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Dáil Éireann debate -
Thursday, 9 May 1940

Vol. 80 No. 2

Committee on Finance. - Resolution No. 14—General.

Question again proposed:—
"That it is expedient to amend the law relating to customs and inland revenue (including excise) and to make further provision in connection with finance."

The Minister for Finance this morning wears an embarrassed look and I do not blame him.

I am sorry, I did not catch what the Deputy said. Would he mind repeating it?

I merely said that the Minister was wearing an embarrassed look.

And I do not blame him, for the long arm of the Irish Times has reached out to gather him to its bosom. His predecessor, the Minister for Industry and Commerce, when he was Minister for Finance spent many years negotiating his way into the capacious bosom of that organ and when he got there he found its ardour was somewhat embarrassing and he moved to another Ministry. His successor, who has been much criticised in the columns of this paper for whipping John Bull, has all his past misdeeds forgotten, and the Irish Times emerges this morning to bestow its somewhat questionable accolade upon him in terms to which I think the attention of the most obscurantist Fianna Fáil T.D. should be directed.

"To the average citizen," says the Irish Times, “in fact, the Budget has made no difference whatsoever.”

That is very true, certainly. He is left to groan as he has been groaning for the past three years.

"His attitude," says the Irish Times, “will be that ‘no news is good news.’ He neither will understand, nor will seek to understand, the curious accountancy by which Mr. O'Kelly has transformed the considerable deficit which the published Estimates revealed a few days ago into the comforting equilibrium of yesterday's Budget.”

Was there ever a more glorious comment on a Minister for Finance's Budget? Do we blame the poor man for slowly sinking through the floor?

"It will be enough for him that he has nothing more to pay. We congratulate Mr. O'Kelly not only on a Budget which is a miracle of ingenuity, but also one which, in every practical respect, is calculated to satisfy. He may have juggled with figures; he may have taken a chance or two; but the fact remains that, for the time being, he has eased the taxpayer's mind and has brought an access of popularity to his Party."

What a glorious epitaph to write on the reputation of a public man. There is not a tight rope walker in the world who would not glory in that tribute from an acrobat's newspaper. But that is not all. This article goes on for a column and a half. The Minister has quite intoxicated Westmoreland Street this week.

"It is possible", says the Irish Times, “—and not unreasonable—to complain that his calculations are misleading, inasmuch as they follow the novel system of accountancy”—what a glorious euphemism—“which was adopted by his colleague and predecessor, Mr. Seán MacEntee; but calculations appeal to nobody; the public, let us repeat, desires to know one thing only—how much it has to pay—and the answer is ‘nothing’”.

That does not seem to correspond with the poor Minister's estimate of the future because he says that when he contemplated what he had to ask the people to pay, his heart sank and that it represented an increase of £10,000,000 per annum on what they were being asked to pay when he came into office. However, the Irish Times is undismayed and ends up with this envoi—

"Can a consoled, but still bewildered, country hope that this first step towards a solution of its ills is near?"

I think every member of the Fianna Fáil Party should get that article and have it reprinted in his local paper and then he should recover the copy from the local paper and have it framed in plush and hang it on his parlour wall so that when his confidence in the present Minister for Finance begins to flag he can reassure himself that Westmoreland Street is pleased, the Irish Times is satisfied, and what more could any loyal supporters of the Fianna Fáil Party ask than that their Minister for Finance should have measured up the most pleasurable anticipations of that pillar of national feeling in Ireland, the indomitable Irish Times? However, the Irish Times notwithstanding, with great temerity, I am going to ask the Minister for Finance a few questions in regard to this Budget. He is a very ingenuous man, of course, the Minister for Finance, as simple as a child, always anxious to take us all fully into his confidence and lay all his cards upon the table—no sleight of hand here. He produces a White Paper to tell us all about it, to explain in detail the reasons for every increase that he has had to make, not on the expenditure of ten years ago, but the increases that he had to make on the expenditure of last year and, as you read the list you are constrained to say: “Who can blame the poor man? All these increases are increases beyond his control.” But it is strange that this ingenuous and honest man, when he was preparing this elaborate return, did not invite the men who compiled it to cast their minds back to 1931 and compare the increases in every subhead of this year with those of the sub-heads of 1931 and set out opposite each of those increases a similar informative paragraph to that which he has been good enough to give us in column 5 of Table 2 of the tables he has published in connection with the financial statement for 1940. However, to assist him in that task, I am going to direct the attention of this House to what some of these increases are and, bear in mind, the Fianna Fáil Deputies on the back benches had better start scratching their heads with a view to working out an explanatory statement to the effect that these increases were made in respect of social services.

If the Deputies opposite started scratching their heads they might get something out of them.

I thought the Deputy was going to say that his colleagues had no heads to scratch. The first increase relates to the Taoiseach. I do not know whether he is a social service or not. Perhaps he is one of the chastening plagues that have been visited upon this country for its spiritual improvement. If so, he is costing £3,476 more than his predecessor cost in 1931. The Revenue Commissioners, a blessed social service, are costing £292,000 more this year than in 1931. The Gárda Síochána, an admirable force of which we are all proud and which I think the Fianna Fáil Party hoped at one time to be able to reduce by 50 per cent. on the ground that we were all loyal and law-abiding people, has gone up in cost by £293,000 since the Minister came in.

The Department of Industry and Commerce, the Department for which this magnificent palace is being constructed in Kildare Street at present, has gone up in cost by £214,000. I trust the Minister is making a note so that, with his characteristic honesty and straightforwardness, he can give us a reproduction of this little list in column 5 to explain the reasons for these increases. The Army, another social service, has gone up by a trifle of £2,108,000, and the Department of Posts and Telegraphs, whose activities are now answered for by the mild and inoffensive Minister we have, has increased in cost by £423,000. Army pensions are up by £388,000. I wonder would the Minister explain to us the reasons for these increases, and I wonder did he ask his economy committee, which he says completely failed to recommend any acceptable economies to him, to inquire into these increases to see whether nothing could be done to bring them down?

I agree with Deputy Childers when he said, during the discussion on the Central Fund Bill, that the question of our financial future was very grave and required close attention. I think that is perfectly true. Does this Budget statement show any indication that the Minister is awake to that fact? The Irish Times is satisfied, but do Deputies think that, in our conditions here and in our surrounding circumstances, it is desirable to balance our Budget by the borrowing of over £1,000,000? I know that many Deputies will say: “What is the borrowing of £1,000,000 when England is borrowing £2,000,000,000 to balance her Budget,” but have Deputies ever thought of this, that, in the countries at war, these immense borrowed moneys are being rapidly expended, and that their expenditure represents, as to 60 per cent., the payment of wages to wage earners, with the result that, in England, the numbers of unemployed are decreasing daily and at a steadily accelerating rate, until, for the first time in 15 years, the unemployed figures in Great Britain are substantially below 1,000,000 people? In this country, however, we are cheerfully borrowing, and we have immense numbers of persons engaged, not on productive works, but on famine works throughout the West of Ireland, and approximately 100,000 people unemployed, and, but for the fact that thousands are emigrating to England, we would have nearly 150,000. Has the Minister simply given up all hope of reducing expenditure?

Many people thought that the developments on the Continent of Europe would result in so rapid an increase in the price of our agricultural exports that the increasing wealth would save the Minister and provide the extra national income out of which the inflated expenditure could be financed; but is it not nearly time we woke up to the fact that these immense prices which we hoped for are not going to materialise and that, in so far as they do materialise, they will be largely offset by our increasing costs of the raw materials of the agricultural industry which will fall upon us as a result of war conditions and as a result of the fact that, with the disappearance of the Norwegian mercantile fleet from the seven seas, we are obliged to import everything we want from outside through Great Britain and by licence of Great Britain?

We did enjoy for the first months of the war a somewhat advantageous position, in that we were in a position to use neutral ships for direct shipment of many commodities to our own shores, but the day that Norway was invaded, the entire tramp fleet of Norway was taken off the oceans or taken into British hands, and we are now compelled by circumstances to import everything through one of the entrepot ports of Great Britain. And it is to be borne in mind that any commodity delivered on the shores of Britain to-day becomes the property of one Department or another of the British Government and can be acquired by us only under their licence and, incidentally, only for the price at which they are prepared to give it to us. By the mercy of God, we are dealing with reasonable people there. As I have often said in this House, they are people who are too astute in business affairs ever to make a hard bargain because they know that a hard bargain is a bad bargain, but, nevertheless, the result of it is going to be that the costs of our raw materials will be higher than they might otherwise be, and that is going to mean that our profits in this war are not going to be anything like the profits we made in the last war.

In that situation, the taxation we are called on to bear is about twice or three times what we were required to carry during the war of 1914-1918. The Irish Times may say that no citizen is interested in calculations or cares where the money comes from so long as he has not to find it, but surely even the Irish Times, decrepit as it may be, does not take the view that legislators should not know or care where the money comes from. Surely if we are the trustees of the public welfare, we ought not to throw our hats in the air and say: “We do not give a damn where it comes from so long as we get a chance of spending it.” We are the trustees of the people and if the people are tempted not to care where the money is coming from, is it not our public duty to tell them that no man can spend his patrimony and escape the workhouse in the end?

Are we going deliberately to pursue a line of policy which will afford the people at present the pleasure of spending their patrimony in the certain foreknowledge that this country will end in the workhouse? Because, if we are, we ought to ask ourselves what it means to a nation to end in the workhouse. There is no workhouse for nations. The only system of public relief for a bankrupt sovereign State is the system of boarding out, and if this country goes smash, the world will board it out to some country that can manage it better than our own people showed themselves able to do. Newfoundland found that, by bitter experience, to be true. When she found herself unable to meet her commitments, the world boarded her out to the British Government and her sovereignty was pawned for the funds to redeem her debts.

The danger to this country of invasion has been harped upon by the Government. I want to tell this House that the danger to the sovereign independence of this country from bankruptcy is just as great and just as fatal as the danger of invasion. The collapse of Denmark may not have been glorious. The collapse of Norway and Poland certainly was. They went down fighting in defence of their sovereignty, but inglorious as the disappearance of Denmark may have been as a sovereign State, it will shine forth as an example amongst nations compared with this country if we lose our sovereignty because we could not manage our own affairs. There is not a Minister sitting on the Front Bench who does not know that that danger overhangs us. There is not a Minister amongst them who has the courage to face up to it, and to tell the people that the clap-trap and "cod" in the leading article of the Irish Times is of no significance and that it does matter where the money comes from, that it is something of vital interest to every citizen in this State that this country shall not live beyond its means indefinitely, that it is just as vital to the survival of this country, as a sovereign and independent nation, that we should meet our bills as that we should be in a position to defend the shores of this country against physical invasion.

