When speaking last evening I was dealing with the table given by the Minister in which he claims to have given £8,000,000 to agriculture. I pointed out that where he claims £220,000, there was a debit against him of £1,000,000. I pointed out that the increases imposed upon agriculture through increased prices as a result of customs duties and tariffs amounted to £4,750,000, at a very low estimate. I also pointed out that there was a decrease in the value of cattle by earmarking of £1,500,000, and a decrease in the Agricultural Grant of £78,000. These items make altogether £7,328,000. Giving the Minister credit for £606,000 export subsidies and £666,000 for dairy produce, we are left with the figure of £5,066,000 against the Minister. To that must be added the unknown quantity—I am leaving it to the Minister himself to put a figure on it—which would cover the loss that agriculture has sustained by reason of losing so much of our market. The Minister told us that we are limited now to a part of our exports. He himself can estimate what that would amount to. That would bring the figure up to £8,000,000 of a loss and with no gain. There was one item I forgot to refer to last evening. That was £2,200,000 in land annuities. The Minister for Agriculture told us that that was equivalent to a capital sum of £40,000,000. Yes but what about the loss that agriculture sustained during those years of the economic war? Was it not at least £60,000,000? That would be a figure that is nearer to the mark. And even £40,000,000 would be very much better for agriculture at the present time when it is under capitalised, than the interest on £40,000,000. At all events the Minister cannot claim credit for £1,200,000 which he has been claiming. If any claim were to be made the claim would be made against him. We will pass from that subject. I am afraid when the Minister has all his claims wiped out by the losses he will not have much to boast of. Now I come to deal with the widening chasm between revenue and expenditure. We are borrowing money this year to balance the Budget. There is a difference of something like £4,500,000. I also pointed out——
Committee on Finance. - Resolution No. 10—General (resumed).
As the Deputy has already pointed it out, he should not repeat himself.
I am only trying to get started in order to give an outline of the position. There are two windfalls which bring in £3,695,000. That is not really revenue at all and it is a drying-up source. That £3,695,000 represents arrears of income-tax. And the £2,400,000 that the Minister is getting in annuities. The position is that we have £27,435,000 of real revenue and if that is deducted from the £35,000,000 for which the Minister is budgeting, it leaves a deficit of £8,281,000, or something over £8,250,000. That is the gap that has to be filled up between real revenue and estimated expenditure.
The Minister pointed out that the revenue is decreasing, and Deputy Dillon has pointed out that expenditure is going up. The gap is growing wider and threatens to swallow up the solvency of this country in a short time. What are we doing about it? It is recognised by some of the more thoughful Deputies on the opposite benches that it is a serious problem and needs to be tackled. Deputy Childers said that it is something that must be gone into and that needs very careful attention, but nothing can be done this year. I am afraid Deputy Childers is like the old sinner who got to the length of acknowledging his sins, but deferred repentance. He admits the damage is being done and that the country is threatened with bankruptey, but we have not the moral courage to begin to put it right. We are going further, though we know we are on the wrong road. We are getting into deeper water or, shall I say, deeper mud? That is where the country is being led by this Government. We will keep on until we reach a point from which we cannot retreat.
I really think that some effort should be made to find a remedy. The fact is that we are living above our means. We are copying countries like Great Britain or the United States of America. Can we afford to live up to the standard of these countries? The average income here is about a quarter of the average income in Great Britain. How can a man here with £100 hope to compare with a man who has £400? There is very little difference between nations and individuals. The squandermania which is going on here is getting beyond the ability of the taxpayers. Our national financial position proves that. We have a deficit of £8,250,000 and the chasm is getting wider. I think it is time to cry a halt. We must examine into the position of the country and see whither we are drifting. We are drifting very near the precipice and something must be done if the nation is to be saved.
There have been great sacrifices made in the past for this country, but now what is being done? We are told that all the Opposition are doing is criticising and doing harm and that no useful suggestions have been made. I do not agree with that. The Opposition have made very useful suggestions. The Government acted on some of them, but the Government action was slow. They did not act until almost irreparable damage had been done. Perhaps they will not act now until it is entirely too late and until more damage has been caused.
Who advised the Government to settle the economic war? The Opposition advised them and eventually they carried out that advice. Unfortunately, they were a bit late and they had lost our market. We have now only a limited market and our cattle are affected to the extent of 30/- a head for every animal exported. We have had quotas and everything else and that would never have happened if the economic war had not been started. They settled it at last after the Opposition had been pointing out to them that that was the sensible thing to do. It could have been settled sooner and with more advantage to the country.
The Minister for Agriculture told us he proposed to do something to improve the condition of the unemployed in rural districts, to devise some scheme whereby they can work with farmers, the farmers to give them whatever they can afford and the Government to augment these wages, instead of paying these men a few shillings a week and keeping them in a starving condition, demoralising them and leaving them no good for themselves or for the country. As a result of the Government's policy, the land in many places has been allowed to go wild, to grow rushes and to remain under water, when it might have been used for the advantage of the nation. That suggestion came from this side of the House also.
I am prepared to make still further suggestions, but I suppose, like the other suggestions that have been made, they will not be acted upon until it is too late. Deputy Childers asked for co-operation and I am happy to echo his appeal. We are quite prepared to co-operate and, if the country is to be saved, it is necessary that all Parties in this House should co-operate. If there is not general co-operation the country will head for disaster. It may be necessary, if the Budgets of the future are to be balanced, to tell the people hard and unpleasant facts. There is no use in telling them the nice story all the time, about how prosperous we are. I am afraid that sooner or later the people will have to be told the truth, and the truth is that the people will have to take off their coasts and work harder, otherwise they will have to tighten their belts.
Who is in a moral position in this country to tell them that? Can the Minister or any one on the Government Benches do it? I am afraid not. That is the difficulty they have placed themselves in. They are not in a moral position to ask anyone to tighten his belt without giving an example. Some months ago Acts were passed increasing the allowances to Deputies and giving pensions to Ministers. The suggestion I am going to make is that the Act giving allowances to Deputies should be repealed, and that the Act giving pensions to Ministers and others should be drastically amended. I admit that there are cases where some provision should be made for Ministers and ex-Ministers, but the Bill went much too far.
This is not an occasion on which to demand repeal of legislation. The Debate is confined to taxation, expenditure and financial policy, but not legislation.
We have been asked to make suggestions.
Is your own Party in agreement with you?
I am pointing out where a beginning should be made. Unless Deputies and Ministers put themselves in a moral position to give a lead to the country, they cannot lead it away from the precipice, with a deficit of over £8,000,000 in the Budget this year, and with the trend to increase, and likely to run up to £12,000,000 next year. What is going to be done? Is it not better to begin this year and not as Deputy Childers said, to defer a decision for another year? I say that nothing can be said until we put our own house in order, and I suggest that we should commence here. Then we will be in a better moral position to ask the people to work harder or to make sacrifices of some sort. Sacrifices must be made. We cannot go on living up to the standard of countries that are four times better off than we are. Supposing I tried to live up to the same standard as a Minister, I would be bankrupt in three months. If a Minister tried to live up to the standard say, of the President, he could not afford it. The position is the same with regard to this country. If we try to live up to a standard that the nation cannot afford, then the nation will go down.
We cannot ask our people to make sacrifices unless we are prepared to make them ourselves. If we are not prepared to do that, then I suggest that we should get out and leave it to people who will do it. I do not agree that there is any sacrifice in doing that. Sacrifices were made by our forefathers, and this generation is entitled to do a little in that way. All they are asked to do is to preserve what has been gained. If we are going to put the country into a state of bankruptcy, now that we have the management of affairs in our own hands, it will not be any great credit to this generation. I was speaking recently to a gentleman in Northern Ireland, with whom I have been acquainted for some time, and he asked me how we were getting on in Dáil Eireann. I told him that we were doing our best, but that we could not hope to get on very well until Northern Ireland joined us. He told me that there was not much chance of that, and he mentioned that he had heard that the salaries of Deputies had been increased.
What?
He said that there was not much chance of coming in to Éire and mentioned that he had heard that salaries here had been increased. That seemed to be the answer to everything. I do not know what he meant. The people in Northern Ireland are not fools.
Hear, hear!
They are not going to come in with us unless they find it to their advantage, and unless they see if it is likely that we will make a success of the Twenty-Six Counties. We will not be able to do that unless we live within our means. Every nation must try to live within its means, or otherwise must tighten its belt. It is better to do it before the crash comes. Agriculture is now on the dole, just as every other industry here. Agriculture was to be derated. Before he came into office the Minister was very eloquent in promising derating for agriculture, but when he got to the Front Government Bench and became Minister for Finance he could find millions for everything but for the relief of the one industry that really mattered. Now, instead of being able to derate agricultural land, he is unable to balance the Budget, although the country is taxed to the hilt, and 125,000 farmers are in such a position that they can make no use of their land for want of capital. What a beautiful prospect that is for raising revenue in future! Where is revenue to come from unless agriculture is made prosperous?
We are told that the Minister had great difficulty in making up his Budget this year. There will be greater difficulty as the years pass unless there is a change, and the unfortunate citizens will have bigger difficulties in trying to make up their own budgets. For that reason, I suggest that the position should be seriously considered, and that we should begin now by putting our own house in order. If we do that, there will be some chance for the country. There is a weakness in the Irish character whereby the people never like to acknowledge that they made a mistake. If they are wrong once they continue in that way. That is a serious weakness, and is one that we must try to overcome. We must admit that it was a mistake to increase Deputies' allowances, and to provide extravagant pensions for Ministers at a time when the country was not able to make ends meet.
Pure hypocrisy.
Anyone who is not prepared to serve his country for £350 a year should make room for others.
The Deputy has been informed that he might not advocate repeal of recent legislation, which he is again doing.
I will not press the point but, as I have mentioned it, it is worthy of consideration. I am afraid it will be difficult for the Minister to find the wherewithal to balance future Budgets unless he considers the suggestion. I strongly appeal to all Parties to do something to bring about better conditions in agriculture, to try to cut down taxation to the lowest level, to provide employment for the people that will be useful and productive, and that will be a benefit not only to them but to the nation as a whole. In that way, production could be increased, the people enabled to recover their position, and be able to meet the burden of taxation. We all know that when money is expended taxes have to be raised, but there should be no necessity for half the expenditure if all the silly schemes started by the Government were scrapped. Scheme after scheme has been started, and officials to deal with them have multiplied. Instead of being any benefit these officials have only added to the difficulties that farmers, business people, and others had already. There are more forms to be filled by the business people in some cases than would take up the time of a dozen clerks. That is waste of time and waste of energy. It is tiresome, and it is disheartening the people. All these nonsensical schemes are only wasting the taxpayers' money. So far as possible everyone should be allowed to carry on his industry with the minimum of interference, but the policy of the present Government is to have the maximum of interference. They will not allow anybody to do anything except as directed from some Government office in Dublin, and in order to enable all this work to be carried out from those offices they are multiplying the number of officials. They are also multiplying the number of pensioners down the country. People are getting pensions for anything and everything, and there is hardly anyone left in the country to produce anything. The few who are left on the land, finding that they are in the position of having to carry the whole burden, are trying to get out of it. They feel that their only chance is to escape. I think it is time that a change should be made, and I do appeal to all sides of the House to put their heads together and try and do something to bring about a change before the country goes completely to ruin. It has gone far enough on the road to ruin, and the red light is now showing. Before things have got completely out of hand, the Government should try and do something to put the country right.
