It was rather a pity that Deputy Donnelly, before he sat down, did not give some indication of the type of people who are coming into this House, who are going to take the places that we will vacate, and for whose coming we ought to be now preparing. He did not say whether, in his view, this Budget was an apt preparation for that wonderful day and for those wonderful people. When referring to the publication of certain criticisms of these Budget proposals that were made in this House yesterday by Deputy Dillon, Deputy Donnelly asked the question: Could that possibly happen in any other country in the world? The answer to that, of course, is no. It could not happen in any other country in the world. Most other countries in the world, at the moment, are greatly afflicted with political and economic difficulties. But none of them, except this country, is afflicted with Fianna Fáil, and that is the reason that it could not happen in any other country, because Fianna Fáil only exists in this country. Deputy Donnelly considers that we ought to be really proud when discussing the wonderful proposals in this Budget. What have we to be proud of? Approaching the proposals in this Budget as I approach them from the point of view of the consideration given to them by the ordinary citizen—the person who used to be known as the man in the street, who must be fed-up with all the financial jargon about capital liabilities, deadweight debt, receipts and expenditure, and national expenditure so constantly displayed by financiers in connection with the finance produced by them—I ask what does this Budget bring to the ordinary citizen? What relief does it give? How does it affect the ordinary citizen and the country in general? Approached in this way, there is very little comfort to be got from the Budget and very much to cause disquiet.
Deputy Donnelly and others spoke of the signs of prosperity and of increasing prosperity in this country. Deputy Brennan described the Budget as an "as-you-were" Budget. Deputy Kehoe gave it as his opinion that the best that could be said about the Budget was that there was no sensation in it. That was another way of saying that it was an "as-you-were" Budget. What is the position of the country? We have Estimates and receipts of expenditure here this year showing, by a simple sum of subtraction, an increase since Fianna Fáil came into power of £6,750,000. On top of that there is additional imposition of taxation by former tariffs and taxation put on and kept on by the Budget. It used to be that once a year the taxpayer would look forward with apprehension or anticipation to this much-abused Budget day. After that day he knew for the next 12 months the best or the worst, but taxpayers to-day have not even that little bit of comfort, because the Executive Council, by decrees and orders from day to day and every day, bring in 50 Budgets during the year and perhaps more. The net of taxation has been spread wider than ever before in the history of this country, even under an alien Government.
This is an "as-you-were" Budget. It is a Budget such as that described by the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Finance last year, leaving things as they were when the Budget became law and its proposals were put in force. It is an "as-you-were" Budget so far as the working-man is concerned, and the Budget of last year was so described by the Parliamentary Secretary in referring to a comment made by Deputy Anthony on the Budget and the working classes. This is what the Parliamentary Secretary said: "Deputy Anthony says these are taxes that fall upon the working classes. Why should they not fall upon the working classes?" That was last year's Budget, which put taxation upon the working classes and in respect of which the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Finance boasted when he asked: "Why should not these taxes fall upon the working classes?" These taxes fall upon the working classes again this year. Because of this "as-you-were" Budget they still fall upon them and press upon them.
The Parliamentary Secretary, in another part of his speech on that occasion, said: "What I like in this Budget is that it brings everybody up against the facts." Last year's Budget brought everybody up against the facts, and this year's Budget keeps them still up against the facts, and the facts are that between direct taxation put upon the people by the Budget and indirect taxation there is a sum of over £10,000,000 increase in taxation since the Fianna Fáil Party came into power.
That is the first part of this "as you were" Budget proclaiming the prosperity of this country. The Minister, in his statement yesterday, boasted of the increase in the consumption of tobacco and beer and the increase in entertainments duty due to the greater number of people going to entertainments and the increase in motor cars. I do not pause for any time to direct attention to the fact that that sort of false prosperity may, for a time, hide from the people what is going on and what is coming to them, and what Deputy Dillon yesterday warned the people would come to them, if this policy is continued. It is no consolation to the unemployed to know that there is more beer drunk and more motor cars being used. It is no consolation to those deprived of unemployment benefit, as a result of the policy of the Government, and who yesterday were seeking relief from the Dublin Board of Health, to know these things. What consolation is it to those people to hear from Deputy Donnelly and Deputy Kehoe and from the Minister for Finance that this country is prospering and is getting more and more prosperous?
