forgotten that statement when speaking recently in the Seanad. Then he went on:
"The function of the courts is to interpret and to apply the law as they find it. If, as a result of the interpretation of the courts, the legislature thinks the law is not in a satisfactory position, there is absolutely no disrespect for the courts in the legislature exercising its function to alter the law. There is no more than there would be in the court finding that, for instance, the legislature had not succeeded in carrying out what members or even the bulk of them expressed as their views at the time."
It would be very hard to interpret the views of Fianna Fáil at the time.
The Attorney-General
Further on Mr. Blythe said:
"and when the legislature exercises its function in any respect in which it thinks it right to do so, there is alsolutely no disrespect to the courts involved."
I wonder if Opposition Deputies will stand over these words now. Proceeding further, he said:
"With regard to the case of people who have cases before the courts and have won them, some Deputies stated that there was no reason for treating them exceptionally. I think there is good reason for treating them exceptionally."
Furthermore, in the course of the discussion, as reported in column 1377, of Vol. 39, Mr. Blythe said:
"As a matter of fact, both here and in England legislation has had to be introduced with retrospective effect. In the present year's Finance Bill in Great Britain, pending a decision of the final court, a section was introduced because they feared that a decision might be given which would have upset the practice as it had existed for 40 or 50 years. Before the court had announced its decision at all, a section was introduced to continue the existing practice if it proved to be necessary. You can get the most extraordinary results if the whole meaning of legislation is going to be revealed by some court decision to be entirely contrary to what was intended and to what it was believed to be. In those cases no injustice is done if what everybody has been doing is confirmed as right."
In the division on that matter I notice amongst the names of those who voted for the motion were those of Deputy Anthony, Deputy Breannan, Deputy Corish and Deputy Davin. I also noticed the names of Deputy Fitzgerald-Kenny, Deputy Vincent Rice, Deputy Thrift and Deputy Alton.
Who voted against it?
Was that carried unanimously?
The Attorney-General
Deputies might look the matter up. The names may carry weight with the Deputy opposite. They include Deputies on these benches.
And I suppose they voted on principle that time?
The Attorney-General
The Deputy did not. Well, of course, that may be.
Did this happen before or after the abandonment of the abstentionist policy?
Deputy Belton was not in the House then.
The Attorney-General
Deputy Belton is not committed in any way in the vote. I have quoted at some length and gone very fully into the matter because these recommendations on the Paper to-day originated from Senator Blythe who solemnly and sanctimoniously proposed them in the Seanad. If we are brought back to discuss them here it is well to know that there are strong arguments and circumstances which justify retrospective legislation. I do not know whether any purpose is served by going into the other aspect of the matter which has been raised here to-day by Deputy Dillon with thunderous eloquence. We have had it all here before. But I have already explained in connection with that aspect of it that the House has got to make its choice. It is not a question of retrospectively imposing a burden upon the ratepayers. It is a question of choosing as to whether there will be a burden on the ratepayers or on the general taxpayers. It has got to be recollected that the effect of the Bill here is to enable the general taxpayers to withhold from the county councils certain moneys.
For years back it has been understood by every county council in the country, by every Deputy in this House and by every ratepayer in the country that these grants from the Central Fund will reach the various county councils in proportion to the extent to which the annuities have been collected. The amount that will go to each county council has been always understood to depend upon the way in which the annuities in that county have been paid. The principles behind that particular legislation have been discussed over and over again. I know that the historic side was gone into. We had a Bill here before and we had the arguments repeated against that particular provision for the existence of the Guarantee Fund. Everybody knows that that had always been accepted as a recognised procedure in this House. Deputy Cosgrave has not referred to the previous discussion in 1923 when one of his own Deputies tried to insist that the Guarantee Fund procedure ought to be abandoned, Deputy Cosgrave swept him aside and said that this was the accepted procedure, that it was reasonable and fair that when there was default in a particular county that that county only should suffer for the default in the payment of the annuities, rather than that the general taxpayers all over the country should have to foot the Bill.
That is the defence which was put up for the Bill, for the retrospective provisions of it. The case is being made that the retrospective effect of the Bill will be to throw a burden of £1,000,000 on the ratepayers. That is, I am sure, a gross exaggeration, because bad and all as the annuitants may be, I do not believe that they will fail to the extent of £1,000,000 to honour their obligation to pay the halved annuities which are now all they have to pay.
What does the President say?
The Attorney-General
The question, in my opinion, has not been fairly put by Deputy Dillon or any of the other speakers. There seems to be a suggestion that there is an attempt here to saddle the ratepayers with this money without adverting to the point to which I have drawn attention, that if the money is not to be got by the ratepayers, and each county is to suffer in accordance with the failure of the annuitants in that county to honour their obligations, it has to be got from the general taxpayer.
I put it to the Attorney-General, would it not be more honest for himself and his Party to approach the British Government, who have already collected more than the land annuities?
The Attorney-General
That is another question.
It is a different one, I admit, but you cannot twist over it, anyhow.
The Attorney-General
I suppose it is impossible to prevent the discussion going along the lines it has already gone, or to prevent the attempt to extract as much political capital out of it as possible. This provision of the Guarantee Fund has always been unpopular and it is nonsense for Deputies to say that the Government is introducing something which has never been thought of before.
The Attorney-General is widening the discussion considerably now. Previous speakers did not refer to the Guarantee Fund. In this discussion the debate should be limited to the recommendations aiming at deleting the retrospective provisions of the Bill.
The Attorney-General
I agree that I have travelled beyond the scope of the recommendations and I am sorry. I certainly do not want to widen the discussion. I urge upon the House that it ought to face the issue. If this money which is affected by these retrospective sections is not to be found, if these recommendations are to be adopted it will mean that in proportion to the extent to which the Minister is prevented from resorting to the Guarantee Fund, he will have to resort to the general taxpayer and raise the money in another way. I urge that these recommendations should not be accepted.
Why did the machinery of the Guarantee Fund break down since 1933 and not before?
That is the very question that the Attorney-General was prevented from going into.
The Attorney-General, in his unfortunately not successful attempt to widen the discussion, did raise rather interesting points. He was really trying within the rules of debate, but was not allowed to do so, to get at the real heart of the situation. I gather from the answer of the Chair to Deputy Belton that we shall not be able, despite the efforts of the Attorney-General, to get at the real core of this whole trouble that has given rise to these recommendations.
The body and soul of the discussion are limited to these recommendations.
I am sorry the Attorney-General was not successful in——
Going outside that.
Yes, in going outside that. There are two things involved here, the retrospective character and the actual effect of the words proposed to be deleted. I think you will agree they are two separate questions. The recommendations from the Seanad propose to delete certain words. We are in favour of the deletion of these words from the Bill for two reasons: first, on the grounds to which the Attorney-General devoted most of his attention, namely, the objectionable character of the retrospective legislation involved. We are also in favour of deleting the words because, if they are kept in, the particular words that the Government propose to keep in, they will at the present moment impose an intolerable burden on the people who are already overburdened. These are the two questions involved in these particular proposals.
Like Deputy Cosgrave, I have not had an opportunity of studying the particular case raised by the Attorney-General, but I think he will admit there was nothing wrong in the thesis laid down by Senator Blythe that retrospective legislation is wrong in normal circumstances and that it should be avoided as much as possible; that there may be cases in which it may be, practically speaking—everything taken into account—impossible to avoid retrospective legislation, but in such circumstances a strong case must be made out for it. I hold the Attorney-General has not made a case for this retrospective legislation and the other members of the Government have not made a case. Our whole contention is the opposite, namely, that even if the retrospective character were absent, if it were merely a question of amending, there is no case for the present legislation. The case is not analogous to the case he quoted and, further, much as I would like to, I cannot accept the Attorney-General's presentation of the case. It is one thing to face the situation of the last 12 months as we find it as a result of Government policy, and another to upset the practice of 40 years. Custom gives a certain amount of ethical value to a legal interpretation, and the fact that a legal interpretation has been accepted for a number of years gives it a moral character that this particular piece of legislation proposed by the Government and supported by the Attorney-General is entirely lacking in.
The Attorney-General, who was repeating the case made by the Minister for Finance, suggested that it is a choice between collecting the money this way or in some other way. Our contention is that there should be no such choice, that the taxation should not be there, the burden should not be there. It was the Government policy that put on this burden and they should not expect the neighbour of the land annuitant whom their policy has made bankrupt to make good his default in the present circumstances.
The Attorney-General
Is it that he should not pay?
If a land annuitant, as a result of the Government policy, is unable to pay, his next-door neighbour should not, in present circumstances, be made pay for him. It is the Government policy that has reduced a large portion of the farmers to the position of being unable to pay.
Did not the Government policy apply to the next-door neighbour as well as the man who has not paid?
It is a fact that all the people are not bankrupt.
Deputy Donnelly will not be satisfied until everybody is bankrupt. That is all he wants. I am sure he will admit he is now supporting a piece of legislation that will bring that about; that will put all farmers on a footing of equality—in bankruptcy! Every farmer would, when this legislation is passed, be on that footing of equality. But that is one of the reasons why we object to this particular portion of the Bill. We object to the Bill as a whole, but we object also to this part of it.
I can understand circumstances quite well, in which retrospective legislation is necessary. If it was a question, for instance, of defending the rights of the courts of this country against outside courts, or if it was a question in which national obligation or honour was involved I could understand it. Even the case cited by the Attorney-General is differentiated from the present, because of the number of years of working that have elapsed. But no case is made, and no attempt has been made to justify the present procedure by the Government. The Attorney-General at the very close of his speech protested that we were making political capital out of this. We are doing our duty in pointing out to the country what the Government are attempting to do. If there is any political capital to be made out of this by anybody it is because the charges we make are true, and the Deputy knows that.
But he does not feel the pinch.
It is not merely the supporters of our Party that object to this particular piece of legislation. I think it will be found that the objection is a little more widespread than that. Why? Because the people in the country know the situation that they are being asked to face at the present moment. Look at what this House has done in backing up the Government with its help. An appeal was made a short time ago by Deputy Bennett when he pointed out the claims of the country were higher than those of any Party, and he was met with laughter by supporters of the Government. Even Deputy Donnelly smiles at the moment. What is it that the Party opposite have done? There are parts of the country where, as a result of Government legislation, and Government policy, the people are not in a position to pay their annuities. There are certain portions particularly hard hit—some more than others. No one will tell me that Dublin is as hard hit as the County Kerry by the present economic war. What is the Government proposal in this matter? Their proposal is to go down to the portions of the country that have been very hard hit already, and hit them harder still. As a result of the economic war the land annuities that at present remain unpaid are abnormally high. What is that the result of? It is the result of the general policy of the Government as approved by this House—what is called through a misnomer the national policy of the Government. They are proposing to place a higher burden on countíes already hard hit, and the more these counties are hard hit the higher the burden. That is the Government's proposal. If there was ever justification or if there ever was an occasion on which retrospective legislation was justified, this, preeminently, is not such an occasion.
I admit this case is differentiated from all other proposals, because there is not only no justification for the present retrospective clauses in the Bill, but as long as the present economic war lasts there is no justification for the Bill at all. The idea of the Government seems to be that the more you bring a man down the harder you must hit him. The Government propose, as the result of non-payment of the annuities due to the policy of the Government in the last 12 months— when they have made almost bankrupt the agricultural community, and when they have hit certain portions of the country harder than others — to put a still further burden on the people. That is the Government's idea of legislation on these lines, and especially of retrospective legislation along these lines.
Everybody must know now that if there is an abnormal amount of arrears of annuities we are dealing with an abnormal situation. If there is an abnormal increase in the number of defaulters, and especially in certain portions of the country, it is because of the economic conditions prevailing in the country. It is precisely the key industry of the country, upon the success of which depend all other industries, that you propose to place this further burden. You have already burdened it with high taxation and rates and now, because the Minister for Finance finds it inconvenient to carry out his promises about reducing taxation, because the Government will not take a sensible step, so far as the big question is concerned of making agriculture a paying proposition, his only remedy is to put it into a worse condition. Is not that the whole effect of these clauses so far as this year is concerned?
There are grounds for opposing the Bill, and there is a special reason for opposing these clauses. As long as the economic dispute continues, and as long as it continues to make itself felt in the agricultural life of the country, surely there are special reasons for not putting additional burdens on those people, but rather for taking them off Take the position of the ordinary farmer in the country. He is asked to pay higher rates. I have mentioned the case before of a man who told me that his ordinary rates to-day are two-and a-half times more than a couple of years ago. As to the value of his produce—from the point of view of getting money for it—I shall not attempt to say how much he is out of pocket. He pays his annuities to the Government. He feels that in the past 12 months he has more than paid them to the British Government, and now you are asking that man to pay the annuities of somebody else. That is what this Bill proposes to do, and that is what is being done when everyone knows and when even the Ministers themselves admit the lot of the farmer is hard, and very hard. Everybody is convinced of that except Deputy Tom Kelly. Deputies are in possession of their senses if they are not in possession of the liberty to vote, and they should, at least, make representations to the Government about the unwisdom of this proceeding. I am not going to pretend that what is disturbing me is the damage this will do to their Party. What I am concerned with is the damage to the country, which will be very serious. How does anybody expect local services to be carried on in these circumstances? I do not say that it is the aim of the Government to bankrupt local services and gradually supplant them by central administration, but I say that, if that were their aim, they could not go about it in a better way than they are doing at present. There are other methods by which this burden could be met, and there was no necessity to introduce retrospective legislation. We may have doubts as to whether the Minister for Finance has not some nest-eggs. He may not tell us how they are going to hatch out. If he has any such, I suggest that they could not be put to better use than to meet an exceptional non-recurrent charge of this kind. They would be better utilised in that way than by being devoted to the questionable uses to which he is likely to devote them.
The whole difficulty is caused by the policy of the Government and by the condition to which they have reduced the country. It is not one unfortunate person or one unfortunate part of the country that has been hard hit and is now to be hit harder. You are facing a situation brought about not by circumstances peculiar to one county but by a general cause affecting the whole country. You are facing a national crisis which has to be met not locally but centrally. I contend— nobody who knows the country would attempt to controvert the contention— that now is not the time to put additional burdens on the farmers or to put additional difficulties in the way of the local authorities. That is what you are doing. It is within the competence of this House to amend legislation. I am not quite convinced that the passage quoted from the Attorney-General by Senator Johnson is quite as innocent as the Attorney-General pretends, because if he will read that particular passage—that is the only part of the speech I have before me— he will find that there is a suggestion that it is almost the business of this House to interpret legislation.
The Attorney-General
I defended myself against that attack when Deputy Fitzgerald-Kenney made it.
The words, I suggest, are susceptible of that meaning, but if the Attorney-General says that he had no intention of conveying that meaning I accept his statement. But the words were not carefully chosen.
The Attorney-General
I made quite clear that that was not my meaning.
If the task is one for the courts alone, then let the courts attend to it. When this action was taken, a number of people scoffed at it and said that there was no foundation for it. If there was the slightest belief that that was so, why not let the case go before the courts and let the courts say whether or not there is foundation for it. Deputy Dillon quoted a speech of the deputy Whip of the Fianna Fáil Party. I suggest that that speech is not a bit more absurd than some of the reasons I heard put forward for this Bill from the Ministerial Benches. We were told by a Minister that the real purpose of this Bill—this is about as good an argument as any that has been put forward from the Government Benches —was to save expense to the county councils! That argument was put forward from the Ministerial Bench. It is not a bit better as an argument than that put forward by Deputy Smith, but it is quite as good as any argument advanced from the Government side of the House for the retrospective clauses of this Bill.
One is compelled to ask why is such legislation as this necessary and, if found to be necessary now, why it should be made retrospective. Government spokesmen informed us on various occasions in this House that, because of the default of a number of farmers in different areas, notably in the County Cork, it was necessary to introduce legislation of this character. The Attorney-General quoted from a speech made by Senator Blythe in the Seanad in which he said that retrospective legislation should only be resorted to in cases of necessity. Neither the Attorney-General nor any of his associates on the Government Benches has adduced any argument to show why this legislation should be made retrospective. The Attorney-General suggested that if the local bodies and the ratepayers were not compelled to pay, the general taxpayer would have to foot the Bill. The general taxpayer has had to foot the Bill for the delinquencies and defaults and for the extravagance of this Government. The general taxpayer has been compelled to pay about 12/- per sack more for his flour and 5/- per ton more for his coal, etc. These are some of the burdens borne by the general taxpayer and I submit that a very good case can be made for the general taxpayer having to bear the burden inflicted on the agricultural community by the Fianna Fail Government and their official Labour allies. The case has been made that if the annuitant did not pay some other member of the community would be penalised and compelled to pay for his defaulting neighbour. Surely the Attorney-General and those associated with him must know that never have the farmers gone through a more trying period than during the tenure of office of the present Government. I can only describe this measure as one of the most iniquitous introduced either by a native or Imperial Government during the last 50 years.