The Minister says that there are limits to the burdens which he can create and impose upon our people. Would he be good enough to tell us, when he is winding up this debate, what those limits are? What is the point beyond which he will not sponsor legislation? He can be very easily deceived in this matter. The Minister himself, in the course of his Budget statement, spoke of the rising Budgets of every State in the world but, in so speaking, he chose to compare our circumstances with those of the belligerent nations of the world. He seemed to forget for the moment that we glory in a neutrality that has little of the glorious about it for me. He forgot that there are some States, like Portugal, which are neutral and whilst this Minister is congratulating himself on his ability to keep step with the belligerent nations in the scale of their expenditure, the Prime Minister of Portugal, Dr. Salazar, is congratulating himself, rightly congratulating himself, that he has at last reached the point when he has extinguished the entire external debt of Portugal. Surely, that is worth thinking about or are we to assume that neutrality is more expensive and more onerous to the community than war? Perhaps if that thought were carried home, some people who are so passionately anxious for the glories of neutrality might choose what appears to me to be the more honourable course.

I have said before, and I say now, that I believe we have reached the point where it is doubtful whether any political Government can save this country from a financial crisis, to escape from which it would be necessary to get outside help. I regard that as an appalling disaster to this country. I know that so long as there are funds at the disposal of the joint stock banks, so long as they have external assets in excess of their external liabilities, the Government can scoop considerable sums out of them by way of loan. It is right to say now that there comes a point in a banking system such as we have got in this country, if its traditional solvency and security are to be maintained, when you cannot further tie up your liquid funds in Government securities. If Deputies of this House, or the Irish Times, believe that we can go on indefinitely squaring our Budgets by borrowing money, when every source of external borrowing is dried up, and the only means left is to get funds from the joint stock banks, they are doing the economic life of this country a very great injury. I do not believe there is a financial centre in the world at present in which the Minister could float a loan for 6d. If he cannot, the only substantial source of borrowed money for him is the banks of the country. If he imagines, if any Deputy imagines, or if the Irish Times imagines, that we can carry on this country on money borrowed from the joint stock banks they are mad, and that is what this Budget means.

This Budget is a reimposition of all the taxes in last year's Budget and in the Supplementary Budget with the realisation of the increase in income-tax and £1,000,000 to boot, plus £1,000,000 odd, to be borrowed from someone. Who is that someone? Where is the Government going to borrow? If they borrow £1,000,000 and if they intend to maintain the same scale of expenditure as they are at present maintaining, if the war should continue and certain essential services bear more heavily upon us in future, where will they get the money to finance the necessities that lie ahead? Surely these are questions we should be asking ourselves now as trustees of the economic solvency of this country for the people. There is no use in asking ourselves these questions when the crisis is upon us. There is no use asking these questions on the morning the Government cannot draw cheques to pay their daily dues. It is then too late to meet it and no combination of Parties, no adjustment of the democratic system of government is then adequate to meet that situation. Unless this democratic State looks forward to the day when that event may occur and makes provision before it occurs, as certain as we are in this room the arrival of that event may end democracy in this country or certainly end democracy as operated by the Irish people.

It means the end of government of the Irish people by the Irish people for the Irish people. There may be substituted for it the tyranny of one individual supported by armed forces of one kind or another, or the detestable alternative of the surrender of our sovereign rights to some other nation for the purpose of restoring our finances to reasonable order. These are two prospects which are too utterly horrible to contemplate. But unless we grapple courageously with the national economic situation and reduce our annual expenditure to within that sum of money which can be raised by reasonable taxation, considering our national income, that fate lies ahead of us as certainly as to-morrow's day will dawn. There is no use in the less-enlightened members of the Fianna Fáil Party saying: "You are only crying wolf." It is the duty of any intelligent member of this House to cry wolf before the wolf is in the kitchen, because when it is in the kitchen you cannot get it out except at sacrifices that I for my part am not prepared to make. The sooner that that plain, simple fact is driven home into the most solid skull on the Fianna Fáil Benches the better it will be for the country.

That is the national aspect of this question. But there is no shopkeeper in rural Ireland who does not see this problem from another angle; and I am a shopkeeper in rural Ireland. The other angle from which this Budget must be viewed is the effect it has on the day-to-day life of the people. Taxation bears heavily on us all. But, to those of us who have a surplus, it merely means that we enjoy less comforts and less amenities than we have had in the past, and that is something that no individual citizen may legitimately complain of if the national need requires he should so suffer. But, in addition to the taxes set out in the Budget of this year and the Finance Act of last year, there are the concealed taxes on flour, on sugar, and on milk consumed by the people of the City of Dublin and Cork and Limerick.

I have frequently ventilated the nature of the concealed taxation on flour. Before the war the millers were robbing the people of this country of £1 per sack of flour. Since the war the process of calculating the amount of their robbery has become so complicated that I am no longer in a position to make the computation. But I am satisfied that at this moment the millers are robbing our people of a substantial sum every year, and in evidence of that I call the dividends that are being paid by the big milling concerns of this country. That robbery is being done with the connivance and by the leave of the Minister and his colleagues. There is also the concealed taxation on sugar, which amounted before the war to £1,000,000 per year, and which to-day represents in the form of direct and indirect taxation about 3d. per lb. of sugar. There is the concealed taxation on milk, which is imposed by a system of levy and payment to the milk producers to supply milk to this city and other cities of Ireland, a transference of the subsidy on milk from the Exchequer on to the backs of the consumers of milk.

What I want to put to the House is this. Grave as the consequences may be for society as a whole from the over-taxation of the comparatively well-to-do, that evil is nothing compared to the literal want that is imposed on the person who is earning 30/- a week; and there are thousands and thousands of people in this country whose weekly income is 30/- a week. I want to ask Deputies, who, at least in so far as our parliamentary allowances are concerned, are circumstanced as I am, how could they live on 30/- a week? I know a man who has a wife and five children and their sole income is 30/- a week. How does that man live? He dresses his children in rags; that goes without saying; he is very lucky to be able to cover their nakedness at all. Every time that man comes to my shop to buy a quarter of a stone of sugar, which is a modest ration for a family of seven people for a week, I collect from him in taxes for the Government on that quarter stone of sugar approximately 10½d. When that man comes in to buy a cwt. of flour he buys it on the instalment plan, because he is quite unable to pay for it out of his weekly earnings. He gets a bag of flour and pays a couple of shillings on it and every week pays another couple of shillings. He cannot get another bag until he has completed the instalments on the first one. If the bag of flour is used before he has been able to complete his instalments, he goes over to potatoes and salt, or Indian meal stirabout if he can afford it. Every time he buys a bag of flour I have to charge him approximately 11/- more than he would pay for that bag of flour if he bought it in Great Britain or Northern Ireland.

I do not want the House to think that I am misleading them by failing to direct their attention to the fact that at present it is unquestionably true the British are subsidising flour and that the gap between the price here and in Great Britain has been further widened by the fact that we are taxing flour and the British are subsidising it. I do not honestly know what the price of flour would be in Great Britain and Northern Ireland if the British subsidy was not operating. But the fact remains that the man who has 30/- a week here is actually being asked to pay, not 11/- for his bag of flour, but 11/- more for his bag of flour than if he were living in Northern Ireland. The price of a cwt. of flour in rural Ireland to-day is 22/-, more than two-thirds of that man's total wage. If you take from his total wage his standing charges like rent and rates, a bag of flour nearly represents his entire week's earnings. Of course, tobacco has long passed out of that man's life, because he has not been able to afford the price of a pipeful of tobacco for years; he simply gave up smoking.

Do we consider that that is a satisfactory arrangement? When we consider these facts, should we go on levying this money in order to maintain Lyracrompane bog, the industrial alcohol factories, and the purchase of immense quantities of ammunition which are going to serve no useful purpose? Does the Minister for Finance tell me that when these facts are brought to his attention his answer is: "No, I must go on with Lyracrompane bog, I must maintain the industrial alcohol factories, because to give them up would be to lose face for my colleague the Minister for Supplies, and, therefore, these people must be screwed into the dirt by the price they have to pay for food, without which they cannot live, because I would not let my colleague lose face"? Surely these economies could, at least, be made for the reduction of the cost of food to the poor. The British Government quite deliberately asked Sir John Orr and another man to consider the food problem of the poor in war time, and to tell them what food the poor must have in order to preserve basic health. We are not saying by any means that we want to level the poor down to the lowest subsistence, but our object is to ensure that they get sufficient so that although surplus expenditure be on luxuries, those luxuries will not be purchased at the cost of essential foodstuffs to maintain the health of their children. Having made a most exhaustive investigation from the dietetic point of view, Sir John Orr reported that they must be provided with flour, sugar, green vegetables, milk, and if possible, a bit of bacon. He said:

"You can leave out the rest. If you can give them the other four things in adequate quantities, then you need not worry about malnutrition."

Whereupon the British Government said: "Very well, we will subsidise these four things that are necessary for the maintenance of public health during the period of the crisis, so that no matter how poor, they will be guaranteed, at least, minimum quantities of those commodities requisite to maintain normal health, and no more." In fact, they said that no child would starve in England and that the poorest would be able to buy minimum quantities of food to keep body and soul together and maintain health.

What do we do? Do we subsidise these commodities? Not at all. Do we leave them at prices at which they would ordinarily be available? Not at all. We pick them out and tax them in this Budget, tax them in a Finance Act introduced into this House, incorporating provisions of Finance Acts that went before; tax them to the point that I have seen poor men unable to buy food that their children ought to have. I have seen the children of prosperous persons, and the children of the poor, walk together to school, and I have seen the comfortable man's child growing, while the poor man's child shrunk away, and if there is any Deputy who wants proof of these words I will show him the two families I have in mind. I have seen the parents of children, children whom I know are starving, coming to my counter to buy food to keep them alive—because he is not giving them food adequate to assuage their hunger—by instalments, because he had not the money to pay for it on the nail. I have known him to keep away, and not attempting to replenish the larder because he had not completed the instalments on the last consignment he got. That is what this Budget is doing, and that is what the one before it did, but the Irish Times says:—

"We neither will understand it nor seek to understand it, but just rejoice that we are not asked to pay any more".