No doubt, this was a gloomy place to sit during the last three or four days and, unfortunately, I sat here during most of the debate. I spent a good many weeks in Mountjoy Prison in past years, and I would prefer to spend a week in that prison again rather than sit through a Budget debate as gloomy as this one. From the statements of the Minister for Finance and the Minister for Industry and Commerce, anyone who cannot see financial trouble coming in the near future is pretty blind. Of course the unfortunate thing is that reason hardly ever comes to the people of this country until poverty stares them in the face. If the Minister had only seen reason four or five years ago this country would have been saved a great deal of money and trouble. Extravagance, either in private or public affairs, is always the forerunner of financial trouble. Anyone we know throughout our lives who lived in a fast, riotous way, no matter how much money he had at his disposal, suffered a financial crash, and his last state was worse than his first. The extravagance of the present Government is exactly in keeping with that of a wildly extravagant man in the country. They flung money here and there and every where, with the result that the till is almost empty, and to-day they have to look hither and thither to see where they can get extra money. As the Minister for Finance himself said, the till is drying up. I would almost say it is good for this country that it is, because I always said that until Fianna Fáil were not able to jingle two pennies together they would carry on in their wild, extravagant way. Of course, it may be said that they got a majority at the first election, at the second election and at the third election. Of course, we must blame the people for a lot of it; the people, with their eyes open, put this Government into power, and must take a lot of the blame. They threw away the substance for the shadow, and they have been following that shadow ever since.
The Minister for Industry and Commerce came in here with a bombastic kind of speech, and tried absolutely to overpower the whole lot of us. In his wisdom, he knew all things. He even lectured the farmers. A man who perhaps never worked a week outside the City of Dublin in his life, who never perhaps saw a field of turnips or mangolds or potatoes in his life, came in here and told the farmers how they can make money. That is the man who for the last six or eight years has carried on one of the most extravagant policies that this or any other country ever experienced; the man who has been responsible for the starting of wild cat schemes of all sorts, which have turned out to be absolute failures. Not alone were tens of thousands of pounds involved, but hundreds of thousands, or I might say millions. He started off with the alcohol factories, which were huge white elephants. There, hundreds of thousands of pounds went west. Then we had the beet factories—three or four new white elephants. Most of the people who are growing beet tell us they cannot get a living out of it, but of course the Government must go on with their wild cat scheme. They then started the meat factory in Roscrea—another great scheme. It has gone, and a few hundred thousand pounds have gone into the pockets of a few rich gentlemen. Then we had the oil refineries. We were to have crude oil made into all classes of oil. Where are those oil refineries to-day? That scheme has gone, too. Then we had the great scheme of slaughtering the calves—the greatest failure and the greatest curse that ever came to this country. Then the Minister for Industry and Commerce comes in here and lectures us as to what we should do on the land. It would be far better if he would mind his own Department in the way the people want him to mind it.
We were challenged by the Minister for Finance as to what we would do with the social services, and what we would do with the old age pensions. We were asked if we would cut them down. I should like to talk straight on this matter, because I am a member of a board of health, and can see what the social services are. I do stand for decent social services, but I do not stand for wild, mad extravagance. Your social services have been the cause of a good deal of the flight from the land. We know that the social services in the towns and cities are far in advance of the decent people in the country, who should come before the towns and the cities. You have housing—I agree with good housing—you have water, sewerage, lighting, heating and all those things in towns. Is it not a fact that you have gone far too fast as regards those social services? Is it not a fact that, while you are giving those social services to the towns at huge expense to the country, our farmers are in a deplorable state? Their sons and daughters are leaving the land, and going into the towns and cities to get the benefit of those social services. You are building up in this country a huge city—the City of Dublin. Ten or 15 years ago it was quite an ordinary city, but to-day you have here all types of people—country people, city people, internationalists of all denominations and all colours, all coming in here and getting the benefit of our huge social services. They are living here in a grand and joyous manner, while the people who are entitled to at least a fair share of those social services have to go without the necessaries of life. Is it not a fact that, instead of rushing through all those social services at a cost of millions and millions of pounds, it would be far better to have decent bread and butter on the tables of our country people. I believe that if you said to one of those people:—"You are living in a poor old shack of a house to-day. Would you prefer to have a new house, or decent bread and butter on your table and shelter and clothing for your children?" he would say: "I would rather lie at the back of a ditch than do without decent food for my children and myself." No consideration is given to that. While there is all this rush of building, you are making a derelict country of our great and fair land.
I think it is time that a halt should be cried to this mad rush to the towns and cities, for which the Government of this country are directly responsible. How can you expect any decent young man or girl to stay in the poverty-stricken country to-day while they can come into the town where, by the mere turn of a tap, they can get cold water and hot water, where they can press a button and have light, and where they can avail of all the other amenities? Surely to God it is time we woke up and realised that the people in the country cannot have those things. First things should come first. The people who produce on the land are the people who should get the first benefits from this State, but that is not happening. I accuse the Government of being directly responsible for the flight from the land. Of course, one might as well be talking to the wall as talking to some of them, because they know nothing about country life. They would rather swank around in swanky cars out to Bray and Dalkey and Howth. When they go across the Channel you will see travelling by their side their tall hat in its lovely case. They have their spats and white fronts when they skip, through Paris and Rome. I would rather see that tall hat thrown into the Liffey, and see them going to the farmers' homes to find out what they wear. They have not got tall hats. They have ragged old trousers and no hats at all. If they have a hat you can see the hair growing out through it. I would like you to realise that this is going on all over the country, and I say to the eight or nine on the front bench opposite that they are directly responsible for all this. It must stop. The wild Minister of 1932 is now the sober Minister of 1939, standing directly behind the banks and the Banking Commission's Report. That is a big turn over, and I am glad it has taken place, but it has taken place far too late. We in this nation are living beyond our means, and the Government is setting the headline. As individuals we are all living beyond our means, and whether we like it or not, whether we have to come back to "praties and salt" or not, we have got to face the facts and let people know that we realise what ought to be done.
The coming year will bring a financial crisis and it may mean the overthrow of this Government. That in itself would be a disaster, because I believe that the people, with their eyes open, put this Government into office, and I think it is only right to let the Government live through its whole period and let the blister be borne by those who put them in. However, even though we may like to let some people suffer, we have got to remember that there are other people who are being made to come into line. We know that the people who swung the present Government in are an irresponsible section of the community who have nothing to worry about and nothing to lose. I am sorry that the Government—who should be a wise and learned Government—is hearkening to the appeal of that mob. The job to-day is to get away from that section and tell them, as they were told eight years ago, that it is a man's duty to earn his bread by the sweat of his brow and that it is not fair that one section should be living at the expense of another. The farmers are working from morning to night to carry, not only their own heavy loads, but the load of 107,000 unemployed men, on their backs. It is time the Government realised that it must do something to put those 107,000 men working, earning their own living. There is no use in saying that it cannot be done. I say that it can. There should be no idle man in this country except the aged and infirm or those destitute and unable to work. We would like to see the social services extended, but not by way of giving millions and millions of pounds to support idle men.
It is unfortunate to see half of the labour power of this country living as State paupers, going into the towns to get a few shillings for livelihood. They go into the towns, five, six or eight miles, on bicycles, stand around there from morning to night and collect 8/- or 10/-, and yet have not 2/- in their pockets when they come home, because there are too many enticements to get them to spend their money. Instead of bringing it home to hungry families it goes sometimes into the tipster's shop. I say that it is time the Government woke up: they should awaken before it is too late.
We also heard the Minister for Finance tell what the Government is doing in regard to old age pensions, but I accuse the Government of being responsible for the huge number of people who are applying for old age pensions to-day. Twenty or 30 years ago when this Old Age Pensions Act came into force, would any decent son allow the father who had reared him so well apply for 8/- or 10/- to live at the State's expense? No, he would not. Any decent son—especially if his father was decent and had reared him honestly and well—would, in his father's old age, be only too proud to forego many of the necessaries of life in order to keep that man in his old age. However, the whole clamour to-day from all sections of the community is to get something for nothing from the State. For my part, I would love to see such old men have a decent ending after a hard life, but I do not think that it is fair to see every old man begging to the State to get the old age pension. It is unfortunate, and I accuse the Government of the responsibility for it. These people with decent farms of land have been brought to the verge of destruction and are crying for help, and fathers who, in the ordinary course of events, would never dare to look for money to the State, have now got to beg to them for it.
This is the state of affairs to which the Government has brought this country, this Irish country which has cost so much blood and tears in the obtaining of its freedom from the Saxon yoke. Are we sure that it is free? Remember, the Fianna Fáil yoke is more severe than the Saxon yoke ever was. I think it is time that our whole people woke up and realised that our freedom is nothing more than humbug and tomfoolery. It is time that the people of this country were given a chance to earn their living in a decent honest way; it is time to get rid of this idea of State pauperism for 50 per cent of our people; and come back to the old Christian solution that every man has to earn his bread by the sweat of his brow. It is nothing more than ten years of fake nationalism and hypocrisy that has brought us to our present condition. It is "Up the Republic" and "up" this and "up" everything else; and "Up the Republic" put up the price of bread, butter, sugar and other things for the poor man, and down went the unfortunate workman's wages. Yes, we fixed the wages for the labouring man. How many men were the wages fixed for? I know honest and good men who had their wages fixed for them.
That is a matter of detail.
I knew a man who had given eight or ten years of good service to a farmer and the moment that wages were fixed that farmer had to put the man out and take in another man, to whom he could give a smaller wage. There is the result of the fixed wages. It would be far better to let the farmer and the worker go their own way and live their own lives in the old way, when a farmer ploughed the worker's garden, gave him seed to sow, gave him meat for his children and gave him the grass of a cow. The fixed wages destroyed all that, and men have to live to-day in a far worse condition than previously.
No matter what may be said in this House regarding social services or old age pensions, it is all fake and humbug. Every man—whether on this side of the House or on the other side— stands for an honest living for our poor and our infirm, but at present you have the nation looking to the State for assistance. Our people must be brought back to the old principle of self-reliance, with everyone living in his own way without let or hindrance from the hordes of officials who are bleeding the country white. New schemes are brought in and then hundreds of State-paid officials are employed to work those schemes, and the last stage is worse than the first. I say, as Deputy McGovern said, start at the top and pare right down, so that we may be a nation once again, and that as comrades we may govern this country as a Christian State, giving everybody a fair crack of the whip. But you are making it a preserve for a certain type of people, such as the State official who has his big salary and who, at the end of ten or 15 years, can retire with a secure pension and mix in the different social circles and get his family into these circles. That is a vicious circle.
What we want to see is fair play for all the people, whether rich or poor. The only way to do that is to let the people alone, give the people the freedom they had even in the worst British times, so that they can work their farms in their own way. The more you meddled with their affairs, the more you helped to destroy their living, with the result that there is a conglomeration of people who have flocked to Dublin, living in God knows what way, but certainly not in as honest a way as the people in the country. There is a lot of financial "crookery" going on in Dublin. There is a lot of people living very "soft" here. They have £5 to-day and £10,000 to-morrow. Is that just? They are coming from all parts of the earth, so that you do not know what they are. I should like to have a census taken in Dublin to see who are Dublin people. Instead of providing social services for the people who want to flock into the City of Dublin, I should like the Government to stop this game and to get the sons and daughters of the farmers, who flocked to Dublin during the last three or four years, back to the land where they may have a plain and humble way of living, but at any rate, it will be honest.