Another question I should like to put to the Minister for Finance is, has he when introducing this legislation, and particularly when seeking to make it retrospective, given any consideration to the capacity of the people to pay? The burden of taxation is increasing year after year. The present Minister for Finance threw up his hands in horror on one occasion when Senator Blythe, who was then Minister for Finance, introduced a Budget for something like £21,000,000. President de Valera then told us that it was a burden the people could not bear and that it was an appalling thing that the people should be taxed to that extent. In face of all these protestations of solicitude for the taxpayer we now find that taxation has gone up by almost £4,000,000.
I am just as much concerned with the agricultural labourer in his cottage as with the farmer. It must not be forgotten that, no matter what argument may be used to the contrary, the humble labourer would be as much affected as the farmer by the operation of this measure. Many people, when discussing this measure, not alone here but elsewhere, appear to think that nobody but the farmers and the agricultural labourers will be affected. But surely the merest tyro in national economy must know that anything that adversely affects our chief industry is bound to affect and percolate right down into the industrial centres in the towns and cities. Surely the Minister does not want to penalise the farmer who has paid. There may be some annuitants who could pay and did not pay. There may be and are good reasons operating in the case of some farmers who have not paid. But, is it because a farmer was not industrious, frugal, thrifty, or in some other way was not a capable or good agriculturist, that the thrifty, frugal and good farmer should be made to pay for such a delinquent? I submit that this is a most unjust measure and should not be put into operation.
I did not intend to intervene in this discussion, but for want of courage to speak the truth the wail and the whine have gone up that this Bill is necessary because the farmers either will not or are unable to meet their obligations. They have met their obligations.
The question of what obligations the farmers met does not arise. The only question for discussion is the retrospective aspect of this measure.
I quite agree, but that case has been made on these recommendations and I do not want to labour it any further. It is strange that this machinery, which has worked for 40 years or more and which was not questioned, should break down in the last two years. The Attorney-General said that the operation of drawing on the Guarantee Fund to meet unpaid land annuities was present in the minds of the Government and every Deputy, and I think he went further and said every citizen, when the 1933 Land Bill was going through the Oireachtas.
And the Attorney-General did not get much further with that argument, as the Deputy knows.
He got as far as he wanted to go.
Question.
You are a good hand at it yourself.
If any Deputy got latitude here, Deputy Anthony has no reason to complain. It is strange that it broke down on that. The law was not amended in any way. If the law was sound before 1933. it must be sound now. Deputy Broderick's little action in the court should not be able to upset the Government, yet the Government come along with this precautionary measure.
Mr. Broderick
Not mine.
Of course, the whole nature of the thing was changed. The Government tried to draw money out of the Guarantee Fund to meet Government taxation not land annuities. That is the whole snag.
The Deputy must get away from that line of argument.
I appreciate that within the strict, narrow limits of order we must confine ourselves to the retrospective aspect of this. In last year's Finance Act there was retrospective legislation. The Minister for Finance was concerned with a test case in the courts. I think, as a matter of fact, that a Circuit Court judge had given a decision adverse to the policy the Minister for Finance had been pursuing, and which his predecessor had been pursuing, in the matter of profit ground rents. The Revenue authorities had been making the case that profit ground rents should be capitalised and should represent income for the year in which those profits were created. A test case was brought in the courts and a decision given, I think by Judge Davitt, that the Revenue authorities were wrong. The Revenue authorities, under the guidance of the present Minister for Finance and his predecessor, had taken that view of assessing income. Last year the Minister for Finance inserted a clause in the Finance Bill placing beyond doubt the intention of the Revenue authorities, but he did not seek that that should apply retrospectively. Of course the Minister will appreciate that I have no grievance because he did not seek to apply it retrospectively, but I cannot quite follow why he wants to apply this Act retrospectively, or why he should not accept the amendments by the Seanad.
The Attorney-General took a long time to adumbrate on the point that if this Bill is not made retrospective—if those amendments are carried—something like £1,000,000 will fall to be met by the taxpayer. Who else will meet it whether the Bill passes or not, and whether those amendments are adopted or not? Apparently, the Attorney-General is unaware of the manner in which local authorities and county councils build up their budgets. Is he not aware that when arrears occur now or in the past, even when the arrears were in what were really land purchase annuities and the Guarantee Fund was raided to meet the deficiency, the arrears at the end of the financial year were made good in the Estimate for the following year, and that Estimate was not confined to the agricultural ratepayers but spread over the whole body of ratepayers? If the rate-paying capacity of agriculture breaks down under this, those arrears due by the agricultural ratepayers will be spread over the non-agricultural ratepayers and they will have to pay them. You can follow that up to its logical conclusion. If you bankrupt the agricultural ratepayers who will pay the rates or who will pay the arrears? They will all have to be borne by the back that will be able to bear them. The only argument which Deputy Donnelly could adduce was that because one man was able to pay his rates they all should be able to pay them; because one farmer was not bankrupt none of them should be bankrupt. That is the only hope which Deputy Donnelly holds out. I should like to have a talk with the Minister for Finance, and probably we in the Dublin County Council will ask him to see some schedules which have come before me as chairman of the county council, and see the appalling condition of affairs there. If he wants the job of disgracing honest people who have always kept their heads high he can do it. I will not do it for him or anybody else. What hope is held out for all this? I was listening to the Minister for Agriculture saying that the only way to get a price is to kill half your stock. Those are the conditions we are up against and I would defy any farmer there, if there is a farmer there—
There is.
I do not want to cross the Jordan again. I should like to hear Deputy Victory on the prosperity of my native county of Longford. He can go to the Longford banks and ask them about it. The Deputy has pathways made to them on behalf of his constituents. I defy him to contradict it. Some of the loudest shouters in support of the present policy in that county and in the county of Dublin are those who are nearly beyond redemption.
Hear, hear.
In regard to both counties, I will give the names to the Deputy in confidence if he questions what I am saying. I have seen the schedules for both, and I know what I am talking about. I have interviewed the bank managers on behalf of many people in both counties. That is no secret. Everybody in this House knows that is the condition in the country, and then we hear this tripe about retrospective legislation which is to take the marrow out of the bones of agriculture in this country to pay £1,000,000 that is not due. I wish Deputy Dillon stood up to it and said "We have paid this and who can contradict it? Who can contradict us when we say that the British Government have collected it?"
The President admitted it.
The worst rack-renting landlord that ever cursed this country never sought to collect the rack-rent from a neighbouring farmer if the other farmer did not pay, but the rack-renting landlords under President de Valera, Seán MacEntee and the rest are doing it now, supported by Deputy Donnelly, and by Deputy Corry, who claims to be a successful and prosperous farmer, and to stand for the hard-working farmers of Cork. They are supporting them in this, when they know in their hearts that they are wrong, but they lack the moral courage to stand up and tell the Front Bench there that they are wrong. They are afraid to lose their jobs, because many farmers there, if they had not the jobs, would not have any farm in present circumstances. What is this money for? Let us go back, by way of the magic wand, to what I might call the pre-de Valera era. Let us go back four or five years, when the £6 a head was not skimmed off the price of cattle, but went into the pockets of agriculture, and was paid as it had been heretofore. But that £5,000,000 is shipped away to-day as surely as it was five years ago. Should not that close the deal? If the recipient of that £5,000,000 says "We have got it all," where is the need for the drain on the Guarantee Fund? For arrears of what? Arrears of annuities which the one man who has got this money, the British Chancellor of the Exchequer, says has been paid already. Is there anybody on the Government Benches so dull in intelligence as not to appreciate that point? There is not a single occupant on those Benches who does not realise the truth of that matter as well as I do, but they dare not speak. People are selling their country for a job here. That is the position of the Fianna Fáil Party to-day. They are selling their country for £1 a day. Then we have been told about half the annuities being remitted. That has broken down of course. The Guarantee Fund mechanism collapsed because it was never intended to be used to meet deficiencies in taxation. And agriculture has been paying £2,000,000 for the last two or three years under the 1933 Land Act. That does not represent half the land annuities, for the farmers are losing £2,000,000 which is really raised by taxation on the land. When the taxation was not coming in the Minister raided the Guarantee Fund and he was getting away with it. He got away with it until the Cork and Louth County Councils challenged him in the courts. Then he got the wind up and rushed in here to get legislation passed in order to cover up his tracks. But it is a waste of time on the part of the Government to try to make a case. They charge that the previous Administration used the Guarantee Fund and that it has been used for forty or fifty years without question. Well, it has been questioned. The propriety and equity of it have been questioned, and a good deal in the circumstances that obtained could be said for it. The real reason why this thing broke down was not that the operation of the Guarantee Fund was bad in itself, but because the Minister used it to do a job that it was never intended to do, that is to collect taxes. I hope Deputies will not think that this is a "sod picnic." I hope they will realise that this is playing with the economic life of the country. I hope that even if they are callous enough to vote to have these grants taken from the Guarantee Fund, they are not sufficiently callous to ask that, in addition to other increases and burdens on the agricultural ratepayer caused by the cumulative effect of their piling on charge after charge on that community, there will be a loss by the danger of adding a burden to the arrears already existing, wiping them out as a loss, and starting with a clean slate now. If the Government Deputies do not realise the necessity of that, they will have to do so later on. I am speaking with some little knowledge of the constituency that the Minister represents. If these heavy charges are put on the County Dublin, we will meet the Minister. We are not going to increase rates there. We will meet this charge by cutting the estimates and letting the Minister find employment in the County Dublin for his dupes. It will not be found by selling the last cow and the last bed of the people that the Minister's policy has plundered in the constituency he now misrepresents.
I am a little bit disappointed at the length of time this debate is apparently going to take. I thought that at the end of an hour or two there would probably be a division on these recommendations. But that, apparently, is not going to be the case. We did not come here to hear a repetition of the arguments that we have heard over and over in this House. It seems to me that we are destined never to get any peace either inside the House or outside the House. Because when we go on holidays and take up a paper to look probably at some sporting event we find a letter from Deputy Cosgrave and attacks and correspondence all through the Press. That annoys us just as we are annoyed here by Deputy Belton's speech.
We are glad to annoy the Deputy sometimes.
Deputy Belton has a great monopoly of brains as far as agriculture is concerned. Apparently all the Beltons have that monopoly. I saw an advertisement in a paper this morning and when I read it I wondered if Deputy Belton had inserted it. It is a kind of medicinal cure for everything. It is called "Beltonia." I would ask the House to listen to this——
Take it and it will cure you of all your ills.
"There will come deliverance from pain and helplessness caused by any form of disease which robs the workers of millions of pounds in wages and salaries... and costs the nation a huge sum." On reading that would one not think that he had been reading a speech of Deputy Belton's? On the last occasion when the Dáil adjourned the Deputy charged that the rank and file of the Government Party were selling the country in order to keep the President and the members of the Executive Council in office. They were doing that for £1 a day. Now this is getting a bit too much and at times it is going a bit too far. I would put this to Deputy Belton for myself personally that as far as I am concerned if I thought the country was going to suffer by any legislation that was introduced by the Government I would not remain here. As regards the £1 a day recompense that we get here I would refer Deputy Belton to one copy of "Irish Nationality" that was issued in this country when I was sacked for my activities for Sinn Fein, and I was sacked from a better job than Deputy Belton ever had.
Was that the job of warder?
Nonsense. Your ignorance on that point is on all fours with your ignorance on other matters.
Now Deputy Donnelly is becoming personal.
Mr. Kelly
Deputy Belton is personal himself.
The Deputy from the very first has been making these appeals from this side of the House. He is inviting Deputies here to do a certain thing but I can tell Deputy Belton that the rank and file of this Party will give their allegiance to our Chief. It is to him we will give our allegiance and if the day comes when we have to alter it let us act together on a clean sheet. That is our attitude. Every time he makes a speech in the Dáil, Deputy Belton refers to the farmers. He represents one of the constituencies of Co. Dublin.
He sits for a City constituency.
In his own constituency, talking about this question of taxation and who is to pay——
It is not detectives they want, anyway.
They have a damn queer one in you, you damned informer.
Remember Mitchelstown.
Who?
You and your father, where they shot the people down. Who gave the intelligence?
No one belonging to me gave it to them. It was probably a Belton.
Deputy Belton talks about the farmers. Why is there so much anxiety in every constituency in Ireland to get more land when there is an estate being divided?
What experience have you of the land?
We see letters appearing in the papers and we see other letters from people looking for more land.
For nothing. Will anyone give any money for it?
On the borders of Louth—and I am sure Deputy Coburn will bear this out—and County Monaghan, one of the counties that have taken an action against the Government, land was offered recently by an auctioneer, and what was the amount paid for it in County Louth? It was at the rate of £6 per acre.
Acting-Chairman
What has this to do with the matter under discussion?
With all respect, I am trying to answer arguments that have been raised here, that as a result of legislation brought in by the present Government the farmers are in a position that it is impossible for them to pay anything and that the addition of this burden will bankrupt them. I think that is a perfectly fair synopsis of the argument.
Acting-Chairman
But is it not a bit off the track?
I will not go any further in that direction.
That does not apply in the smuggling area.
I referred to the borders of Monaghan and Louth.
Where many live by smuggling.
One would think that this is the first time that the rates have been made security for the annuities. Under the Ashbourne Act and the Wyndham Act was it not always done? If my memory is correct, I believe that Deputy Cosgrave leans in that direction, because, when the 1923 Act was going through, Deputy Gorey moved an amendment that the rates be no longer responsible for making up the amount due by defaulting annuitants. Deputy Cosgrave, who was then President, refused that amendment and spoke against it. If I am wrong in that, I will willingly accept contradiction, but I think that was the attitude at that time. One would think this was the first occasion upon which a decision on these lines had ever to be adopted.
There is another matter which I would like to mention—it may be touch and go whether or not I am in order. These recommendations have come back from the Seanad for the one purpose of torpedoing this Bill. If these recommendations are accepted, a big part of the Bill might as well never have been passed here. During the discussion on this Bill, and in connection with other Bills, we were taunted with the smallness of our majority. As Deputy Dillon and others have said, when the other Parties got together we had only one or two of a majority over all comers. That is true. But by one of a majority in the Seanad these recommendations have been sent back here. The position is worse in the Seanad than it is here, because the one of a majority in the Seanad occupies a certain position. I do not want to trespass too far on that, but if we want to go back into ancient history we will realise how marvellous it is in Ireland that history always repeats itself. When a Government is trying to do anything for a country, or when a man is trying to do anything for a country, it is peculiar how history repeats itself. In this particular instance the same two counties, Cork and Louth, were the two counties that raised the flag of faction against Mr. Redmond and Mr Dillon when they were trying to do something for the country. The same gentleman whose casting vote in the Seanad sent these recommendations back here was the man who fought the old Irish Party in East Limerick as a factionist.
You should be ashamed to mention the Irish Party.
It might even hurt Deputy Keating.
You blackguarded the old National Party, the Party that was a credit to the country.
I am certainly not blackguarding them now. I often read in the provincial papers, and so did Deputy Belton, long lists of defaulting annuitants. The very men who are now coming along trying to torpedo this legislation are the men who backed up that system of legislation years ago. Must there not be some finality? Deputy Belton and Deputy O'Sullivan talked about the agricultural community being saddled with a burden. Deputy Belton should take a walk through his own constituency and maybe he will realise that if the general taxpayer has got to make good these deficiencies, the poor man in Dublin pays as much in general taxation as the farmer. The poor man in Deputy Belton's constituency has to pay as much for his tea and sugar as the person who resides in Cork. Deputy Belton must know that in his own constituency in Dublin City North there are many poor families living in places where the rent amounts to £80 a year.
I do not.
The farmer has very little in return for all the hard work he does.
I would like to see the farm of land that one of these unfortunate people would get for £80. I am voting for this Bill because I believe it is right. I believe a lot of the argument we have listened to has been exaggerated. I believe, too, that there is a lot of dishonesty behind a lot of the things said in this House. I will back the Government, the President and the Minister, in putting this thing through, and so will every Deputy on these benches, notwithstanding all the talk to the contrary.
The Deputy who has just sat down said he believes there is a lot of dishonesty behind all this. I should like to say that I never heard a more dishonest speech than the one delivered by the Deputy. If I might say so without offence to the Deputy, I never heard a more ignorant speech— ignorant on the subject—than the one we have listened to. The Deputy never once got down to what the Bill means, because he does not know.
What does he care?
On the last occasion when I spoke on this matter I pointed out that if the North Tipperary County Council, when this Bill becomes law, has to make good the amount of the grants withheld by the Government for last year, it will mean 2/1 in the £ on the rates. Deputy Donnelly said that that was bunkum. The Minister for Finance said it would mean nothing of the sort. Of course Deputy Donnelly does not know anything about it. He does not know whether it would mean a penny, 2/1 or 4/1. The Deputy is confused in his ideas about this Bill. Apparently the Deputy is not aware of the fact that this is not to make good annuities, but to make good taxation. It is for revenue purposes. The Deputy did not seem to grasp the fact that this is for revenue purposes and not to pay annuities.