Yesterday at a meeting of the Dublin Board of Assistance, as reported in last evening's Evening Herald, the chairman remarked that hundreds of people in Dublin were refused unemployment assistance on the ground that they were not genuinely seeking work. “The relief superintendents,” he said, “reported that for the week ending Saturday last 7,057 cases were relieved at a cost of £3,153 11s. 6d., being an increase of 28 cases and £21 6s. 8d. in cash, over the preceding week; and an increase of 510 cases and £156 5s. 0d. in cash as compared with the corresponding week last year.” Is that evidence of increase in prosperity on the day after the Budget was introduced? On the day after the Budget we find there is an increase of 510 cases over the corresponding week of last year of persons seeking relief from the Dublin Board of Assistance, having been deprived of unemployment benefit. Is it any relief to those people, who are unemployed, and who have been unemployed, to know that the Government set up a committee two years ago, and to know that the terms of reference of that committee were, as I read them, designed rather to protect the Exchequer than to protect the interests of the unemployed?
The terms of reference—I am speaking from memory—were to the effect that this committee were to consider how best savings in the expenditure on unemployment assistance and public works could be effected. As a political Party, we may have some pleasure in rubbing the noses of the politicians of the Fianna Fáil Party regarding the sort of rubbish they spread in 1932 and 1933. The President of the Executive Council then said they had a cure for unemployment staring them in the face. The present Minister for Industry said he was going to bring back the people in shoals from America, because he would not have enough people here to do the work that Fianna Fáil would provide when they came into office. We take pleasure in casting up that sort of thing at the politicians of the Fianna Fáil Party, not because we get political advantage from it, but because we hope that that spirit of political racketeering has been ended by experience of Fianna Fáil as a Government during the past four years.
It is no comfort to the unemployed who voted for the present Government to be looking, year after year, for that cure for unemployment which members of the present Government said was staring them in the face a few years ago. We are told in this year's Budget that the country is prosperous, that the cost of living is coming down. Yet, those who had a panacea for unemployment, who knew how to cure it, have not merely to provide £2,500,000 to meet the present situation but, after four years of their economic policy, they regard that evil as endemic. Unemployment, we are told in the Minister's speech, we shall always have with us. It is no comfort to the unemployed to know that the country is prospering, that more beer is being drunk and that more motor cars are being bought, when they are told that the evil of unemployment, which was to be so easily cured, is endemic.
The Minister for Industry and Commerce stood up here last night, with his usual brazenness, and made a speech which I would not dignify by the description "cross-roads speech." It was nothing more than a street-corner speech. In the course of his observations he contended that the cost-of-living had not increased. It will be comforting to those people who are living on small salaries and small wages to learn that the Minister for Industry and Commerce is able to produce a book here to prove that the cost of living has fallen in this country by four points in the last couple of years. But though that may be comforting, it does not get away from the hard fact that on every single item of the necessaries of life tax is being paid to the present Government. Tax is being paid on tea, sugar, bread, butter, clothing and practically everything that people must use in their daily lives. That is the work of this patriot Government. The housewife who has to manage the finances and the budget of the household knows how impossible it has been to live within the usual means of the family during the last few years owing to the increase in the cost of living caused by the economic policy of the Government. No juggling with the figures and no Budget speech will get over that fact. No brazenness on the part of a slippery politician, like the Minister for Industry and Commerce, will convince the ordinary housewife that the cost of living has not soared and soared appreciably in the last few years.
Even the few remissions promised by this Budget will bring no comfort to the people. The farthing tax put on sugar last year is being taken off this year, but the farthing tax upon sugar imposed by the present Government when they took office still remains. It has become abundantly clear that that reduction in the duty on sugar is not going to be passed on to the consumer. This morning we read in the paper that the other remission— the remission of the levy under the Slaughter of Cattle and Sheep Act—is not going to be passed on to the consumer. And this is the Budget which we, as Irishmen, are to be proud of, according to Deputy Donnelly. I have been given figures which would prove conclusively that the figures given last night by the Minister for Industry and Commerce regarding the cost of living were inaccurate. I have no belief whatever in figures. The fact that the Minister for Industry and Commerce is able to produce a book to prove that more people than ever are saving money, and that the cost of living is coming down—that, coupled with the fact that I am able to produce figures to prove that the cost of living has gone up considerably and to controvert the assertion, as it was controverted last night by Deputy Cosgrave in his broadcast speech, that more savings are taking place than ever before, leaves me completely cold so far as figures are concerned. You can do anything with figures.
Looking at the ordinary points where this Budget hits the ordinary, plain citizen, there is no hope and nothing to be proud of. A short time ago a man casually stopped a member of this Party in the street. He did not know he was a politician. He asked him for a match, and he told him that he had, in the previous week, been put out of employment as the result of a recently-imposed tariff by the Minister for Industry and Commerce. He said that, when the present Government came into power, business was regarded as bad and that it was hoped it would be better. Now he had lost his job as a result of the tariffs, although that job was secure before the present Government came into office. Security is what the worker is looking for. Under the Cosgrave régime the workers' jobs were secure, and security and stability are what the worker is looking for. I commend that slogan to the Fianna Fáil Government. The whole policy of the Government is calculated to produce insecurity and instability in every branch of the people's life, although security and stability is what every section of the people is seeking.