If we in the country want a servant girl we cannot get one. We may get one for two or three months, but when she has got a certain training she goes off to Dublin or to England, where she has electric cookers, electric irons, electric sweepers, electric fans, and everything else. If she loses her job, does anybody think she will go back to the country where she will have to milk cows or feed calves or scrub floors? No, she will not. The fact is that you want to make Dublin nothing but a city of "dandies." Our young girls are flocking to Dublin and they come back to the country done up with rouge and lipstick and with fancy high-heeled shoes and absolutely set the country people mad. Every young girl in the country of 12 or 14 years is longing for the day when she will be 17 or 18 and can get up to the city and get nicely "done up." These are the things which are facing the country. I know that I shall have to face bad times, as everybody else will, to bring the country back to a decent sense of its responsibility. I should like to see it going back 50 years and starting again in a plain, humble, Irish way and not have all these "stunts." We want to be as good as Paris or London; we want to make Dublin better than the whole lot of them. You have done it, but you will live to regret it.
We are told: "We have our freedom and we have our comforts." Are you sure you have your freedom? Are you sure that John Bull has not got you in his pocket? Are you sure that it was not England's opportunity when she put Fianna Fáil into power to carry on with wild extravagance? You carried on in that way, and to-day John Bull has you in his pocket. You have no money. You must go to Threadneedle Street for a few pounds to carry on your services. John Bull is better off to-day than when he had the British Army here, because you are doing his dirty work. You have impoverished the country and left it financially tied to England. There is no use fighting for freedom now. It is not worth a rap to you. You are at the mercy of the old bully still. I suppose it is good enough for the people who put you there, but they will put you out when there is nothing left. You could have done a good deal in the past to save the country if you wanted to. But, at the behest of your friend across the water, you put up £7,000,000 or £8,000,000 for a huge Army of 30,000 or 40,000 with bombing planes and quick-firing guns. For what? To suit John Bull. You had to smile at him because you had to raise a few millions to carry on the social services. We do not want any armies or bombing planes. What we want is bread-and-butter, and decent comfort in our homes. Instead of big towns and cities we want the people brought back to the country to work with a spade or a plough and live an honest, clean life. Instead of spending money on bombs and guns we should spend it on producing the necessaries of life for our people and for any other people who may need our food.
What you want is straight talking, and you are not getting half enough of it. If you come down to my county in the future and try to tell the people what you have done, I will tell them from the same platform what you really have done. You have destroyed the moral fibre of our people. Twenty years ago we had people who would fight and die for their country and for freedom. Would they do that to-day? They would not. Why should they do it? We see what our freedom has been brought to. It is all sham and humbug. You have brought the country to ruin until it is not worth fighting for. The whole agricultural community is begging of you to do something for them and you will not do it. You provide bombs and guns and aeroplanes, and then you sneer and jeer at the farmers who came to Dublin a few weeks ago to protest in a clean and manly way that they were not getting a fair crack of the whip. You called them perambulating farmers who never did an honest day's work. You came from a foreign land almost—the City of Belfast.
I would remind the Deputy that "you" in this House is assumed to apply to the Chair.
I did not mean that. I meant it directly for one man—the Minister for Finance.
The Deputy must refer to him as the Minister for Finance.
I say it is unfortunate that this country should be burdened with a man like that. He seems to have a fair sprinkling of education, but a large amount of "neck." He calls farmers insulting names such as perambulating farmers. They were behind the plough before he was here and they will be there again. With these few remarks, I shall sit down. I am satisfied that I contributed my share to this debate in my own way and in my own time.
Creidim go mba cheart dom beagán a rádh ar an gceist seo. Tá mé ag éisteacht leis an gcaint seo le seachtain beagnach ón taobh eile den Teach agus creidim nach bhfuil mórán réasúin ná céille sa méid atá siad a rádh. Ní raibh a mbunáite ach ag gearán mar gheall ar gach rud dá ndearna an tAire. Más fíor a ndeir siad ní thiocfaidh leis an Aire tada a dhéanamh i gceart.
Nuair a bhí an dream thall ag stiúrú sa Teach seo chuireadar £5,000,000 sa mbliain go Sasana, agus anois tá siad ag gearán ar an Rialtas seo de bhrigh go bhfuil siad ag coinneál an airgid sa mbaile. Thug an dream thall an t-airgead seo do Sheán Buidhe agus teastuíonn uatha go ndéanfadh an Rialtas seo an rud céanna.
Tá siad ag gearan freisin faoi nach gcuirtear an De-Rating i bhfeidhm sa tír. Ach dá ndéantaí é sin is ag na feilméoraí móra a bheadh an buntáiste agus ní bheadh maith ar bith ann do na feilméoraí beaga nach bhfuil aca ach cupla acra talmhan. Go leor den chaint atá déanta ag na daoine ar an taobh eile níl mé ag rádh gur ag innseacht bréaga a bhíodar ach ní hí an fhírinne a bhí ar bun acu.
Ba mhaith liom fiafruighe cé hiad na daoine atá ag fáil tairbhe as na seirbhísí a chuir an Rialtas seo ar bun. Nach iad na daoine Gaedhealacha bochta iad? Tá neart le n-ithe acu, beagán le n-ól acu agus péire maith bróg ortha. B'éidir gur bróga ísle a bhíos ag cuid acu ach más é sin an faisean caithfear géilleadh dhó. Deir an sean-rádh: "Bí sa bhfaisean no bí as."
Ní maith liom mórán eile a rádh ach ní féidir le fear ar bith bheith ina shuidhe annseo ag éisteacht le go leor den chaint nach bhfuil ciall ná réasún ann. Ní dóigh liom go dtiubhraidh muintir na tíre mórán áird ar an gcineál cainte atá ar siúl ag an dream thall. B'olc an lá ag feilmeóraí beaga na tíre seo dá gcuirtí an derating i bhfeidhm. Beidh aithmheál ortha nuair a fheicfeas siad nach bhfuil aon bhuntáiste le fáil as. Siad na feilmeóraí beaga seo agus na daoine bochta sna cathracha agus sna bailte móra is mó a bhfuil cabhair agus congnamh an Rialtais ag teastáil uatha. Ní dóibh sin a dhéanfadh an de-rating maith ar bith ach do na feilmeóraí móra agus do na daoine saidhbhre. Níl sin ceart agus ní ceart a leitheide a chur i bhfeidhm.
While the Minister has been very inconsistent of late in comparison with his statement of policy of some years ago, there is one thing for which I must give him credit and that is that he is ever and always perfectly consistent in increasing taxation. Year by year, since Fianna Fáil came into power we have a consistent rise in the Budget. Each year the amount is greater. This year the Budget has been very nicely framed with a big increase but it is framed with an eye to politics. The Minister for Industry and Commerce told us yesterday that they did not put an increased tax on boots, that they put it on income-tax, on petrol and on tobacco. It is no trouble to go out and tell the ordinary innocent man in the street "we did not touch you, we are only taxing the rich." If one looks at the history of income-tax one finds that the men who are generally taxed on income-tax do not lose much themselves, personally. To cope with that increase they cut down and lowered all their expenses and they saved what they paid in income-tax in wages and labour or in some way like that.
What the Government is doing is that indirectly they are taking the money out of the pockets of somebody else and not really out of the pockets of the rich. They are very often taking it from the very poorest of the people in this indirect way, the while they are telling the poor man that they are not taxing him. We know how this tax works out in the case of petrol. That tax does not so much hit the man with the car. It affects the big companies, and if we follow the history of those big bus companies we will find that they go on paying dividends just as well after the tax is put on as they did before. It is not these companies who suffer. Who suffers? I think I know who will have to pay the increased fares. It is the ordinary member of the public, the ordinary individual, the poor man who will suffer from this tax when he has to travel on a bus. It is the poor man who will have to pay extra for his goods when these goods are brought to the shopkeeper on petrol-driven lorries. The same thing has been happening for years. Now, if we take the case of tobacco, it will be found that this tax hurts very severely the poor man. The poor man does not smoke cigars. What he smokes is the ordinary common tobacco. That is one of the few things in life that he enjoys. He is not able to afford to go to the pictures or that sort of thing and it is the tax on the ounce or two of tobacco that he smokes in the week that will hurt him. The Government framed the Budget with the idea that they could go out into the street and tell the ordinary man "we did not tax you; we only taxed the rich." I tell the Government that these three taxes that they say are only on the rich will fall most severely on the poor man.
We have only to look back at other Budgets and at the history of the Minister and of this Government to find that nearly everything in the line of food and clothing that could be taxed is so heavily taxed that it cannot bear any more. There has been a tax on sugar, bread, bacon and nearly everything used in the poor man's household. All the things he uses in his house are taxed one way or another. If the poor man does not pay direct taxation to the Government, he pays it to the person from whom he buys his foodstuffs because there is a tariff or tax on nearly everything he uses. Almost everything used to-day by the poor is already heavily taxed and there was not much room for any more direct taxation. Yet the Minister frightens us when he tells us "this may not be the end of taxation this year." He tells us that he may have to bring in another Budget before the end of the year. On account of how things in the world are looming and the dangers of a big war, he tells us there is a possibility of further taxation. I hope that is not a fact. I think the present Budget looks monstrous enough and dangerous enough without having any further taxation.
Yesterday the Minister for Industry and Commerce talked across to this side of the House, harping at Deputies here and asking them: "Do you want to cut the social services?" We do not want to cut down the social services, but it is rather disturbing that their cost should have run so high in this country and, at the same time, strangely enough, everybody who is receiving something from these social services seems to be worse off. It is extraordinary that we should have an increase of millions in the social services and, at the same time, the people are much worse off than they were seven or eight years ago. That is one of the disturbing factors in connection with your whole policy, that the people receiving money from the social services are day by day becoming worse off. That applies to the whole country, and anybody travelling through the country and around the various towns will find that is correct. Even with all the money that is being spent, conditions are not improving and everybody seems to be poor.
We on this side of the House do not stand for the cutting down of social services. We are just as Christian as the people on the other side of the House. In the circumstances that exist, we feel that these social services must continue, but we also feel that there can be, and there should be, some savings made. I hope we are not as mistaken as the Minister for Finance used to be eight years ago when he was here in opposition. At that time he told the Government how they could save money on public expenditure. This year we have a vast increase for our Army. We have the ports we took over from Britain, and we were led to believe that the vast increase for the Army and for those ports is necessary for the defence of the Irish people, at least the people of the Twenty-Six Counties.
I think Deputy Meaney said yesterday that the people on this side of the House did not appear to want to defend this country; that they wanted the British to defend it. That is what I gathered from the Deputy's speech. I may say definitely that if we want this country defended we should consider the position very carefully. What are we putting up defences for, and against whom? What is the idea of modernising ports and forts? We have no navy, and whose ships are we going to protect in those parts if a war comes? We have no ships of our own to protect and I assume that it is British ships that will be protected in these ports, should it be necessary to give protection to any ships. With our country in its present state, not bankrupt but badly impoverished, I say that if those ports are necessary for Britain's defence, let Britain pay for modernising them. The poor people of this country should not be asked to pay for modernising them.
I have no objection to putting up air-raid shelters and protecting the civil population, but I do not believe in building a big army of volunteers and infantry. If I did, I would like to have it built up to ten times the size that it is at the moment. Our Army is no protection to this country against any of the big countries in Europe. I have indicated that our people are impoverished. Building up an army might be one means of taking people off unemployment assistance, but this money should not be spent on an army until our people are better off. I believe that this is one of the things we have to pay for the economic settlement we have had with Britain. I believe this is one of the ways in which we are paying for that, and that it is part of the settlement.
The Minister for Industry and Commerce told us yesterday that we had 140,000 more acres tilled. I would like the Minister for Finance to ask the Minister for Agriculture how much less tillage he is likely to have this year than last year and how much less will we have in the season that follows this one. I am sure the Minister for Industry and Commerce has taken into account the new grasses and the second year grasses. The new grasses sown in most parts of this country last year and the year before have had this effect, that if the people who sowed them can help it, they will never go back to tillage again. I am sorry to see that happening, but it is happening in some of the best of the tillage districts. We have a huge increase in dairy cows.