Let me give the Deputy a couple of figures that have an important bearing on the matter, the figures given in this House by the Minister for Finance in reply to a question by Deputy Brennan. So far as the County Tipperary is concerned, in February 1935, the amount withheld from the South Tipperary County Council was £91,376. The amount withheld from the North Tipperary County Council was £44,132. Does the Deputy consider that it is fair at this particular stage to pile that down on the ratepayers of this country? It is rather peculiar, to say the least of it, that during the whole course of the passage of this Bill through the House we had not a speech from any farmer on the far side or from any person who is in daily touch with the people to be affected by this legislation, and particularly by the retrospective clauses, if we except Deputy Corry, who made a long rambling speech. At the end of his speech we did not know whether he was for or against the Bill. He took very good care that he was not going to go on record as voting in favour of it. Having made that speech, he got someone to pair with him. He succeeded on the first occasion, but on the second occasion he did not succeed in getting a pair, although he went out of the front gate, meeting members coming into the House and asking them to pair with him.
That is a lie.
Well, the Deputy went outside the House anyway; he may have gone to the front gate. I am making the point that he was anxious to pair, because it proves beyond yea or nay that there are Fianna Fáil Deputies living in rural areas and in touch with the people in those areas who are against this Bill and know that it is an unjust Bill. They know in their hearts that this Bill cannot be put into effect without cutting the social services. Is there any member of the Party opposite who will get up and honestly say that there is a county council to-day in the Free State that can pay this additional rate and keep going?
Not one.
Is there any member of the Party opposite who knows anything about local politics, who believes that they can collect £1,000,000 additional? At any rate, every Deputy opposite knows that every one or nearly every one of the county councils in the Free State is working on an overdraft from its bank. Is it not a fact that certain county councils were unable to meet the wages of their workmen? Is it not a fact that, in one particular case, they were unable, for a short period, to pay their poor relief? And is it not a fact that in one case it was only by sending deputation after deputation to the bank that they succeeded in carrying on? Are bodies such as these, working on overdrafts, and only able to continue their services because of overdrafts, to be asked to pay an additional rate amounting to something from 2/- to 4/- in the £?
I suggest to Deputy Donnelly that he should consider these facts. He told us he is not concerned with facts and that he is going to follow his leader. We know that. That kind of thing is the unfortunate curse of this country. Unfortunately the Deputy is more often following the President when he is wrong than when he is right. He told us that when he can no longer follow his leader he will walk out. I am rather surprised at that. I gave Deputy Donnelly credit for having much more intelligence than that. Let Deputies not forget that by this legislation they are putting this amount of £1,000,000 extra on the rates in order to meet further activities of the Government. Is there any Deputy in this House with a knowledge of the local authorities of the country who is not aware of the fact that additional money has to be provided at present to meet the increased cost of living, to meet an increase of practically 11/- per sack for flour and an increase of from 17/- to £1 extra per ton for coal compared with 12 months ago? The same applies to butter, sugar and all other items, and the people are expected not only to meet them but actually to provide an additional £1,000,000. Deputies opposite are silent when these things are brought forward though they know better than I do that the Government has been strangling the local authorities for all these years.
We are hearing the same speech over and over again.
The Deputy is getting uneasy. He is one of the ablest speakers on the other side, and he knows better than most of them how to face up to a bad case. But there are some cases so bad that even Deputy Donnelly with all his ability cannot attempt to defend them.
Yet with all his intelligence you think he made an ignorant speech.
An ignorant speech on this particular subject. He told us he was prepared, in company with the rest of his colleagues, blindly to follow his leader.
So much, I suppose, for his intelligence.
He allows his sense of loyalty to blind his intelligence. I suggest to Deputy Donnelly and members of the Party opposite that they should consider this whole matter seriously. The majority of them in touch with rural areas have considered the facts. They know the effect of this Bill, as well as we do, and in their hearts they are as much against this Bill as we are, but we heard only one speech from a farmer Deputy opposite—made by Deputy Corry—who is not prepared to back his speech with his vote. That shows what the Deputy's opinion was worth. We had other speeches from Deputies opposite whose knowledge of agriculture is not greater than mine. I do not profess to know much about agriculture, but I am in touch with the people who have suffered and will have to suffer if this Bill is passed. I am satisfied that the cost cannot be met by increased rates and I am very much afraid that what will happen is this: that county councils, when they are compelled to meet the demands imposed on them by this Bill, will be forced to cut their social services and the poor people and the workers will suffer in the long run.
I am afraid the remarks which Deputy Morrissey made in respect of Deputy Donnelly and his ability to study the situation apply with equal force to every member of the Government Party opposite. But no one seems to have taken into consideration on the Government side what is the actual state of the country with regard to the local authorities. Deputy Donnelly told us this was not the first time the rates were made liable for the payment of annuities. It is the first time rates have been made liable for Government taxation. That is perfectly true. It is the first time that a British or an Irish Government has endeavoured to make money out of the people in that way.
I do not follow you.
Let me explain. If the British Government insisted on the Guarantee Fund and if the predecessors of the present Government insisted on it, it was for the purpose of ensuring payment to the stockholders of money raised for them. It went out to them.
You are getting on dangerous ground now.
I am not.
Are we entitled to discuss the purpose of the Guarantee Fund?
No. The purpose of the Guarantee Fund may not be discussed. We are dealing only with the retrospective provisions of this Bill.
I do not wish to contravene the ruling of the Chair. Deputy Donnelly used an expression which was used by more than one other Deputy—that one would imagine that this was the first time this was being done. It is the first time. I want to impress on the House that this is the first time the rate-paying community has been made liable for Government taxation.
Are we entitled to discuss whether the annuities are payments in respect of land purchase or taxes?
The question is not relevant.
I am not discussing it.
If the Deputy were allowed to pursue that matter, then other Deputies would be entitled to reply.
The matter is not really open to discussion, because the Minister for Finance and the House know that what I am saying is perfectly correct.
Many things which are correct are not relevant.
The recommendations before the House are no more than an endeavour to save not alone the unfortunate people who have already paid their rates and annuities, but whatever little self-respect is left in the Government. The Minister for Finance told us in the House recently that he had mortgaged our future in order to get us over the position in which we found ourselves last year, when he made available certain moneys to us so that the pressure of that £716,000 would not be so heavy for the time being. I should like to know from the Minister if, in putting these retrospective clauses in this Bill, he considered what the position of local authorities was. In reply to a question some time ago we were told that, in 1931-32 the amount of arrears carried forward was £123,000; in 1932-33, £129,000; in 1933-34, £176,000; in 1934-35, £339,000, and in 1935-36, £364,600. Add to that that none of these local authorities has made full provision for the withholding of the grants, that the Minister, by this retrospective legislation, hopes to get in or has already collared £716,000, and that a sum of £364,000 has been carried forward as against £123,000 in 1932. What, then, will be the position of the local authorities? Deputy Belton mentioned that, because the people have already paid their annuities, they are apparently justified in refusing to pay the further annuities. There is a lot to be said for that. This is the first time people have been asked to pay a debt twice.
Did you read the report of the meeting of the English Farmers' Union?
We have quite enough to do to look after our own business. They are able to look after their own business and you have evidence of that in the coal-cattle pact.
They have good helpers here.
They do not need anybody's assistance. They come out winners every time. If the annuities are unpaid to the extent of £716,000, why is that so? There must be some reason for it. Deputy Donnelly says, in effect, that the farmers are as well off as ever they were, and that, if they were not, they would not be looking for more land. I am amazed at Deputy Donnelly putting up that type of argument. There is nothing stable in this country but land and, after all, a few acres of land to a young man is something.
I agree.
I advise Deputy Donnelly to inquire from the secretary of the county council of the county which he represents as to what are the prospects of continuing social services and of making provision for roads and employment, as has been done in the past, if this retrospective legislation is to have effect. Who is going to foot the bill? I do not know exactly how much Leix County Council have been deprived of by means of the withheld grants but, in Roscommon, we were actually docked £26,000, which represents 1/9½ in the £. In addition, we have, as pointed out by Deputy Morrissey and several other speakers, new and increased services of every kind. We have new hospitals being erected at tremendous cost and new housing accommodation at tremendous cost. The cost of maintenance of all these services has to be borne and, in addition, the farmer who has paid has got to carry the burden of his neighbour who, through Government policy, is not able to pay.
I was at the fair of Roscommon on Monday and I should like Deputy Donnelly to take a note of my experience. We hear a lot of talk about the halving of the annuities. The Attorney-General told us that the farmers have only to pay half annuities. There was a slight omission there. They have only to pay half to us. But they have to pay the whole to Britain. A neighbour of mine—a poor man—had three head of cattle in the fair. They were two-and-a-half-year olds and he got £22 for them. He was lucky to get that £22 but, under present conditions, he lost £18 on them—three sums of £6 each. His annuities were £16 and were brought down to £8. Has not that man a great advantage in having his annuities halved and his three cattle sold at a loss of £18? The Minister for Finance will then tell us that they have halved the annuities of the farmers.
Deputy Cosgrave wanted to do it before the last general election.
And if he did, the people would have had an open market which would be quite a different matter. By this retrospective legislation, the Government are ensuring that not alone will the ratepaying community in future be responsible for the debts of their neighbours but that the Government will be entitled to hold what it has already got outside the law. I say "outside the law" deliberately. I am sorry that Deputy Corry has left the House. He used to be very loud in his denunciation of salaried people. He used to tell us about bloated officials and how, when his party got into power, they were going to tackle these people. Now Deputy Corry sits silently while these bloated officials are allowed to go scot-free so far as this matter is concerned. Deputy Corry and his neighbours, if they have their rates and annuities paid, will have to bear the responsibility of the nonpaying members of the community.
The Minister for Finance and the Attorney-General asked, "Is it fair to put this particular load on the taxpayers considering that the farmers have failed to pay"? I ask Deputy Corry, is it not fair to let some of his bloated salaried officials carry part of this load rather than put it back on the farmers? Is there any reason why the farmers should carry it all? The Minister for Finance says that this money was advanced on a community basis. It was not. There was no such thing as a community basis in the advance of the money. The money was advanced to buy out the landlords and, as far as the tenants were concerned, it was advanced individually to everyone of them. The only reason that Great Britain put in the provision of the Guarantee Fund was to ensure that she would get the money to pay the stock-holders, because she mistrusted the Irish people.
Why did Deputy Cosgrave put it in?
If he did put it in, there is one thing he did not do—he did not get any advantage out of it, neither did his Exchequer. It was not then Government revenue. Every penny of it went to pay the stockholders.
You are on dangerous ground.
I am not. I know well the ground I am on. We had the Attorney-General quoting a case to show that it was not the first time retrospective legislation was introduced in this House. Of course it was not. One would imagine from the manner in which the Attorney-General spoke that there was a complete analogy between the two cases, but there was not. If the Attorney-General told us what the other case really was, the House would know where they were. I know what the other case was, and there is no analogy between them as far as the circumstances are concerned. The other was a case dealing with people who, it was found after their death, according to the legacies which they left, did not make a proper declaration of their incomes previously. This is a case where people are not able to pay, and have been declared by the Minister and by the Land Commission as not able to pay, because if they were able to pay they ought to have collected the money off them. This is a case where the people are not able to pay and where the load which they are not able to carry is being put on their neighbours.
To my mind there is no justification for the retrospective portion of this Bill. The unfortunate position in which we find ourselves is, I maintain, due to Government policy. I should like to know why the Minister for Local Government, who must stand sponsor for local authorities here, does not appear in this House, or why at the Executive Council meetings he does not demand justice for the Departments which he represents. Why must the Minister for Finance be allowed to be the Shylock of the Government Party to demand his pound of flesh irrespective of what happens to local authorities?
I have been on local authorities for a great number of years, and I ought to know something about them. I do say that with this legislation in force and the circumstances of the people as we see them to-day, as illustrated by the non-payment of annuities and by their inability to meet their demands, and with the calls already on the people, we are going to have a breakdown in local administration. Nobody will regret that more than I will. It cannot possibly stand. Anybody who has examined the situation must see that. We have increased Estimates, we have an increase in the carry forward of unpaid rates, an increase in the writing-off of irrecoverable rates and, in addition, we have this demand for £716,000 for last year. What are we going to have for this year? The Minister can tell that, but will possibly say that it would be out of order. Probably it would be out of order, but it would be very interesting to Deputies and the local authorities to know what are the deficiencies this year as far as unpaid annuities are concerned.
The unfortunate position that the farmers find themselves in is that, while this Government collars £716,000 outside the law for last year, and while Great Britain collars the whole of the annuities, and together with that the police pensions and the local loans out of the farmers' cattle, we have the Government saying: "In addition to paying that we will make you pay to us £716,000 which some of you failed to pay last year." As was pointed out by Deputy Broderick on the Second Reading, neither this Government nor their predecessors deserve any credit for these grants. They belong to local authorities by right.
Under certain conditions.
Before the Act of 1898, in the Grand Jury days, there were county cess and poor rates, and a certain portion was paid by the landlords. Then the landlords were bought out and grants were made available in substitution for the landlords' portion. These are some of the moneys which the Minister proposes to hold. Not alone that, but he proposes to make the unfortunate farmer who is endeavouring to pay his way, pay for the other who is not able to pay his way.
The Government ought to stop and think—I am afraid that is a thing they have not been doing. If local government fails, it will be the saddest day that ever came. There is no use in thinking that you can force people to pay unless you first give them something to pay with. There is no use in telling people that we have withheld £5,000,000 from Great Britain. We have not withheld it. Even if Great Britain was not collecting it, and if we lost, to the extent to which they are collecting it, in another way, then you are not holding it either, because you could not hold anything until you have it. You must have it before you can hold it. Whatever money the people of the country may have left by for their sons or daughters, whatever money pays their rates or annuities, was made on the British market. Even from the returns furnished to-day we see that that old British market does not appear to have gone yet. We are increasing our exports there, but at what a price—£6 per beast.
The position in which the local authorities find themselves is not a happy one. I am afraid the New Year's gift which they are getting from the Government will not help them to make provision for the social services. As far as Fianna Fáil are concerned, the Bill has done this much good—it has exploded all their promises and all their fallacies. In 1931 and 1932 when Fianna Fáil were coming in here we were to have derating; we were going to hold the annuities, and we were going to spend those on the annuitants.
And did they not do it?
Why did they fail to pay £716,000 last year? Is it dishonest the people have become or is it bankrupt? The Deputy should take his choice of the two. The situation staring us in the face is that the people are not able to pay, and the Government knows that as well as anybody else. The amounts previously withheld were nothing. They never amounted to more than a fraction of a penny in the £. Now we are confronted with a different situation. Now we have the people who promised derating, and went in with a great flourish of trumpets to do everything for the farmers, coming along and saying: "We are going to take the last drop of blood. We are going to take the last penny you have. We are going to sell the last cow you have in order to see that the Government will have revenue."
Deputy Brennan knows a good deal more about the finances of local authorities than most of his colleagues, and that probably accounts for the fact that his speech marks the reduction of the main figure used by the Opposition by rather more than 25 per cent. Until Deputy Brennan spoke, the figure of £1,000,000 was being repeated ad nauseam. Deputy Brennan was too wise to make use of that figure, and he has brought it down to £716,000. That is a considerable improvement, I think, from the point of view of the good sense of the debate. I wonder is there any great reason for using either the figure of £1,000,000 or the figure of £716,000. The Government have never said that if that amount of money is not collected by a certain date the ratepayers will be responsible.
They have.
The Government have never stated that if the land annuities are not paid by a certain date they will abandon the collection of such annuities, and that they automatically go on the rates. I wonder if Deputy Brennan or any other Deputy has authority for quoting any figure in connection with the liability under that head at the present time?
Might I correct the Deputy for a moment?
Certainly.
The Government last year actually withheld £716,000. Those are the figures given in the House.
Would not the Deputy be good enough to explain to the House the significance of the two figures which he quoted—first, that the Roscommon County Council expected that £29,000 would be withheld, but, in fact, only £26,000 was withheld.
I agree.
The point being that £3,000 of arrears had come in between the date on which the Roscommon County Council formed its expectation and the date on which the grant was released.
If I might correct the Minister; the Roscommon County Council was notified that at that particular time not £29,000 but £39,000 were outstanding, and that that would have to be withheld unless certain payments were made.
And they were made.
But at the relevant date £26,000 were withheld.
And if part of that £26,000 is paid this year that money will go back to the Roscommon County Council. What on earth then is the use of talking about the pending bankruptcy of the local authority, and of quoting such figures as £1,000,000, £716,000, and all that sort of thing? Does not everybody know that there have been certain difficulties in connection with the collection of land annuities in recent years that are not likely to recur? There is no use in mincing words about it; Deputy Brennan knows very well that propaganda and conspiracy existed——
The people had been led to believe that they would not have to pay.
Even though those things have practically ceased for some time, the driving force of such agitation still leaves its effects, and probably accounts for a substantial share of the arrears. There is, further, the fact that in a period of transition, when to a large extent the whole basis of agriculture is being changed, it is inevitable that people will find themselves in temporary difficulties. I think Deputy Brennan is not without knowing that there are people in Galway, for instance, in Mayo, in North Cork, West Cork, and so on, who to-day are in a position to pay the annuities, when two years ago, say before the establishment of beet factories in their areas, it was extremely difficult to do so.
Mr. Broderick
Question! The Deputy should mention counties that he knows something about.
