A considerable time has elapsed, owing to pressure of Government business, since we last debated this motion. Various opinions seem to have come from members of the House as to the reasons for the remarkable increase in the cost of living. Tariffs have been blamed for it; taxation and the various expenses which fall on the working community have been blamed, but I think the villain of the piece in this debate has been the Minister for Industry and Commerce. In 1932 he had a plan and, in pursuance of that plan, he embarked upon a remarkable scheme of tariffs or imports on almost every article that was imported into this country. In fact, the difficulty we had in arriving at any decision on this matter was to find the particular article that was not taxed. We must give the Minister, at any rate, the merit of honesty in carrying out his policy. He put a tariff on every article he could possibly think of and, if it was not effective in achieving its object as a protective tariff, it had, in his view, the merit of adding to the revenue of the country. The fact that we are at present collecting over £11,000,000 at the ports is an indication that, at any rate, the policy of high protective tariffs has not been as successful as was anticipated.
Again, the Minister for Industry and Commerce found it necessary in Cork to warn those industrialists who were not satisfied with a small profit. He found it necessary to warn them that they would be dealt with drastically. He tells us that "the greatest danger to the present industrial revival comes from a minority of manufacturers who are cashing in to an undue extent upon protection" He admits further that "the one thing that may produce a public reaction against the idea of developing our native industrial resources is any failure on the part of industrialists to give the public a fair deal" It must be the aim, he says, of our manufacturers to produce articles as good and as cheap as any that can be imported. That is practically an admission that the Control of Prices Bill has not been as effective as was anticipated. The very fact that the Minister thought it necessary to give that warning to industrialists was an admission on his part that the policy of protective tariffs had a tendency to increase prices and to increase them to an inordinate extent, beyond the capacity of the people to pay.
When questioned the other day, the Minister said that five licences had been given to boot manufacturers to come over here to manufacture boots and to take advantage of the protective tariffs which had been imposed for the benefit of industrialists in this country. I can remember paying a visit to Messrs. Dwyer's of Cork at the Lee Boot Factory, and there is no question at all about it, the Lee Boot Factory and the Hanover Factory are as efficient as you could make them. At that time they were of opinion that a tariff of 15 per cent. on boots would give a very powerful impetus to their industry. It was not the desire of such manufacturers to have a very drastic increase, as such an increase would bring industrialists from England to open here, and the fact that the Minister has given these five licences proves very conclusively that, under the policy of high protective tariffs, we are simply giving employment to foreigners instead of to our own nationals.
One thing the Minister for Industry and Commerce has been careful not to do, is to put a tariff on the raw materials for industry. He has not been as careful in that respect in regard to agriculture with the result that every form of implement connected with agriculture is highly tariffed. Manures, which are a very much needed adjunct to agriculture, have also been tariffed. So have feeding stuffs. In fact, a very large proportion of the needs of production for farmers has been tariffed with the inevitable result that they cannot produce at a profit without increased prices. Naturally, the competition of other countries in the agricultural sphere is able to keep these prices down. Therefore, the farmer is the one man who has not benefited in any way from protective tariffs while he is seriously affected by the material increase in the cost of living which has imposed such a blow on our community.
I have here a cutting from the Evening Herald headed “Soaring Cost of Living—Bonus Rise for Civil Servants.” The cutting states:—
"Higher and higher soars the cost of living. The index figure mounted 14 points in the mid-August period since 1935; 15 points in the mid-November period during the same time, according to tabulations issued last night. Smoked bacon advanced by 3/- per cwt. this week; best rashers now sell at 2/- per lb. in Dublin. It is an ill-wind that doesn't blow some body some good, and so
civil servants, in the light of the current mathematics, are to get a
bonus which works out at 2/6 per week on a basic salary of £4 per week. Since the mid-August tabulation this year, living costs soared seven points. Then the index was 170; in last night's official announcement 177 was the index for mid-November. Therefore, the average living cost for six months was 173½."
