This Budget would appear, by reason of the reception it has got from the other side of the House, to be a popular Budget. Indeed, if one were an innocent travelling abroad and if one came to this House for the first time and listened to the long statement that the Minister for Finance has read out, and were to accept in all good faith everything contained in that statement, one would probably come to the conclusion that this was a happy and a prosperous country. Looking back, however, over the last seven or eight years and comparing the results of the policy that has been pursued during those years with the policy that was pursued previously, and examining how all this additional revenue that has been collected over those years has been spent and going into the details which have been mentioned by the Minister, one cannot find much satisfaction in the results. There is not much room for satisfaction if we are to compare those results with the results which obtained prior to the very heavy additional impositions of taxation which have taken place during the last seven or eight years.
From the year 1927, down to the year 1932, there was an annual average increase of 11,400 persons in employment, if we are to take the revenue derived from the purchase of stamps under the National Health Insurance Acts as an indication of the numbers of persons getting employment. The increase, as I say, was at the rate of 11,400 persons each year, over and above the number employed in the previous year. We have now an opportunity of examining the alternative policy that has been pursued during those eight years. We have had an intensive industrial drive; we have had huge sums of public money raised, in taxation in some cases, borrowed in other cases, and all devoted, according to this statement of the Minister and the statement of his predecessor, towards improving and increasing employment throughout the country. The Minister mentions on page 25 of his statement that the Employment Schemes Vote alone afforded employment, from November to March last, to an average number of 28,000 persons, while the maximum number employed at any one time during the year was 38,000. That was a commendable effort. It was apparently a bona fide attempt to deal with a situation which was largely the creation of the Government. It was their policy, financial and economic, which had produced the situation which demanded such a large imposition of taxation, on the one hand, and such huge borrowings on the other.
Scarcely, I suppose, in the case of any other European country has there been such an exhibition of colossal failure in their financial and economic policy, and the strange thing about it is that it does not appear to have penetrated the minds of the Ministry, except to a lesser extent. There is now before the Seanad a Bill known as the Institute for Advanced Studies Bill. I suggest that Ministers would go through the elementary studies first, go through the four main principles of arithmetic—addition, subtraction, multiplication and division. They should master these, master them in connection with our annual Budget, master them in order that there would be a headline for the rest of the country, because we have expensive national institutions here to deal with people who depart from practising the benefits that we derive from learning those elementary lessons of arithmetic.
This Budget is, as it were, a Budget and a half. We had the rather onerous part of it in November. Examining the financial tables which have been so courteously distributed to Deputies, we find that the Minister estimates the deficit on last year at £892,276. The Budget, he admits, was unbalanced to that extent. That is his confession—a deficit of almost £900,000. Now let us see how he has managed to escape with only £900,000 of a deficit. On the opposite side of table 1 we find the defence expenditure on Votes 11 and 65. The Minister deducts almost £700,000, which is to be met by borrowing. For airports there is a sum of £55,000 and for property losses compensation, £3,000. In the case of afforestation the figure is £58,000 and for employment schemes, £305,000. I can see no justification for the first and for the last item. None whatever.
The defence expenditure of £700,000 is a normal expenditure and it should be met out of revenue. Unemployment schemes, £305,000—why are they needed? Has there been any year for the last five years that we have not needed them? Is it likely in the next five years that we will not need them? It is said that they have added to the value of our wealth. If any of their predecessors had taken that line our dead-weight debt would now be very considerable. But the Minister in the course of his statements takes £150,000 from the Road Fund. He says he sees no reason why that money should not be available for revenue. Surely the very name "Road Fund" suggests the reason for this collection. It was instituted for the purpose of putting the roads in order for those who need to drive motor cars over them. This fund has been used for a great number of years and, apparently, according to the Minister's own statement, it is not sufficient for the purpose. But the fact is that £150,000 afforded employment to men who had 30/- to 35/- a week and something over that, and now it is devoted to providing them with three or four days' work a week which, to my mind, is the principal infirmity in the Government's economic policy; this policy, which has been pursued now for over eight years, is directed towards making people dependent on the national Exchequer and making them look towards Government, demoralising them, sapping their initiative, or taking away their initiative and self-reliance.