Deputy Donnelly asked us to co-operate in the solution of the unemployment problem. We would gladly do so, irrespective of Party considerations. I do not think that there is any Deputy who does not feel the heartbreak of being unable to assist people who come to him genuinely looking for work. We should gladly co-operate, but you have to get at the root cause of the trouble first. The Deputy by his speech to-night did nothing to add to security and stability when he talked about these young, these super-patriots knocking at the door and waiting to take the place of the present Deputies. We have had four years of government by the Fianna Fáil Party, and the country does not yet know the political philosophy of that Party. They do not know, according to the Fianna Fáil Government or the Fianna Fáil Party, what is the form of Government under which this country should live permanently. Deputy Donnelly has spoken eloquently, but somewhat ambiguously, about the great problem that awaits solution. I presume he was referring to the problem of partition. The foremost plank of this Party is to end partition. You will never end partition until you get security, and until the Party opposite makes up its mind whether it wants a republic, or whatever it wants, and sticks to that, and not say, as Deputy Donnelly would say: We have a Government here for four years calling themselves, in brackets on their notepaper, a Republican Party, but they gave a pledge to the people at the last two elections that they would not change the political form under which this nation is living without another general election. Should they not say, now that another general election is within sight, what they intend the political future of this country to be? Deputy Donnelly does not say that his Party is standing for a republic or any other form of government. The only thing, if we are to believe what he says, is that his Party is going to go out and be defeated by those people who are knocking at the doors of Leinster House.
There are many points I should like to deal with in the Budget, but I do not want to emulate the example of my friend, Deputy Belton, by occupying the time of the House at considerable length. There is, however, one matter that I wish to refer to that has not been dealt with. The present Government have no use for the income-tax payer except in so far as he can be regarded as a milch cow to be milked dry. Speaking generally, the income-tax payer, according to the view of the political bosses of the Fianna Fáil Party, votes against Fianna Fáil. Therefore, that class is not to be nursed from the point of view of potential vote catching, and we have had since the present Government came in, one long ramp after those burdened by income-tax, super-tax and excess profits duty. In this Budget the Revenue Commissioners have been again approached to find some new screw to put upon that already racked section of the community. I should like, before I say anything more, to pay the highest tribute that lies in my power to the efficiency and integrity of the Revenue Commissioners and the officials in that Department. There is in my view no more efficient body of civil servants than those in the Revenue Department. They are doing a job of a very difficult and technical character. They have had great training and experience and have become experts in that job. Who have they as their opponents? The ordinary taxpayer, who nearly faints when he sees income-tax forms coming to the house by the morning post; a man who is a child in the hands of these expert officials. The proposal in the present Budget is to put the screw again on these people; to give powers to the Revenue Commissioners to go back to 1922, and to exercise another drive against these unfortunate income-tax payers.
The Minister waxed sarcastic at the expense of that section and dilated on them in a verbose fashion. He spoke of the absurd restriction of six years on the Revenue Commissioners' powers. The Minister might not think it so absurd if he had to pay income-tax, or if any of his colleagues were paying income-tax. They are not harassed by demands from the Revenue Commissioners, and can look with complete equanimity upon the case of a son, whose father died years ago, being asked under these proposals to give an account of his father's earnings in 1922, all the books having been destroyed and the records gone. That son framed his life, his livelihood, and his career on the assumption that he had so much money and that, at least, as far as he was concerned, when he dealt honestly with the income-tax authorities that was his only responsibility.
The Minister said that what he called "a much more serious matter was brought to his attention." That serious matter was that under the present law the Revenue Commissioners cannot recover tax from a person who succeeds for six years in escaping assessment on his true income unless they are in a position to prove fraud or wilful neglect. That was the serious matter referred to in the Budget speech but it represents only £50,000. I might say in passing that it is clear to my reasoning that was put in, because the Minister wanted to give something which would appear in his Budget to be a relief. He said it would look well if he gave increased relief in respect of children. It will look well. People will think they are going to get a lot but they will not know that they are only going to get a remission of £1 14s. The Minister asked the Revenue Commissioners if they could think of anything else. They had already thought of the one-sixth remission on the valuation in respect of repairs to property. They had already thought of that extraordinary figure, five-fourths, which was put on in the Finance Act of last year. They were asked to have another think, and being efficient they had another think, and produced the proposal embodied in the present Budget. Will it be any source of pride to Deputy Donnelly, or to anyone else, or be any comfort to the man getting £1 14s. a year as a result of this Budget, to know that his neighbour is going to be harassed by a State demand, and to be subjected to a species of blackmail, in order that the Minister may gain some sort of kudos or appear to gain something from the Budget?