In face of all that, I consider it a rather senseless proposal that merely as a side issue the question of doing away with the Guarantee Fund and making such a big change in our financial system should be raised here and debated in this Party spirit. If the principle of the Guarantee Fund is to be debated, and if there is a better system to replace it, then it ought to be debated on its own merits, and not merely as a side issue to a Bill that has practically nothing to do with the principle of the Guarantee Fund. The principle of the Guarantee Fund was always unpopular. Long before the present Government came into power I heard a group of farmers at a cross-roads on a Sunday afternoon talk on the subject, and I remember very well how heated they were in their indignation that, faced with big difficulties in paying their own way, they were having also to pay for their neighbours who, judging from their remarks, were not very worthy neighbours, and did not deserve great help from anyone. It was always unpopular, and inevitably would be so.
You established the principle when you got into office.
In a period of depression, when people find it difficult to pay their own way, it is not at all easy for them to accept the principle that they must also pay for their neighbours. But I should like to see the principle put to a much fairer test than it has been put to in recent years before I would consider proposals to abolish it, and particularly I should like to see the alternatives that the Opposition would put up to the principle of the Guarantee Fund.
Settle the economic war and you will want no Guarantee Fund at all.
At all events, the debate had shown one thing; to-day, at least, there are not the same crude and ridiculous protests against the principle of retrospective legislation; there has been less shouting about the odious proposal that the Dáil should decide to correct an error of its own making, to correct an error that was admittedly of its own making, an error that nobody denies crept into the legislation of the Oireachtas. At all events, we have heard a great deal less of that to-day.
You may thank the Chair. It was out of order to-day.
When the subject was before the House on a previous occasion we had Deputies yonder tediously copying one another in repeating statements about the terrible danger to individual liberty, the terrible danger that would arise if this principle were accepted—the principle by which the Dáil, having discovered a mistake in its legislation, took the first opportunity of correcting that mistake, and did not allow it to be threshed out in the courts at public expense. At all events, I say we have made that much progress.
On the general question of the Guarantee Fund, I personally have an open mind as to whether or not it is desirable that it should be continued. I have not heard any proposals for a better system, and I am sure that in present circumstances no attempt is being made to arrive at a fair judgment upon the system of the Guarantee Fund. There have been extraordinary circumstances in this country during the past two or three years. There have been extraordinary political, social and economic circumstances, and they have contributed to the creation of an atmosphere in our public life which is not in accordance with the realities of the life of the individual farmer. Obviously the differences in the arrears between one county and another are not the result of different economic circumstances in those counties, and the proposal that the retrospective part of this Bill should be dropped and that we should start now with a clean slate seems to me so childish that I do not think anybody puts it forward seriously. The idea that one county, having made a great effort to pay its way, where the farmers have accepted their liability in this respect, should now be penalised, because in another county there was undoubtedly agitation and propaganda against the payment of annuities and because farmers deliberately withheld their annuities.
And Fianna Fáil farmers as well.
Are these two counties to be put in the same position? Surely, that is not a proposal that is contemplated seriously. I have heard proposals against this Bill——
It is hard to let that go unchallenged. The people are in a bad way.
There seem to be two of us in possession.
Deputy Fagan can make his own speech and allow Deputy Moore to make his without interruptions.
Deputy Moore has been talking about my county.
I was not referring to Deputy Fagan's county or any county in particular. I was endeavouring to discuss the question as reasonably as I could.
It is very hard for anyone living in my county to keep his temper listening to Deputy Moore's speech. The people in my county are all drained out. They are in poverty and hunger.
If Deputy Fagan wants to make his statement let him make it in the proper fashion and not by way of interruption of other Deputies.
But all the farmers in my county are clean broke.
I have heard that one reason why people in Westmeath are broke is because they backed the wrong horse.
The Minister for Finance smiles with his £1,000 a year. In my constituency the children of the farmers are crying for want of food and clothing.
I must insist on Deputy Fagan allowing Deputy Moore to proceed. Whether Deputy Fagan's indignation is serious or simulated he should not interrupt other Deputies. He will be given an opportunity of speaking himself.
We have the Minister for Finance there with his £1,000 a year smiling while the children of the farmers in my constituency are hungry. I could not silently watch him with his £1,000 a year smiling.
£2,000 a year; £1,000 for himself and £1,000 for his wife.
And everyone of us is broke.
We must have order on this matter if we are to have any debate. It is not Deputy Fagan's usual practice to interrupt. I hope he will allow Deputy Moore now to proceed.
I can only say that, in my opinion, a great deal of the opposition to this Bill is simply due to the desire to bring up again the question of the economic war. The people have spoken their minds on that question already and Deputy Dillon and his followers are making a mistake if they think that the threats of general bankruptcy are going to cow the people. There is one thing upon which the people are apparently resolved, and that is, that no threat of bankruptcy, no matter from what source, whether from England or from some of their own neighbours, will compel them to give way on the question of the economic war. That is, at all events, my judgment as to the present situation. I do suggest that Deputies Brennan and Dillon and others are making a very big mistake in endeavouring to make the people believe that they are not being allowed to avail of the opportunity of securing substantial wealth or at all events of securing greatly increased wealth. There are very few on the Opposition Benches who really believe that that position is there for the people even if the economic war were settled to-morrow. It would be a very disastrous thing if people were encouraged to believe that through public policy in this country they are not only being impoverished but are being prevented from enjoying fruits that are there for the plucking. This is a big question and I suppose it would be irrelevant in this debate to debate it fully. But, to my mind, at all events, the speech of Deputy Dillon in which he talked of the terribly disastrous financial position that is arising in the country, and the consequent threat to the poor and destitute, was reckless and anti-social to a very serious extent. I think the Deputy could contribute more towards helping the people in their present struggles than by telling them that they are on the verge of disaster and that their bad circumstances are entirely due to the action of the Government that they have elected. Whatever Party politics may justify, they would not justify us in preaching a doctrine like that. I, for one, regret that that should be the tendency of the debate to-day.
Before speaking on the matter before the House— the recommendation of the Seanad which the Minister for Finance has proposed should be rejected—there are two or three small points that I would like to deal with. First of all I have been informed that the Minister for Finance expressed his great regret when concluding his speech that I was not in the House. I would have read it too. I have always made it a point to hear what the Minister has to say on any subject that interested the Dáil. But, owing to something over which I have no control, I am at the disadvantage that I did not hear the Minister's speech. I will attempt to deal with the matter on its merits alone and I would welcome any criticism that the Minister may be able to make on my contribution. I wish to avail now of the opportunity of answering Deputy Donnelly's statement standing over what he considers his principles. I rather regret the discourteous way, whether he intended it or not, in which he referred to Cork and Louth. The Deputy said that we were imbued with the spirit of faction. I ask Deputy Donnelly or any other man on the Government Benches to say what in normal times they would say as to standing over the principle of making one man responsible for the debts of another. It is against that principle that Cork and Louth are at war, and I make no apology for our action. We on the Cork County Council, and, I am sure, the same can be said of Louth, weighed down by the anxieties of our public service, took every constitutional means to establish that principle, and we will continue to do so until this or some other Government recognises that a man is responsible only for his own liabilities. That is our answer to Deputy Donnelly.
Unpleasant scenes frequently occur and have occurred. Painful remarks were made to-night. I deplore that, because anything that tends to reduce the power of the National Assembly to deal in reason and courtesy with every question that arises, lessens the dignity of the Assembly and lessens its efficacy. With regard to the question that is before the House, the rejection of the recommendations of the Seanad, I regret the Minister refused to listen to us or to give effect to our appeals. Deputy Moore has just gone out. I think he implied, if he did not say it distinctly, that we were actuated by a desire to discredit the Ministry. I think that is the implication of what he said. He also said that there was very little merit in our action. As a matter of fact, we had but one desire and that desire lives to-day as acutely as when we joined issue and it is not confined to any section of the Cork County Council, either Labour, Fianna Fáil, Independents or the Opposition Party, but it is the unanimous wish of the whole council. It was based on nothing of a political nature; it was based purely and simply on an economic point. It was purely and simply an economic question and we did what we considered was right. I submit that because there was quite a possibility that we were right, this measure has been introduced. As a matter of fact, we hold that there was quite a probability that we were right, but we will not debate that question now.
The matter that is uppermost in everybody's mind is the maintenance of public services at their present pitch. If this Bill passes without the small recommendations that the Seanad has sent down about the retrospective clauses, it will have very serious reactions. Let me quote the words of a Ministerial communication: "It is essential to the maintenance of the county services"—the collection of the annuities. That means that without the collection of the annuities those services cannot be maintained. How can Deputy Donnelly or Deputy Moore, or anybody else, find fault with us? What is the possibility of collection? With all our resources and with all the energy we can command there is, in the case of our own levy, an amount of £83,000 outstanding. How can we collect the unpaid annuities? What machinery have we to do it? The Minister has the entire resources of the State under his control and if he fails, how can we succeed? If we do not succeed and if these things are not paid then, according to the Minister's letter, the essential services of the county will be seriously menaced. There is no hope of our collecting them.
Some Deputy on the opposite benches said that nobody here had made a constructive suggestion. I make no apology for holding on the main principle that we were correct. Government spokesmen have always referred to the great credit of the country. If they claim that, what is the difficulty of borrowing money to pay all this? Remember that neither you nor any Government can discredit this country. The credit of the country, the finances of the country, were built by former generations who utilised their thrift and energy, and made use particularly of the English markets. The trouble to-day is caused largely by the policy of the Government in regard to those same markets.
I will ask Deputies opposite to visualise what the destruction of the public services would mean. Remember that the public services enter largely into the lives of the ordinary people. Those responsible for public services have to make arrangements for maintaining hospitals of all kinds, granting home assistance, maintaining roads, and so on. All those things come under the local authority, and if by any possibility the finances of the local authority fail, you bring more acute miseries on the people than would any other activity on the part of the Government. So far as our own county is concerned, I regret the Minister refused to give effect to the appeals made to him for justice or equity on the principles of the Bill when it was before the House. I am equally satisfied that he is not going to give us any consideration now in regard to the retrospective clauses. It is, therefore, an appropriate time to point out to him the consequences for the entire country which will follow on the Minister's refusal of all claims for justice, even to the extent of the Seanad's recommendations. As far as the law can do it, he is imposing on the shoulders of ratepayers who have paid their rates a general responsibility for unpaid taxation. The Minister has apparently admitted his inability to collect taxation from those who have shirked their responsibilities. The only power he has is to mortgage the amount of money passed by this House for the relief of the public services. He has the power now—he is making it clear cut and defined—to withhold all that money.
This is going to have a very serious effect on us, and it might possibly destroy our whole public services. It is not my intention to go over the many points I placed before the House when the Bill was first introduced. I frequently wonder do the Ministry entirely understand how this thing will affect the local authorities? The several county councils in the Free State undertook office to administer the affairs of their counties under conditions which have now considerably altered. Various statutes and actions of the Ministry have now rendered the position of councils exceptionally difficult. I do not wish to refer too much to the principal cause of present difficulties, such as the great reduction in the revenue of the ratepayers at large and their difficulties in meeting their obligations to the local authorities. It is at this critical moment that the Minister has decided to aggravate the ratepayers' difficulties.
We undertook office on notification from the Minister for Local Government that we were to get certain sums. Previously we were entitled to estate duty grants, agricultural grants, etc., and in addition we received 50 per cent. of the cost of the maintenance of the mentally afflicted in the various mental hospitals. Now the estate duty grants have been absorbed into the Central Fund, and instead of a 50 per cent. grant for the cost of the mentally afflicted we are now getting only 20 per cent. and the ratepayers have to face the remaining 80 per cent. We have been instructed in many cases to increase our expenditure. We were always in favour of vocational education, and our former voluntary contribution of £5,000 or £6,000 has now been changed into a compulsory liability which this year in Cork County amounts to over £13,000, and that will increase by an annual sum of £1,500 up to a maximum of approximately £18,000 per annum.
There were many other important things which were normally controlled on a voluntary basis but which are now mandatory. Take the question of housing, for instance. The Cork County Council unanimously pledged itself to spend £500,000 on a housing scheme. All the principal and interest there will have to be defrayed, because it is quite clear the assistance we were going to get will not be forthcoming. I suppose I might be told that there I am touching on future matters, so I shall leave it out. But the fact is that the ratepayers are now called upon to face the full cost of services that they never had to face before. They had undertaken all that, with the promise from the Ministry that they were to receive a grant amounting to 40 per cent. of their entire expenditure. Now that is withdrawn and the ratepayers are left to face the entire liability.
There was another point which, I think, has been completely overlooked and it is this: Whenever we were notified by the Ministry to give credit to the ratepaying community it was always the agricultural community that was intended. So that if we require the sum of £500,000 or £600,000 for housing, for the great county of Cork, the cost of that falls upon everybody. But the Minister comes along and advises us, or instructs or notifies us, that we must give credit for £200,000 to the agricultural community. The rate is struck on everybody in the month of March, and collected so far as it is in our power to do so; but the following February we are notified that the Minister for Finance has deducted a certain sum from the grant for local services. Here we are up against inequality. In the first instance the agricultural community is to get relief but the ordinary householder will get no relief. When the so-called grants are withdrawn, the levy to make them up falls upon the general ratepayer. If the Minister refuses to accept these recommendations made in the Seanad, it means, in our county, that householders in Charleville, Mitchelstown, and in all the suburbs of Cork who have already paid their rates, will be compelled to pay £42,000 more to make up what the Minister has deducted from the grant. Other people will also have to pay their share in making it up, and the people who actually paid their rates already will also have to help to make it up. Deputy Donnelly accused us of vexatious and factionist action in this matter.
It is not good for the character of Cork and for councils in Cork to advise people not to pay their annuities.
Mr. Broderick
I can only answer for myself in that matter, and I challenge any man, inside or outside this House, to show that by any word or act of mine I prohibited, in any form, the working of the law.
I accept that on the part of the Deputy but not on the part of his colleagues.
Mr. Broderick
I am not aware of such acts, but may I point out to the Deputy, and to the Minister, that it is nothing but a miserable, flimsy pretext to put that kind of argument forward as an excuse for iniquitous action of this kind. A few misguided enthusiasts—perhaps men suffering under great mental excitement—may have been guilty of a few acts of that kind. Is that sufficient cause for this National Assembly to bring forward this legislation at this particular time? That kind of argument may be good political propaganda; it may be a good excuse, but it is unreal.
It does not apply to my county.
Mr. Broderick
No; but Deputies opposite pick out poor Cork.
It does not apply to Leix and Offaly.
Mr. Broderick
At any rate, Cork can always look after itself, and is prepared to accept full responsibility for its action. When Deputy Donnelly talks about factionist action on the part of people in North and South Cork, I ask him how can he defend the demand that men who have already paid their rates, in full, must make up the sum of £42,500 in order to pay their neighbours' annuities.
That includes the cottage tenants who have also paid their rates already.
Mr. Broderick
Yes, it includes the cottage tenants who have paid their full rates, and it will mean an increase for every cottage tenant in Cork of 11/1 on their cottages.
It would mean no increase to them if the new land league, instead of urging people not to pay their annuities, urged them to pay them.
They have already paid them three times over.
Mr. Broderick
I have a very high regard for the Ministry and for the institutions of the State, and I have too much regard for the courtesy of debate to say really what I think of that kind of argument. I think the Minister will agree, on reflection, that that kind of low-down political correction is really unworthy of him.
I do not agree.
Mr. Broderick
Every man in Cork County, worthy of his salt, has stood up for constitutional government in the past and now and every time. If we are in disagreement with the law —and I disagree with the policy of making one man responsible for another man's debt—we will use every constitutional means in our power to give effect to that disagreement. I asked already does the Minister expect us to collect the unpaid annuities. We cannot collect our own taxation at the present time and the demand made on us to collect other people's debts requires no other answer than that. I do not think I have much more to add. The Minister quite clearly sees what the whole thing means. I have pointed out this thing is a very severe threat to the public services not only in the County of Cork but to every other county in the State. If this Act comes into force in its full unqualified rigour, if it is to be applied in its full meaning, I certainly feel it means the destruction of our local services. We are called upon to face this liability for unpaid taxation, if you like, at a most crucial moment when, amongst other things, we are concerned with a great scheme of £500,000 to carry on our housing programme. Is that the moment to add another serious item to our revenue? I appeal to the Minister, before it is too late, to delete these retrospective clauses from the Bill. I do not think the local authorities can stand them. I have in no way referred to the economic conflict; but if the Minister and the Government feel that the country is merely passing through a transition stage, and that everything is going to come right and that although the cattle trade is destroyed, everybody is growing wheat and beet, then what is the trouble in getting over this temporary difficulty?
There is plenty of money in the country. It was not put there by your activities or by ours but by the energy and enterprise of the people. There are, probably, £150,000,000 in the country. That money is frozen at one end. I put forward the suggestion to borrow the amount of the national liability to the local authorities and pay it over to them. Otherwise they cannot function. I very rarely suggest ulterior motives. But if the Ministry desire to wipe out all local authorities and to establish a managerial system—if they have a sinister motive of that kind— they are proceeding on the proper lines. If they really mean that this country is to be governed democratically, that local authorities are to be free to express public opinion, that this country is to be built up on those ideas, then you have got to help the local authorities through what you claim is a transition period. If the amount voted by this House to cover the national liability to the local authorities is to be held in mortgage for unpaid annuities or national taxation, then the position of the local authorities is hopeless if this is to go on for an indefinite period. If, as the Minister and his associates claim, this is only a transition period; if, in three or five years, we are going to flourish, when all the stable industries of the country are gone and we have these new industries, why not help us over the transition period by paying us the full amount of the Government's liability?
