The sum of £6,000,000 is in dispute. It is still the subject of penal tariffs. The £4,000,000 represents funded annuities and other things of that sort. Now, as regards an asset, one assesses the value of an asset from the value of the solvency of the person concerned. If we are told that the unfortunate farmers have not been able to pay their land annuities, that they have to be put out on a long-dated loan—then, if that is to be regarded as an asset, he is welcome to it. I do not think he will get anybody in a banking institution to give the same value to that particular asset. It is guaranteed to this extent, that if it is not paid the ratepayers will be called upon to meet it. It is deducted from the moneys voted here, but that is all there is to it. I submit that these two sums of £10,000,000 have no right to be regarded as assets or as having been created by this Government, and to that extent his balance sheet falls.
To come back to the Budget itself, we are told that last year's Budget balanced with a surplus of £464,000. I concede that there was a surplus of £464,000. It is a surplus which can be defended. There is no bad finance in connection with it, even though the Budget of last year was based on bad finance. The Minister was proposing to borrow something like £900,000 in respect of bounties and subsidies, but it has not been necessary to do it and there is a surplus. Let us look at another figure. Last year we were told that a definite and determined effort was to be made on the unemployment problem in this country. We accepted that in good faith. We taxed the people of this country to a higher degree than ever they have been taxed before to achieve that purpose. We started off on the assumption that something like £2,500,000 was to be expended in order to relieve unemployment. What happened? The unemployment assistance voted last year amounted to £433,325. There was to be taken from that for unemployment schemes £550,000, leaving a net sum to be spent on unemployment assistance of £883,325. The unemployment fund itself amounted to £1,675,000 and for public works and buildings we voted a sum of £883,396, making in all a sum of £3,391,721.
What was spent? On unemployment assistance, £1,119,331; on the unemployment schemes, £790,000; on relief schemes, £26,325; and on public works and buildings, £601,707; making a total of £2,537,363—£854,000 short of what was voted. Were those votes put up to this House, and was taxation imposed during the year, in good faith, to spend that money? Had it been spent, the Minister would have been £400,000 on the wrong side; he would have had to borrow from some source or other. What was the meaning of voting £4 to these unfortunate unemployed people and giving them only £3? What was the meaning of giving them only 15/-, when we had arranged to give them £1? Were they so well paid that they did not need it? Were they not there? Would it not have been possible to prevent so many of these unfortunate unemployed people going across the water to find employment, if that money had been spent, and was it good business to bring in that Budget here last year and say that we were justified in borrowing money for that purpose? They are the unfortunate unemployed; but we are told now that we have a surplus: that we have a buoyant revenue and that we are doing well. But balancing budgets at the cost of these unfortunate people is not good business or sound business, and the Minister deserves no credit in respect of it.
This year we are having a higher revenue anticipated than ever we had before. Circumstances, as the Minister said, all show buoyancy—people are more prosperous, they are doing better, there is greater scope for the collection of revenue, and yet, when all that is so, it is necessary to vote something like £3,500,000 to relieve and help people who otherwise would be left practically penniless and, possibly, destitute. Now, this scheme of high taxation presses particularly heavily at the present moment on a country two-thirds of the people of which are engaged on agriculture. We are told by the Minister that the prices of agricultural produce are rising. So they are, but no thanks to the Government or their policy. It is the world price. What are the facts? Why, even in this year's Estimates there is £80,000 for calf-skins—a potential asset those calves. In a few years' time, possibly, they might be worth £1,000,000—but the result of the policy of destruction carried out for the last two or three years in this country is that we are now left short of agricultural produce to sell; and that is now regarded as bringing us into an era of prosperity. It is a great matter that agricultural prices have risen—a very great matter—but the great pity of it is that there was not a wiser policy on the part of the Government to ensure that, when those rising prices would come, we would have the stock to sell. I notice also, in connection with the Budget of this year, and comparing it with the Budget of a few years ago, that taxation, we have found, and the Minister has found, is capable of being raised in bulk from only the wage-earning classes of this country. We have a very small proportion of rich people in this country. Our yield from income-tax and super-tax, etc., is something like £6,000,000. Out of £30,000,000 it is about one-fifth. I do not know that it is even that much. Across the water, income-tax and super-tax come to about one-third of the revenue. Consequently, when high taxation is imposed, it falls upon the classes of persons who, normally, cannot bear any additional burden.
We find, apart from this Budget altogether, that there are increased costs, arising out of Government policy, on flour, sugar, butter, bacon and several other items, but these are outstanding. These are phenomenal. A member of this Party went into a shop in his constituency, which is close to the Border, a short time ago, and he purchased a number of items which would comply with the normal expenditure of a family of about six or eight persons—tea, sugar, flour, tobacco, butter, bread and oaten meal—and the sum total of the bill was 12/10½. He crossed the Border and gave exactly the same order in a business house over there, and the bill was 9/10. What is it that has increased prices here, when agricultural prices are below prewar prices?
Now, let us look at the contribution that is being made by the Ministry to deal with that situation—and it is a serious situation: a very serious situation, as they will find out in a very short time, whether they like it or not, and you have the evidence in the City of Dublin and in the City of Cork. The contribution they propose to make is that they are taking off the duty on wheat, the value of which is £170,000. We consume somewhere around 3,000,000 sacks of flour here, and £170,000, distributed over that number of sacks of flour, amounts to about 1/1½ per sack. A family will consume, normally, about six sacks of flour a year, and the remission on that, therefore, is 6/9. The remission on 1 lb. of tea is 4d., and on 10 lbs. of sugar is 2½d.—that is 6½d. per week, or £1 8s. 2d. in the year. If you add the 6/9 to that, it amounts to £1 15 s., all but one penny. That represents 7d. per week. In other words, 7d. per week is being allowed off now from the person who can buy goods on this side of the Border for 12/10 and, on the other side of the Border, for 9/10—and that is the contribution towards the solution of our political problem in this country.
It has been complained of us on this side of the House that whatever contributions come from this side of the House are in the nature of wails and jeremiads and so on. Within the last 18 months, Deputy Mulcahy referred here on several occasions to the cost of coal, and his calling attention to that matter had the effect of persuading the Minister to take it off.