What consolation is it to the man whose child is starving to be told that he need not pay any more?

There are Deputies here who will say that this is exaggeration, that there is no one starving. This fact cannot be too often repeated, starvation has a meaning other than the literal cry of a child who suffers the pangs of actual hunger. Starvation can be of more kinds than one. There is the starvation born of an empty stomach, the signal of which is that the child cries out for food and we hear it. Those who run may read that signal. You can fill that child's stomach with food and still the hunger pains, but its bones will be crooked, its face will be blue, and its physique will dwindle, until eventually it carries within its body all the potentialities of the invalid of middle age. Remember that is not the comfortable invalid with a pension or with a fixed income who can go to a spa or a convalescent home, but the invalid whose natural end is the county home. To any trained observer such a child is as clearly starving, as the child crying with hunger is clearly starving to the uninitiated who passes it by. I do not want to be taken as suggesting that the Minister for Finance is a heartless ghoul, dabbling his fingers in the blood of the poor. I am quite sure that when his mind is directed to this question he is as sympathetic as I am, but it is his job to do something about it. It is his job to take a stand in the Executive Council and say: "I am prepared to listen with a sympathetic ear to the demand for further moneys for social services, but I have also got a duty, as Minister for Finance, to speak for the poor, and that is to protest against a policy which is going to make permanent an intolerable burden of taxation on the food without which the poor must starve." He is not doing that. He is consenting to a system which he knows is not making adequate nourishment available to the poor.

I have obligations to the poor. Do you realise who the poor are? The poor are the people who are working on the land and they are poor because we fixed 30s. a week as their statutory wage. It is the most that the industry can afford to pay. They are the people we are all living out of. It is the agricultural labourers and the people working on the land that are producing the wealth out of which we all live, out of which the professional men in this city and out of which the whole commerce of Ireland live. They are the poor. Is it any wonder democracy would collapse in this world when the people that democrats chose as trustees of their income convert the producers, the essential element of the population, without which the whole country would crash, into paupers and condemn them to the permanent shadow of hunger?

The Irish Times continues:

"It is possible—and not unreasonable—to complain that his calculations are misleading, inasmuch as they follow the novel system of accountancy which was adopted by his colleague and predecessor, Mr. Seán MacEntee, but calculations appeal to nobody; the public, let us repeat, desires to know one thing only—how much it has to pay—and the answer is ‘nothing'."

Does the mother of these five children who cannot get food for them, subscribe to that dictum, or does she legitimately complain that one man in Ireland is being asked to pay 11/- more than he ought to be asked to pay for the food to keep his children well; and is being asked to pay 12d. more for the quarter-stone of sugar which they must have than he ought to be asked to pay, and is her voice not more eloquent to those of us who are proud to be drawn from such people than the gilded accents of the Irish Times?

I think we should take Deputy Dillon's advice or warning and once more suggest that he is exaggerating the position, that, in actual fact, of all the countries in Europe at the present time, we are probably in the soundest position so far as our future is concerned. We have noted that the savings of the people continue to a considerable degree, that our foreign trade has recently expanded, that there is no evidence in any of the indices of trade that we are approaching a calamitous position. We also have the good fortune to have very large external investments of a kind which will continue to bear interest as long as there is any hope of our continuing any kind of export trade. We have gilt-edged investments in the neighbouring country. These securities may be in danger at a later date. We cannot tell that, but we are at present in an extraordinarily lucky position. Having said that, I am, nevertheless, fully aware that we are opening a new era in our economic life through the intervention of the war and that a very dark future looms before us—not immediately but ultimately.

I think that, instead of making exaggerated statements about our present position, it would be a good thing if both sides of the House considered the position of the country when this war is ended, having regard to all the circumstances. I wonder if any Party is making sufficient provision for us to face the adversity that will come to us then. It is well the people should know what adversity will come to them and that they should be prepared in advance to make the necessary sacrifices to meet it. We should study the foundations on which we are building so as to see whether, at the end of this war, when, after a short period of temporary inflation, agricultural prices inevitably collapse, we are prepared to meet that collapse of prices. We should consider the equipment we have in our community at large—equipment both so far as the State and every individual farmer are concerned—to meet that collapse of prices and see how far we can alter our economy to meet the new conditions.

In saying these things, I am not, as the Opposition might suggest, making any criticism of present Government policy. Everything the Government has done in its economic policy to date has helped us to prepare, to a considerable degree, to face these conditions. To the degree that we have become self-sufficient will we benefit by that self-sufficiency during the present conflict. To the extent that we have induced our people to grow wheat, will we benefit during the present crisis. To the degree that we have met the housing problem will we have already given our people decent housing prior to a period when raw materials may be scarce? We have secured a large proportion of our people from absolute want by our social services. That again, in time of crisis, is a good thing to have done.

I will now repeat the view of the Minister for Finance himself when, in his Budget Statement, he commented on the nature of our export trade. He said:

"This brings me to another point —the character of our export trade. The demand from our principal market may increase by direct war-buying and by the withdrawal, in whole or in part, of other supplies. But it is too often and too hastily assumed in this country that such demand takes no account of cost, and that, accordingly, we are relieved for the present from any obligation to produce for that market on sound commercial lines. There is also a widespread belief that quality does not matter, that big profits are going to be made and that the burden of rising costs can be lightly accepted and easily passed on to the consumer. Whether we take the short-term or the long-term view of the position, it should be realised by all that this is far from being the case. Costs of production must be kept down to the minimum. There is not going to be now, as there was a quarter of a century ago, a continuous upward surge of demand and of prices, due to unregulated buying and defective monetary policy."

That was the warning of the Minister so far as our future is concerned. In view of that, I think we should study the question of our development in this State coldly and deliberately not only with reference to recent years but since the foundation of the State and find out whether there is not some fundamental factor lacking in our community which needs to be corrected if we are to face these new conditions. I think we should account for past facts to indicate their effect on the future and take whatever bold action is necessary for curbing the weaknesses in our financial structure.

All of us admit that agriculture is the foundation of the State, that it occupies 48 per cent. of our people, that eleven-sixteenths of our land is purely agricultural land, that 10,000,000 acres are free for export purposes aside from those acres we can use for the purpose of supplying our own needs. We know that 30 per cent. of the income of the country comes from agriculture and that, at least, another 30 per cent. depends, in its turn, on that income. It is time those in political life, who speak more with a desire to please the electorate than to face facts, should examine our relation to the world situation so far as agriculture is concerned. We all know that agricultural demand in the world is inelastic. Agricultural production goes on remaining the same while industrial production diminishes in order to curb the result of financial depression. We know, for example, that if you take the figure of world production as 100 in 1924, it was 98 in 1925, and 102 in 1932. In contrast with that, in the case of industry the figure of 90 in 1925, had gone down in 1931 to 73, indicating that less was being produced in order to meet the reduced demand and the reduction in price.

We are engaged in the most highly competitive industry in the whole world, an industry whose producers are unable to organise themselves as, for example, those who take part in the activities of the international steel cartels organise themselves. We are at the mercy of the world situation so far as agriculture is concerned. We know also that in every country the peoples of other countries have found it difficult, if not almost impossible, to reduce their cost of production to enable farmers to make profits and, if we study the figures given in the League of Nations Economic Handbook, we will find that for the year 1932 the majority of the farmers of all the principal countries of Europe were making losses on their farm operations, quite apart from any local situation which we might have had here. Therefore, the whole business of farming has been at a low ebb during the last 10 years and we may assume that after this war is over the situation will revert more or less to what it was in 1932, if not to a still worse position. We know also that we have a market available to us, but how much of that market will remain at the end of the conflict and what the price will be are matters for speculation. We can take it that we shall have to face a very serious issue.

I want to place before you the situation so far as agriculture is concerned, not based on our unfortunate dispute during the last eight years, not based on the dispute we had after the foundation of the State, but taking the history of the State since its foundation, and I think it is time that every farmer sitting by his fireside in the evening should know what has been the economic development of this State since its foundation, that they all should know the truth and be made face the facts. In the light of the present Budget and the enormous burden of expenditure we have to bear, I think the farmers should study those facts. I have taken a great deal of trouble to obtain information as far as possible from accurate sources, principally from the International Institute for Agriculture, with its foundation in Rome, and we may assume that whatever errors may exist in the statistics for the separate countries, they are more or less of the same kind and the comparative figures may be regarded as having considerable value.

Let me first of all examine the question of how far our cattle population has changed in comparison with that of other countries since the foundation of this State. Taking the period 1923 to 1938, we find that the German cattle population went up 22 per cent.; the Danish cattle population went up 28 per cent., and the Irish cattle population diminished by 3.7 per cent. I might mention that a considerable part of the decrease took place before the economic war began; in other words, there was no marked increase prior to the economic war. In the case of New Zealand the cattle population increased by 29 per cent. and in Great Britain and Scotland the increase was 15 per cent. Thus, there is a large capital increase indicated in the case of these countries, most of them rivals in our only market, whereas there was little or no increase in the case of our country.

Let me now take the case of sheep. You will find a reduction in the case of Germany of 12 per cent.; a reduction in the case of Denmark of 50 per cent.—the numbers were very small in that country—and in our case there was an increase of 3 per cent. In the case of our principal rivals the position was that in New Zealand there was an increase of 38 per cent. and in Great Britain an increase of 25 per cent. That represents another failure on our part since the foundation of the State to increase our capital structure in so far as that particular type of trade is concerned.

I now come to pigs and there was an increase in Germany between 1923 and 1938 of 64 per cent.; in Denmark the numbers were the same, but in our case the pigs are down by 17 per cent. In Great Britain pigs have gone up by 36 per cent. and in New Zealand by 89 per cent. Let me now take the case of a very ordinary farm product, the fowl. As regards fowl, they may sound unimportant, yet they represent 14 per cent. of our agricultural output. In Belgium and Denmark there was an increase of 27 per cent. and in our own country there was a reduction of 11 per cent.; in the Netherlands there was an increase of 14 per cent.; in the United Kingdom a decrease of 5.4 per cent. and in New Zealand an increase of 5.4 per cent.