Before sitting down, I have to pay my tribute to our own local authority. Unlike other bodies, we have concentrated on the maintenance of our public services. We may have our own little passing differences, but they are rarely acute. We have our own political ideas, but every man, no matter what Party he supports——whether it be Labour, Government, Opposition or Independent—concentrated on the purpose of giving the best service he could to the public. In my position as chairman it will fall to me to levy that increased rate of practically £250,000. I know that in levying it and in adding it to our annual expenditure, I shall be signing practically the death warrant of a considerable number of ratepayers who pay their rates. Neither the Minister nor I, with all the powers at our disposal, can hold liable the shirker who is not paying his rates. When it comes to the signing of that warrant I shall have seriously to consider what my attitude is to be to those services from the point of view of the county as a whole and of those ratepayers whom we have done our best to serve but on whom we are called upon by Ministerial policy—I should not like to describe it as tactics—to levy an amount which is impossible. The Minister knows now, though he has not informed us, what he is going to deduct from us. To the £179,000 of last year we must add £83,000 of uncollected debts of our own. I do not think that I shall be far wrong if I estimate the annuities deduction for this year at £75,000 or £100,000. When it comes to May or June we shall have to face sums of £179,000, £83,000 and the deductions of the Minister in addition to our own liabilities. Does any man with a sense of justice or right, or with any sense of proportion, think that I should sign for that huge figure and impose it on the ratepayers of Cork County? Remember that nobody can levy on the man who will not pay. You are compelled to levy on the people who have already paid and, as I have already told you, the people in the suburbs of the cities persist in that action. The time will come when that action will bring its own regret.
I have been accused this evening of refusing to vote. At the last meeting of the Dáil, I voted on four separate occasions for this Bill. There was one hopeful note struck here to-night, and I wonder how far it represents the opinion of the Opposition Benches. Professor O'Sullivan told us that this was an exceptional, non-recurring charge. Does he mean that this campaign against the payment of annuities, which was so prevalent in my county, is now going to cease, and that he and his colleagues are now going to advise these people to pay up their annuities? Or is it that he thinks that, because of the Government's agricultural policy, the farmers are getting more prosperous? I wonder which of the two arguments is right, and which of the two arguments Deputy O'Sullivan meant when he said that this was a non-recurring charge. I cannot disabuse my mind of the belief that there was a very definite campaign, of which this is the unfortunate aftermath. I cannot close my eyes to the fact that ratepayers who, in December, 1934, had 7 per cent. of their rates paid in my county, had, in December, 1935, over 30 per cent. paid. I wonder how farmers who were unable to pay in 1934 were able to pay in 1935. How is it that in one particular area the rate collector could only collect, up to a definite date in 1934, 7 per cent. of the rates, while on the same date in 1935 he had over 30 per cent. collected? There is no use in blinding ourselves to the fact that this campaign was going on, and that it was a campaign not alone against annuities but against rates.
In Cork.
I am not speaking of any other place at the moment. That is the place we are most concerned with. Deputy Brennan, when he alluded to this taxation, completely forgot that the bond-holders under the 1923 Act are still being paid in full out of the collected and uncollected annuities under the guarantee given by the Cosgrave Government, while those who purchased under the 1923 Act are relieved of 50 per cent. of their annuities. He quite forgets that portion of the Bill. Not alone under the 1903 Act, but under the 1927, the 1931, and the 1933 Acts, all these bond-holders are being paid in full whether the annuities are collected or not.
What is the amount?
Roughly, £1,000,000 per year. They have to be paid in full.
Who pays them?
The annuities, as far as they go. The annuitants under the 1923 Act, if they all paid, would only pay one-half, because they were relieved of 50 per cent. of it. That is the position which Deputies opposite ignore. Deputy Cosgrave, when the 1923 Act was going through the House, insisted upon the Guarantee Fund being made liable. When Deputy Gorey brought in an amendment, Deputy Cosgrave objected to it and spoke against it. You cannot ignore these facts. When you say that this money is being collected for taxation, or something like that, you completely ignore these facts, and completely ignore the land that is being taken over now from ranchers and others for division. Who will pay the bond-holders in these cases? Where is the money to come from?
I take it that when Deputy Belton, after completely mesmerising the Party opposite into this campaign against the payment of annuities, was removed to a quieter spot, the Deputies opposite, now having a little regard for their responsibilities, are finished with that campaign. Can we take that assurance from Deputy O'Sullivan's statement to-night—that that campaign for the non-payment of annuities is now finished? When he said that this was an exceptional, non-recurrent charge, does he mean that this campaign is finished? It is Deputies like Deputy Holohan, going through the country and preaching that, who have put us in that position to-night, and brought about that £716,000 in unpaid annuities. These are the people responsible.
You were responsible for making the farmers pay three times.
That is the campaign that is responsible for the present position.
It is not responsible. Your policy is responsible.
There is no good in talking thrash. Either Deputy O'Sullivan admits that there was a campaign, and that that campaign is now definitely at an end, or else he admits that the Fianna Fáil agricultural policy is right and that the farmers in future would be more prosperous and better able to pay. Which of the two did he mean when he alluded to this definitely as a non-recurrent charge? What did the rate-collector in County Cork find out when he was only able to collect 7 per cent. of the rates up to December, 1934, and 31 per cent. up to December, 1935? Either that there was a campaign against the payment of rates or that the farmers in his area were more prosperous.
The farmers are not more prosperous anyway.
If they are not, the campaign is over and you have decided to pay up.
The sheriffs are going around taking all the people have.
You can make your speech afterwards. That is the position as I view it. The thing that troubles me far more is the result of all this. That is what we have to set our minds to and find a way out of.
Hear, hear. Come down to brass tacks.
I make no bones about it; I was never any lover of holding the Guarantee Fund or any other fund responsible at any time.
Why did you not vote against it?
That is my business. I thought I did see a way out when the legal adviser to the Cork County Council advised us that we could get away with it, and I voted for getting away with it. I make no bones about it. If I can relieve the ratepayers of my county in any way, I will relieve them. If I saw any opportunity of putting that on other people I would put it on them.
You are reversing your attitude.
Good old Cork.
You were damn quiet in the other counties when we drove the Black and Tans out for you. Deputy Donnelly and others came for shelter to Cork and should conduct themselves.
Send Corkmen to the Six Counties.
We went there before when the Six Counties men ran out of it.
Better tell that to the Minister for Defence.
Please remove the Border.
We can deal with it anyhow.
By shoving it on to someone else.
As I have stated, I make no bones about my reasons for voting for the action to be taken. If I saw any means of relieving the people of Cork of this burden I would relieve them. I cannot see any way out of it. Deputy Cosgrave on another occasion alluded to the large amount of uncollected annuities in 1923. At that time he found a rather clever way out—that the compensation for property destroyed, which was being levied on the rates, should be spread over a number of years at 6d. in the £. He found that way out at that time. Perhaps some way out can be found now in connection with this particular matter. I entirely agree with Deputy Broderick that if the whole of that burden is going to fall on the ratepayers of Cork this year they will be unable to pay. It is the unfortunate aftermath of a definite campaign introduced by Deputies opposite.
You can relieve the burden by voting against it.
If Deputy O'Neill took his part it would be all right, instead of going round the country in a blue blouse like a big baby. Deputy O'Neill should be the last man to open his lips here about it. I ask him not to make me say any more about it.
You can say what you like here.
They are all Corkmen.
I suggest that a way out could be found in that manner. If, as Deputy O'Sullivan says, and as I think he believes, this is going to be a non-recurrent charge, and we are not going to have any more of these campaigns for the non-payment of annuities, then this burden could be met by spreading it over a number of years in the shape of a loan. I think that that is a way out and that it could be very well met in that manner. It is the only way out I can see. Realising as I do that there are still large numbers of unfortunate farmers who have not purchased their holdings, who were forgotten when the other Acts were brought in, and who are now, under the 1933 Act, getting an opportunity of purchasing, realising also that there are large areas of ranch land in this country that must be divided up, and that money must be provided for all this, I think, to use the words of Deputy Cosgrave, that the Guarantee Fund should be held liable, and I think that any twisting that has been done here in this matter, which may have been done for the advantage of one political Party or another, should go by the board. I think that we should set ourselves together at this stage, realising that certain amount of damage has been done, by misguided people, if you like; I will not call them by any harder name.
In Cork?
And elsewhere. You had a few of them around your country, too.
I challenge you to quote one case.
There is a Deputy sitting in this House.
That does not come into this debate.
I am not concerned with the fight between Deputy Davin and the Minister.
It is not a fight; it is a history.
I would certainly suggest that the way out is, that this money should be raised by way of loan and stretched over a number of years. It could be met in that manner, and I do not see any other way out of it. I put that suggestion confidently to the House as one way of meeting it. As I stated before, when Deputy Cosgrave discovered, in 1923, that he was £500,000 out in the land annuities, he took that way out. He knew that the ratepayers could not pay all the arrears of annuities and at the same time meet their ordinary rates.
He was afterwards found out. He was put out for that.
Deputy Davin can tell us that afterwards. He should allow Deputy Corry to make his speech.
If I were to speak for a week, I could not refer to all the misdeeds for which Deputy Cosgrave was put out. It would take me a year. I am not going to go into that now, but I put forward that suggestion as a fair way out, and the only way out that I can see.
Mr. Broderick
I did not wish to intervene in this debate, but I thought it only fair to reply to Deputy Moore's reference to the good position of the farmers on the western seaboard. It struck me as rather strange that Deputy Moore should travel from Wicklow and leave out all the counties surrounding him—Wicklow, Dublin, Louth and Wexford. He did not refer to them at all; he had to refer to Mayo, Galway and the western coast. I suppose Deputy Moore is of the opinion that the farmers who, as was said of old, had to go to hell or Connaught, could live on potatoes and salt. There is no getting away from the fact that Deputy Moore's policy has put a number of farmers on the western seaboard into that position, and there is no getting away from the fact that the farmers in Galway and Mayo are suffering. The Minister for Finance may tell us here that they have so much of the rates paid. I know the reason why they are paid. The annuities are paid in the same way —through the sheriff. You will find many instances in Galway where the sheriff has called in the case of non-payment of annuities, and where even milch cows are being taken. The children in houses in the west of Ireland have been left without even milk for their tea through the action of the present Government.
That is the position, and Deputy Moore will tell us it was all propaganda. Who started the propaganda for the non-payment of annuities when the farmers were well able to pay in this country; when the farmers were getting at least £7 a piece more for their cattle; when the farmers of Galway were getting £6,000 per annum more for the sheep they exported? That was the time they were able to pay, and who were the gentlemen who went through the country saying: "Do not pay your annuities; do not pay your rates?" What was the idea in County Galway some years ago when military guards had to be sent out with every rate collector throughout the county? What was the idea, and what were the threats behind that? They were nothing but Fianna Fáil threats the whole time. This question of the non-payment of annuities was a Fianna Fáil plot from the start, and the non-payment of rates was theirs also. I know the western seaboard well, and I know how the people there are suffering. I know that the farmers of Galway have suffered to the extent of £600,000 per annum through the loss they have sustained by the 10/- per head on the sheep they exported from that county. It may be information to the Minister to hear that in County Galway we produce threequarters of the number of sheep produced in this country. Out of one year's export— the 10/- per head, and the 5/- per head that his inspectors draw from the small butchers for every sheep killed in this country—we could pay our two years' rates. That is the position in Galway. That is on one stock alone, and I should like the Minister to consider that. The Government might think that we in County Galway are very prosperous because we have a beet factory down there. Whatever the farmers get from beet, they earn it. That is all I can say. Then we have people like Deputy Moore coming from Wicklow to say a word about what is happening in Galway.
I should just like the Minister for Finance to look at one resolution at the recent Fianna Fáil Ard Fheis. I will quote from the statement of a very reverend clergyman there:
"The Very Reverend S. Kelly, P.P., Knock, Spiddal, said he had asked the Minister for Agriculture last year not to impose this 5/- tax on mountain sheep which were worth from 9/- to 10/- each."
That is now the position in the County Galway. On a mountain sheep of a value of 10/-, there is a tax of 5/-. Every sheep that is killed in this country has to bear a tax of 5/-. We have gentlemen going around the country all drawing fairly decent salaries finding out the number of sheep every butcher buys, and every butcher is compelled to pay 5/- for each sheep he kills. It is also clear that on every sheep exported there is a cross-Channel tax of over 10/- demanded by the authorities, and then Ministers tell us that the country is prosperous.
The Attorney-General cited another case, in addition to those already dealt with and disposed of, in attempting to prove that retrospective legislation had already been passed in this State. I accept first the disclaimer that had been already made. The fact is that I cited those cases, and if they are any proof what is alleged about them is evidence enough to satisfy anybody that the Government knows on what it is engaged in the present Bill. Whatever dispute there may be in the cases mentioned, there is no doubt in the minds of anybody in this country and there is no doubt in the mind of any member of the Government, that this is retrospective legislation. The Attorney-General this evening read extracts from the speech of the Minister for Finance in 1931. He ignored—or perhaps it escaped his attention—the speech that was delivered by the present head of the Government on that occasion. As reported in column 1395 of the Dáil Debates for the 2nd of July, 1931, volume 39, the present head of the Government, then Deputy de Valera, said:
"I want to say, as far as I am concerned, and I think the other members of my Party, that we are not satisfied with the exception of pending cases. We are opposing on principle...."
Then later on he said:
"The law is as it is, and what it is is to be determined by the courts and not by the wishes of the Minister or anybody else. That is the position...."
Later on he said:
"I am referring to this whole principle of trying to nullify the law as it is, by the power of a majority Party, to make it what I want it to be, and try to anticipate the judgment of a court by changing the law when cases are pending."
That was a pronouncement made by the present head of the Government at that time. He was then in the Opposition. We can test the value of the case that he made to the House by examining the voting lists. I find that he was joined in the vote by only two Independent members of the House and that in the majority vote there was not alone the majority Party but the three Parties. There were the Independent members, there was the entire membership of the Labour Party that was present in the House at the time, and there was the Government Party. It was fairly clear on that, having regard to what is being said about retrospective legislation, that the House was not convinced that it was introducing or passing retrospective legislation at that time. What was the issue that has been avoided in connection with this whole question? The issue on that particular occasion was this: in the case of an estate belonging to a person who died testate or intestate it was discovered after death that the payment of income tax had been evaded during the lifetime of the deceased person. And the law as it was understood to be was that the State had the same rights as an individual in respect of a period of six years to reclaim repayment. The amendment was to the effect that that right would be continued. The case came before the Circuit Court judge, and it was then on appeal. It had not been decided as yet and the point that was put up was that it was only fair to the remaining taxpayers that the same right should run against the estate if the person had departed this life as there was when he was alive. But there were no penalties involved. There was no loss to any person. There was no injustice done to anybody. The State simply entered into possession of what was its, according to the law which had to be vindicated.
What is the case here? We have the principle of opposition to retrospective legislation. We have furthermore got the vote that was taken here in this House at the time, when persons were convinced of not alone the legality but the justice of a claim of that sort against the estate of a deceased person. The people who were responsible for enunciating opposition at that time have taken a different attitude to-day. What is their position at the present moment? The law is this: that at present, subject to litigation in the courts —and it is well known to the Ministry that the court would decide against them——
How would that be known?
Did not the Attorney-General state in this House that he had advised the Minister for Finance that he could not assure him that they were to win?
That is not the same as assuring him that they were to lose.
I would put a lot of money on that particular decision and I do not know anybody outside Grangegorman who would put money on the other side. If there be no apprehension on the part of the Ministry that they will win the case then let it go on.
If there is no apprehension why the Bill?
To resolve doubts. What is the position with regard to this? Have we considered the first principle? They have absolutely abandoned that now. They are no longer standing on principle. As far as they were concerned that was a Party vote and the vote registered against it was not a Party vote There were three Parties voting against them.
Were the Government Whips off or on?
I had forgotten all about the case. The Minister had better ask some person whose sense of recollection is better than mine. But whether on or off, those in favour of the motion comprised three Parties, with the exception of two Independent Deputies, and the Fianna Fáil Party only was against it.
I notice the tellers for the motion were Deputies Duggan and Doyle.
And who were the tellers against it?
Deputies Gerald Boland and Allen.
The Fianna Fáil Party could only mobilise two Independents along with their own Party while the majority Party could mobilise three Parties. So much for principle—for the principle on which they were standing. What is the principle in this Bill? The question is that where the bailiffs and extra police with a decree from the Land Commission fail to collect the annuities through whatever cause — either inability to pay or, taking the phraseology that we hear so much about, objection to pay—then the people who have paid are going to be charged with the debts of those who have been unable to pay. Let us examine the case for a moment. A person is not only to pay his own annuities but also to pay the annuities of those who have defaulted.