Let us look on the proposal on the merits, leaving aside all other considerations. I ask the House to look at this matter on principle and entirely free from prejudice. If it is looked on in that way I have no doubt that all Parties in this House will unite in demanding that this particular proposal be dropped. The Minister said it was a serious matter that the Revenue Commissioners could not go back for more than six years unless they were in a position to prove fraud or wilful neglect. They have ample power, if they can prove fraud or wilful neglect, to go back any distance. As the Finance Acts of 1925 stand the Revenue Commissioners can only go back six years, but in case of fraud or wilful neglect they can go back as long as they like. Wilful neglect, in the mind of the Revenue Commissioners, has an entirely different significance to what it means in the mind of the ordinary citizen. Any breach of their code, any mistake even, is such a serious and wilful sin against the Revenue Commissioners that it constitutes wilful neglect. Let that pass. They have the power. No other citizen owed a debt has the power to go back for an unlimited period, even where there is fraud. If I am done out of my property by any person, through fraud, I cannot recover from him after the lapse of a statutory period, even where there is fraud. I should have by the exercise of due diligence discovered that fraud. We had operating here since 1922—for the last 14 years —the most diligent and efficient officials in the State, and if there are any frauds hanging around they ought to have been discovered. If they have not been discovered the perpetrators of the frauds are entitled to get away with them. The proposal at the moment is in ordinary cases—not in cases of fraud or wilful neglect—to allow the Revenue Commissioners to reopen assessments already made, and to go back in every case, even where assessments were made generally and bona fide, and rip up these assessments since 1922.
It has been said that it is only the big people that will be got at. I presume Deputy Donnelly is under the illusion that that is what is going to happen. I wish to disillusion him or anybody else who may be under that impression. The big people will be the first brought in, and the Revenue Commissioners will search the recesses of every pocket of these big people, but the time will come when these pockets will be dried up, and then the small people will be got at. Then the clerk, the small-shopkeeper and everybody else will be subjected to this imposition. Anybody can be got at from 1922, the small man as well as the big man. The general principle in the case of an ordinary debt, if it is allowed to run for six years, is that the creditor cannot recover it. That is not law or custom, but it has become established as law in the interest of debtors. It is a principle that has been established in the public interest, and I do submit to this House that that principle which was established in the case of debtors and creditors in the public interest, should apply still more in the public interest in the case of debts due to the State. Stale demands are banned in the public interest. Why should not the State, which has an elaborate machinery available for the collection of debts, be subject to the same principle in reference to stale demands as applies between the ordinary debtor and creditor? If it does not weary the House unduly I should like to read very shortly the underlying principles of what are known as the Statutes of Limitations. I quote from a very great judge, a Lord Chancellor:
"All Statutes of Limitations have for their object the prevention of the rearing up—
a very expressive phrase—we can visualise the claims of the Revenue Commissioners rearing up against the taxpayers in the course of the next year or two—
"All Statutes of Limitations have for their object the prevention of the rearing up of claims at great distances of time when evidences are lost and in all well regulated countries the quieting of possession is held an important point of policy."
Another great judge said:
"The public have a great interest in having a known limit fixed by law to litigation for the quiet of the community, and that there may be a certain fixed period after which the possessor may know that his title and right cannot be called in question. It is better that a negligent owner, who has omitted to assert his right within the prescribed period, should lose his right than that an opening should be given to interminable litigation, exposing the parties to be harassed by stale demands after the witnesses of the facts are dead and the evidences of the title lost. The individual hardship will, upon the whole, be less by withholding from one who has slept upon his right and never yet possessed it, than to take away from the other what he has long been allowed to consider as his own, and on the faith of which the place in life, habits and expenses of himself and his family may have been unalterably fixed and established."
Every word of the principles contained in that statement are applicable to the proposal here. Income-tax payers are going to be harassed by stale demands at a time when their place in life and the habits and expenses of themselves and their families have been unalterably fixed. People whose fathers died in 1922, when account books and back records dealing with the incomes of that time have probably been done away with, are going to be asked to tell what the incomes of the fathers were in 1922. They cannot do it. They are going to be assessed on a fictitious figure. They are going to be harassed and frightened into settling the claim, even if they can find evidence, and if they have the grit to fight and win in the courts. The principle at the back of this proposal is symptomatic of Fianna Fáil policy as a whole. Somewhere or other hidden away at the back of every proposal brought in by the Fianna Fáil Party—and it is perhaps more hidden in this case than in others—you will find intimidation. This is an intimidatory proposal. It will mean that everybody from this time onwards must keep certified records of his business or of his profession.