There is more of the bluff. We are told there is an increase of £30,000,000 in the value of our industrial output. It is extraordinary if we have that increase when we are exporting less in industrial products than we were seven years ago. How does that come about, I wonder? The Minister at one time used to say a lot about factories closing when Fine Gael was in power. He used to quote that repeatedly. We do not hear a word about the factories that are being and have been closed during the term of office of Fianna Fáil.
The Minister for Industry and Commerce says we have not increased our dead-weight debt. Surely, no one will believe that? I take it that our dead-weight debt applies to all the local bodies, as well as to the central government. Amongst the local bodies there has been a huge increase, and it looks to me lately as if it has been difficult for the local bodies to find money. I know of cottage schemes in connection with which everything is ready, and has been ready for over a year, and yet the schemes have not been started. People are pressing for the cottages and the boards of health have approached the Minister, but there is no sign of the houses being built. The dead-weight debt on the local bodies has been brought about by the policy of the Government.
I admit there has been a lot of good work done in the way of house-building, but, because of the Government's policy, each building has cost 30 to 35 per cent. more than it should have cost. Everything that went into each building from the very foundations to the top of the chimney was a third dearer than it should be. I advise the Minister before he raises taxation further to look closely into the cost and utility of the Army and see if it could not be cut down by half. He used to tell us that it was a toy Army and could be reduced to almost nil. The same way with every other public Department. I admit that with the different trend in world events there are perhaps some more inspectors necessary than there used to be, but I still hold that 50 per cent. of the inspectors parading this country are not necessary. That applies to every Department.
I believe that a great deal more than £1,000,000 could be saved, if the Minister examined closely into the different Government Departments, with a view to finding economies. I hold that economies could also be made in connection with the employment of inspectors, who are interfering with the ordinary lives of every man, woman and child in the country. When schemes put up by Departments, and in which inspectors were employed were scrapped these inspectors were not scrapped. They were shifted to some other scheme, and they are still in the employment of the State. The same thing applies to the Government's policy concerning county councils. I say that a big saving could be effected under that heading, and a big saving could also be effected in the Army. If the Minister does not try to effect economies in the future, instead of consistently increasing taxation, there will be a revolt, because the country cannot continue to bear such taxation. I hold that the position of this country is sound, and that it can be saved by not increasing taxation. I believe that that can be done, and it is for the Minister to find a way to do it.
I look upon this as the most disappointing Budget yet brought in by the Fianna Fáil Government. After seven years of office, and after promising the people in 1932 that when they came in they would reduce taxation by £2,000,000, we find that, although we had an economic war for four or five years during the progress of which the Government should be excused, for the increased taxation, the farmers, who were in the front line trenches, and other sections of the community, are now paying the cost. It cost this country a big sum of money and, according to Fianna Fáil, the war was won: It was won at great expense to the people. When a settlement was effected we were told by the Taoiseach, and by members of the Government, that it was a good settlement, and that this country had been saved an annual payment of something like £5,500,000. Surely if this country has been saved that payment annually by the settlement, the people are now entitled to a reduction in taxation. Instead of that we find taxation very much increased, and we must now face a bill for some thing like £35,000,000 to run this country. After the miseries and misfortunes that the farmers went through during the economic war they now find themselves in a worse position. It is always the case after a war that the people find themselves in a worse position for a number of years. That is the position of the farming community here to-day. They find themselves almost bankrupt. It is well known to the Government and to Deputies that the deplorable state of the agricultural community is due to the economic war and to the policy of the present Government.
The same Government has got authority to spend something like £7,000,000 or £8,000,000 of money on national defence. It would be more fitting for the Government to scrap all the talk about re-armament, bombing planes, and anti-war craft guns that are to cost huge sums of money. That money could be better spent by trying to increase agricultural production. It is no wonder that young men and young women who had always got a livelihood in the agricultural industry are flying from the land, seeing that there is no living to be got on it now. Going around the country to-day and visiting farm houses one does not notice two or three sows or 20 or 30 pigs in the farmyards. There are very few pigs in the country. We have now to import bacon from England, and it is selling in Dublin and in Cork at a price that is beyond the capacity of the people to pay. I know for a fact that a piece of Irish bacon has not gone into the homes of some of the working class people in my part of the country for five or six years. If one goes into a retail shop for a pound of rashers the price is 1s. 11d. That is due to the policy of the Government in handing the bacon industry over to a ring. In fact it is costing £80,000 yearly to transport pigs from one county to another. That is a disgraceful state of affairs. We have committees of agriculture in every county, and we have as well the Department of Agriculture, which is costing between £600,000 and £700,000 a year. What are they doing for the bacon industry? The Department and the Minister have ruined the industry.
What have they done to bring back the poultry industry to its former position? Then it brought in £2,300,000 yearly instead of £800,000 for the past few years. This Government, that claimed some years ago to be the Government of the poor man, has raised the price of tobacco, the only luxury left to the poor man. He must now pay 1/7 for two ounces of tobacco in order that we may be able to defend this country from Great Britain. I can see no other reason. I do not know of any other great Power that wants to attack us. The poor man is to be asked to pay one penny more on every two ounces of tobacco so that we can get anti-aircraft guns and bombing planes. It is a wonder the Government did not think of building a fleet. It is also intended to put a tax on imports of bicycle frames. Is it the intention to grant a monopoly to any particular firm or to any group that proceeds to manufacture cycle frames?
Is that in the Budget statement?
I think so.
I think not. It is embodied in one Financial Resolution which the Deputy will have ample opportunity for discussing on the Finance Bill.
Petrol has been increased by 2d. a gallon, and I hold that that is a great burden, particularly on taxi-men who are making their living by their motor cars. They will have to increase their prices, and I believe that that will result in less business for them. As I have said, this is the most disappointing Budget since Fianna Fáil came into office. This year the people expected a reduction in taxation because, as stated by the Taoiseach and members of the Government, this country, by the settlement made with Great Britain, was relieved of an annual payment of £5,500,000. Surely it was reasonable for the people to expect a reduction in taxation as a result of that settlement. I believe that the people will not be able to carry on and to meet all this additional taxation.
We heard a lot about increased social services but I cannot see very much increase in the social service. We have more unemployed to-day than we had seven or eight years ago. You have unfortunate men looking for work and being unable to find it. They have to go four or five miles into the towns to sign three or four days a week for a paltry 10/- or 12/- wherewith to maintain their wives and families. Even men who are working and who are receiving from 30/- to 35/- a week find it impossible to maintain their households owing to the increased taxation. Since this Government came into power, all the necessaries of life have been increased in price, and that has affected the poor especially. Their flour, butter, bread, sugar and bacon are being increased in price. It is impossible for a poor man to go into a shop and attempt to buy bacon now.
In his statement, the Minister explained that the Forestry Department were asking for £186,000 this year. That seems a very small amount. If it were £1,180,000, the money would be well spent because it would be giving employment to men who would be otherwise idling about the country or working for 10/- or 12/- and endeavouring to keep their families on that amount. The sum should be £1,180,000. You will find that, before the end of this month, the Forestry Department will be dismissing their men from all the centres. These men, when they are dismissed and when they make application for unemployment assistance, will be told that they have no business into that office until next October. The only source of employment for them will be on the land. It is well known to the Government that farmers at the present time are not in a position to pay, labour. Deputy Childers, in his speech, suggested that the Government should subsidise farm labour and help the farmers, in that way, to employ additional men on the land. I think that the Ministry should give that suggestion their earnest consideration. The people will not be able to continue for long to meet all the taxation that is being placed upon them. If something is not done for the agricultural community you will have here very soon a state of affairs which it will take more than a Treason Bill to remedy.
The question before us is a very important one. This is the only time of the year when we have a discussion on the general trend of Government policy in its financial aspects and it is only right that matters should be thoroughly criticised. This is the eighth Budget which Fianna Fáil have brought in. The seven previous Budgets were very small compared with the present one. There is something ominous about the figure seven. There are seven deadly sins. There were the seven plagues of Egypt and there were seven previous Fianna Fáil Budgets.
I am very sorry, but this is the eighth Budget.
I was talking about the previous Budgets. It is also said that, when a national calamity befalls a people, the first seven years are always the worst. I was hoping that the seven Budgets we have gone through and the fiscal flagellation we have got from the Minister would have satisfied him and that we would be able to look forward to something better in the future. I am sorry to say that, from the general trend of his remarks and the general spirit in which the Budget was conceived, the outlook is not as bright as we would like it to be. In fact, I think the Minister himself told us that it was one of very great gloom indeed. We should ask ourselves why it is necessary at all to have the impositions upon the people increased to the extent to which they are being increased in the present Budget. No new social services have been created during the past 12 months. Certain provisions have, if you like, been made for defence which, whether it is going to cost us £5 or £5,000,000, will be equally inadequate. This country ought to weigh the matter up very carefully before plunging itself into commitments with regard to defence. However, I am not one of those who would like to see this country defended by anybody else. I think we should defend ourselves if defence be necessary, but I do not think that the time will ever come when it will be necessary for us to defend this country because it would not be worth anybody's while to attack this country except as a jumping-off ground for some bigger operation. That is not likely to happen. We have a neighbour whose future is going to be highly imperilled if there is European conflagration, and it will be up to that country, with its unlimited resources, to defend itself. In the course of that defence, it will necessarily, whether it likes it or not, have to defend us also. It will have to defend us to the extent of preventing this country from being made the jumping-off ground for anybody going to attack itself. Our natural attitude is to keep out of war. At the same time I think the Government is fairly wise—although, from the practical point of view, I do not agree with the steps they are actually taking, with regard to defence—in keeping the position before them; I think they are wise in keeping the people's minds not necessarily alarmed but at the same time fixed on the gravity of the situation surrounding us at the present time.
We are called upon this year to meet a total expenditure—I am quoting the Minister's figures—of £37,716,000. Let us go back to the year 1932, and the seven intervening years. In 1932 the total expenditure was £25,496,419. There is, therefore, £12,000,000 more expenditure in the country this year than seven years ago. Is it any harm to say that the first seven years of the Fianna Fáil Administration were, we hope, the worst? All that time we have deliberately damaged not alone the position of the country with regard to its basic industry, but we have damaged the country very much from the point of view of its credit, and we have mortgaged its future in a very harmful way. The Minister this year is budgeting for a sum of £1,180,000 extra on top of the present taxation. That does not seem a great lot of money, but it appears to me that it is money which could easily be saved if there were careful administration, even with the resources at our disposal and the taxes which are already being collected. We have heard here that this expenditure is due to increased social services. I should like to ask what are those social services? Are there any new social services which were not in being last year? No, but there has been extravagance; there has been bad handling; there has been. I might say, actual mishandling of the social services.
The Vote for Primary Education this year has gone up by £700,000; it has gone from £4,600,000 to £5,300,000, in round figures, and this at a time when schools in the country are being closed down owing to the want of students; when the school-going population of the primary schools has gone down by not less than 42,000 children; at a time when over 700 trained teachers cannot get positions because of the fact that the averages in the schools have gone down, and the number of schools is decreasing. There must be something wrong. Some blame has been thrown on the Labour Party and on some people at this side of the House because we asked for free school books for necessitous children. That certainly would not run away with £700,000. We are told that certain "cuts" are being restored to the teachers. That is not going to run away with £700,000.
How much would it amount to?
The figure is in the Minister's statement, but I cannot quote it now.
I will quote it for the Deputy. The restoration of the "cuts" would cost £174,000.
That is a long way from £700,000.
It is just 25 per cent. of it.