That, Sir, is the position with regard to civil servants. The same thing prevails with regard to those who are employed by local authorities, and local authorities have had very serious demands on their purse by almost every class of their employees for an increase in salaries based on the fact that the cost of living has materially gone up. We had an extraordinary position at the South Cork Board of Assistance, where a large number of persons were refused increases in salary, and the only man whose salary there was an attempt to increase was a wealthy landowner. He owns about half the village of Douglas and is the possessor of a licensed house. That man was paid £100 for cleaning the sewers of Douglas village, which, needless to say, he did not do himself, but employed a man to do. A suggestion to increase his salary by £10 a year was proposed by Deputy Corry and lost by my casting vote. I am very pleased to say that, because he was the only man whose salary it was suggested to increase. Those are people who are making that same demand based on the cost of living. It has not been denied by Deputies in this House that the cost of living has advanced. The only excuse, in their opinion, is that the standard of living has increased. That is a very debatable point. It certainly has not increased amongst the farming community, and I do not think it has increased amongst the agricultural labourers. Those two classes, at any rate, are suffering very severely from the disabilities and impositions that affect the agricultural community.
The South Cork Board of Public Assistance has had to increase its estimate for public assistance by £3,000, although the number of applicants for public assistance is down by 1,000. That is based entirely on the estimates of the superintendent assistance officers that the cost of living has gone up, and it required such an increase in the assistance in order to enable the poor to get even anything like a living out of the miserable pittance that is given under the administration of public assistance. That is a state of affairs which is not indicative of the high state of prosperity that is claimed for this country. The amount would probably be very much higher still were it not for the operation of the Unemployment Assistance Act, which has to a certain extent relieved the boards of public assistance, but the present condition of affairs has meant stronger demands on the estimates of those boards. As I said, the South Cork Board of Health have had to increase their estimates, although the number who are in receipt of public assistance is down by over 1,000. An amazing statement was made by a worker to myself, that the cost of living did not matter very much, because with every point of increase in the cost of living an increase in wages was demanded and obtained. If the increase in wages is going to keep pace with the increase in the cost of living, we are going to arrive at a stage when the workers themselves will be affected by that. They will be in the position of taking in each other's washing, and their natural all-round drift must of itself have some influence on the cost of living in this country.
One of the burdens to which I have to draw your attention, Sir, is the ever-increasing volume of rates. Deputy Brennan asked a question about the amount of rates collectible in the various county council areas all over the Irish Free State. The amount shows a very drastic rise. I think if the Minister for Local Government were here—because the amounts of the estimates for the county councils are mandatory and have to be passed whether they like it or not—he would probably admit that the rates are likely to go up more and more as time goes on. We were promised derating in 1932, but we did not get it, and we are still bearing the imposition of an ever-increasing rate on a partial system of taxation, that is a system of taxation based on the poor law valuation of agricultural land. Although we may get certain grades of relief, nevertheless that burden is ever-increasing as time goes on. That is the position in which the farmer is to-day. He is the largest section of the community. His purchasing power is very considerably reduced. I do not want to dwell too much on this point, because we have laboured it so much, but the penal tariffs deducted from his cattle exports have meant that a sum of £5,000,000 is taken off the price of his cattle. It means that those who are raisers of live stock have to bear the burden of the retention of the land annuities in this country; they have to bear the burden for those who do not raise cattle and export them. In other words, the man who sells new milk, and does not raise calves, is in the position that he is not bearing that burden to any great extent, except in so far as a few pigs or any other exportable produce he may raise are concerned.
It has become an ever-increasing difficulty for the farmer to pay his rates. In the Cork County Council— those county councillors who are present will bear me out—we have had to discontinue the services of rate collectors, and place the collection of the rates in the hands of an officer collector, who probably has more drastic powers than the ordinary rate collector. With regard to the labourers, we are building cottages for them, for which we are charging 1/- a week. We are not able to collect that 1/- a week. Four collectors, I think, were dispensed with on the proposal of Deputy Corry, and there were two of them who absolutely refused to go back. We have it here in the reports of the Cork Examiner, which I will not weary the House by reading, that those men would not accept their old positions, simply because they said they would have to resort to eviction if they did. On that account they refused to accept their positions back again. That is an indication as to what is the position of the labouring man.