Further, there is no reciprocity about this proposal. The Revenue authorities can go back to 1922 in every case. They can go back to the beginning of income-tax in any case where fraud or wilful neglect is alleged, but the person taxed can only go back for three years in his claim for allowances. We had a case, a reported case incidentally, of a person who was entitled in equity and in all justice to have an allowance against the claim of the income-tax authorities for a period of more than three years, and the income-tax people, very properly and very legally, pointed out that they had no power to allow that claimant to go back more than three years even if they wished to do so, although it was admitted that these allowances should have operated in justice and in fair play for more than three years. At that time the Revenue could get six years' tax and collar all the reliefs to which the taxpayer should have been entitled for any period more than three years back. If this proposal is forced on the country, then at least there should be some reciprocity about it. If the Revenue can go back for 14 years, then the taxpayer who has made a mistake should be allowed to go back a similar period.
Arising out of that feature, I should like to call the attention of the Minister to another hardship that will result from this proposal, because it has resulted, in my own experience, in very considerable hardship in relation to the excess profits duty. Assessments will be raised all over the place, with no basis of fact whatever, but merely as try-outs, try-ons, or whatever you like to call them. It will then be the duty of the income-tax payer to disprove the assessment put upon him out of the imagination of the inspector of taxes. He would be able to do so in a very large number of cases, but in a number of cases he will go to his advisers, as they have come to me, and say: "I can disprove this claim, but it is going to cost me a lot of money even if I do win. I should like to go to the Revenue Commissioners and say: `What will you take to stop the thing and let me out of it, although I do not owe anything?' " That is one result. In any case it is going to mean that taxpayers will have to employ accountants, solicitors, and possibly barristers. It is going to cost money, and even if they win it will go on to the Special Commissioners, and then on appeal to the Circuit Court judge, and a very considerable amount of costs will have been incurred and cannot be recovered from the Revenue. I say that in the forthcoming Finance Bill it is the duty of the Minister to bring in a proposal to the House to enable the Circuit Court judge to give costs in such cases to the taxpayer. I had a case myself in the courts in the last few weeks, and a more unsustainable case, I think, I never came across. It arose out of an assessment on a farmer. This particular farmer was 80 years of age. I would not let his son settle the case. The Special Revenue Commissioners, in due course, confirmed the assessment without deciding the question, and there was an appeal to the Circuit judge. I was employed during the course of that case to a considerable extent; a solicitor was employed, and an accountant. On the morning of the hearing before the Circuit judge we got a letter from the inspector of taxes saying that he would consent to the discharge of the assessment. His bluff was called. He waited until the last minute. It was very proper that he should. He is an exceedingly efficient inspector, doing his job, as he is bound to do it under the Government, efficiently and well on behalf of the Revenue. The result was that that taxpayer was put to enormous expense, a penny of which he cannot recover. I say that is a gross and shocking injustice, and I submit that all sections of the House should call upon the Government to remedy it.
There is another matter that I want to call attention to arising out of this. When I called attention to it before, I was told that that was not the appropriate occasion to do so. This is the appropriate occasion. It is proposed in this Budget to give relief to the heads of families who have children. I understand that it is the contention of the Revenue Commissioners that there are, in certain cases, no appeals from their decision to the Circuit judge in reference to reliefs of one kind or another, and particularly in reference to certain kinds of reliefs. That should be remedied. There should be the right of appeal in every case from the Special Commissioners to the Circuit judge, and I propose to put down an amendment to the Finance Bill to secure that that will be done. I hope that when I do so I will receive support from Deputy Donnelly and commonsense members of his Party, if there are any other such than he.
The last item that I want to raise arises out of these reliefs for children. This is a case which was brought to my attention some months ago by one of my constituents. Relief is given from tax to the father of children who are attending at school or at the University. If a man has a son over 17 years of age attending the University, and at the same time he is apprenticed to a profession—to be an architect or a solicitor or any other profession— because that boy, while attending the University, spends part of his time in an office as an apprentice—it is a thing that apprentices have the habit of not doing—the Revenue Commissioners take up the attitude that he is not in whole-time education at the University and refuse relief. Now, if that is the law I suggest to the Minister that it is about time it was stopped, and that it ought to be changed. I do not know if many people have the habit that I have of looking at the Independent, and sometimes at the Irish Times on a Saturday morning.