But where is the other 75 per cent? I cannot see that there is any reason why that Vote should be increased by that amount. I do not want to cut down education. It is one of the things on which I should like to see very little parsimony or cheeseparing. Look at the Vote for Unemployment Assistance and the Vote for Relief Schemes. Unemployment assistance and relief schemes run away with £2,250,000. Will anybody here in this House get up and say that that is productive work, and that there is no opportunity there for making some economy? As long as you are paying over £1,000,000 to men in this country to remain idle you will not solve the unemployment problem. The Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Finance told us here that he was at the end of his tether—that he found it very difficult to get useful schemes on which to spend money for the relief of unemployment. When a man with all the energy and the resources of the Parliamentary Secretary finds it difficult to solve that problem, after all the attention, all the care, all the study and application he has given to it, I think it becomes a very serious problem for this country. Those Votes run away with £2,250,000.
If I went through some of the other Votes I think it would be possible to point to some extravagances or mismanagement. At all events this year we are going to spend £37,716,000 as against £25,496,419 in the year 1932. I would ask anybody here in this House now, a year after the economic war ended, to tell us whether this country is in a better position to-day than it was in 1932. I do not think anybody will say that it is. That is not the worst aspect of the case. The capital commitments of this country are enormous. I think the Minister told us in his opening statement that the increase of 48 per cent. in one year is a matter which must be of grave concern to a person in the position of Chancellor of the Exchequer. The position to-day is that the capital obligations of this country have gone up to over £76,000,000. In 1932 they were £48,878,000. There is a big increase there. I say that those obligations have come upon us at a time when the country is getting poorer and poorer. In addition to that, there is the matter of the local authorities' liabilities. Their capital obligations have gone up from £15,750,000 to £28,000,000. We will see, therefore, that this country has been run in a very extravagant way, and has been spending its capital in a way which is not justified by the resources of the country.
I was about to say that I was much impressed by the speech of the Minister for Industry and Commerce; I should rather say that, I was very much impressed by the manner in which it was delivered, and the blatant way in which he tried to put over things which are far from the truth. Whenever I hear the Minister for Industry and Commerce telling us how grand things are in the country, and how buoyant our credit is, I feel that there is something wrong, something which calls for careful examination. He is a remarkable man for making up a fine brass band statement about a bad case. I think he has done so on this Budget. I was impressed by one fact to which he referred—but which he did not live up to, and which this Budget does not square with—and that is the fact that the country should be run in a businesslike way. I should like to see any business which could be run as this country has been run— by eating into its capital, day after day, without building up a reserve of any description. The Minister postulates that there is no bottom to the pocket of the taxpayer in this country. As long as we can keep dipping our hands into other peoples' pockets it is easy to run any country. It is easy to run it in a very extravagant way, without any regard to its resources.
There is one very important point with regard to the resources of this country. There is only one industry in this country which can carry on successfully, and that is the agricultural industry. When this country's gross agricultural output was £67,000,000 our expenditure was only about £25,000,000. To-day the gross output of agriculture is down to £42,000,000, and our expenditure is up to £37,000,000. That £37,000,000 is purely national expenditure. What about the local expenditure? What about the rates raised on the £12,000,000 valuation? I would say that the rate works out at an average of 15/- in this country. If that is computed it will be seen that nearly £9,000,000 are raised in local taxation. That amount must be found on top of this expenditure of £37,750,000 this year. In the seven lean years, about which we have been complaining, our agricultural exports have fallen from £32,000,000 to £13,000,000.
The Minister provided us with an interesting White Paper in which there are several tables. Therein Table VIII is supposed to represent the amount of money that flowed into the pockets of the farmers as a result of Fianna Fáil policy. He does not say this is money given to them, but that it comes directly from ad hoc legislation for the improvement of agriculture. The total with regard to wheat is £1,900,000 which, the Minister says redounds to the credit of the farmer out of what he calls the wheat scheme. It would be interesting to inquire how much of that money is kept in the pockets of the farmer.
Last year we produced 250,000 acres of wheat and I do not think the farmers' share of the subsidy over and above the actual value of the wheat amounted to £3 an acre. On the assumption that it was £3, the farmers got something less than £800,000 out of it. Even £1,900,000, I think, is an under-estimate of the actual amount of money that this wheat scheme cost the country. The present price of flour in this country is really £1 more than the price it ought to be, and we use 2,600,000 sacks each year. That means that the consumers of bread are paying the extra price of over £2,600,000. Instead of calling this a wheat scheme, I think the Government ought to change their minds and outlook and call it a millers' endowment scheme. The millers are getting the full advantage of it. I will concede that the millers have certain financial difficulties, having to provide extra capital and buildings, finance purchases and pay carriage, but, at the same time, when there is a sum of £2,600,000 to play with a lot of it goes into the extra cost of bread. When we realise that the farmer gets only £800,000 over world price as subsidy, there is surely in that way a very nice margin in the balance for the millers.
That is a tax on the people's food— a tax that has not been levied by the Dáil, but which is paid direct by the people in the extra cost of their food. When I stated something about this previously to the Minister he told me there were no taxes on food in this country. Of course, there are no Budget taxes on food—no taxes on tea or sugar (except in so far as imported sugar at 7/11 per cwt. is concerned)—but people are paying extra prices for necessary commodities such as bread, flour, bacon, milk and butter.
I need not deal with the bacon business: that has been dealt with by various other speakers. I will quote one instance that has come before me with regard to the discrepancy between the price of bacon and the price of the pig. The Minister refers to the increase in the value of home-produced bacon to the "producers." And he quotes in Table VIII the figure of £1,300,000. That sum, however, does not go to the farmers at all. I happened to be in a poor town in Kerry, a town very near to the residence of one of the members of this House, Deputy John Flynn. When I was in a little shop I noticed the assistant was selling a pound of rashers and the price was 2/-. Being interested in the business, I made inquiries, asking was it easy to get people to pay such a big price for rashers and the assistant told me that she had to charge that price. Eventually she showed me the invoice from a Trade bacon company and the invoiced price was 170/- per cwt! Now, the top price that the farmers in Kerry were getting for pigs at that time was 63/- per cwt. Between 63/- and 170/- there was certainly something for the "producer" of bacon, but certainly nothing for the producer of the pig. How long will this go on?
Deputy Daly a few minutes ago referred to foreign bacon in Cork. They are actually producing too many pigs in Cork at present and cannot get them cured, and yet we are importing foreign bacon. We have a Pigs Board, and we have had the Minister talking about "perambulating farmers;" but we have "perambulating pigs" now, since it is costing £80,000 per annum to distribute those pigs! Even pigs that may be reared and fattened in one part of the country may be sent 80 or 100 miles away or further to be cured. That is extravagance, and reacts eventually on the consumer who always pays.
My viewpoint is that in addition to the real Budget of taxation falling on the people there are hidden taxes of a hideous kind hitting the consumer of goods, especially foodstuffs, in a very grave way.
The Minister for Industry and Commerce told us yesterday about the great increase there has been in the number of people absorbed into industry. He never told us about the increase in the number of unemployed, nor did he explain why, while there has been an increase in gross output, there has been no impression made on the hard core of unemployment. He has not explained why, if the output has increased, there is no diminution in the number of unemployed. Industrial output is up by over £32,500,000 from 1931 to 1937. That is a very big increase, and yet there are over 100,000 unemployed. Where has all that money gone? On going through the country, there is no evidence to be found in the small towns of any sort of industrial life—they are stagnant and decayed, the population is going and the little trade they had is gone. I will concede that there are certain people in Dublin who are getting monopolies of certain industries, and I must believe from the facts that most of this £32,500,000 extra gross output of industry is finding its way into the pockets of the small select few. This Government is gathering around it a number of people who are battening upon it and upon its industrial policy, men whom I have described in this House as having fingers dripping with the fat of tariffs, who are deriving benefits from the monopolistic policy of the Government.
Industry generally has gone down, the small towns are decaying, Dublin is expanding and a certain small number of monopolies are reaping benefits from the higher prices obtained through hidden taxes that have fallen upon the people for the increased cost of supporting those industries. These new taxes that the Minister has levied in his Budget are indicative of the poverty of the country. Deputy Corry made a statement that he was sorry income tax was not more than it is. That is a reckless, callous, brutal sort of statement for a Deputy to make. No man should be sorry that taxes are not greater. I am sure even the Minister himself is very sad and very worried that it has been necessary to tax anybody. I am sure it is no pleasure to him to extract extra money out of the pockets of the people who are ill able to afford it. That such a statement as that should have gone unchallenged shows the sort of channel into which we are drifting with disregard for the people outside the House.
Income-tax is the one tax which hits every section of the community. It is not alone people with incomes of a certain amount who pay income-tax. It hits industry, because, if trade is saddled with a high income-tax, trade naturally suffers. The industry from which it is extracted suffers. The earning power of the industry suffers; and the employment-bearing capacity of the industry is bound to suffer. So on through the whole gamut of the community. Income-tax is a thing which comes back on everybody, even on those who never knew what income-tax is. Every industry that is saddled with income-tax will suffer by that extra shilling. That extra shilling is nearly 25 per cent. of the existing tax, and one "wallop" of a 25 per cent. increase on an already high tax is sufficient to blister people very much indeed.
The petrol tax is not a luxury tax. In my own constituency there are many people in a small way who, from their savings, were able to buy utility lorries. They are running these lorries for the benefit of the farmers and they are getting a living out of them. This tax, which is going to be extracted from these industrious boys, will fall back on the farmers, whose produce they bring to the market, and on the consumers of goods because the shopkeepers and the merchants in the towns to whom they bring these goods will naturally have to pay more too, to meet the extra running costs. I need not mention the taxi drivers. It will cost the Great Southern Railways £30,000 per year, which will fall on the bus services and the lorry services of the railway and affect employment and the carriage of goods and persons. Here in the City of Dublin, it is not the wealthy people with the extravagant Ministerial salaries who use the buses; it is the poor people. £12,000 more will fall on the buses as a result of this extra petrol tax of 2d., and will be collected in extra fares off the working-class people.
Then the Minister is going to come down on the unfortunate local bodies again for £68,000, which, he stated, they did not pay last year owing to some mismanagement. £68,000 is to be got out of them in increased rates. So that you see the Budget is coming down on top of everyone, and every class in the country. In addition, the Minister is going to raid the Road Fund again. That is a very immoral thing; it is a sort of public misappropriation of money; a sort of trover and conversion: taking money from a fund which should be devoted to special purposes. It is an ad hoc fund, and the money should go for the upkeep of the roads of the country. It should go to relieve the local rates for the maintenance of the roads. But the Minister is going to put it into his own pocket for his own needs. I am sure that the roads will suffer accordingly, and that the local rates will suffer accordingly, because the money must be made up in some other way. The tax of ½d. per oz. on tobacco looks very small, but it is going to be a very serious thing for the poor man. I need not dwell upon it. What I want to bring home is the fact that the £1,180,000 that is going to be extracted in this very hard way by this extra taxation could easily be saved, by a little more careful administration, in the taxes which already exist.
I was glad to see that the Minister, in his statement, did not give us the usual poetic statements about gold ounces, buoyant bullion, etc. He made a nice allusion to our difficulty in trying to steer our barque between Scylla and Charybdis. The unfortunate taxpayer has no alternative. He is between the hammer and the avail. He is between the anvil of hard times and the merciless hammer of taxation, and he has no redress. That is the outlook. I think the Budget is a very bad Budget, and shows very little imagination and very little regard for the actual capacity of the people to pay. It shows an abyssmal disregard of the actual conditions under which we are trying to live at present. To ask this country to meet a national expenditure of £37,750,000 in this year is certainly putting upon it a burden which it cannot bear. It is a very bad Budget, indeed. There are many other aspects of it with which I should like to deal, and from which it should be attacked. But time is pressing. There is plenty of material to show the immorality of it. We had some difficulty in the House yesterday with regard to a quotation from Shakespeare. I should like to use a word in connection with the Budget which may not perhaps be strictly Parliamentary.