These are very important matters and they give us an idea of what we have to face in the future. We have not yet got down to the fundamental fact that we must take advantage of our nationhood by increasing our production very largely. Take the question of the increases in our animal population up to the time that the last Government took office. In the case of cattle there was an increase of 3 per cent. between 1912 and 1921; in the case of milch cows there was an increase of 4 per cent.; in the case of sheep, 6 per cent., and in the case of pigs, 16 per cent., indicating there again that there was no large capital increase in our animal population.

We have been for a very long time debating the question of the big and the small farmer. Examining the annual population, where there were decreases they were greater in the case of the small farms and less in the case of the larger farms. Where there were increases they were smaller in the case of the small farms and larger in the case of the larger farms, indicating that the whole production position of the small farmers needs revision.

Now let me examine our position in relation to England's imports. Taking the proportion which we enjoy of the total English market, the total volume of English imports, we find that in 1924 we enjoyed 4.3 per cent, and in 1932 4 per cent., a reduction from 1924. In 1938 we enjoyed only 2.49 per cent. In the case of Denmark we find that they enjoyed 4.2 per cent. in 1924 and it went up to 6.1 per cent. in 1932 and was reduced to 4.1 per cent. in 1938. They found alternative markets during that time and their total income increased by over 25 per cent. from 1925 to 1932. In the case of New Zealand you find a steady improvement. Their English imports showed an increase from 3.5 in 1924 to 5 per cent. in 1938. We find also in the case of our other rivals there were increases at our expense.

If we examine the yields of crops, we find that although in some cases we improved our yields enormously, other countries improved at a faster rate than we did. These are important matters showing the position in regard to our live stock and our inability to compete in the English market. In the matter of crop yields, it is interesting to examine the position. We have naturally a fertile soil and our yields compare favourably with those of other European countries and yet, by modern methods of production, sound production, they are gradually increasing their yields and their income at our expense.

I recommend the House to examine the figures for the yield of oats, a good Irish product and one which we manage successfully. It is a product in which we have exceeded the efforts of other countries so far as our yield is concerned. Let us see what has been done here since 1938 and what other countries have done in order to out-rival and outstrip us. In the case of nine countries which principally grow wheat, we were second highest in the 1928-1931 period in our yield of crops. In 1938 we were fourth. There was no great decrease, yet it is interesting to note the increases in other countries, countries that were low on the list before. They increased enormously from the 1928-31 period to 1938. By 1938 we had an increase of 7 per cent.; Belgium had increased by 22 per cent.; Denmark had increased by 61 per cent.; Finland had an increase of 100 per cent.; Holland 45 per cent., and New Zealand 17 per cent. All those countries discovered new ways of treating oats more successfully and producing more oats per acre. In that way they removed our advantage as far as that particular production is concerned.

If one examines the question of output of agriculture here and compares it with those of other countries how does that output compare in terms of pounds sterling in our country? While our output is £528 per 100 acres of crops and pasture per year the output in Denmark is £1,115, England £822 and Scotland £759. Then, again, if you take our more serious competitor, New Zealand, the country which exports frozen beef, mutton and butter and each of which competes with our products in the English market you will find that there has been an increasing production since 1918. That increase in production has been nothing short of phenomenal. You will find that the number of their dairy cows there in 1918 was 800,000; in 1938 it was 1.87 million cows; their sheep in the same time went up from 26,000,000 to 32,000,000; butter exported in 1921 from New Zealand was 900,000 cwts. and in 1937 it was 2.95 million cwts.

That is the country that is continuing to be our greatest rival in the English market now. If you study the figures of agricultural production in New Zealand since the beginning of the century they are astonishing. The volume of production taking the 1900 figure as 100 is now 290, and their exports which were £13,000,000 in 1900 have now gone up to £35,000,000 at 1900 prices. Then again I notice with pleasure that the Government this year are giving £100,000 additional subsidy for fertilisers. Let us examine the situation as far as the treatment of grass land is concerned. In New Zealand, 60 per cent. of the entire area of the finest grass land in the world in the North Island is sown with fertilisers every year. The amount of fertilisers used has gone up from 200,000 tons in 1925 to 400,000 tons in 1936. We find from those responsible for the conduct of agriculture in New Zealand that half the entire value of butter-fat production is based on the amount of fertilisers used——

Fertilisers which cannot be got here.

On the further question of the future agricultural production, the securing of sufficient fertilisers is a very serious one for this country. What is the reason for this failure to improve in our position since we obtained independence? Why is it that the national income of this country even weighted according to prices remains so rigid? Why is it that all that time a very large proportion of our grass land is practically derelict according to modern standards of grass cultivation? Why is it that over two-thirds of the land was as backward at the end of this administration as it was at the end of the last administration? What is the cause of the lack of vitalisation? Is it that we lack intelligence? I instantly answer "No". Is it because of any peculiar form of currency? The answer is "no", because our rivals have no remarkable forms of currency. Is it because we are linked with English currency? No, because some of our rivals have been linked to the Bank of England. Is it because of some special trade relationship? No, because as far as that is concerned our condition is the same as other countries. Is it due to the absence of credit? No, because other countries that have been able to increase their production are in the same position——

It must be due to the Fianna Fáil Government then.

Deputy Belton might let me make my speech. I am referring to agricultural production since 1922. I am giving figures that are correct. There has not been any great volume of increase in agriculture in this country since 1922. I am not making any Party capital out of it. It is an impossible situation considered in relation to this and other Budgets.

The reason for the lack of increase in output is obvious. It is due to the lack of peaceful conditions in this country. It is not the fault of this House. It is the fault of the Irish people because they were divided amongst themselves. It is due principally to the fact that in my opinion we have done nothing substantial since 1922 to link up science with tradition in agriculture; whereas all our principal rivals operate agriculture on a purely scientific basis we have as yet left that task uncompleted. That is the only distinction I can find between this country and those other countries that are successful rivals to us and that are more and more securing a bigger proportion of the English market at our expense and are continuing to do so ever since the foundation of this State. To my mind this is a serious matter.

One of the most fantastic facts that I met the other day was that the net output of industry, small as it was during the régime of the former Government was actually greater in 1926 than in 1931 while the net output of agriculture declined. In spite of the falling prices and in spite of heavy competition and without any artificial protection or very small artificial protection the industrial production output actually increased by 10.9 per cent. from 1926 to 1931, according to the figures provided by those who were the economic friends of the Opposition. Whatever the cause, we decreased in agricultural production by over 15 per cent. I might add, of course, that our industrial production increased enormously during the period of our administration.

While we gave very large employment and where net output in industry increased by £2,600,000 from 1926 to 1931, the increase from 1931 to 1937 was £9,000,000.

Are these quantities or values?

I meant the net output not the numbers employed, the net increase during our period of office as compared with the previous Administration.

Is that values?

If you work them out according to prices it comes to more or less the same thing.

I am not criticising Deputy Childers—I am only seeking information.

Either way, by prices or by bulk. Now, it seems to me that in view of that position we should examine the situation that exists at present. We may ask ourselves whether in view of coming prices in the future, further self-sufficiency is possible? The answer is that from the standpoint of war undoubtedly there are opportunities for further substantially safeguarding ourselves against possibilities later on. If we examine self-sufficiency in relation to the ultimate future it is very difficult to say, but we can say this that it is definitely limited to a certain degree. We can make certain progress, but our progress is limited, and unless we are forced by world circumstances to adopt a different programme we can count on no great increase in prosperity by that means.

The only other alternative besides examining the question of our production and of expanding our exports is an artificial limitation of imports through financial control which, I trust, will not be necessary. Therefore, we arrive at the position that somehow in the future we have got to face the people of this country with the necessity for so far improving their output per acre and so far lowering their costs of production, that they can face the future with confidence. In my opinion that is going to be very difficult to do. How many farmers in this country at this moment know that there are ten farmers to their one in our rival markets pouring out fertilisers on their land, taking advantage of the most modern methods of education and converting their farms from being farms run purely by traditional methods to the extent that they can almost be described as factories for producing food? How many farmers in this country are aware of that position and how many of them are aware of the fact that that condition is going to continue: that at the end of the war there will be nothing to stop the same steady scientific methods of the New Zealand farmers from continuing to place us still more at the mercy of New Zealand even should there be a collapse of prices?

Nor will the decision of whether we are to adopt a purely laissez faire policy, indicated at one time by the Opposition, or whether we are to continue a policy of high protection finally make the difference. This question of producing more at a lower cost is ultimately partly one of human initiative. There has evidently been, ever since the establishment of this State, a lack of will to produce more on the part of the agricultural community. There is something there which they need and which they have not had, something they will require to be taught and which they have not been taught, but no Party and no Government has yet made them face up to the fact that when this State was founded there should have been sacrifices made by everybody: that if the young generation were to benefit by independence the older generation and the younger would have to work harder, to expect, if anything, less advantages rather than more advantages, and that this must continue until we can increase our production and so defend ourselves and make ourselves impregnable against any violent lowering of world prices.

There is no blame on anybody in this House for that, but as I have said we have had a disturbed condition of affairs in this country and an acute division of opinion amongst our people. The fact remains that no matter what any Government does in this country, at least 80 per cent. of the whole effort required has to come from the people rather than from the Government. The necessity of making our people realise that was never greater than to-day. We hear Deputies on both sides of the House admit that. It is not for me in this House to make suggestions as to how that should be faced, but when we are discussing the Budget, I think it is the duty of Deputies on both sides to realise that that position exists: that if we are to continue the present burden of expenditure there will have to be a mental revolution on the part of the people of this country, and also a recognition, on the part of members on both sides of the House, that this House, for reasons excusable or otherwise, has never yet given a lead to the people of this country since the foundation of the State. Now, there is a great deal of good that we have done in this House. I do not wish to asperse the qualities of democracy. I do not wish to suggest that any individual member of the House has failed to act up sincerely according to his own beliefs. I am as much responsible as anybody else for that because, although I am a young member of the House, I have been in politics and have said the same things as everybody else has said, but the fact remains that the position is a serious one. I think that in guiding the future of this country, in considering this Budget, we could do more good to the people of this country if we were to consider our position since the foundation of the State rather than in continuing the eternal squabble on issues in respect of which both Parties have definitely modified their opinions: we should be doing more good to the country if, instead of concentrating on those issues, we considered our life since the foundation of this State, and I commend that view to the House.

