Undoubtedly the amount of money asked for by the Minister in this year's Budget is a very huge sum. It is a sum of money which, in the opinion of many people, is rather big for a small nation like this to carry. The Minister's Budget this year is something in the region of £34,000,000 or £35,000,000. When one considers that huge figure and compares it with what it took to govern this country 30 or 35 years ago, the comparison is all against the Minister's Budget in the year 1939. The fact of the matter is that there used to be a little country called Ireland. That country used to be governed and carried on on an annual expenditure of something like £10,000,000 or £11,000,000. At that particular period we were told that Ireland was being overtaxed. The same country to-day is being taxed at the rate of almost £50,000,000 per annum. I am sure Deputies on the Government Benches will open their eyes, prick their ears and say that I am speaking nonsense. I am speaking of Ireland. We in this part of the country are taxed £35,000,000 a year, and the tax in the Six Counties is £15,000,000. That is £50,000,000, not to speak of the secret and indirect taxation. Including indirect taxation, or hidden taxation, we are carrying a burden of almost £60,000,000.
This must be a great little country. This little State must have been well looked after by those in charge of it. It must have been built on very solid foundations when, after 20 years, including a period of civil war and another six or seven years in a useless, senseless economic war, it is still in a position to yield an annual taxation of £35,000,000. The Minister for Finance, in the days when he was Deputy MacEntee, stated on a certain occasion, the occasion of the introduction of a Budget by the late Minister for Finance, his opinion of that Budget. He characterised the burden of that particular year as immense. That burden, incidentally, was between £23,000,000 and £24,000,000. He told the Minister at the time that he was foredoomed to failure. He told him that he could not collect the £1,150,000 extra in that Budget over the previous year, the sum he set out to collect. Deputy MacEntee on that occasion pointed out that the country was already groaning under a load too heavy to bear and that accordingly it was not in the power of the Minister or any other Minister to collect the extra £1,150,000 from our impoverished people. Later he told the then Minister for Finance that "our warnings have been justified; the Minister has failed to collect that £1,150,000. He has not collected half of it; he has only collected a little more than one-third."
Deputy MacEntee wound up with these very remarkable words:—
"The pitcher will go to the well once too often, not because the pitcher in this case is in any danger of being broken, but because the well will run dry."
Deputy MacEntee on that particular occasion said that the then Minister will go to the well once too often with the pitcher and that the well would run dry. That was the time when the Minister for Finance was budgeting for £23,000,000, or £1,150,000 over the previous year. I wonder how the well stands to-day, when the Minister has run to the same well, if it exists to-day, not for £23,000,000 or £1,150,000 extra, but for £35,000,000, a difference of £12,000,000 between 1928 and 1939. I am sure the Deputies will realise the truth of the opening statement when I said that this is a great little country, and that it must have been well looked after in the days of its infancy when it weathered the storm so well in the last 20 years.
The three things on which the Minister has concentrated to increase his revenue so far as this Budget is concerned, are income-tax, a tax of 2d. per gallon on petrol, and 8d. per lb. or ½d. per ounce on tobacco. Let us deal first with the income-tax. Fortunately or unfortunately, I am not one of those who has to pay income-tax. Because of that fact it would be only natural to assume that I would not have much sympathy with income-tax payers so far as the tax which they have to pay is concerned. I should imagine that people would say that Deputy Coburn should follow the example of other Deputies, and state that it was right and proper to tax the rich—take it from the rich in order to give it to the poor.
I have never enjoyed the novelty of paying income-tax. I do not know what it is to pay it. I have been used to hard work most of my life. I think I know as much about work as any Deputy on the Fianna Fáil or Labour Benches, but I say it is absolutely wrong and almost suicidal for men of the type of Deputy Corry to get up in this House and state that he gloried in the fact that income-tax had been raised by one shilling, and his only regret was that it had not been raised by double that amount. There would be some weight in that argument if, after taxing the rich for the last six or seven years, Deputy Corry, or any other Deputy who advocates an increase on this question of taxation, could point to the fact that as a result of that increased taxation the Government had solved many of the problems which they set out to solve, particularly that of unemployment.
I challenge any Deputy on the Government Benches, or on any other bench, who has advocated the policy of taking money from the rich on the assumption that it is going to make more comfortable the lot of the poor, to point out to me what progress, if any, has been made in that respect during the past five or six years. Is it not a fact that to-day we have as much, if not more, unemployment than we had six years ago? Is it not a fact that the cost of living is much higher than it was six years ago, and that, as a result of the cost of living being higher, the money earned by the poor can buy less food, less clothing, and less everything else than it could buy six or seven years ago? Is it not a fact that the taxation in this country is £5,000,000 or £6,000,000 extra every year? I say that more in sorrow than by way of criticism. I am not saying it to twit the Government, but facts are facts.