Then do not use it.
The word is not a Shakespearean word. It was not even used by George Bernard Shaw. My authority is no less a person than Chaucer. The word is "lousy." I would describe this as a "lousy" Budget.
I suppose I ought, thinking of the tone of this debate, to thank Providence that the economic war is over. We did not hear so much to-day about the beneficial effect which the settlement of that dispute would have on the fortunes of this country. The Opposition has lost what used to be the stock-in-trade of debate here in the Dáil, and I, for one, think that the standard of debate has improved in consequence. Within the limits of exaggeration, which I suppose are excusable in Parliamentary discussion, this debate has not been lacking in usefulness. Perhaps, listening to each other, we may learn a great deal. One thing I am sure we may learn, one thing which we ought to take to heart and remember is, that in matters of public expenditure we cannot eat our cake and have it too. We cannot have increased expenditure, no matter how laudable the purposes, and, at the same time, keep down taxation, no matter how vexatious the burden. We must learn that, as matters are so ordered by Providence, if we want things in this world, or indeed in the next, we have to pay for them.
Deputy Cosgrave has described this Budget, not in the Chaucerian term of his colleague Deputy O'Neill; he has not applied to it the mediæval adjective "lousy"; he has described it in terms of latter-day politics as a popular Budget. He said it was a popular Budget, but a bad Budget. Words of praise from Deputy Cosgrave are rare, and I suppose I ought to be grateful for his acknowledgment that the Budget is acceptable to the masses of the people. In the same breath, however, as I have said, Deputy Cosgrave also described it as a bad Budget. Why has Deputy Cosgrave so described it? I presume because, in order to maintain the existing services, it has been necessary to increase greatly existing rates of taxation. That, in Deputy Cosgrave's view, makes the present Budget a bad one. Very well. But, think how much worse that Budget would be if Deputy Cosgrave had his way. He wants full derating. Derating, as the House is aware, is an expedient which is designed to help the large landowner at the expense of the less fortunate elements in the community. Full derating would cost the Exchequer and the taxpayer an additional £2,000,000 per annum.
If the Government were prepared to endow a section of the landowners to the tune of £2,000,000 a year and, at the same time, to maintain the existing services, as I presume Deputy Cosgrave and his Party would pretend to do at any rate, they would have not merely to increase the standard rate of income-tax by 1/- but by 3/- in the £ and, in addition to an increase in the tax on petrol and on tobacco, they would have to put a further 1/2d. per lb. on sugar and perhaps 4d. per lb. on tea. That is the sort of Budget Deputy Cosgrave and the Fine Gael Party want. If our Budget is a bad one, because we have had to increase the existing rates of taxation, what sort of Budget would Deputy Cosgrave's Government have introduced if they were in power at the present moment and had to find an additional £2,000,000 in order to endow the large landowners of this country at the expense of the least fortunate elements in the community? In regard to this matter of expenditure and taxation—I am sorry that Deputy Davin is not in the House, for in this matter he is a mere can tied to the Opposition tail— the Opposition and Deputy Davin should stop trying to face both ways. It makes them look too much like the well-known Petrol Shell advertisement of "Crikey," and "Crikey" cannot be described as a thing of beauty or of dignity. It is striking, and striking only because it looks so supremely ridiculous.
In introducing the Budget I pointed out the purpose for which revenue was required. I enumerated the services upon which it was proposed to spend the money. I challenged the Opposition to state whether they were against any of these services and whether they were prepared to economise in respect of any one of them and, if so, to name which of them. There are over 70 services in the Volume of Estimates. Some of these services are perhaps less necessary and less desirable than others. Obviously if a Deputy or a number of Deputies or the Leader of the Opposition, speaking for 40 per cent. of the Deputies of the House, thinks that the expenditure upon these 70 services, taken as a whole, can fairly be described as squandermania, there must be some amongst these 70 services on which, in his opinion, and in the opinion of the members of his Party, expenditure could be reduced and therefore ought to be reduced.
Surely Deputy Cosgrave—when he accused this Government of squandermania—when he said that, he meant that on certain services money was being needlessly and wastefully spent, and that were it not for this fact the additional taxation which has been imposed this year would not be necessary. If words mean anything to him, if Deputy Cosgrave believes that, if his statement represents his considered judgment on the merits of these services, he can render a first-class public service which, I am sure, will appeal to those hard-driven farmers for whom Deputies O'Neill, Hughes, Corey and Brooke-Brasier have been speaking. In fact, if Deputy Cosgrave, when he stigmatises all our present policy in regard to public expenditure as squandermania, is justified, he has it in his power to render a first-class public service. It lies with the Deputy to save the taxpayer from additional taxation. Will Deputy Cosgrave or the members of his Party do that service for the taxpayers? They have accused us of squandermania. Surely they ought to stop talking in polysyllables, come down to hard facts and say in simple language: "Here is a service upon which so many hundreds of thousands of pounds can be saved; here is another service; here is still another, and let the Government save the money on those services and let the taxpayer keep his money." If the Deputy does that, if those who had been talking here about squandermania and about the burden of taxation get up here in this House and state openly what service they would save the money on, their words will receive the serious consideration of the Government and—what is perhaps more important in view of the fact that feeling in a constituency is shortly to be tested—it will receive the serious consideration of the electorate.
Since his attack on the Budget, the taxpayers of the country have been waiting for Deputy Cosgrave's words. Will he not speak out and save them? Not at all. Deputy Cosgrave prefers that the taxpayers should continue to suffer. The Deputy seems to be animated with the same sort of vindictiveness against the electors who turned him out of office and put us into power. That was from his follower, as Deputy Giles seems to be. Deputy Giles says the taxpayers, the farmers and the farm labourers put in the Fianna Fáil Government.
Deputy Giles says what these people are getting now is good enough for them. That would appear to be the position which Deputy Cosgrave takes up in this matter. He seems to feel a spirit of vindictiveness towards the taxpayers. We have the fact that though he feels there are services on which economies could be made, and the removal of which would relieve the taxpayers, yet he refuses to open his mouth and state what these services are, and so save the taxpayers that burden. His reply to my plea that he should speak, has been to maintain a sullen silence. He proclaims that he has no responsibility for the Budget.
That will not do. The Opposition cannot wash its hands of this matter. They, too, have a responsibility for the conduct of affairs here. They bear an equal responsibility with Deputies in other parts of the House. Like them, they receive a Parliamentary allowance to do the country's work, and that allowance is not being granted to them merely to enable them to pose as Pilates in Irish politics. They have a responsibility, and a great responsibility. Let them act up to that responsibility and tell us what economies they think ought to be made, what economies they would make. It is, of course, and I quite admit it, the function of the Minister to keep expenditure within bounds, but to do that the Minister must be supported by the Dáil and by public opinion against the unreasonable demands which from all sides are made upon the Exchequer from time to time. When I was in opposition I did tell the people of the country that in my view they were paying too much and they were being taxed too heavily to maintain the then existing public services.
What about the £2,000,000 that you were to save?
I am just coming to that, Deputy Hughes. As I said, when I was in opposition I often urged the Government of the day not to spend all the money they were taking from the people in maintaining the then existing public services. Statements which I made when in opposition have often been quoted here. They were quoted during this debate. I urged that expenditure should be reduced, but I did not content myself with that. I went on to specify the services upon which, in my view, economies could be made, and this Government, since it took office, has made these economies and has fulfilled its pledge in that regard to the letter.
Deputy Brennan, I think, quoted a speech which I made in 1930 or 1931, in which I said I would not touch the public services, but that there were sources of expenditure which could be cut off completely, and that if we came into office we would cease to make the payments and thereby would save for the people a sum of over £2,000,000. What were the services and the economies which I advocated? There was, first of all, in Vote 16 of that day, a sum of £1,152,000 for the pensions of the Royal Irish Constabulary. There was a sum of £110,000 for civil pensions. There was in another Vote, Vote No. 8, for local loans, a sum of £600,000 paid over to Great Britain, and on the Vote for the Land Commission there was a sum of £134,000 for Bonus and Excess Stock paid over to Great Britain. There were a number of other small items, totalling £84,000. All these moneys, in addition to the land annuities, were collected from the taxpayers of this country and paid over to Great Britain. Excluding the land annuities, apart from them, they totalled £2,080,000.
When we were in Opposition we protested against the attitude of the Government of the day in maintaining these services, and thereby imposing unnecessary taxation. We pointed out that £2,000,000 too much were being taken from the people. We specified the services upon which we were prepared to economise. We came into office and we have made these economies. Our pledge in regard to the £2,000,000 has been fulfilled to the letter. We no longer tax the people to the extent of £1,152,000 to pay over to Great Britain; we no longer tax the people in order to find £600,000 to pay over for the local loans; we no longer tax the people in order to find £110,000 to pay to Great Britain in respect of civil pensions; we no longer tax the people in order to find £134,000 to pay in regard to bonuses and excess stock to Great Britain, and we do not find another £84,000 in regard to a number of small annuities paid under the Ultimate Financial Settlement.
We have stopped taxing the people for those purposes. We have not stopped taxing the people for the purpose of improving the social and educational and other services. We have known that we were in charge of a young, undeveloped country, a community which had not had the power to order its affairs for centuries; that there were many things that would have to be done in this country, and that vast sums of money would have to be spent in order to provide for our people the amenities and services which people in other European countries have come to regard as the ordinary commonplaces of everyday life. These things had to be done here. We had to make good the defects and deficiencies of centuries of foreign rule, and accordingly we have had to ask the people to tax themselves more heavily in order that they might provide these things for themselves. But so far as our original pledge, that there were certain services upon which we would save £2,000,000 per annum, was concerned, I have said, and I will reiterate it, that that pledge has been fulfilled to the letter.
Were the people taxed to pay that £600,000 for local loans?
They were, of course.
And were the local authorities the collectors?
Oh, I see. The supposition is that if the local authorities act as tax collectors, that the people are not taxed. Surely the local authorities did not find the money out of their own pockets? What is the difference between the ratepayer and the taxpayer except that the rates or the local tax is levied on property and it is distinct in that respect from ordinary taxation?
But they are being paid still. What were they relieved of if they are still being paid?
They are relieved by the considerably increased grants that the local authorities are getting.
Why do you still collect them, if you do not pay them?
Because they belong to the people of this country, and the amount which we are collecting in respect of local loans is very much less than the £600,000 which was paid over to Britain, and Deputy Corish knows that even at the time our predecessors were in office the amount which the local authorities were paying over to Great Britain in respect of local loans did not amount to much more than two-thirds of the full amount. The amount is very much less now.
I only intervene to say there was a difference between £600,000 for Local Loans and ordinary taxation.
I say that the local authorities are getting many compensations in respect of any money they are now paying. They are building for themselves valuable properties. There is not a local authority that is trying to give effect to the Government's policy with regard to housing, which is not providing itself with an income earning asset towards which the Government is contributing more than 50 per cent. of the cost. The Deputy knows that as well as I do.
Taxing the ratepayers further.
Will the Minister say at what period they will be income earning assets?
As soon as the local authorities have paid off 43 per cent. of the cost of the properties.
Does the Minister not know that the local authorities are also subsidising these properties?
The trouble about some of them is that some of these local authorities are like suckling babes. They are depending upon the Government to spoon-feed them instead of doing something for themselves.