I would remind the Deputy that the principle has been accepted.
We are restricting the section now and we are dealing with that portion of it which pertains to the amendment. What is the period under review? The period consists of the year 1934. What was the position of the farmers during 1934? They were able to sell approximately 46 per cent. of their fat cattle as compared with what they were able to sell in 1933—100 per cent. In 1934 the British markets were closed against them and they were able to sell half the number that they were able to sell in the previous year. That has escaped the attention of the Ministry. Though I do not represent an agricultural constituency I had letters from every part of the country asking me was it possible at all to get a sufficient number of licences to enable the writers to sell their cattle so that they would have money to pay their rates. Would any member of the Ministry stand up in the House and say that during that period we got no communication from anybody who had stock and could not sell them? Is it not inevitable that under the circumstances there would be a piling up of arrears?
Mention has been made by Deputy Corry this evening of the Guarantee Fund having been started by me in the 1923 Act. That is perfectly correct; but the circumstances of 1923 and the circumstances of 1935 are entirely different. Nobody knows it better than the Ministers themselves. Ministers do not go about the country saying that the agricultural industry must be made prosperous, that its prosperity is absolutely essential for every secondary industry in this country—Ministers do not go saying these things as the Minister for Agriculture has been saying about the farmers, that they are having a hard time—unless there is truth behind the statement. There is a remarkable difference between the year 1923 and the year 1935, and there is much difference between the undertaking by land annuitants before 1923 and after 1923. They were signed in very different circumstances from the circumstances now obtaining. Will the Attorney-General advise me that if I get his name to a bill for £100 in the bank I can alter the terms of it without his consent or that the bank can postpone the date of payment? He knows it is not the law and it cannot be done and that it breaks the bill.
The Attorney-General
Since 1923 the tenants do not sign agreements at all.
The tenants up to 1909 signed agreements and the Guarantee Fund was a condition to the whole bargain. If they failed to pay, the Guarantee Fund operated. In principle the circumstances now are altogether different. There are at the present moment four countries collecting annuities. They are paid on the polls of the cattle that go to Great Britain: they are paid on the polls of the cattle that go to Belgium and Germany, but nobody gets credited with them because the cattle are sold at the British price and the British price has the annuities deducted before the farmer gets paid; and then they are being collected there. When Deputy Corry mentioned that we are liable for the dividends on the land bonds, he wanted to know how much it was. It is approximately £1,200,000 a year and the half of that sum is assessed in the Land Commission Vote. But the Government puts into its own Treasury £1,500,000 of the annuities that are in dispute with Great Britain and uses them and, just like all other people who find themselves in difficulties of their own making, they want to know what is the way out of this and where are we going to get the money. Show us, they say, how we can get it from any other source.
I will just put one point to the Government in that connection. This aims to get them the money they want, but it does not ensure that local government is going to be carried on; it does not ensure that the local authorities are going to collect it. In fact, the whole business from beginning to end would remind you of the poetical description of a certain individual — I do not remember all the words or the person —"Providence fortunately fashioned him hollow, so that he might conveniently his principles swallow." Remember, it is not the first time an attack was made on the local government of this country, and the very same means were adopted by the other people to paralyse local government. It was sought to be done by making it impossible to balance accounts financially. Already some difficulties have occurred in different parts of the country by reason of the situation that has arisen out of the Government's policy. If local services break down, the responsibility will be on the Ministry, because they were warned in time and they know themselves as well as anybody that this is entirely due to their policy and nothing else. They have made certain charges against the farmers about refusing to pay. I do not believe these statements about a campaign against the payment of annuities. We heard the same about rates and six County Waterford farmers were paraded before the Military Tribunal. They were kept three or four weeks in jail and then the Military Tribunal found them not guilty. Have you prosecuted any farmers——
We have, and the Deputy is aware of the fact that we have.
How many?
We prosecuted one who is the vice-chairman of the Cork County Council.
The Attorney-General
We prosecuted several hundreds who were cutting telegraph wires and so on as a protest against the collection of the annuities; we prosecuted several hundreds in a couple of months last year.
And you have none now. This is going to affect £1,200,000. I have often referred to the fact that after 20 years there was a sum involved of £600,000 and now after three gales there is a sum of £1,200,000 due here.
Not now.
There is a sum of £1,200,000 due from the three gales— November of 1933, May and June of 1934, and November and December of 1935. The actual amount is £1,185,000 for those three gales. It may be that you will get in this money. It may be that by reason of the collection of a sum of money beyond the capacity of the people to pay you are going to paralyse their business and, if that is so, it will be a costly experiment. I hope that Deputy Corry's proposal is not going to be adopted in this case. It would be against all the canons of municipal finance to borrow in respect of charges that are assessed in this fashion. From the point of view of law, the ratepayer has a life of 12 months. You have no right to charge next year's rates with the responsibilties that fall on this year's. If this be a debt that you find difficulty in meeting, recollect that your difficulty is not less than that of the local authority in trying to raise the money. I say it is beyond their capacity.
I listened to the Attorney-General speaking at considerable length this evening, but I missed any reference to the position in Mayo. The Attorney-General is a Mayo man, and I often listened with great pleasure when he was referring to the financial position in Mayo, to the honesty and probity of the people of Mayo with regard to their payment of annuities and rates. As a Mayo man, I have the greatest possible admiration for the Attorney-General when he refers to these facts. These are facts of which I am very proud. But the Attorney-General made no reference to these things this evening. I admit he is not a representative of Mayo in this House. He is a representative of some institution that, I understand, in the very near future will cease to have any representation in this House. I will be sorry, for the sake of the Attorney-General, because he seems quite honest and straightforward in his admissions with regard to having advised the Minister for Finance that in the cases before the courts by Louth and Cork there was hardly any doubt but that they would succeed. If I am doing him any injustice, I speak subject to correction. I think, anyhow, that was his statement.
I heard the Attorney-General making a reference to restrospective legislation and he tried to draw an analogy between retrospective legislation relative to the payment of income-tax and retrospective legislation with regard to the payment of land annuities. I think there is no analogy whatsoever. I think the person who is in a position and is liable to pay income-tax should be very proud to pay it. His position is entirely different from the position of migratory labourers in County Mayo who, as the Attorney-General is fully aware, have to cross to England to earn their livelihood and to bring back with them sufficient to pay their annuities and rates. In the very recent past I had some very peculiar experience in connection with this Bill. On the 6th January a notice of motion was due to be considered by the Mayo County Council at a meeting of that body. The chairman of the council is a member of this House. I quite understand his position and do not blame him. I rather sympathise with him, because I fully realise that as a member of this House he was relying upon what he thought was the fact. A notice of motion is entirely different in its character and meaning, of course, to an ordinary motion, because a notice of motion to be effective must be given 14 clear days before the meeting of the council at which it is to be considered. The object of that is because the secretary, if he is not satisfied that proper notice has been given, can reject it as not in order, but if he receives it within the specified time of 14 days he is bound to accept it. The secretary having received this notice of motion sent a copy of it to each member of the council within the 14 days specified, according to the standing orders, but the chairman in order to save his own face and that of his followers had to rule it out on other grounds.
What have we to do with the action of the county council in Mayo in connection with this matter?
I am coming to that point. It was a notice of motion protesting against this Bill. The chairman ruled out that notice of motion although proper notice was given and one of the reasons he gave for ruling it out was that it was not in order because the Bill to which it referred, and which we are considering here to-night, was then law. I refer to that as propaganda and as the kind of stuff that is handed out to the people as a rule in order to deceive them. Personally, I have the greatest possible respect for the chairman of the county council, but for his ruling on that occasion I have nothing but the greatest possible contempt.
This House is not discussing the action of the chairman or other members of the county council. The House is now discussing the retrospective nature of this Bill.
That is what I am coming to.
I would like to hear the Deputy relate the attitude of the Mayo County Council to the retrospective character of this Bill.
That was what was before the county council, but the chairman ruled it out because he said the Bill was law. He should have been aware that it was not law. I am referring to the retrospective character of this Bill. I see what the effect is going to be so far as Mayo is concerned. Subsequent to the striking of the rate last year, the sum of £17,240 was deducted from the Agricultural Grant. That sum, I claim, was legally due to the ratepayers of Mayo. But this deduction was made subsequent to the date on which the rates were struck, and no provision could be made for the previous years' rates. Consequently, the sum of £17,240 has to be provided for in this year's rates. As a further consequence, the ratepayers will have to pay, as a result of the rate increase that will be necessary, an additional 1/5 in the £. That is what the deduction from the Agricultural Grant means. We all heard much about the Mayo annuitants and ratepayers in the past. I was glad to hear the Attorney-General pay a well-deserved tribute to the annuitants in County Mayo. They hold first place in regard to the payment of rates and annuities. As a Mayo man, I was very proud to hear our Attorney-General, who is also a Mayo man, pay that tribute to the people of Mayo, but now what do we get in return? This deduction will mean increased rates for the people of Mayo. We heard many suggestions with regard to propaganda as to the non-payment of annuities. Was such an allegation justified in regard to Mayo? Has there been any attempt made to establish an organisation in Mayo to induce people not to discharge their liabilities or obligations according to law? Such is not the case. But I want to bring home what the position to-day is compared with what it was. If the Mayo County Council is to have £17,240 deducted from its grant, what is the only conclusion to be come to? First of all, if the Attorney-General is ever seeking to represent the people of Mayo in this House in the future, I think it is right that the Mayo people should take stock of his action now in regard to this matter. They should ask themselves if it is just that they should be mulcted in this amount of money, having already discharged their obligations promptly.
The Attorney-General got up and spoke with pride, and in terms of great praise, for the people of Mayo; it was well deserved praise. Now we see the position that has been created. No one can allege that there was any person who endeavoured to mislead the people of Mayo not to meet their obligations. I do not think the Attorney-General suggested that anything like that was done in Mayo. But, notwithstanding that, and the fact that the people of Mayo met their liabilities in that prompt way in the past, they are certainly not able to meet these new obligations imposed on them now when £17,240 is deducted from their grant, and which means an addition of 1/5 in the £ this year in their rates.
To try and draw any analogy in respect to retrospective legislation in connection with income tax as compared with land annuities is a gross absurdity. I am not suggesting for one moment that the people of Mayo met their obligations as a result of anything they succeeded in making out of the land. A very big percentage of the people of Mayo cross every season to England to work as migratory labourers. It is the result of their work there that enables them to meet their obligations. There is no county in the Free State that contributes more in the way of tariffs, unless Galway, than Mayo, because it is the congested area with a huge population that contributes most in this direction. Needless to say, a man with a little holding in Mayo, with a wife and ten children, is contributing as much to the payment of tariffs on the necessaries of life as a man in Roscommon with a valuation of £100. That is conclusive evidence that it is the congested counties that are making the greatest contribution to the millions that come into the Exchequer as the result of tariffs.
That is a fact known to everybody. Everyone with any sense of reason knows that every farmer in Mayo who has anything to sell has to do so at the lowest possible price, while his requirements in the way of tea, sugar, tobacco, clothes, boots, hats—everything necessary for his house and family—is bought at the highest possible price. Never before did the people of Mayo have to pay higher prices for necessary commodities, except in war time. Take the case of flour. We are paying 9/-per sack more for flour than we would be paying with normal competition. We have not normal competition. We have protection and control, and the control is tantamount to dietation. We have a veritable dictatorship and nothing else. I want to enter my protest, as one of the representatives of Mayo, against the decision to deduct £17,240 from the ratepayers of the county in respect of last year. The Bill before the House is a most cruel infliction on the people of that county, who met their liabilities very well in the past.
The last time this Bill was before the House I tried sincerely to state the position of the county councils and bring it to the knowledge of the House, apart from the polemics which are usually indulged in here. So far as one can ascertain privately outside in the Lobbies, individual Deputies of all Parties are agreed that county councils are in for a very severe time indeed, in view of the provisions of this Bill. That is a mild way of describing the position of the local authorities. The position of a county council cannot be summed up here adequately in view of the tremendous difficulties with which they are to be confronted. Everybody knows that there is nothing more crushing or demoralising than for two or three persons to come together, look at one another and say: "What can we do when we have no money?" I can appreciate how the Minister for Finance feels when demands come in from other Departments and he sees that cash is short and that times are hard. But he has his remedies. How will county councils feel when this Bill goes through? I cannot see public men offering themselves for local bodies in the future if they have to shoulder the responsibilities now being placed upon them. It was really a sad thing, in connection with local bodies, to see certain work which required to be done and certain bills by doctors and officials which required to be paid having to be held up for a considerable time until a certain amount of money was gathered in. If that was the position some time ago, what is going to be the position now? Certain important works will have to be put aside, and certain rate collectors who would like to do their work in a decent, respectable way, who would like to cajole and win over ratepayers to good citizenship instead of bludgeoning them, will have to be got rid of. They will not be able to bring in the amount of money that the conditions will require. I am afraid that the county councils will have to be reconstructed and that personnel and staffs will have to be changed. If we have to set out to make good this sum from those who have already paid, we will have to introduce new methods. The county councils as a body cannot be expected to take the place of the squad. That will be the effect of this Bill.
I cannot express in language which I believe would be understood or accepted in this House what I believe will be the position of the county councils if this measure is passed. A lot of county councils will collapse. They will not be able to face up to the task, and you will not get as candidates for local bodies men who want to assist both from a national point of view and from a local point of view. I am not sure that this meeting is not a mere farce. My opinion, after listening to some of the speeches made from the Government side of the House, is that it was a mere waste of time for us, as members of the Opposition, to come here long distances and to ask to have our words accepted seriously. It is said that in 100 years in another House a speech never won a vote, and in 2,000 years a speech will not win a vote in this House.
As a representative of Cork County, I must enter my protest against the retrospective clauses of this Bill. Members of the opposite Party have spoken of precedents for this legislation, but there is no precedent for it because the conditions now and the conditions which obtained at the time of which they speak are quite different. This burden is being imposed on the people for a debt which the President has admitted on more than one occasion has been collected from the farmers in a more painful way than that in which it was extracted heretofore. I challenge the Minister for Finance or any Deputy on the opposite side to contradict that statement. It is quite enough for a person to pay a debt once, without being compelled to pay it secondly. No purpose is served by trying to convey to the people of the cities and towns, who have no experience of agriculture, that the farmers are in a better position than they were four years ago. It is simply ridiculous to talk in that fashion. The farmer-members of the Government Party know that quite well, if they had the honesty to stand up and admit it. The Minister for Finance, speaking in the Seanad, referred to certain persons in Cork County who he said had conspired to prevent the collection of the land annuities.
The conspiracy, real or alleged, regarding the land annuities cannot be debated.
On this motion in the Seanad, the Minister for Finance used this very same argument.
The matter under discussion in the Seanad was not these commendations; it was the whole Bill.
Am I not justified in putting forward arguments here to show that as a result of these retrospective clauses an extra burden will be imposed on the people I represent?
Quite in order.
The Minister tried to convey to the people that these annuities were not already paid. I maintain that they have been already paid, and more than paid, and while we are not allowed to argue that certain people have refused to pay annuities, I say that the same argument could have been used during the land agitation. There were people in those days, too, who could not pay their rents, but their neighbours, who were not so down-and-out, stood by them. In 1906, I and five others stood up to Sir George Colthurst in an effort to compel him to give us the benefit of an Act passed for our benefit. He selected six of us who were able to pay our rents then better than we are able to pay them now, and he sold our farms in Cork Courthouse and we let them go to the Defence Union in Cork at £5 apiece in order to stand by the people. The same position is being created to-day by a Government which calls itself an Irish Government. I have been with some of these unfortunate people during Christmas. I met some of these people, the most industrious in the world, and it would make you grieve to hear of their sorrowful condition. As a result of Government policy, they have been driven to desperation, and I challenge the President to come down with me and meet those people. I will take him down at my own expense and let him discuss with them their position now as compared with their position four years ago when the Government came into office.
Deputy Moore talks about the benefits conferred on the people in certain parts of the country. Deputy Moore is a happy man. He is a bachelor and he does not know what it is to have to maintain a family. He gets £1 a day here to live and he can get his grub in Dublin for 30/- a week. I should like to see him going down the country and studying the condition of some of these people who have to maintain families and he will realise the hardship which he and his Government are imposing on those people. Deputy Corkery at the Fianna Fáil Ard-Fheis said—I have not got the quotation now but I am sure he will stand over his speech—that the position was becoming impossible for some of these people, and he asked the Government to set up a commission to inquire into the matter. I now ask Deputy Corkery to have the manliness to make that statement in this House, and to ask the Government, before imposing this burden on the people, to set up a commission and find out for themselves what is the real position in the country. I am not here to bluff at all; I was associated with these unfortunate people during the land agitation, but, God knows, I never expected that by getting our freedom we were going to make slaves of the people of this country.