Anybody who gives a moment's thought to the position of the people in the country as a whole—not to the people here in the City of Dublin or in any other large city or town in the country—and who studies the position of the people in the little towns and villages, the position of the labourers in the towns, and of the farmers and the agricultural labourers, must admit that their position is worse to-day than it was eight or nine years ago. I am a worker myself. I have mixed with them for the last 40 years. That is my honest opinion of the situation as it exists at the moment. I am not talking politics. I am simply answering the Minister, and putting before the Deputies of this House the very same facts as the Minister himself put before the House eight or nine years ago when he was Deputy MacEntee. There is no improvement, I am sorry to say, so far as the position of the people of this country is concerned. Therefore, there is no weight in the argument that it is right to tax the rich in order to improve the lot of the poor. Of course, my dear friends over there, who preached so much class distinction in the years prior to their forming a Government, can never understand the fact which I am going to put before them—that there are large numbers of people in this country whom they used to style as ex-Unionists, and sometimes, when they got into a fit of bad temper, as Freemasons, but those people have love for this country, and have stayed in this country, although the income which they derive from any estates in this country is not sufficient to meet their outgoings, and they have to depend on moneys derived from investments abroad. Those people are giving a very large amount of employment to a type of person for whom employment is very scarce at the present time. Everybody will know the type of people to whom I am referring—that good old type which kept men working until they were almost 80 or 90 years of age. They kept them working day in day out, week in week out, year in year out. To-day these people have to pay more to the State, and the first thing they will do is to look into their accounts. Perforce, they will have to reduce their staff. In the case of men employing nine or ten, they will do with six or seven. No remarks will be passed about the one or two who were dismissed here and there throughout the country, but the aggregate of those ones and twos and threes and fours over the Twenty-Six Counties will run up to thousands. There is a great hullabaloo in the Press and in this House about a little factory employing 20 or 25 people if it happens to shut down for a week or two, but no remarks will be passed on the state of affairs to which I have referred, which exists all over the country at the present time.
It will be seen, therefore, that the argument that a tax on the rich will benefit the poor is a fallacy. It was good propaganda at the cross-roads. The poor people down the country who did not pay income-tax, and did not understand much about it, believed that every £1 taken in that way was going to do them good. We all know that a £1 derived by means of taxation is sometimes not worth 5/- by the time it reaches those for whom it is intended. Everyone knows that. In regard to petrol, the same arguments can be used. The same applies to tobacco. The tax will interfere with the business arrangements of those who are engaged in the manufacture of tobacco at the moment. It is going to increase the cost of that article to the poor man; we cannot get away from that fact. Everybody knows that to some men tobacco is as essential as food, and nobody will doubt that even the price paid for it prior to the introduction of this Budget was over and above what the ordinary working man of this country could afford to pay.
It is usual, on occasions such as the introduction of a Budget, for the Minister to give a general survey of the conditions which exist in the country, and also to intimate to the House what are his plans and the plans of the Government in regard to the future. I do not know what ideas are in the Minister's head, but as far as I can see the Minister for Finance and the Government are making no provision for a position which must necessarily arise in the very near future. I refer now to the very large number of people who are engaged in the building of houses. A good deal of nonsense, in my humble opinion, has been spoken about house building. Let me say at once that the building of houses for the workers in this country is undoubtedly a very laudable project, but it must be remembered that there will come a time when the production of any more houses cannot be proceeded with. I am not at all sure that we are very far from that time. That may not apply here in Dublin, but certainly in many of the other centres throughout the country house building will cease to be an avenue of employment in the very near future. It is a well-known fact that during the last six or seven years some 20,000 or 30,000 extra people have been put into employment as a result of the intensive campaign entered upon by the Government in regard to the building of houses. Might I ask the Minister what plans, if any, he has in mind to meet that situation which must of necessity arise?
I am quite aware that house building is one of the best means of providing employment, and providing it quickly, but not employment of a continuous nature. Everybody knows that once a housing scheme is finished there will be no houses needed in that locality for practically 50 years, or in some cases for 70 or 80 years. The position at the moment, even here in the city, is that after every scheme is finished you have thousands of men knocking at the gates asking when the next scheme of house-building is going to start. As I have already stated, since the housing drive was initiated, 20,000 or 30,000 men, over and above those who followed the building trade as their normal occupation in the last 20 years or so, have been employed on building schemes. We all know that there are people who have followed the trade all their lives, but I am speaking now of people who have come into the trade in recent years, and I should like to know what are the Minister's views on the problem of providing employment for these people in future. I do know that at the moment if the Government were to take away its all-protecting arm in so far as building is concerned, you would have very little house building or building of any other description in this country. So far as I can see, private enterprise, as we used to know it of old, is practically finished. Were the Government to stop the subsidy you would have no house-building in progress at present. I should like to know if the Minister has any plans to absorb those who at the moment find employment in house building but who, I regret to say, will find that avenue of employment closed in the very near future.
Again, I should like to ask the Minister whether the Government intend to implement the promises they made some years ago to derate agricultural land. That is a matter which has been a great bone of contention amongst all Parties for some years past. Undoubtedly the Government were very sweet on derating some years ago, but for some reason or another they seem to have changed their minds recently. With a view to refreshing their memories, I propose to quote from observations made by no less a person than the Taoiseach himself some time ago.