Mr. Walsh
Are not local authorities being provided with very valuable assets? That cannot be denied.
The local authorities are a valuable asset to the banks. It represents £200,000 in Westmeath.
If some of the ratepayers we know of in Westmeath would pay their rates, there would be no need for overdrafts.
Westmeath is the third best paying county in respect of rates.
I was saying that when we came into office we made economies to which we had pledged ourselves. Deputy Cosgrave implies— though he will not specify them, if he knows them—that there are economies that could be made. When asked what was his remedy for the present situation, instead of telling us what these economies were and asking us to make them and to reduce taxation to correspond, he said his only cure for squandermania was to turn out the Government.
If Deputy Cosgrave believes in himself, what a prospect faces the taxpayers. "Turn out the Government," he says; but the electorate have put us here, one might say, for another four years. Deputy Cosgrave's attitude towards the taxpayers is that since they put this Government here for four years more, let the taxpayers, in his view, endure the penance for another four years. If he wants that period shortened, if he wants to relieve these taxpayers in whom he expresses so much concern, then, I think the Deputy ought to open his mind a little more. He ought to tell the country what economies he would make if it took him at his word, turned out the Government, and put him in office. When the Deputy has been as candid and as open with the country, as I think the Leader of a Party that wants to take over the existing Administration ought to be, then the electorate will be able to judge the issue and, I am sure, come to a wise decision.
Why are the increased rates of taxation necessary? Deputies Murphy, Gorey, Bennet, Belton and O'Neill, and Jeremiah Ryan say that the need for increased expenditure on national defence is the principal cause. Deputy Gorey took up the challenge which I offered, and was good enough to say that one of the services on which he would economise would be on the provision for national defence, and that he would let that £3,000,000 is defence go. But the money required for defence is not all coming from immediate taxation. £1,350,000 is being borrowed. A certain amount, undoubtedly, must be provided out of present taxation. But that fact—and I want to emphasise it—of itself does not necessitate an increase in the rates of taxation which we have had to propose this year.
Even if the additional need of national defence did of itself involve us in the increase of rates that we have had to make, let the House ask itself: Should we shirk that expenditure? Deputy Daly has told us what his point of view in regard to that question would be. The Deputy is in agreement with Deputies Belton, Gorey and Bennet, and suggests that we should. The British, these Deputies say, will defend us! Let us rely upon the British. That is a doctrine fit only for spineless slaves. We pride ourselves on our fight for freedom. We, and our fathers before us, have made many sacrifices for that cause. We have secured our absolute sovereignty over five-sixths of our ancient territory. There is a danger that, in certain circumstances, our territory or our commerce or those communications which are vital to us might be endangered. Are we not, within the limit of our resources, to put ourselves in a position to defend them if they are menaced? Self-preservation, it has been said, is the first law of nature. Self-defence is the first obligation which that law imposes on men, and particularly upon free men, and equally upon States and nations. It is a law that carries with it its own sanctions. It cannot be disregarded with impunity, particularly by a nation reborn to freedom as ours has been. If we are not prepared to shoulder the burden of our own defence, make no mistake about it, our fate may be such as befell other nations which, in Europe, recovered their freedom after years of struggle, but were not able to consolidate that freedom, and unfortunately were not prepared to make sacrifices to maintain it.
The adequate defence of our country is necessary for our own welfare. It is essential to the preservation of our liberty, and it cannot, on any account, be neglected. It must be attended to for the sake of our own people, and for our own interests above everything else. The matter, however, is not quite so simple and autonomous as that. Our defence problem is a complicated one. The adequate defence of this country is essential, not only to safeguard our freedom and our interests, but to obviate possible danger to a mighty and powerful neighbour, with whom, let it be at once admitted, we have certain economic interests in common. Deputies Belton, Bennet and Daly said that the defence of this country is a vital concern of Great Britain. All who have given the matter serious thought must agree. I do, at any rate. Therefore, Deputy Belton says: "Let the British defend us and let us save the money." How simple! That is just the sort of him-bugging catch cry that Deputy Belton delights in.
But how might the British respond if we were to adopt that sort of attitude? Might they not say: "The Irish want to have it both ways. They want to be free but they will not accept the obligations of freedom. They will not tax themselves to defend themselves. They want us to tax ourselves and do it for them. If that is to be the position, since we have to defend the Irish Beltons, the Irish Bennetts, the Irish Goreys and all the poltroons who say that the Irish are too poor or too miserly to defend themselves, let us do it in the cheapest way, in the way which will be most effective for our own purposes; let us go back to Ireland and reoccupy those strategic points in that country which we regard as vital to our defensive scheme."
That is what is really implicit in all the talk we have heard here from Deputy Belton and those like him who are trying to induce the people to believe that the defence of this country can be safely entrusted to the imperial forces. Deputy Belton and his colleagues know that as well as I do. They are not simpletons and they are not fools. They are not so ignorant as the poor people whom they wish to dupe and gull. If Deputy Belton and Deputy Davin are sincere when they say that we should spend no money on defence but leave it all to the British, then the only reason these Deputies take up that attitude is because they want the British back. That is what Deputy Belton wants in his heart of hearts. They tell us to spend no money and to leave the defence of this country to the British. What they want in their heart of hearts, if they are sincere when they put that catch-cry before the taxpayers, is to have the British back.
Go back to Belfast and put them out of there.
You could not stop them with 30,000 men.
Put them out of Belfast.
Order!
I did more to put them out of this country than Deputy Davin did.
If you go back, they will get out of it more quickly.
We do not want the British back and I am sure that the common people of this country—whatever Deputy Belton, Deputy Davin, Deputy Bennett and some of their associates may think and desire—do not want the British back, either.
They would not take a present of us.
The people are prepared to tax themselves in order to defend themselves—to stint themselves to the very limit if need be to preserve the liberties which they have won so dearly. But let me repeat that it is not because of the defence forces alone that we have had to increase taxes. The need has arisen from other sources. I shall try to put them before the House.
In my Budget statement I referred to the White Paper of Estimates of Receipts and Expenditure which had been circulated on the preceding Saturday—in time to allow Deputies who wished to take an intelligent part in the discussion upon the Budges to study the figures carefully. That Paper has not once been referred to from the Opposition side in the course of this debate. Yet there set out in black and white, plain to be seen, was the principal reason why it has been necessary to increase rates of taxation this year. In the first table of Part II of this Paper, circulated for the information of Deputies by the Government in accordance with the Constitution, it is shown that the tax revenue on the basis of the rates of taxation in force prior to the introduction of the Budget was expected to be £676,000 less than it was last year—the then existing taxes, it was estimated, would, for a variety of reasons, bring in £676,000 less than they did in the year 1938-9. Now the Opposition, because they are supposed to be the watchdogs of the taxpayer, might urge that, since the revenue was going to be so much less —then, at least, there were some things in regard to which we ought to make economies. Again I ask them, what economies are we to make? Deputy Cosgrave has refused to tell us. If he would tell us perhaps we could obviate the need for putting a further 1/- in the £1 upon income-tax. As I pointed out to the House, revenue upon the basis of last year's rates of taxation is going to be £676,000 less than it was last year. An additional 1/- in the £1 on income-tax brings in £660,000. If the Opposition know of any economies which could properly be made, if they tell us what they are and we can make them, and they total £676,000, we can save that additional shilling on the income-tax. If they will not tell us, if the Dáil will not help us in the matter of economies, then we have no option but to impose taxation to maintain the existing services—those services which the country, as represented here in the Dáil not merely by those who support the Government but by those sitting on the Opposition Benches, tells us it wants.
How can the Government be responsible for the short-fall in revenue which we have to face this year? We did not create the September crisis. We did not march into Czecho-Slovakia. We had nothing to do with the Austrian Anschluss. But everybody knows that since this crisis developed in international affairs last September, business everywhere—not only here, but in every country—has tended to retrogress. That is inevitable in the atmosphere of uncertainty and dread which hangs over Europe. We suffered from it here in many ways. Dividends have been reduced. Former stock exchange gains have been replaced by heavy losses. Sweepstakes have declined. Therefore the yield from taxes upon property and income, and from the duties in respect of stock exchange transactions must decline next year likewise. We cannot cook the figures.
I was told by Deputy O'Neill that there was little imagination in the Budget. There can be little imagination in any Budget, because you do not pay for the public services out of imagination. Therefore, looking back at the year which has elapsed since the last Budget was introduced, seeing how trade everywhere has been stifled by, as I have said, present international fears knowing that incomes have declined, what else can we do but look the facts in the face? And so next year out of the existing taxes we are going to get £676,000 less than last year. Therefore, if the public services are to be maintained, the only thing that is left for us to do is to increase the rates of taxation so as to make good that short-fall of £676,000. That accounts for more than half of the additional taxation which is imposed in this year's Budget.
What were the other reasons why taxation had to be increased? The second principal reason for the increase in the rates of taxation is the additional sum which must be provided this year out of revenue for export subsidies on agricultural produce. For what purpose is that money being provided? We have been told about the poor prices the farmers are getting for their milk, not by Deputy Mulcahy.
I told you what the people were paying for butter as a result of your policy.
He talks about the high prices the consumer has to pay for butter.
And for bacon.
But Deputy Mulcahy's understudy—I believe that is what he is in the councils of the Party —Deputy Bennett, comes along and makes a wail here, sets up a sort of banshee cry, about the poor prices dairy farmers in Limerick are getting for their milk. In any event, one of the reasons why we have to impose increased taxation this year is that we are spending £606,000 out of revenue for the purpose of providing amongst other things £434,000 for subsidies on exports of dairy produce. Deputy Mulcahy has not advocated that we should refrain from providing that money. Oh, no; he would split his Party if he did. He split it before when he tried to get the Fine Gael Party to walk into the division lobby against the Dairy Produce (Prices Stabilisation) Act.
I am asking you to admit that you are making the people of this country pay an exorbitant price for butter in order that the British people may get their butter cheaper.
In any event, £430,000 is being provided out of taxation this year for subsidies on exports of dairy produce. A sum of £160,000 is being provided for subsidies on exports of eggs and poultry. Whether the subsidy on dairy produce finds its way into every farmer's household or not, I do not know. I am told its reactions are very widespread indeed, that it is not merely the dairy farmer in Limerick that is getting the benefit of it, but also those who are rearing and selling cattle everywhere. In any event, here is an item of £160,000 provided for subsidies on exports of eggs and poultry, and undoubtedly a due part of that finds its way into every farmer's household, and also into the households of agricultural labourers in this country. Again, a sum of £12,000 is provided for subsidies on exports of potatoes and other agricultural produce. There we have a total of £606,000, all for the benefit of the farmer, to help him, to stimulate production by assuring him of remunerative prices. Last year only £222,000 was provided out of revenue for this purpose. As I have said, this year we have to provide £606,000. That is to say—and let those who have been talking clotted nonsense and saying that nothing is being done for the farmer, note it—£384,000 more has to be provided this year for the farmers than was provided last year.
Then for educational purposes, for teachers and such like, we require £106,000 more than last year. We want as well an additional £50,000 for the reconstruction of national schools, making £156,000 more for education. Am I to be told, by those who tell us that we are doing nothing for the farmers, that that is an unnecessary expenditure, that the farmers get nothing out of it when we provide better schools for their children and better educational facilities?
Nothing at all.
After all, the bulk of our people live in rural communities. The bulk of our people go to primary schools, and that is what the bulk of this money is being provided for: to give them more teachers and better schools, or to provide their children with free school books or free school meals.
And there are less children.
That may be, but what we are discussing at the moment is the provision of this additional money. If the Deputy is logical, if I am to grasp anything of his mind from that remark, then I presume the line of argument is that, since there are less children, there should be less money provided for education.