Deputy Corry talked about the gentlemen in receipt of £1,000 a year and the excuse they give now is that they want to save the taxpayers. They want to save the taxpayers, but they want to compel the unfortunate tenant farmers to pay their annuities over and over again. In many of the cases I mention, the annuity is not more than 50/- a year, and when I was amongst them I asked them how much they used to realise before the economic war started from the spare cattle they produced and each of them said from £50 to £70 a year. Deputy Moore and others talked about the substitutes they have given to those farmers, but what substitutes have they given to these people? They have increased the burden on them. Those people could not carry on at all if they did not buy feeding stuffs, and to-day, for the mixture which the Government advocates, they have to pay 5/- a sack extra. In a great many cases, it means a burden of probably 10/- a week on these people. I put it to the Government that they should accept Deputy Corkery's proposal and set up this commission and find out for themselves the real position in the country.
There is no good in suggesting to these people that they should grow wheat or beet or tobacco. They are not in a position to do so. They find it pretty hard to grow potatoes because the land they hold is simply land reclaimed by themselves and their forefathers from barren mountains. There is not an article which these people consume at present which has not been increased in price as a result of Government policy. They have to pay 10/- to 12/- extra for their sack of flour; they pay 1½d. a lb. at least extra for sugar; they pay 4d. a lb. on tea; and ½d. an ounce on tobacco. Those of them who are not in a position to get turf have to pay 10/- per ton extra as a result of the Government's policy in giving a monopoly to British coal in this country. I find it very had to find any article going into any farmer's house on which a tax has not been put during the term of office of the present Government. I am sure, as other Deputies have said, there is very little use in appealing to the Government, but I support Deputy Corkery's demand that a commission be set up to inquire into the position of the farmers and I will stand or fall by the decision of that commission.
I do not wish to add very much to this debate, but references have been made here, particularly, I think, by the Attorney-General, to the fact that the only thing the farmers were asked to pay was half the annuities. There have also been references, which were promptly ruled out of order, to a campaign that never existed, but which was alleged to have existed with regard to the non-payment of annuities. There was, of course—I will not say a campaign or conspiracy——
If it has been ruled out of order, it is still out of order.
That is the reason I do not want to refer to it. There was a protest, not against the payment of annuities, but against paying annuities four or five times over. That was the root of the whole thing. I will not follow it very far, because I do not think it would be very much use or add anything to what has already been said. The whole fact of the matter is that Cork has come in for a good deal of notoriety. Deputy Donnelly, I think, went back through the years of history and accused us of having always been out for disunity and of trying to break up the great united national advance. I am afraid that even in this debate we cannot get away from the fact that this is essentially a Cork Bill. Looking over the original debate here, I find that this Bill was carried by four votes. On that occasion, I made a great appeal to four Fianna Fáil members of the Cork County Council on the other side and, if they had done their duty, as they promised the people of Cork they would do, this Bill would not be before us now—it would have been beaten.
It is not before the Deputy now. What is before him is the acceptance or rejection of three recommendations. The Deputy seems to be in a retrospective mood.
With regard to these retrospective sections, I want to come back to the evil that will be done to the County Cork by the rejection of these recommendations from the Seanad. We have heard very clearly from Deputy Broderick what it means for the county. It means more for Cork County than it means for any other county in Ireland owing to its size and importance. One of the Fianna Fáil Deputies, Deputy Corry, has tried to argue or, rather, has howled through a sort of argument in favour of relieving the ratepayers if it can possibly be done, but if Deputy Corry and the other three Deputies associated with him on that side had done their duty by the ratepayers, that necessity for howling would not have arisen. He has told us that he is forced into this attitude by reason of this campaign, but this Bill is going to flagellate not only what he calls the Blueshirt element of the farmers of County Cork, but even the persons who voted for him, his own Fianna Fáil farmers, because the ratepayers of the county must stand up to the rates irrespective of what Party they follow or what policy they adopt. I merely mention this to show that when this Bill becomes law and when it proceeds to impose this burden on County Cork, of which we have heard from the chairman of Cork County Council, we must place the blame at the proper doors. The blame is to be placed on the four Fianna Fáil Deputies of the Cork County Council. They are like the four horsemen of the Apocalypse, going to carry destruction not only to Cork County but to every county council in Ireland and, so far as I can see, to smash the whole system of local administration in this country.
As a member of the Cork County Council, I wish protest in the strongest possible manner against the rejection of these recommendations sent down by the Seanad. As Deputy Broderick, who was chairman of the Cork County Council, pointed out, the rejection of these recommendations will mean the imposition of £250,000 on Cork County this year. The Cork County Council will have to levy that £250,000 along with the great burden that has been placed on the people of Cork already, something like £760,000. That will bring the total to over £1,000,000. It was stated here this evening that there was a campaign in County Cork against the collection of annuities and the payment of rates. I say now that there was never a campaign directed against the collection of annuities or of rates.
This heavy burden which is about to be placed on the farmers of Cork who have already paid their annuities makes them liable for the arrears of people who are unable to pay. Not alone does it make liable the farmers who have paid already, but it makes liable householders in unurbanised towns and villages of the county. There is also the position of the workers, the cottiers, to be considered. They will be faced with an extra burden of something like 11½d. in the £ next year. I say that is most unjust. I would ask the Minister if this Bill is passed through the House, as retrospective legislation, to go further. If these recommendations are rejected, and the Bill passed, as I am sure it will, that result will be secured with the help of four Fianna Fáil Deputies from County Cork who gave their pledge to the ratepayers of County Cork that they would look after their interests as members of the county council. It is with the help of these Deputies that this burden of £250,000 is going to be placed on the hard-working industrious people of County Cork. As I have said, there was no campaign against the collection of annuities or the collection of rates. The people whom Deputy Corry accused this evening of campaigning against the collection of rates and annuities are the very people—the hard-working industrious farmers of the county whom I represent—who are keeping not alone the local government machinery of the county going but also the institutions of the State. Were it not for them, and the hard work they are putting into the growing of beet and wheat, there would be little use in the Government erecting a factory in Mallow. There would be little use in building that factory were it not for the supporters of this Party who are maintaining that factory by growing beet.
I say that this is the most unjust Bill that the Fianna Fáil Party has passed in the three years that have elapsed since they got power in this country. There is one hopeful effect of this measure that I see. This is to my mind the winding-up Bill of the Fianna Fáil Party. If it does cost the country £2,000,000 it will be very cheap for the country if it has as its result the hunting out of office of the Fianna Fáil Government.
Lest all the tears on this measure be shed for County Cork I think we had better at this point switch on to the North and see if any county other than Cork has a grievance in this matter. I took very little part in the discussion on this Bill when it was previously before the House and I intend to be very brief to-night. I only wish to make a few points on it. At the outset, I think the recommendations of the Seanad are very reasonable indeed, and that the Bill should not be retrospective. I am speaking now from the standpoint of County Monaghan. In the discussion in the Seanad, and possibly in this House, I think, it was remarked that in the matter of arrears of annuities, Monaghan ranged amongst the counties that had the least amount of arrears. Our council provided last year for a possible £1,500 of arrears of annuities. As I have said, it is one of the counties which has the lowest amount of arrears. At the same time, we are debited with arrears amounting to £7,800 for the last year, an amount equal to 8d. in the £ on the rates. There is no indication, as far as I can see, that there will be any improvement in the collection of annuities for next year. If we have to strike a rate of 8d. in the £ to meet the deficiency for 1935 and another 8d. in the £ to meet the deficiency for the coming year, that will mean that we shall have to provide a total of 1/4 for these deficiencies in the next rate estimate for the county. That is a very substantial amount and the Government should take it into consideration.
Possibly we stand in a better position than most counties on the question of arrears, but even that amount will make a substantial demand on the rates. Inside this House, and outside it, I have heard Deputies again and again blame the British Administration and the Cosgrave Administration for the method in which they dealt with the arrears of annuities. That method of taking the money from the grants was condemned in all moods and tenses as not being an equitable one. I do not profess to be able to put my finger on the records, but I go this length and say that it was my impression when the 1933 Land Act was going through this House that the Government meant to make a change, and to have a more equitable distribution than their predecessors in this matter. What is said now is that the Guarantee Fund Bill meant to make it clear that it was to be retrospective in its effects. I submit that that is very unfair. Farmers who will be the sole victims in regard to arrears of annuities are not the people who created the trouble. I do not say that they are all free from blame, but anyone who has a substantial stake in the country, anyone who owns land and tries to carry on farming did not press for withholding the annuities or for what has arisen. The cause of the default was not in the hands of people who had a stake in the country, who are now popularly described as "the men in the front line trenches." In that way I say it is unfair that they should be made responsible for the whole of the deficiency.
I am not disputing that the Government represents the different classes in the State but, if in their wisdom they embark on a certain policy, it is most unfair that one section of the community should have to bear the burden. If times were prosperous with the farming community there might be an argument for that. I am sorry to have to refer again to the position farmers are in, as regards ability to pay not only their own annuities but the annuities of those who default. Since the Government came into office the cost of every item in their means of living has increased. Only last week flour cost 16/6 per cwt., when the right price would be 12/-; sugar cost 4/6 a stone, when the right price would be about 2/4. The correct price of meal mixture is £5 a ton or 10/- a bag, but in County Monaghan it is 15/- or 15/6 a bag. I do not suppose that Monaghan is worse off than other counties. All the implements used in agriculture have been taxed, even the spade, which is the lowliest implement in use; also plough parts, forks and manures. Almost every article, whether of wear or food, is dearer, making in one way or another for a higher cost of living. On the other hand, what is produced on the land brings a lower return. I submit that to put not alone future arrears on the ratepayers, but to make this charge retrospective, is most inequitable. Farmers can only meet their liabilities from what they produce they can only pay the annuities out of what is produced on the land. Owing to the special import duties operating in Great Britain everything produced on the land brings in a lower price. It was pointed out here to-day that we are getting £6 a head less for full-grown animals. That question has been ventilated in the past couple of months. To put the whole burden of this economic dispute on poor struggling farmers is beyond reason.
It will have the effect of seriously upsetting local government administration. As the Government professes to be a popular Government, carried on by the will of the people, I am sure it is not their desire that there should be commissioners or dictators in several counties, and that they are prepared to carry on local government administration by local representation. If these burdens are thrown like bombshells upon the counties it will make conditions intolerable, and I do not think we can have smooth running of local government machinery in future. The efforts of those who are trying to carry on agricultural schemes are being undermined by questions like this. People responsible for the striking of rates are hesitating now, because they feel they are putting an undue burden on the shoulders of those who have to pay. It is rather queer that in the year 1936, after all the struggles— whether one agreed with all the methods or not—of the farmers for ownership of their land it is now impossible for them to hold it. In my opinion we could get no more effective way of dispossessing the tenants than by making it impossible for them to meet their demands out of what is produced on the land. I do not want to make any speech in bitter terms. I am speaking of facts. I have reason to know the bulk of the people that I work amongst in the course of my business, and I say that the Government should seriously consider the position in which these people find themselves. I have never been one to obstruct the Government, but when things are becoming impossible, and when it is very hard for our people to carry on, I respectfully say to the Government that they should not let this Bill be retrospective. Whatever may be done in the future, let us not have to budget for bygone things. If the Government does that I think the country will take it as a gesture that they have at heart the interests of those who are struggling hard at present, and they will have no cause to regret it.
The Minister to conclude.
The Minister for Finance (Mr. MacEntee) rose.
Is not this Committee Stage?
Even in Committee, if no other Deputy offers, the Minister in charge is called upon to conclude. If any other Deputy wishes to intervene now I shall see him.
This debate, like the conversation between the carpenter and the walrus, has concerned itself with many things. Let me recall the attention of the House, however, to the ostensible purpose of this discussion. It is to consider recommendations which, it is assumed, have been sent back to us by the Seanad that, in sub-section (1) of Section 1 and sub-section (2) of that section, the words "whether before or after the passing of this Act" should be deleted, and to substitute therefor the words "after the passing of this Act." Now, what would be the effect of accepting the Seanad's recommendations? It is clear that, if we leave out the words suggested, that would prevent the validation by this Bill of what has always been the practice in this State. The Bill has been condemned on the ground that it is an example of retrospective legislation. What it proposes to do, however, is not to upset the established order, not to interfere in any way with what has been the uniform practice, but merely to declare that what has been done with the full knowledge of this House, with the full knowledge of the public authorities involved in this litigation, with the full knowledge of those who have been the beneficiaries of the public moneys, will be declared, since it is alleged that doubts exist in regard to it, always to have been valid and legal.
It is nonsensical, of course, to try to put a Bill with that purpose on the same plane as the retrospective provision of the Finance Bill of 1931. Deputy Cosgrave, in the course of his speech this evening, referred to that particular measure, and tried to justify it. I think the House might be interested to know the grounds upon which at least one member of the Oireachtas, who was then in opposition, opposed it. The proposal then was to deal with the estate of a man who was dead—of a person, not recently deceased, but who had been dead, I think, for such a time in fact that the assets of which he died possessed had been distributed to his heirs. Here is what I said in opposing the Measure:—
"For one thing, the deceased is no longer in a position to put himself right with this State. His widow and dependants are, possibly, not in a position to redress the wrong which has been inflicted. They may find it difficult to provide for themselves, let alone to pay, if you like, for the sins of the father; and, for that reason, there is a good deal to be said for the law as it originally stood."
Now, not merely was this the position, that here was the case of a widow and orphans and of an executor who had distributed assets; not merely was that the human element in the situation, but there was also this: that the executor in this case had actually got a decision of the courts in his favour. Here the position, as I shall show, in regard to this Bill is quite different. For one thing, the courts have not yet decided the point of law involved, and it is not true to say that the Executive has been advised that the decision of the courts is likely to go against them. There is, as the Bill itself admits, some doubt in the matter, but the doubt is not a grave one. Nevertheless, the circumstances in which this action has been launched make it, I believe, imperative on the part of those who are responsible for asking the Dáil to vote public moneys in this matter to take steps to terminate this litigation and not to allow it to proceed further.
Let me remind the House of what the facts are. Every year since the establishment of the State, the Dáil has voted certain sums in relief of the rates on agricultural land, and every year, in voting those moneys, the Dáil has understood that these grants were hypothecated for the purposes of the Guarantee Fund. In the course of the earlier stages of this measure, I have already referred to the statements which were made by several members of the Government as to the position in which they thought the Guarantee Fund was placed by the Land Act of 1933 and by the Land Purchase (Annuities Fund) Act of the same year. Nothing was said by any Government spokesman—certainly, nothing was said either by the Minister for Local Government and Public Health or by the Minister for Finance, who has personal responsibility for asking the Dáil to vote these moneys—to lead the Dáil or the local authorities or the local ratepayers to believe that the position was in any way changed or that the basis upon which these grants were being made to the county councils was being altered. On the contrary, speaking in the Seanad on the 22nd March last, on the Second Stage of the Central Fund Bill, when this question of the Guarantee Fund was raised in relation to the question of the Agricultural Grants, I said:—
"So far as we are concerned, the Guarantee Fund is going to operate. We want to make it quite clear that the man who wilfully withholds his annuities is not penalising the central Government, but is penalising his honest neighbours who are willing to meet the obligations they undertook when they applied for and were granted a parcel of land by the Land Commission."
On this basis, and with this view——
On a point of order, Sir, I think we were prevented from discussing the general purposes of the Guarantee Fund—that is my recollection of the discussion—and the Minister himself was the gentleman who drew our attention to it.
Quite, but the Minister—I am waiting to hear the conclusion of his argument—is, in the opinion of the Chair, arguing that this Bill should be retrospective.
Yes, Sir, that is the purpose of my argument. On this basis, and with this view of the position, the Government asked the general taxpayers to provide sums ranging from £1,750,000 to £2,198,000 each year since 1932. That was the position until May of this year when two counties, Cork which was to receive £226,000 and Louth which was to receive £39,000, commenced a suit to declare that the Guarantee Fund did not apply to these grants. Now, these were people who already were the beneficiaries of the Dáil to the extent of over £265,000. Having enjoyed the benefits of the arrangement by which these grants were voted, on the understanding that they were hypothecated to the Guarantee Fund, they now took an action to repudiate their obligations.
The Minister is not now dealing with the retrospective clauses.
I am going to show why if I will be permitted.
You will be permitted to show why.
I said they now initiated an action——
It must be clearly understood that there must be no reflection on the Chair direct or indirect. There is only one method of challenging the ruling of the Chair.
Having, as I said, enjoyed the benefits of the arrangement they now proceeded to repudiate their obligations under it. The Government was responsible for providing these moneys.
On a point of order, may I suggest that the plaintiff, who is at present before the courts, having repudiated his obligations, is prejudging the issue that is still before the courts?
The Chair stated when the Bill was originally before the House that it was regrettable that a certain court case had to be referred to, but I am afraid that was inevitable.
I am not objecting to the case being referred to—that certain people have repudiated their obligations. It is the manner of the reference to the case that I object to, not to a reference to the case.
Quite obviously Deputy O'Sullivan does not want to hear the argument as to why the retrospective provisions in this Bill ought to be adopted by the House.
That is what we are waiting for.