I listened with considerable interest, I confess, to the speech of Deputy Childers. I grant him immediately that by the statistics he quoted as regards the advances that have been made in other countries, he has put a problem that, I think, the whole House, and particularly the Government, ought to consider. I am not going to try to make any Party capital whatsoever out of his speech, but he ought to recognise, I think, that if he will indulge in asking explanations he is bound to get them, according to the views of the people who think they can give them. I shall try to give them without any bitterness or any controversy. The position that the Deputy has dealt with is very unsatisfactory, but I do not think it is quite fair to throw the major portion of the blame for that condition on the farmers. Let us consider their position, say, during three distinct periods: the period of the last War, referred to also in the Budget statement of the Minister for Finance, in which they could get any price practically they wished for anything they produced, and then they had no need to bother too much about quality. Then came the postWar years which were exceedingly difficult. Now the farmers are not alone—I suggest that the members of this House can at least rival them in this—in failing to overcome difficulties consequent on a change of policy. A new situation confronted the farmers and the people of this country between the years 1922, when this State was set up, and, say, the period when we left office. If the Deputy will look into the matter he will, I think, find that it is not a fact that the then Ministry was quiescent in accepting that anything was good enough, nor do I think it is true to say either that on the whole the farmers did not come to respond.

In the Budget statement, as well as in the speech of the Deputy, there is a reference to the necessity of improving quality. If there was one place in which our Government did make a strong, definite effort to increase quality, to get everybody in this country to realise the necessity of bringing our farming methods up to date, it was in connection with agriculture. It was the life work of the late Mr. Hogan to try to do that. All his thoughts were governed by that particular effort. Remember, however, as a result of what he received, he was starting, so to speak, behind scratch; he had to try to bring the methods of this country up to date. He tried, and tried manfully. I believe there was a certain amount of grumbling. That was natural, it would be made by any other class of the community if similar reforms were attempted and if efforts were made to enforce those reforms on them. Yet, on the whole, that policy succeeded admirably. Then came another period in which there was a complete reversal of that policy, in which the farmer was taught, by speeches from responsible Ministers, that production for the foreign market was not to be his main effort, that it would not pay and that he should drop it.

You have, therefore, three periods of about eight years each, during which the farmers were subjected to three different types of policy. One was: "Go-as-you-please": that was during the last European war. Then: "Improve your methods, because only in that way can you even keep your hold on the foreign market." The policy of the third period was: "The foreign market must go." Can you blame the farming community if they are not as up to date as Deputy Childers would like them to be?

I do not blame them.

I am glad of that, and I am glad that the Deputy has had the opportunity to say so, as blame of them seemed to have been the burden of portion of his speech— of the end of it. Here were the farmers, confronted with three different types of policy. I suggest to the Deputy that the policy pursued, as far as agriculture is concerned, between 1922 and 1931 was sound. I put it to him also that that sound policy was overshadowed for a number of years —not for ever, I am glad to say—by politics. I do not say whether they were good politics or not, but let me put it in this way without being offensive; for pure political considerations that policy was scrapped for a certain period. I am glad to see it advocated now and accepted fully by all sides of the House. I hope that we can regard as something quite definite for the future not merely the views put forward by Deputy Childers but the actual statement of the Minister for Finance himself—quoted, I think, by the Deputy:

"We have to rely on our export trade—and that means on our agriculture—to ensure that in spite of vast war demands we will obtain the wide range of imports required to maintain stability of conditions at home."

He lays down that, in order to do that, the quality must be attended to. I put it to the Deputy—since he asks the question—that that was the policy in agriculture of the late Mr. Hogan from start to finish of his political career. It is sound policy, and I am glad that it is being adopted—if we are to take the words at their face value—and that its soundness is being fully realised by the House.

The struggle is going to be difficult; I think the Deputy is quite right in saying that. I may not be as competent as he is to know what the problems of the future will be. If—as seems likely—this is going to be a long war, I confess that I, for one, have no conception of the world or the Europe which is going to come out of the war. That it will mean a fundamental change in many matters, I think, is probable: that it will bring forward grave problems, as Deputy Childers has suggested, is almost inevitable, and I fear that those problems may be even much more grave than he has suggested. I am afraid there were occasions when both the Minister for Finance and Deputy Childers showed in their speeches evidence of complacency; and we ought to ask ourselves if that complacency is due to anything we have done. It was summed up by Deputy Childers in two words—though I do not know if he meant it in that way—we are in a "lucky position." That is just it; we have escaped the main onslaught of the European War, and up to the present we have escaped the principal repercussions from that war, not through any great foresight on our part, but through our being in a lucky position—a lucky position, metaphorically, in the sense that we are able to be neutral in this particular war, and in a lucky position also in our geographical situation, in our not being on the direct route to either of the belligerents; and our luck in the first instance depends on that.

I am glad that the Deputy has stressed the necessity of thinking, not merely of the present Budget but of the situation which is likely to confront a Minister for Finance who has to deal with a continued war position and what, perhaps, may be even more difficult, the situation that is likely to occur after the war. I must confess that I do not find—and I wonder if the Deputy finds—any evidence in the Minister's Budget statement, to show that either of these two problems is seriously engaging the attention of the Minister or of his colleagues. What is he doing? He is saying, quite rightly, that the war did not develop along the lines expected by everybody in every country. The Minister confesses that it is largely due to that that the increased burden put on in the Supplementary Budget some six months ago need not be still further increased. But he is deliberately shutting his eyes to precisely those problems which Deputy Childers wished him to consider. We have got through those six months better than we thought we should, not on account of anything we have done, not because of the way in which we have tried to face our problems, but because the war did not turn out as everybody thought it would. If the war continues as at the present time, no doubt we may have a little more respite so far as our immediate troubles are concerned. I remember that, in this House, when we were discussing the question of peace and when we were somewhat pessimistic about it, I made the suggestion that we could have peace so long as England and France were content to submit— to use a perfectly neutral word—to the demands of Germany. If they were prepared every six months to give way to those demands, then a short period of peace could be anticipated. It is the same way now: I think now that the Minister can look forward with a certain amount of complacency even to another six months of undisturbed financial trouble—that is, without its being so serious that even he would have to wake up to it—if the belligerents, and especially England and France, decide that it is not really necessary to wage the war in order to win it. However, just as I was not sure that there was no limit to which England and France would go to preserve the peace, I am not sure now, either, that they might not start waging the war, and then I fear that, on the return of the gloomy picture painted by the Minister for Finance six months ago, we shall have to wash off a little of the varnish the Minister has been able to put upon it in his Budget speech of yesterday.

Now, elsewhere, we were told, in the speech to which we have listened, Governments have found it impossible to reduce the costs of agricultural production, but what we object to, and strongly object to here, is not that our Government has set about the difficult task of reducing the costs of agricultural production, which is our principal industry—it is now admitted by everybody to be our mainstay and something on the success of which everything else depends—that is common ground now— it was not to that problem of diminishing the costs of agricultural production that our Ministers have turned their minds over a number of years, it is to increasing the costs of our agricultural production. Other countries may have found it difficult, as Deputy Childers pointed out, to face the other problems placed on them by natural causes, but we have not been content with that. We have deliberately gone out of our way to increase the costs of the raw material of the farmer and the costs which he must incur in order to buy. We could at least have spared our farmers that. Deputy Childers, quite rightly, has drawn attention to the slow advance we have made in all articles of agricultural production. That has been done again and again from these benches. The attention of the Government has been called to it repeatedly from these benches, but I am glad that a voice comes from their own benches to call their attention to that important fact.

Unless there is that increased production the Minister for Finance must recognise that he or his successor will have an impossible task to face in this country if the war lasts, and a still more impossible task, perhaps, when the war ends. We have to see that we are not caught in some of the difficulties that followed the cessation of the late war. If, for instance, we see Great Britain making every effort to prevent what happened in the last war—the quick inflation of prices—then we ought to have some foresight with a view to guarding against the more obvious problems that we may have to face. There may be others, as I have said already, the nature of which no one can foretell, but at least as much foresight as we have ought to be applied to that particular matter.

Now, there was one matter raised in the speech made by Deputy Childers that he did not pursue. I wonder where it would lead, and I wonder whether the country as a whole would care to face it. The Deputy passed rather quickly over the effect of what I shall call the division of land. He did not call it by that name, but he did point out that the decline or, as the case may be, the lack of progress, in productivity was more marked in in the case of the small farm than in that of the large farm. I think the Deputy will acknowledge that that brings him into much more complicated and difficult problems upon which he did not even touch. What lesson are we to draw from that, or did the Deputy want a lesson to be drawn from it? Evidently not, since the Deputy shakes his head. Then it was merely a matter of information for the House, but what I thought was that he would dwell on the lesson that was to be drawn. However, I gather from the shake of his head that he deliberately refrains from that.

These figures were from before 1931. They only referred to the 1923 Land Act.

Well, whatever happened, that was the fact— that there was no lesson to be drawn from it.

The Deputy says "perhaps," but at any rate he will not draw the lesson. I thought not. It might raise more difficult social questions than we care to face. We may have to face the problem as to what we want and what price we are willing to pay for productivity. However, as the Deputy did not pursue that matter, I do not intend to pursue it further, but I warn him that the problem is there. Now, we have £100,000 for fertilisers. After a great deal of cogitation the Government have determined to increase their grant by that extent.

For next year?

Yes, for next year. Let us consider the way in which they have helped, at the expense of the consumer or the taxpayer—and in tackling this question I make no distinction between them—let us consider the way in which they have given help to other industries not so vital as farming. Here, when they realise, as I presume they do realise, the importance of increased productivity, this is as far as they can go in that particular matter. Yet, I put it to the Minister that the consuming public is salted, and salted very severely, for the upkeep of industries that have not one-hundredth part of the value of agriculture, and the production of which cannot stand in the scale for an instant against the increased productivity on the part of agriculture. That is what makes me uneasy about some phrases in this Budget statement that otherwise I should accept with a great deal of pleasure. In other words, I do not know how far they go beyond the mere words of the Minister. I admit that is a gain in itself, but it is when I come to take the words of the Minister and compare these words with his performance that I am profoundly disappointed and really uneasy.