The money should be spent on seeing that there are more children first.
There should be less money spent on Irish, anyway. You have the children of the country destroyed with so much Irish.
I do not know how Deputy Mulcahy wants me to work out that last suggestion, that the money should be spent on seeing that there are more children first. Last year the Land Commission required £1,645,000. This year we have to find £1,792,000 or £147,000 more. This too, has to be found out of new taxation. Although we have heard a great deal about additional taxation, I have not heard any person coming along here—certainly I have not heard anybody on the Opposition Benches—to say: "You ought to cut down expenditure on the Land Commission." We could save money, if they were prepared to accept that proposition. But not at all! That is not the line the Opposition ever take in regard to any possible occasion of public expenditure. They are always crying out for more and more money.
What do all the four heads which I have read out amount to, when you tot them up? We have, first of all, in order to make good the anticipated deficiency in the revenue arising out of the international situation, to get £676,000. Then for additional export subsidies on agricultural produce we require to find out of revenue an additional £384,000. For educational purposes we must find out of revenue an additional £156,000 and for the Land Commission we must find out of revenue an additional £147,000.
What about the saving you should show from the halved annuities which you now receive?
These four headings together, total £1,363,000 and, let me add, these sums include nothing for administration per se. Every penny of the extra £384,000 provided for the farmers in export subsidies will go to the farmers.
What is the total?
Every penny of the extra £156,000 provided for educational services will go for the benefit of the teachers or of the schools or of the children. Every penny of the extra £147,000 provided for the Land Commission will be spent for the benefit of the allottees under the Land Acts. These three items that I have enumerated come to £687,000. If we could economise on them, we could avoid taxation.
What is the total amount of the annuities?
Deputy Cosgrave says that we are over-taxed. He has told the people of this country that the present Budget is a bad Budget because it overtaxes them. Which of the three services I have just specified would Deputy Cosgrave economise upon?
How did the farmers live before you came into office?
If the Deputy could keep expenditure on these three items down even to last year's figure he could save £687,000—£27,000 more than the extra shilling on the income tax will bring in. If he would keep even the export bounties down to last year's figure he would save £384,000, or £50,000 more than is represented by 6d. on income tax, or £70,000 more than the additional 2d. per gallon on the petrol, or £40,000 more than twice the additional tax on tobacco would bring in. I heard Deputy Daly and Deputy Giles making a sad story about this tax on the poor man's tobacco. The Deputy told us that the amount—I think he said—that the poor man would have to pay would be 1/7 for his two ounces of tobacco in a week. There you are. The Deputy can save not merely the poor man's 2d. per week, but he can save £40,000 more if only he could persuade everybody in the country——
That is your job.
Not at all. It is the business of the Opposition to show where this taxation is unnecessary. That is the purpose of an Opposition.
What did you say when you were in opposition?
Order!
What about the £2,000,000?
Order!
I said that we could save the £2,000,000, and I showed where we did save it, but I am now telling the Deputy, who is so sad about the poor man's tobacco, that he can save that poor man 2d. per week, and have £40,000 more in addition, if only he can persuade, first of all, his Party, and then the majority of the Dáil, that this £384,000 we are providing for export bounties and subsidies could be done without.
Could you not take off your own pensions and reduce salaries and allowances?
We have not any pensions, and the less the Deputy talks about the matter the better.
It is a shame and a disgrace to have these pensions.
If the Deputy ever merited a pension I am damned sure he would draw it.
I would not draw it. That is where you could save, and not on the poor man's ounce of tobacco.
Order!
Now, I am saying, Sir, that the Opposition cannot have it both ways. Either they stand for this additional expenditure, and therefore accept responsibility, with us, for the additional taxation which is required to defray it, or else they ought to have dissociated themselves from the proposals to incur these increased expenses when they were submitted to the Dáil. Opposition Deputies— Deputy Cosgrave and his colleagues— who have spoken against this Budget, did not take any such stand on behalf of the taxpayers about whom they now pretend to be concerned. On the contrary, they approved, without a division, the Votes for Education, the Land Commission, and the Export Subsidies. They wanted the additional expenditure on these services six weeks or two months ago, and they, as well as we, have the responsibility for finding the money to pay for them now.
They, with the rest of the Dáil, must take responsibility for the additional £687,000 which these services represent in additional taxation this year. I hope they will take the responsibilities more seriously than they have done in this debate: take them as seriously as I do, and look at the future in the light of the present strained conditions in Europe with an apprehension similar and equal to mine. Then we shall have here an Opposition worthy of the name and fit to play the important part which an Opposition should in a parliamentary assembly. Then we shall have an end to the irresponsible pandering to every sectional interest which has been the keynote of the Opposition policy here. Deputy Mulcahy will then stop complaining about the price of butter in an attempt to work up resentment among butter consumers in the towns, while at the same time another member of his Party, Deputy Bennett, as I have said, tries to curry favour with the dairy farmers of Limerick by complaining that the price they get for their milk is too low.
Deputy Gorey, in an endeavour to work up feeling among the farmers, protested in this debate against the social services. When the Party of which he is a member—and a valuable member, because he speaks his mind and is a man of courage—becomes a really responsible Opposition, with some principle and some backbone, he will refrain from doing that so long as Deputy Dan Morrissey, who sits at the further end of the Front Opposition Bench, rises and, seeking the support of certain Labour elements in Tipperary, is permitted by Deputy Gorey's Party to demand further expenditure upon the very services against which Deputy Gorey has protested. When the Opposition become really responsible we may even have Deputy Dillon, whose view of the sugar beet industry has been succinctly expressed by himself in a word of one syllable, telling the House—members of his own Party and his ally on this side of the House— when they complain that an insufficient price is being paid for beet, that their statements are all "cod".
Opposition Deputies have pointed out that, if it had not been for the failure of a number of beet growers to enter into their usual contracts for beet acreage this year and last year, the position of the Exchequer would have been worse. That is quite true. If the acreage under sugar beet last year and this year was what it might have been if the growers had been better advised, we should have had to impose, not merely the additional 1/- on income-tax, the extra 2d. a gallon on petrol, and the further ½d. per ounce on tobacco, but we should have had to put, perhaps, as much as 3/4d. on sugar as well. Now, there is a moral in that, and a warning for those who are interested in beet growing, not to kill the goose which lays the golden eggs.
The Minister might advise Deputy Corry.
The short-sighted politicians who have got control of the Beet Growers' Association are fast doing that.
The goose killers!
The Minister should give the advice to Deputy Corry.
Deputy Hughes had better take it, too.
I have nothing to do with it, but Deputy Corry has.
By their actions, they have led many farmers not to grow beet at a price which a competent tribunal fixed as a fair price. What has been the consequence? Thousands of farmers who were misled by the wild and unjustified statements, such as those we have heard here from one or two Deputies, lost the profits on the best paying crop in their rotation, but the general taxpayers profited to the extent of over £500,000.
God help the other crops if that is so.
If the farmers, by listening to the politicians, have lost profits which might have been theirs, the taxpayers have escaped an extra ¾d. per lb. on sugar this year. There is a moral in that for all of us—never to go on strike for an unreasonable demand, particularly where your opponent, in the case to which I have been referring, the sugar consumers of this country, has nothing to lose, but everything to gain by your strike. The Government has been anxious to establish the sugar beet industry here and has been prepared to do that at a not unreasonable price, a price which the consumers, who, in regard to this matter, include in their number over 90 per cent. of the 500,000 or 600,000 families, farmers and farm labourers, who have to live in rural Ireland, have to pay. If the existing factories were working to capacity, the consumer, at the present rate of subsidy, would be paying £1,500,000 more for his sugar than the price at which he could get it elsewhere.
Even as it is, he is paying £1,000,000 more than he might. Those who control the Beet Growers' Association ought to be satisfied with that. They ought to stop mixing politics up with beet growing, and leave the decent, hard-working farmers to get everything they can by honest labour out of this industry which the country is subsidising so heavily. And that applies likewise to all the demands that are now being made, of one exorbitant kind or another, upon the Exchequer. If we are going to carry on here as a democratic community we have got to get a sense of responsibility among public representatives. We have heard, in the course of this debate, that the Government is not doing enough for this, that or the other sectional interest. Every ramp against the community which is started for no matter what purpose and no matter by whom, is supported by the Opposition because of the political advantage which may be got out of it. That, as I have said, is the rot of democracy. That attitude by political Parties is sapping the morale and character of this people. We have had a very serious Budget to face this year. I hope it awakens us all to a sense of our responsibilities——
We all hope so.
——and that we make up our minds that henceforward, instead of holding out the Exchequer and the general community as a sort of milch cow to be milked dry, we are prepared to say to our people that times are going to be serious in Europe, that even if the present crisis were to pass without war, and even if there were to be a peaceful settlement, the economic reactions of that settlement will be so severe that every one of us must tighten his belt and live within his means, and try, by hard work and industry, to make what provision we can for ourselves by our own efforts. That is the moral of this Budget.
Tá
- Aiken, Frank.
- Allen, Denis.
- Bartley, Gerald.
- Beegan, Patrick.
- Boland, Gerald.
- Brady, Seán.
- Breathnach, Cormac.
- Briscoe, Robert.
- Buckley, Seán.
- Carty, Frank.
- Childers, Erskine H.
- Corry, Martin J.
- Crowley, Tadhg.
- Derrig, Thomas.
- De Valera, Eamon.
- Flynn, Stephen.
- Fogarty, Andrew.
- Fogarty, Patrick J.
- Friel, John.
- Fuller, Stephen.
- Gorry, Patrick J.
- Harris, Thomas.
- Hogan, Daniel.
- Humphreys, Francis.
- Kelly, James P.
- Kelly, Thomas.
- Kennedy, Michael J.
- Kissane, Eamon.
- Lemass, Seán F.
- Little, Patrick J.
- Loughman, Francis.
- Lynch, James B.
- McDevitt, Henry A.
- McEllistrim, Thomas.
- MacEntee, Seán.
- Maguire, Ben.
- Meaney, Cornelius.
- Moore, Séamus.
- Morrissey, Michael.
- Munnelly, John.
- O Briain, Donnchadh.
- O'Grady, Seán.
- O'Loghlen, Peter J.
- O'Reilly, Matthew.
- O'Rourke, Daniel.
- Rice, Brigid M.
- Ruttledge, Patrick J.
- Ryan, Martin.
- Ryan, Robert.
- Sheridan, Michael.
- Smith, Patrick.
- Traynor, Oscar.
- Victory, James.
- Walsh, Laurence J.
- Walsh, Richard.
- Ward, Conn.
Níl
- Belton, Patrick.
- Bennett, George C.
- Brasier, Brooke.
- Broderick, William J.
- Browne, Patrick.
- Burke, Patrick.
- Burke, Thomas.
- Byrne, Alfred (Junior).
- Cole, John J.
- Cogan, Patrick.
- Corish, Richard.
- Cosgrave, William T.
- Costello, John A.
- Daly, Patrick.
- Davin, William.
- Doyle, Peadar S.
- Esmonde, John L.
- Everett, James.
- Fagan, Charles.
- Fitzgerald-Kenney, James.
- Giles, Patrick.
- Gorey, Denis J.
- Hannigan, Joseph.
- Hughes, James.
- MacEoin, Seán.
- McGovern, Patrick.
- McMenamin, Daniel.
- Morrissey, Daniel.
- Mulcahy, Richard.
- Nally, Martin.
- Norton, William.
- O'Higgins, Thomas F.
- O'Sullivan, John M.
- Pattison, James P.
- Redmond, Bridget M.
- Reidy, James.
- Ryan, Jeremiah.