The sum and substance of it is that we have now reached a point where instead of having 11,000 persons added to the employment list each year, we have gone down to an average of some-like 9,800. More significant than that is the fact that last year not 1,000 persons were added on to the employment list. Now is it not time in face of these facts that we should have a review of these circumstances? This country has not been growing richer during the last eight years. It is only a country growing richer that could support and sustain an increased and increasing taxation year after year. If we divert from the individual his responsibility for giving employment and place it upon the State, the first thing that happens is that it costs the State the money to collect the tax that goes to the Exchequer and it costs the State afterwards money to distribute that.
In the course of the latter portion of the Minister's statement he described what huge sums of money had been disbursed for stationery, printing and various activities of one kind or another totalling up something like £4,100,000. Quite true, but he could have said the same about the whole revenue of £32,000,000. But notwithstanding the fact that we have gone from £25,000,000 in our National Exchequer to £32,000,000 we still have unemployment. We still have the responsibility placed upon the central authority of doing something to relieve the situation they themselves have been responsible for creating. Included in the list of social services that the Minister read out for us, services which have been increased in cost during the last seven or eight years, are the Department of Local Government and Public Health and the Land Commission. He totalled up that increase over what it cost the State in 1932 as £5,250,000. I dispute that entirely. I dispute the inclusion of the Department of Local Government and Public Health and the Land Commission. If there are services performed by the Ministry of Local Government and Public Health which fall properly under those two heads I will concede them, but I am not disposed to include the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Local Government and Public Health, Deputy Ward, as a social service; nor am I disposed to regard the Housing Commission as a social service; nor do I regard the Parliamentary Secretary for Lands, Deputy O'Grady, as a social service. He is not a social service at all.
This Budget, in my opinion, is beyond the resources of the people of this country. They can pay it I suppose by lessening expenditure in other directions but it may create and it may be responsible for unemployment. It may be responsible for hardships of one kind or another because it is not only this concession of 1d. per ounce on tobacco that we are passing now. We are passing now the Supplementary Budget of last November as well. We are keeping on all those taxes. We are keeping them on by passing this Budget. We have it on the authority of the Minister that the yield of the import duty charged on the ad valorem value of the goods has gone up because the increased insurance and freightage are included in the values of the imported articles on which the duties are charged. That only means additional taxation on the same goods. While nobody is to look for increased salaries or profits the Minister himself gathers in every penny he can by the highest tax that it is possible to collect. In the course of the Minister's statement it transpired that the yield in respect of duties on spirits is down by £185,000. The duty on spirits was increased last November but notwithstanding the increased imposition we collected £185,000 less. Presumably it is because there is a majority of tee-totallers on the Executive Council at the present moment that that tax is left on. But £185,000 is a considerable amount of revenue. If it can be collected and at the same time leave the price of this stimulant, which is so much abhorred by those Ministers, at what it was, would it not be very good? It so happens that the distillers in this country are not particularly prosperous. At one time distilling was one of our most important industrial activities, but taxation has largely put it in the position in which it is to-day. Perhaps the Minister, who is not so infirm as some of his brethren, might persuade them that there is now an opportunity of getting that £185,000, or, at least of stabilising the duty at what it was prior to the introduction of the Supplementary Budget. In passing, may I say, as I said on a former occasion in this House, that I have no interest whatever, in any of the firms that are engaged in distilling in this country. There is a lesson to be learned from that particular duty: the lesson of imposing taxation and of not being able to collect the revenue anticipated.
The Minister, apparently, has secured the support of his Party for this Budget. The results are there for everybody to see. The employment returns are the test, and not only the employment returns but the very facts which the Minister produced in his Budget statement. The position is that we have now got a dead-weight debt of £54,000,000. That is a nice legacy the Government are leaving to their successors. It is an unfortunate legacy but, what is worse, it is possible that some other political humbugs may come along and take the same line that the Government took in their time and say: "Let us promise the people to spend more money and, if we get the opportunity of doing so, we can leave it to our successors to pay the debts when they arise." That is a bad policy. It is the policy that has been responsible for the economic disasters of the last 20 years. We are pursuing it here now, but we ought to correct it in time. We have the opportunity of doing so now and, in a time of emergency, when we are advising everybody how they should behave themselves, we should give the example to the people of the country.