Take the question of economy. There are various portions of this Budget Statement from which you would think that the Minister had the question of economy at heart, but when you come to performance it is quite obvious that he has no intention, so to speak, of honouring what he considers to be a very wise policy. From this side of the House we have put forward, in considerable detail, various economies that might be effected. We have never concealed our belief that the increased expenditure on the Army is unjustified. I believe that the defence of this country, or the better defence of this country, does not depend in the slightest on any of the increased expenditure for which the Department of Defence has been responsible in the last 18 months. If I may again borrow the two words of Deputy Childers, I believe that the defence of this country depends on our "lucky position", and I think the Minister himself will realise, and everybody will realise, that the real defence of this country does not depend on us at all. I do not say that other people are protecting us for the love of us—I am not pretending that—but it is in the interests of other people to protect us for the love of themselves. It is on the efficacy of that defence that our safety depends, much more than on any increased and wasteful expenditure in which the Ministry has indulged, as I say, for the last 18 months. I think that is plain. I think it must be plain, even to the Government. What I object to is the slowness with which they react to obvious evidence. I do not wish, any more than Deputy Childers wishes, to go into the past. It was he drew me into the past. I do not wish to go into the past but I think that if the Government had realised the necessity for changing policy more quickly than they have done in many vital instances, the position of the country would be much more satisfactory.

I must say that I cannot at all sympathise with the Minister getting any comfort out of the fact that in other countries men holding similar positions have had to face vast expenditure. That is no indication that a similar course was necessary for us. We have not to base our expenditure on the expenditure of countries that were liable to invasion at any moment. We must take advantage—it is blindness not to take advantage—of what has been described as our lucky position, and if other countries have found it necessary to increase their expenditure enormously—and often, I am sorry to say, quite ineffectively—for defensive purposes, that is no justification whatsoever for our laying any balm to our heart because we are following the same road. From beginning to end of the various debates on defence, I have never heard or read any argument put forward by the Ministers to show that what they have done in the way of increased expenditure for defence is of any service. I think the Minister for Finance ought be the first to realise that.

There was a statement in which the Minister justified his expenditure and he used one sentence that perhaps I might call to his mind—I was anxious to call it to the attention of his Parliamentary Secretary—namely:

"Since I assumed office as Minister for Finance it has been my object, in the course of the necessarily detailed study I have had to make of the many problems arising in the financial affairs of our country"—

that is not what I want to call attention to, I may tell the Minister. I do not want to break into his profound studies of these problems. It is the next thing—

"to concern myself in the first place with ends rather than means and not to refuse the support of the public purse to schemes and projects which, on a strictly accountancy basis, could not be reckoned as profit-earning or revenue-producing."

And yet, I think, his Department, as a whole, he himself, his predecessor, possibly, and the permanent Parliamentary Secretary, permanent during the tenure of office of the Ministers opposite, have turned down various important useful works, nationally useful works, on the ground that they were not economic, such as various drainage schemes, schemes that will have to be done sometime, schemes that will be undertaken by some Government, schemes that the longer they are postponed, will cost all the more. If that phrase of the Minister is borne in mind much more useful work than much of the work in which the Government has wasted money, in a way that shocks a large number of the people of this country, could be carried out.

When the Minister got to speaking of social services, the things he lumped together in order to increase his expenditure on social services might cause some amusement. We will soon think that, possibly, the whole maintenance of the Ministry is a social service. Perhaps it is. There were things put into social services that I do not know that even his predecessors tried to do. When he was speaking of borrowing, he said that he thought he was entitled to borrow one-fourth of the Unemployment Vote. Why? Is it because the unemployment situation is such as to give him the hope that in the near future there will be a diminution of that sum? Does not he know he will have to meet that sum year after year? Does not he know his predecessor in one of his Budget statements said that unemployment was to be endemic—it would be always with us? I am not criticising his predecessor for having said that, but does not the Minister realise that if the present policy goes on, unemployment is going to continue and that there is no justification for borrowing any portion of that particular sum on the grounds that it is capital expenditure? What does that matter when you have to meet it every year, one year after another, and when, if the difficulties we have to face increase, we may have to increase that sum rather than diminish it?

Dealing with that whole subject of the work provided by the Government by means of various sums of money that the Government are spending which might give work here and there throughout the country, we have in one particular page of the Budget statement a mounting sum—£2,000,000, £3,000,000, £4,000,000, £6,000,000, spent by the Government, but he was not satisfied until he brought it to £8,000,000. I think in unemployment schemes alone, technically so called, he pointed out that some 24,000 people —I cannot remember for the moment the exact figure—were engaged in that way. Does he not think that that raises a problem as to the value, from the employment point of view, of the industrial policy that was pursued with such vigour and determination for at least seven years of the Government's existence? If the Government find it necessary to spend all that sum, not merely on unemployment relief, but also to act as employers on a very large scale, is not that a serious problem? Is it not quite as serious as some of the problems raised by his supporter, Deputy Childers? The Government is becoming daily one of the principal employers—I speak of unskilled work—and yet the inroads into the unemployment problem are not at all as drastic or as great as we would like to see.

We have seen that despite this immense expenditure of public money, despite all that the community has to pay in the way of tariffs, which increase prices to the ordinary consumer a great deal more than the amount collected in tariffs, the rate of people taken into employment has not increased. I put that merely as a problem—but a very grave one. It is one that surely is worthy of engaging the attention of the Government. Is it not possible—and I again put this before them—that in the policy of increasing taxation you may find money to enable the Government to employ people, but you must also, as a counterpart of that, take into account the fact that you may be depleting the ordinary private employment fund? The situation is extremely complicated and I can well understand Ministers, when they came into office, thinking in their enthusiasm, that by a policy of increasing and heaping on tariffs, they could cope with the problem of unemployment, but I put it to them that after eight years' experience that whole question is worthy of drastic review. Otherwise, I fear you will have a continuation of the system and you will have people being driven out of private employment and having to be taken into Government employment.

So far as economies in general are concerned, I find very little evidence, unfortunately, in the Budget statement of any real effort in that respect. In respect of one of the most outstanding cases where an effort at economy might have been tried, I feel that the Government having, so to speak, nailed its colours to the mast in connection with their defence policy, refuses to take them down now. I think it is a pity because I think there is big unnecessary expense there. If it is merely a question of face-saving, the Government ought to be above it, because the crisis is sufficiently grave to warrant a real attack on the whole problem by the Government. You may want money soon for other things. Do not squander it now, and do not dry up the source of supply merely because we have escaped the worst effects of the war, owing to its extraordinary character, for the last six months.

Reference is made in the Budget statement to the cost of living. I think the Minister should not base his references to the cost of living merely on the Civil Service, because it affects everybody. It is not merely the civil servant who is affected by it, but the ordinary person with 30/- a week. What I want to point out is that, as a result of the war, without any contribution whatever from the Government, the prices of essential commodities to a man with from 30/- to £3 a week, the prices of what are necessary to keep him and his family alive, are bound to go up, and surely it is an occasion for seeing whether you cannot come to his relief by taking off at least the Government contributions to the increased cost of living to him. The Minister implied that these prices were bound to go up in his Supplementary Budget statement, and he implies it now when dealing with the Civil Service—higher costs and higher wages, other higher costs and other higher wages, and so the spiral goes up. Assuming for the moment that that is so, is it not a time for a revision of the additional burden which the Government has put on these costs? If that is done, economies will have to be made, and I suggest that providing money for contingencies such as invasion which, so far as we can see, are not likely to occur, and for measures which, if these contingencies did occur, would probably be quite useless, is not justified when you have problems much more vital to the people than the hypothetical future which we are asked to face and for which we are asked to vote a couple of million pounds per year.

If this other problem is not attacked, you are certainly going to have a much more dangerous problem in your big cities which will not be hypothetical— but a very real problem. You will have that to face, and not the possibility of invasion, which, if it occurs, we have not got the forces to repel. Compare our armaments with those which have gone down like nine-pins before the invasion of a modern big State, and let us ask ourselves what are the chances of invasion, put in the balance against the chances of unrest due to increasing prices and the stablisation of wages? You have the possibility of that unrest, on the one hand, and a hypothetical invasion, on the other. You make grossly inadequate provision, if you intend to rely on yourselves, to repel an invasion of that kind. You might as well have made none. I put it to the Government that it is time they sat down and attacked these problems, leaving what might be called ordinary political considerations out of it. I recommend these things, for what they are worth, to the Minister's attention. The future is extremely uncertain, and I think we shall have to face, as the Minister says, very grave problems, but they will have to be faced by everybody. A drastic revision of policy must be necessary on the part of any Government in this country, and whatever Government is in, this country ought to have the courage and the determination to undertake that drastic revision.

Deputy Childers opened his remarks by stating that he had gone to great trouble to get his facts accurately, and as he was dealing with the situation of the agricultural community, I immediately, and wrongly, assumed that he was getting his facts from the farming constituency he represents, County Longford. He then stated that he had got his facts from the Institute of Agriculture which has its headquarters in Rome. He gave a very interesting survey of the position of agriculture since the establishment of the State. He showed how we were rated, our production and the decline in the various articles of that production, together with statistics of cattle, sheep, pigs and fowl. He showed how we had not improved our position with respect to other countries in the production of cereals, but, at the end of his speech, he said that he did not feel called upon to suggest anything which would get over this great difficulty, this lack of modernisation of our agricultural industry, which would enable us to get into the position of other countries. He advanced the most extraordinary reason I ever heard, or ever will hear, for the fact that the farmers did not come up to the mark compared with their foreign competitors when he said that the fault was partly that of the Irish people and that the cause of it was the political disagreement in the country since the inception of the State.

That is the most extraordinary reason I ever heard advanced for the failure of agriculture in this country, or even for the lack of enterprise in agriculture. Little as I think of a farmer who supports the Fianna Fáil Party, I would not go so far as to suggest that the mere fact that he is foolish enough to support that Party makes him a very bad farmer, and it is quite possible that, even in the ranks of Fianna Fáil supporters, you might find an odd good farmer; but I cannot see how the Deputy can argue that the fact that there was political disagreement in the country affects agricultural production. I could see how it would operate during the period of civil strife, when there was general economic upset, and upset also so far as the Government was concerned, but, from 1923 to 1938, which covers most of the period he dealt with, I do not see that the political disagreement of our farmers had anything to do with the lack of development of agriculture, or their disinclination to link, as he said, modern scientific methods with tradition. He made one most sinister remark, a remark I never want to hear in this House, because it suggests that there is one thing vitally necessary before any good can come to this country and that is a revolution. What he actually did say was that a mental revolution on the part of the people was required. One thing I do not want to hear of is a revolution, mental or otherwise.