This was the position: two public authorities had secured from the Dáil upon a certain understanding £265,000 of the taxpayers' money. The Dáil, having voted it, these authorities came along and asked the courts to declare that the understanding which had always governed these grants, the understanding which had operated since 1923, because from the point of view of the Opposition it is important to know this: that until Section 12 of the Land Act of 1923 was passed by the Dáil it is doubtful whether the Guarantee Fund existed in this country or not.
The existence of the Guarantee Fund does not arise.
But, in any event, since the Guarantee Fund did exist, and since the Dáil saw fit to apply it to these grants, could any Government which had been responsible for asking the Dáil to vote public moneys upon certain conditions stand by and allow those who had accepted the grants upon these conditions to go to the courts and ask the courts to break the contract, because that is what is involved here? That is why I say that it is nonsensical and hypocritical to endeavour to put this Bill, and the purpose of his Bill, upon the same plane, say, as the retrospective provision in the Finance Bill of 1931 which endeavoured to reverse the decision of the courts given in favour of a widow and orphans and of an executor endeavouring to discharge his trust to a deceased person.
I say these county councils have moved the courts to relieve them from the obligations which, it is understood, they were under in regard to the Guarantee Fund in relation to these grants for the relief of local taxation. But, at whose expense are they going to do it? This question has been discussed in this House by the Opposition in a frame of mind that would suggest that they believed that, if the county councils were going to be relieved of all their obligations in respect of land annuity arrears, we were going to get a free gift of £716,000 from some undesignated source. Of course they know — Deputy Haslett knows and Deputy Davis knows and other Deputies who sit in this House for constituencies in which on the whole the people have endeavoured to discharge their responsibilities to the extent of their ability know—that that is not so: that if we did not make this legislation retrospective, and that if we did forego £716,000 of public money in favour of the defaulting counties someone would have to pay it, and that those who would have to pay would be every man, woman and child in this country—the general taxpayers.
Now, I have referred to the position in the County Monaghan and the County Mayo. Let us see what justification there would be for making the general taxpayer in Monaghan and Mayo shoulder a large part of this £716,000. In Monaghan the amount of arrears of land annuities uncollected on the 31st July last represented 7 per cent of the total collectable since November, 1933. In Donegal the arrears were 8 per cent. and in Mayo 11 per cent. On the other hand, in Cork they were 43 per cent. and in Tipperary 51 per cent. Now, I say that in Monaghan where the arrears were only 7 per cent., in Donegal where they were only 8 per cent. and in Mayo where they were only 11 per cent., we may assume that at any rate in these counties the honest people had paid to the best of their ability. In so far as they did fail to pay, the ratepayers of these counties had been penalised, as Deputy Haslett has just recounted to the House, by the fact that their share of the Agricultural Grant had suffered a corresponding reduction. I assume that Deputy Haslett will agree with me that, having paid once, the ratepayers, who are also taxpayers, in County Monaghan ought not to be asked to pay twice.
It is the same way with the annuities—we paid three times.
I say that, in so far as the annuitants of county Monaghan had failed to pay, the ratepayers of that county had already been penalised to the extent, we will assume, of about £6,500—that is the amount of the accumulated arrears that stood against them. In Donegal it was £9,000 and in Mayo it was, I think, about £22,000. In addition to having paid this, if the contention of the county councils of Cork and Louth were accepted by the court, or if, having been accepted, we had deferred bringing in this Bill until after the decision, and had omitted the retrospective provisions in accordance with a recommendation which might then come from the Seanad (if the Seanad were in existence), or in accordance, say, with and amendment to be proposed by Deputy Haslett or Deputy Davis—what would be the position of the unfortunate ratepayer in County Monaghan, who is also a taxpayer?
I have gone to the trouble of making some calculations and I find that if the position in respect to arrears of annuities—when we came to give effect to the decision of the court and the provisions of this hypothetical measure, which did not contain these retrospective provisions— had been as it was on the 31st July of last year, every man, woman and child in County Monaghan would have additional taxation imposed upon them at the rate of 9/- per head and, instead of that unfortunate county having to pay something between £6,500 and £7,000—I want to make the figure as comprehensive as I can—in respect of defaulting annuitants, that it would have to find £30,000. That is the position which Deputy Haslett has been advocating to-day— That instead of having to pay £6,500. Monaghan would have to pay £30,000.
Then we had Deputy Davis and the Mayo County Council. Deputy Davis was pathetic. He looked like a sorrowful knight as he stood there complaining and bewailing the sad plight of Mayo. He told us that it was a congested district, heavily populated by people in very poor circumstances, who contributed in tariffs and by way of indirect taxation more than their fair share of the burden of the whole community. Yet what was Deputy Davis advocating except that Mayo, which, in present circumstances, might have suffered in accumulated deductions a loss of about £22,000 of the Agricultural Grant, was now to exchange that for a burden in indirect taxation amounting to £88,000.
Deputy Davis had a great deal to say about the chairman of the Mayo County Council. If the chairman of the Mayo County Council prevented that body from passing a resolution demanding that the retrospective provisions of this Bill should be deleted, then the chairman of the county council did his duty to the ratepayers and the taxpayers of Mayo, because he prevented that county council from being stampeded by the dishonest propaganda of Deputy Davis and those associated with him into demanding that the burden upon the people of County Mayo should be increase fourfold, because that would be the effect if the retrospective provisions of this Bill were to be dropped. In short, what the county councils of Cork and Louth were demanding, what Deputy Davis is pleading for, what Deputy Haslett has advocated, what the Opposition, including, I think, Deputy Broderick of Cork, are going to vote for, is that county councils which have already discharged their obligations in relation to land purchase should make themselves responsible for the debts and obligations of other county councils which have endeavoured to repudiate their liabilities in that regard.
Deputy Davin and Deputy Broderick said they did not stand for the principle of making one man responsible for another man's debts. Deputy Broderick, and the other Deputies of the Opposition who have spoken this evening against this Bill, are supportings the county councils in what amounts to a demand that the men and women of Monaghan, Donegal, Mayo, Cavan, and all the other counties in which people have endeavoured to pay their land annuities and discharge their obligations to the Land Commission in respect to the holdings which they are purchasing, should be responsible for the debts of the men and women of Cork and Tipperary who have not paid.
As far as we are concerned, we are not going to ask the general body of the taxpayers to accept responsibility for the obligations of ratepayers in certain counties. Those ratepayers were always thought to be liable to the Guarantee Fund for the payment of the annuities. Every year, as I have already stated, the Dáil voted large sums of money to assist those ratepayers on that understanding. Every year recourse was had to the Guarantee Fund to make good any deficiency in the collection of the land annuities, and advances to the county councils were reduced accordingly. It was on the understanding that this was the correct position of the law, that this was the position as accepted by the Dáil, and that this was the position as the recipients of those grants were understood to accept it, that those grants were made. Yet some of those people who have received benefits on foot of that understanding come along afterwards, and ask the courts to declare that this understanding is illegal, and should not be honoured— but, mark you, only after they have benefited by it. I say that good faith, honourable dealing and honesty demand that the provisions of this Bill should be made retrospective, and that those people should honour the obligation upon which they accepted the money.
I am not, and the Government is not, minimising the seriousness of the position which has been created in certain counties. I hope that this discussion will be beneficial.
Hear, hear!
——and that it will bring home to the ratepayers that the people responsible for the position in those counties are those who have refused to pay their annuities. Although we have heard a great deal about the sad plight of those communities, we have not heard anybody who is opposing this Bill get up and say that those people ought to pay their annuities. We have not heard Deputy Dillon get up in this House, or address those outside it with whom he is associated, and say that the vice-chairman of the Cork County Council, or ex-Deputy Brooke Brasier, or Mr. Cussen, or any of the other people who served a term of imprisonment for conspiracy to prevent the collection of annuities, should abandon this dishonest campaign.
They have paid their annuities three times over and you well know it.
Nonsense!
Many suggestions have been made——
A Chinn Comhairle, I think it is unfair for the Minister to introduce the names of outsiders who are not here to defend themselves.
It is not advisable to introduce the name of any outsider who has no remedy against privilege.
I think it should not be allowed. It is in very bad taste. The people whose names he has mentioned are honourable men who were helping to build up the State when he was trying to break it down.
If the Deputy wants me to go further I will tell him about certain Deputies in this House who might pay their rates and annuities.
Then say it out; do not half say it.
There are no such things as annuities now. It is a land tax.
Many suggestions have been made as to how this position might be dealt with. I say it is grave; I say it is serious; but I say also that the remedy lies in the hands of those who man the county councils which are principally affected. It is extraordinary that the problem does not arise in the same acute form in regard to the collection of land annuities in counties like Monaghan, Cavan, Donegal or Leitrim.
They have the great smuggling industries.
It is extraordinary that it arises in an acute form in only certain counties. As I said, the people who are in power in those counties have the remedy in their own hands. We have been asked here by Deputy Broderick of Cork—whose reasonableness in this matter I think everybody in the House will acknowledge, but who is put in the position of the devil's advocate, trying to do his best for his county and for the body over which he presides in a position in which I am sure he finds it not with his consent and not with his connivance—to deal with this by granting a loan. What would that be but to give effect to the principle which he himself has already repudiated—the principle of making one man responsible for another man's debt? If there is a loan it is the general taxpayer who will have to foot the Bill. It is he will have to make provision every year to pay off the loan, and to pay interest on the loan. It is on the general taxpayers, many of whom do not own, as I said before, a square yard of earth in this country, upon whom the burden will fall heaviest. As we do not accept the position that the general taxpayer should be called upon to redress a situation which has been created by a section of recalcitrant annuitants in this country, I certainly do not think that we can consider or would consider the proposal of Deputy Broderick.
And Deputy Corry.
Deputy Corry's proposal, if I understood it correctly, was that the Cork County Council might be given authority to raise a loan. That is quite a different matter.
He supported Deputy Broderick.
Deputy Broderick's proposal was that a loan might be given by the Government of this £716,000. I understand that Deputy Corry's suggestion was that in order to deal with the position in which it now finds itself the County Council of Cork might be authorised by the Minister for Local Government to raise a loan for its own immediate needs. That is quite another matter, because the people and the ratepayers of County Cork would be accepting responsibility, and would have to bear the expense of that. It would be brought home to the ratepayers that the people who were imposing the additional charges for interest upon the ratepayers of the County Cork were those who had associated themselves with this campaign for non-payment. We are asked in short to deal with the whole of this position as if it were an exceptional crisis. There is a very serious objection to that, because that in another way amounts to a demand that the general taxpayer—who has been adversely affected already, who has been grievously and seriously affected already by the non-payment of those annuities, because we have had either to increase the general burden of taxation in order to make good this deficiency or we have had to borrow money to make it good—should now be asked to indemnify those who have been responsible for the non-payment agitation against the consequences of their campaign of sabotage and the damage it has caused.
I have prevented two Deputies from discussing an alleged or actual campaign for the non-payment of annuities and the Minister should not discuss it further.
It has been argued here—I am not certain whether you were in the Chair at the time—that we ought to raise this money and make a free grant to the county councils of this £716,000, because we had failed to pay, and that after all it was not fair that the man who had paid should be called on, as has been said here to-day by some Deputies, to pay twice and even three times. I have a great deal of sympathy with that position. From the point of view of the man who is aggrieved by it, I do think that he has a right to feel very strongly. I do think it is a terrible position for the man who has paid his annuities and his rates to look across the road and see there his neighbour perhaps who has not paid one penny, and he has to pay the full burden of that other man's default.
Hear, hear.
I agree, but Deputy Davin's position is not to relieve the man who has already paid his annuities but to increase the burden on him.
Collect the annuities yourself.
Not only to increase the burden, but to put it on him as a taxpayer. It is really only the difference between tweedledum and tweedledee.
Do your own job.
Very well. It has been advocated from the benches opposite that we ought to remit £716,000; that we ought to delete the retrospective provisions of this Bill because we have not done our own job. We have tried our best to collect the annuities and we will collect them. But there is one thing that we think would be more effective than special squads and bailiffs and sheriffs and that is to make these people who have not paid their annuities, and who have been responsible for creating this position through not paying their annuities and who have given a bad example to the general body of annuitants, responsible directly for their actions. I understand that many of these defaulting annuitants who have been responsible for £716,000 of arrears, are men of substance and I think that before this year is out we may be able to bring a measure into the Dáil which will satisfy the demands of the Party opposite. A measure by which the responsibility for non-payment will be brought home to these people. A measure by which any person who has been aggrieved in any way by the non-payment of the annuities, whether as ratepayer, recipient of home assistance or as one of the workers under the county councils who, we were told to-day, will be paid off if these annuities are not paid, will be given the right to go to any of the defaulters in the area and demand that he should make good the loss that that person has sustained. I hope when we do that we will receive the unanimous support of this House.
Does the House desire that the vote on the three recommendations should be taken together?
We have no objection —let there be one division.
Question—"That the Committee disagree with the three recommendations made by Seanad Eireann."
The Committee divided: Tá, 71; Níl, 63.
Tá
- Aiken, Frank.
- Bartley, Gerald.
- Beegan, Patrick.
- Blaney, Neal.
- Boland, Gerald.
- Boland, Patrick.
- Bourke, Daniel.
- Brady, Seán.
- Breathnach, Cormac.
- Briscoe, Robert.
- Browne, William Frazer.
- Concannon, Helena.
- Cooney, Eamonn.
- Corbett, Edmond.
- Corkery, Daniel.
- Corry, Martin John.
- Crowley, Fred. Hugh.
- Crowley, Timothy.
- Daly, Denis.
- Derrig, Thomas.
- De Valera, Eamon.
- Doherty, Hugh.
- Donnelly, Eamon.
- Dowdall, Thomas P.
- Flinn, Hugo V.
- Flynn, John.
- Flynn, Stephen.
- Fogarty, Andrew.
- Geoghegan, James.
- Gibbons, Seán.
- Goulding, John.
- Hales, Thomas.
- Harris, Thomas.
- Hayes, Seán.
- Houlihan, Patrick.
- Jordan, Stephen.
- Keely, Séamus P.
- Kehoe, Patrick.
- Kelly, James Patrick.
- Kelly, Thomas.
- Kennedy, Michael Joseph.
- Kilroy, Michael.
- Kissane, Eamonn.
- Lemass, Seán F.
- Little, Patrick John.
- Lynch, James B.
- McEllistrim, Thomas.
- MacEntee, Seán.
- Maguire, Ben.
- Maguire, Conor Alexander.
- Moane, Edward.
- Moore, Séamus.
- Moylan, Seán.
- Murphy, Patrick Stephen.
- O Briain, Donnchadh.
- O'Doherty, Joseph.
- O'Dowd, Patrick.
- O'Grady, Seán.
- O'Reilly, Matthew.
- Pearse, Margaret Mary.
- Rice, Edward.
- Ruttledge, Patrick Joseph.
- Ryan, James.
- Ryan, Martin.
- Ryan, Robert.
- Sheridan, Michael.
- Smith, Patrick.
- Traynor, Oscar.
- Victory, James.
- Walsh, Richard.
- Ward, Francis C.
Níl
- Alton, Earnest Henry.
- Belton, Patrick.
- Bennett, George Cecil.
- Bourke, Séamus.
- Brennan, Michael.
- Broderick, William Joseph.
- Brodrick, Seán.
- Burke, James Michael.
- Burke, Patrick.
- Byrne, Alfred.
- Coburn, James.
- Corish, Richard.
- Cosgrave, William T.
- Costello, John Aloysius.
- Curran, Richard.
- Daly, Patrick.
- Davin, William.
- Davin, Michael.
- Davitt, Robert Emmet.
- Desmond, William.
- Dillon, James M.
- Doyle, Peadar S.
- Mulcahy, Richard.
- Murphy, James Edward.
- Nally, Martin.
- Norton, William.
- O'Donovan, Timothy Joseph.
- O'Higgins, Thomas Francis.
- O'Leary, Daniel.
- O'Neill, Eamonn.
- O'Reilly, John Joseph.
- O'Sullivan, Gearóid.
- Esmonde, Osmond Grattan.
- Everett, James.
- Fagan, Charles.
- Finlay, John.
- Fitzgerald-Kenney, James.
- Haslett, Alexander.
- Hogan, Patrick (Clare).
- Holohan, Richard.
- Keating, John.
- Kent, William Rice.
- Keyes, Michael.
- Lavery, Cecil.
- Lynch, Finian.
- MacEoin, Seán.
- McFadden, Michael Og.
- McGilligan, Patrick.
- McGovern, Patrick.
- McGuire, James Ivan.
- McMenamin, Daniel.
- Minch, Sydney B.
- Morrisroe, James.
- Morrissey, Daniel.
- O'Sullivan, John Marcus.
- Pattison, James P.
- Redmond, Bridget Mary.
- Reidy, James.
- Roddy, Martin.
- Rogers, Patrick James.
- Rowlette, Robert James.
- Thrift, William Edward.
- Wall, Nicholas.
Tellers:—Tá: Deputies Little and Smith; Níl: Deputies Doyle and Bennett.
Recommendations made by Seanad Eireann disagreed to.
Disagreement reported. Report agreed to.
Bill accordingly passed without amendment.
Message to be sent to Seanad Eireann accordingly.
The Dáil adjourned at 9.25 p.m., until 3 p.m. on Wednesday, the 5th February.