A mental revolution is desirable at times.

The word "revolution", mental or otherwise, should not be mentioned in this House. It gives one an extraordinary conception of the farmers' outlook. What would happen if they had to undergo a mental revolution?

Perhaps a social revolution.

I do not mind social revolutions because a social revolution, as understood by the Labour Party, does not mean anything. We have heard of social revolutions from the Labour Party for the past 20 years. That is the one kind of revolution I do not mind hearing people refer to. It is something like a Utopia. They talk a lot about it but they never do anything to bring it about as far as I can see. As my friend Deputy Hickey asked on one occasion recently, what is the use of commemorative demonstrations unless something is done? The same remark might apply to other questions. What is the use of talking about them unless something is done?

I will put this problem to Deputy Childers. Was it really the fault of the farmers that they did not attempt to improve their position from the scientific viewpoint, in the period mentioned? Was it possible for the individual Irish farmer at any time to do what had been done in other countries? I do not think it was. It was still more impossible for the last eight years. No matter how desirable the improvements which Deputy Childers would like to see, it would appear as if it is going to be still more impossible for the Irish farmer to improve his position in the near future. The Deputy put his finger on the cause of all the trouble. We are meeting a situation now totally unlike that which prevailed in the last Great War when the Irish farmers could demand any price they wished for their products. We are meeting a situation where we have a market in Great Britain and where one of our main competitors has been completely removed but with this difference. Unless the Minister for Supplies and his colleague, the Minister for Agriculture, have done something or hope to do something of which we are not aware, the Irish farmer has got to face a position this time that he cannot demand and get any price he wants for his produce. He is going to be met with a system of very rigid control of prices as far as Britain is concerned. To make matters worse, his costs of production are increasing daily. Is any effort being made to reduce his costs of production? The first step, to my mind, would be to find out how these costs have increased over a period of years, particularly for the past eight years.

If Deputy Childers went to any farmer sitting, as he said, by his fireside in County Longford and asked him to suggest some means by which the cost of production of agricultural commodities could be reduced, I think that farmer would be able to point out, inside in his own house, outside in his yard or out of his account books if he kept account books, quite a number of items in which there have been needless increases in the cost of feeding stuffs and other commodities which he has to buy. It is all very fine for Deputy Childers to talk here in the strain in which he did. His statement was magnificent from the point of view of research and figures, but I do not think it was very helpful as a contribution towards a solution of the farmer's difficulties. I suggest to him that, if he goes down to County Longford, he will find that the position at the moment is that, having regard to the feeling in the hearts of most Irish farmers, owing to what they have gone through in the past eight years and owing to the small prospect they see of pulling themselves out of the mire, it will be very hard to convince them, unless something drastic is done on their behalf, that they should link science with tradition in the manner he suggests. Ninety-nine per cent. of them are not in a position to improve their circumstances.

Forty or 50 years ago one might say that the Irish farmers were the slaves of the Irish landlords. In the period immediately preceding the Great War many farmers were in low water and were indebted to traders in the surrounding towns. I am afraid that for the past five or six years they have gone back to that position again. The small farmers of the country are indebted to practically everybody with whom they have had dealings—to the local traders, to the local creameries, to the local authorities for rates and very often to the Government for land annuities. That position is due to no fault of their own. Mind you, the position of the bulk of our farmers is such that unless there is an extraordinary improvement in prices, such as occurred during the Great War, they will not be able to pull themselves out of the mire very easily. Actually what has been happening for some years past is that these farmers have been getting themselves deeper and deeper into the mire and they have carried with them into the mire traders in the smaller market towns. The farmers are not in a position to meet their indebtedness to traders in the country towns and the traders in turn are not able to discharge the liabilities to their creditors. There you have the vicious circle and the burden of debt grows all round. That was one aspect of the situation which the Minister did not take into consideration when he was introducing his Budget.

The Minister congratulated himself on the fact that he was able to carry on without increasing taxation, but he completely overlooked one vital aspect of the whole matter, that whether he increases taxation now or not, he is looking for a sum of about £35,000,000. If he never put on another penny as long as he remains Minister for Finance, does he really believe that it is within the capacity of this country to bear that huge sum? I am beginning to think that the attitude of the present Minister for Finance is similar to that which his predecessor seemed to have adopted towards the end of his term of office when, it was said on one famous occasion, he saw the map of Éire as that of a country bounded on the west side by the Phoenix Park and on the east side by the Irish Sea. I wonder has the Minister any conception of the conditions under which ordinary people have to live in the small country towns and in the countryside surrounding them—the small farmers, the casual labourers and the agricultural labourers living in these areas? Has he any conception of the conditions under which they are existing at present? Will he go down to any one of these towns, live there for a period of, say, three months and put himself into the position of a trader or a small farmer, or even live with such people for a while and watch the business they do in any particular week? Let him see the size of the markets in these particular areas. All over the South of Ireland, where formerly there were flourishing weekly markets, these markets have now practically disappeared. The fact that they have disappeared means that the productivity of the farmer has disappeared and that the trader in the town is not doing a fraction of the business which he did formerly. Again, both these things mean that neither the farmer nor the trader is in a position to contribute to the national revenue as he could have done in the days when prosperous markets were in existence.

One amazing feature of the Minister's statement, one I was rather surprised that he had the coolness to mention, was the fact that in the first page and practically in the last page he completely reversed Fianna Fáil policy. On the very first page, he pointed out that revenue had shown an unexampled resilience despite the strain of adverse conditions. He went on to say that our import and export trade consequently did not suffer as seriously as was expected. That is the death-knell of self-sufficiency in this country. The real explanation why the Minister is not looking for extra money is that even during the war we are still importing so much that he is able to collect sufficient in tariffs to enable him to tide over this particular Budget. At the other end he again reversed the Fianna Fáil policy and said that if we are to look forward to the future we have to think of our agricultural export trade. It is a great pity that our imports referred to in the first page and our exports referred to on the second-last page were not thought a little more highly of by his predecessor eight or nine years ago. If his predecessor and the Government paid as much attention in those days to our export agricultural trade as the Minister now suggests they are likely to do, I do not think either the Minister for Supplies or the Minister for Agriculture need travel to England to try to improve our position.

One of the reasons why I say this £35,000,000 is vastly beyond the power of the community to bear is this. Imports are still high and tariffs show an increase, the tariffs are being charged on the cost of the articles imported, and, as he said, the landing price includes freight and insurance. These articles, therefore, are imported and have to be bought by our people at a far higher cost than six or seven months ago. That means nothing else than a reduction in the purchasing power of the community, because the people earning £1 or 30s., unlike the civil servants, have nobody to estimate the index figure of 85 for the cost-of-living bonus for them, and no matter how the Minister's tariff returns may have increased, because he has been collecting tariffs on goods the prices of which have increased for the people of the country, they are not in a position to get any more for their £1 or 30s. In fact, they are in the position that they get far less.

The Minister congratulated himself on the fact that he had not lost on the revenue from motor cars and petrol. He may be a little bit optimistic in thinking that these duties were up to the mark. If I remember rightly, when the scare started last year, more petrol, oil, motor parts and motor cars were imported in a short period than were imported for quite a long time before. Even though the Minister said that the motorists stood up bravely to the increased taxation, they may not stand up to it so well in the future. He may not have that happy event occurring again of the extra imports for a month or so which helped him to bridge the gap.

It is significant that every year for the last few years there has been a reduction in estate and death duties. In my opinion that is definitely a sign of a reduction to a certain extent of the capital of the country. I remember the previous Minister for Finance arguing on one occasion that that did not necessarily follow, because, he said, it was very often explained by a reduction in the value of stock exchange securities. That explanation may be again offered. I remember that when the Minister introduced his Supplementary Budget one of the optimistic features about it was that he increased the death duties on very large estates. At the time everybody was wondering why he did that, because most people assumed that there were scarcely any estates of that kind in the country. But the death duties have gone down despite the fact that, after increasing the rate of duty on very large estates, he succeeded a day or two afterwards in capturing duties from one exceptionally large estate. Apparently it was intelligent anticipation on his part last September when he expected this estate to fall in and therefore increased the rates. Still the death duties have gone down. I do not think the Minister can say that the drop in stock exchange securities will explain that, because I do not suppose that out of 80 per cent. of the people who pay death duties of 30/- or so on estates of £300 or £40 or £50 on estates up to £2,000, 75 per cent. would have to pay in stock exchange securities. In the bulk of the probates or administrations taken out in country districts or towns stock exchange securities would be the exception rather than the rule.

I was rather surprised at the Minister's reference to the phrase coined during the last depression that "Budgets are being worn unbalanced this year." I think he must have forgotten what happened before he came into office, because if "Budgets are being worn unbalanced this year," I suggest that the Minister is wearing the same suit as his predecessor was wearing for eight years. As far as I remember, the wearing of unbalanced Budgets has been quite a popular fashion, particularly since Fianna Fáil came into office.

With regard to the White Paper which has been issued explanatory of the Budget, I do not think it is right that the Budget should be balanced by a series of extraordinary calculations. The first of these which helps to balance the Budget is No. 4 on the expenditure side: "Deduct unemployment assistance saving, £125,000." A saving on the Vote for unemployment assistance can only come about in two ways: (1) a reduction in the number of unemployed; (2) an alteration in the rates of assistance or a tightening-up of the regulations. If the Minister is to get his saving by a reduction in the number of unemployed, like every other Deputy, I would be delighted to see it, but I do not believe it is possible. I do not believe that the Minister is likely to effect any saving on the Unemployment Assistance Vote by a reduction in the number of unemployed. Assuming he does not get that reduction, how is he going to save £125,000? He must do it either by altering the rate of assistance or by tightening-up the regulations. Nobody will suggest, with the rising prices of the necessaries of life, that there could be any alteration in the rate of assistance. I do not believe either that anyone would suggest that there should be any tightening-up of the regulations. If there are any regulations in this country that are water-tight, they are the unemployment assistance regulations.

Another little bit of financial jugglery is the deduction for capital expenditure to be defrayed by borrowing. Any person would naturally assume from the term "capital expenditure" that it referred to non-recurring expenditure. Will the Minister say that the £500,000 for defence expenditure will be non-recurring? If so, I shall be delighted to hear it. I can understand the items with reference to the Air Force and afforestation. Then the £350,000 to be borrowed for employment schemes is likely to be a recurring item, unless the Government have some plan for reducing the number of unemployed.

When the Minister, with a very modest appreciation of his own power said at the end of his statement that he possibly would have a microscopic surplus of £4,000, he was not doing badly, because he started off by juggling with figures for capital expenditure and possible savings to the extent of £1,194,000. Actually it means that, on his own figures, he has to borrow practically £1,250,000 to balance the Budget, and is borrowing in respect of items which should be defrayed out of revenue in a particular year.

He also stated that when a Commission for Economies was set up last year, he was attacked from all sides, but he did not say what he was attacked about. He was attacked when it was suggested that the economies would take place on such items as housing grants. I do not think anyone here heard that the Economy Committee suggested any economies that he would be inclined to agree with. I remember that on the last occasion on which the previous Minister for Finance introduced his Budget, there was the worrying question of social services. I do not think he went as far as the present Minister, who suggested that practically everything concerned the social services. He put them down at £8,000,000 while his predecessor did not go beyond £4,000,000. Taking the tables in the Financial Statement, on which there are increases, it will be found that they vary from the President's Department to the Irish Tourist Board, and that they are likely to increase year by year. The number of pensions is also likely to increase. Salary increments as well as retirements are likely to increase, so that next year and the year after the Minister will probably have to spend more money on them.

Coming to the heading B—services on which expenditure was less than the previous year—it appears that some of these are disappearing services. Is the saving on the Gárda Síochána due to the change in the system of mid-month advance of pay and to reserve stocks not purchased? That seems to be a cheerful sort of saving, because reserve stocks were not purchased. The saving on the Department of Local Government is accounted for by less housing grants. There is nothing in that to give the Government any cause for congratulation. There is nothing for congratulation on the part of the Government in connection with the items from 1 to 72, because the increases there are likely to be maintained. If the country has to face a Budget of £35,000,000 this year it may have to face a bigger one next year. Even if the Minister congratulated himself this year on being able to balance the Budget by jugglery, and without increasing taxation, he will have to face up to the fact that unless the demands are cut down in some way taxation will eventually be beyond the capacity of the people to bear, and that the yield from income-tax, foodstuffs and entertainment tax will diminish. If the purchasing power of the people is hit the volume of receipts from these taxes will be reduced.

There is no use in telling the House that the entertainment tax is up slightly during the last six months. Thanks be to goodness the effect of the war has been very slight in this country during the last six months, but it does not follow that the effect will be as slight for the ensuing six months. I will give an example of one type of casual employment that helped in rural areas, and that was building schemes promoted by boards of health, by private owners and by urban authorities. If building is going to slacken, as the Minister suggested in his Budget statement, because of the difficulty of getting supplies, then the only means of employment outside of agricultural work in rural areas will be gone, and the Government will have large numbers unemployed. The purchasing power of these people will be gone if they have no wages, and they will become a charge on the unemployment assistance or the unemployment insurance Votes. We would then be faced with a period when people would have less money to spend and less money to utilise in business and the capacity of the country to bear higher taxation would be growing less. Accordingly the Minister will be getting less money than he gets under the present system.

Seeing that Fianna Fáil has changed its mind, and that it has no plan to deal with unemployment, I hope that steps will be taken to show some ray of hope to the taxpayers. The Minister brought in what I consider to be a middle-aged Budget. He had not the pluck to go forward, and had not the pluck to go backward. He had not the pluck to say "You have to face this expenditure" or to say "I might be able to do something about it but for the Opposition". Will it ever happen again that anyone on the Fianna Fáil benches from the Minister, the ex-Minister, or Deputy Moore, down along will get up to tell us how the country could be run on £20,000,000?

Your Party never told us how it could be run cheaper.

I will tell the Deputy how it could be run cheaper. Only for the policy that the Government has pursued, and that it pursued when in Opposition, we would not want a big Army or a big Gárda Síochána. If the Party now on the Government benches were as anxious to stand up for law and order in 1922 as they are to-day a big Army or a big police force would not be wanted. When it is 16 years too late that Party is coming to its senses. Sixteen years too late they can thank themselves for having to spend £5,000,000 on the Army and on the Gárda.

That will be consoling for the taxpayers.

My opinion about the Budget is that there is much unreality about it, and having listened to Deputy Linehan I cannot say that there has been anything but a great deal of unreality about his speech. The Deputy spoke at great length about Deputy Childers' reference to what was wanted in this country—a mental revolution. I am quite satisfied that Deputy Childers is as far away from a mental revolution as Deputy Linehan, but I hope that what Deputy Childers had in mind was the social revolution which, I hope, is going to come about in the immediate future. In his Budget statement the Minister said: "While solicitous in the interest of the taxpayers about economy, the Government has at the same time not been unmindful of its paramount duty to help in remedying unemployment". One of the things I want to have faced definitely by Ministers is the question of unemployment. There is no problem except that of war, that has brought so much suffering and sorrow to individuals, and that is such a great danger to moral development, to health, and also to the stability of the State than this unemployment problem. I am rather surprised at the light way in which the Minister passed it over. Of course, Deputy Linehan in his speech only referred to it to tell us what the Minister and his predecessor said. The Deputy has somewhat the same views.

I said no such thing.

The Deputy did not, but he did not deal with unemployment. I say that there is a great lack of appreciation of the situation, and that we are not facing up to the reality of the unemployment problem. I want to say to the Minister in all seriousness that I am quite satisfied that most of us do not fully appreciate what unemployment means. With a view to bringing to the minds of the Government and members of this House what it means, I want to give a few facts. We have in Cork a scheme under which differential rents are charged to some of our tenants. We have 2,797 tenants and out of that number we are charging differential rents to 779. These differential rents—I hope Deputy Linehan as well as members on the Government benches will take note of this —are based on one-tenth of the total income of the families in these houses. We got a return from our housing superintendent in December, 1938, which showed that, out of 779 tenants, 177 families were living on an income of 20s. per week, 154 families on from 20s. to 30s. a week, 127 families on from 30s. to 40s., 79 families on from 40s. to 50s., and 90 families on from 50s. to 60s. per week. Take the two first-mentioned figures. They make a total of 331 families and the average is a little over six persons per family. The members of these families are unemployed and they have been transferred to these houses. I want the Minister for Finance, who, I am satisfied has a good deal of human sympathy, to realise the position so far as these families are concerned. I meet these grim cases every day and I am satisfied that we have not yet come to appreciate the gravity of the position regarding unemployment.

Picture 331 families, with six persons per family, trying to exist on an income of between 20/- and 30/- a week—£400 odd between 1,980 persons. These people are paying some rent for their houses. The lowest rents are 3/- and 3/6 per week. That comes out of their income. Take £50 out of the £400 and what has each person to live on? He has something like 3/7 a week for seven days a week to feed, clothe and otherwise provide for himself. That is less than 6d. per day and that applies practically to 331 families. If we were to get a record of all the unemployed homes in the city and of the thousands of unemployed not only in the big cities but in the urban areas, what standard of living would we find? I know what is happening behind the scenes. I know the mentality of these men and I know of the rumblings in the minds of many of the unemployed. Unless people are working somewhere—in factory, field, docks or ware-house—any talking we do here will be of very little use. I happened to have a conversation with a maternity nurse during the past week. She had to go to the home of an unemployed person, whose wife was being confined. When she went there, she found the woman lying on a mattress without a bed. There was only one bed in the home. She asked that a cup of tea be got for the poor woman who was ill. The cup of tea was got only after some delay because there was no fire. When the cup of tea was brought, the nurse asked for milk but there was no milk in the house. I should like to know from Deputy Linehan or from the Minister whether we are doing our duty to these people?

The Minister said in his Budget statement that the burdens must be equally distributed amongst all sections of the community. That is a fine statement but are we honest about it? We are not honest regarding it. We could talk about no more serious problem than unemployment. It is not being talked of here. What is the position regarding widows and orphan children? What is the position of our old age pensioners who are trying to exist on 10/- a week? What is that sum of 10/- a week worth to them as compared with its worth before the war? I have listened to fine, long speeches and to opponents scoring off one another but I agree with Deputy Childers that we should forget about these things and try to solve these problems. No Party will go further in doing that than the Labour Party. We have not dealt with the people really affected in this Budget. Probably because of the position I hold at the present time, I could sear the minds of members of the House with particulars of unemployed men and their wives and families. If I were not in the position in which I am, I would probably not hear of these cases. When we find families, including eight children of from 14 years to six months, occupying a room 12' by 9', I think it is time for us to take this problem seriously instead of scoring off one another in this House. I agree with Deputy Childers, if he is serious in what he urges. What we want is a mental and social revolution to bring about the necessary changes. I am glad Deputy Dillon has come in and I am sorry he was not here to hear some of the things I have said. If we are to do our duty in this House, we must take cognisance of the big problem of unemployment. We shall not do our duty by delivering flowery speeches or by making clever points against opponents across the House. I heard no reference in these speeches to the 120,000 unemployed or their dependents. Neither did I hear any reference to the widows and orphans who are trying to live on an allowance of about 1/- per week per person.

The Minister, in his speech, said:—

"We have learned much since 1914-18 and it should be realised now that the attempt to maintain unimpaired standards, in the face of the additional burdens and losses caused by war, is not only doomed to failure in its immediate objective but will cause the greatest economic difficulty and social injustice."

Whatever increases are being got by the workers are mere tokens to meet the changed conditions. It is not fair to those who are trying to have social peace to make these statements because they are interpreted as meaning that they must not look for any increases. Having regard to the facts I have given and to the general situation, I want to see the Minister tackle the unemployment problem vigorously. In view of the present crisis, we should be mobilising the resources of the nation so that by so doing we might arrive at some solution of the unemployment problem. Because we have not done that, I say that the Budget has not the reality I would like to see it have.

Progress reported. Committee to sit again at 7 p.m.
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