The Minister for Finance has presented to us a Budget which I think is a record from the standpoint of demanding taxation from our people. While I am not one of those who are unduly worried at the size of a Budget or of Budgetary expenditure, I think any intelligent analysis of a Budget must take cognisance of the degree of productivity in the country. The disquieting thing about this Budget is that at a time when national productivity is falling, and falling rapidly, when in fact we are exporting approximately 40,000 of our people per annum, who ought to be contributing to the production of national wealth here, we are by means of this Budget levying taxation to the extent of approximately £42,000,000. That appears to me to be a very disquieting development. When national productivity is falling, when the production of national wealth is decreasing, that is the time at which our citizens are required to make a contribution of £42,000,000 for the maintenance of services during the present year.
A Budget of £42,000,000 could not conceivably impose any real hardship upon our people if the standard of productivity in the country were high, if the national income were high; but, unfortunately, we here have had a tradition of a low national income and nothing that has happened in the last 15 years has added substantially to the low national income which has been, apparently, the economic heritage of this country. Indeed, in case the national income would go up, we are engaged in a scheme of mass exportation of men and women who are taken into the production of armaments in another country and, apparently, that is now accepted as part of the normal activity of this State in dealing with present problems. I do not want to revert to the days when we were going to bring back the emigrants. I do not want to make the Minister for Supplies uncomfortable by any reference to that. The fact remains that not only do we not want to bring them back, but we are exporting men and women in very substantial numbers and apparently regarding that as quite a good price for the emigrants, because they are now threatened that if they do not work for 32/- a week in turf production they will not be given a permit to go out of this country for six months. If they are naughty boys and refuse to work on the turf production scheme, they will not be allowed to go across the water for six months.
This Budget and the whole economic position present a picture which is disquieting to me. What is most disquieting is the lack of realisation of the economic drift. It is that that chiefly causes me anxiety in connection with this Budget. The Minister stated that he was not imposing any new taxes this year. It is difficult to see where the Minister could impose new taxes, so far as the masses of the people are concerned. What is the position in which the poorer classes and the small farmers find themselves? They are not able to pay their debts, not to speak of paying new taxes. If the Minister were to investigate the circumstances of small farmers and the workers in any city or town, he would find that every one of them owes as much money as he dares to borrow from shopkeepers, pawnbrokers or others, and the inability of the people to bear any additional taxation is something which the Minister must have comprehended when he decided not to impose new taxes.
The people have been suffering certain hardships, not because of an annual tax imposed under the Budget, but because of increased weekly taxation. That has been the position for the past 2½ years by reason of the substantial increase in the price of everything. The Minister might very well have imposed an additional tax of 2d. per lb. on butter because the consumers have to pay an additional 2d. It is an increase of that kind, not once per year but once per week, that the consumer has been enduring for the past 2½ years. It is an increased burden of that type which makes the imposition of further taxation on the poor and needy, through this Budget, quite impossible.
The Minister has resorted to the device of borrowing £4,500,000 to bridge the gap between revenue and expenditure. That device is convenient enough, but we ought to have some appreciation of the direction in which we are drifting and the price we are paying by borrowing money at the present rate of interest. According to official information, this country pays £3,000,000 per annum for the service of debt. In other words, for the money that is borrowed the country pays £3,000,000 annually to bond holders, whether they are banks or well-to-do classes in society. It means that £1 per head of the population per annum goes in payment for the service of debt. Under this Budget we are to borrow another £4,500,000 and we will probably pay an additional £200,000 per annum for the service of that debt, irrespective of the £3,000,000 we are already paying. All that money has to be paid by a people reduced in income, reduced in spending power—people who are suffering very severely because of the rise in prices and a complete disorganisation of the whole economic machine.
The Minister is suspected of being quite generous with new Irish companies because he has allowed them certain concessions in respect of excess profits tax and he appears to have convinced himself that he was justified in extending some concession to them. I might suggest that there are other classes in the community much more entitled to consideration in this connection than some of the new, well-financed companies which exist in the country to-day. The Budget makes no provision for an increase in any of the social services or an improvement in their standard. Old age pensioners had to live on 10/- a week in 1939, when the index figure was 173. To-day they have to live on the same amount when the index figure has risen to 237. There is no provision for any increase in the pension in order to meet the very substantial increase in the cost of living.
Unemployed persons who, in rural areas, have to exist on an allowance of 14/- a week—that amount covers a man and his wife and five or six children—will secure no increase in their rates of benefit, notwithstanding that it was fixed in 1933, when conditions were totally different. Apparently there is to be no appreciation of the position to which these people have been reduced by reason of the complete failure on the part of the Government to control prices. Widows who live on small pensions are given no increase under this Budget. Such consideration as has been given to any of these people relates only to the scheme of food vouchers which are extended to certain recipients who reside in urban areas. In the rural areas, and in the small towns which are not urbanised, these people are expected in 1942 to live on allowances which were fixed before the war. There is no appreciation of their economic plight, which has been gravely accentuated by reason of the substantial increase in prices.
The Minister told us that he tried to stabilise wages and prices. He might have told us at the same time that he had failed to stabilise prices, but that he had succeeded in doing one thing, and that is wrecking the relationship which ought to exist between wages and prices. He has succeeded in stabilising wages by Emergency Powers (No. 83) Order and by an amending Order, but he has failed completely to control the price of commodities. These prices have continued to rise, notwithstanding that when the Minister made his statement in respect of stabilisation on the occasion of his Supplementary Budget he implied clearly that the object was to stabilise wages and prices. He has succeeded in stabilising wages to the extent that he has pegged them down to the level in operation in May, 1941. He has not, in fact, stabilised wages, because that would mean an amount which would buy for a continuing period the same quantity of goods. Wages to-day buy less than they bought in May of last year. By the end of this year they will buy still less. The economic position of persons in receipt of static incomes, while prices are rising, will be still worse than it is to-day. Having realised—as he must now realise—that he has failed in his effort to peg down prices to the level in operation in May, 1941, surely the Minister ought to abandon the policy of pegging down wages to the level in operation at that period. If the Minister has failed to implement one portion of his policy, quite obviously, he cannot sustain the second portion unless at the price of imposing very severe hardships on working-class people.
Although the Minister made an effort in the course of his statement to paint a relatively peaceful picture at home and a relatively undisturbed condition of affairs, it was quite clear that the Minister realises that we are certain to have a still more serious unemployment problem here during the coming year. According to the latest departmental figures available there were 96,000 people registered at the employment exchanges in this country, after we had exported 40,000 in the 11 months January to November of last year, and after an additional 30,000 had joined the Army. The Minister's speech betrays a grave fear that that position will become accentuated during the year. I think the Minister's fear is justified. The writing is on the wall already. The position in many industries is parlous because of the shortage of raw materials. Security in private industry to-day is of the most temporary character. Although that position is developing, the Minister did not indicate in any way the plans the Government have for dealing with a situation of that kind. It is quite clear that the supply position is not going to improve. The Minister acknowledges that fact. It is quite true that reliance on the methods that we have relied on in the past is not going to relied us any better results than have been secured so far. We, therefore, will be faced this winter with a very serious situation in respect of employment. The Government do not seem to have any proposals for dealing with that situation. It will be no use trying to deal with that situation next winter; it has got to be dealt with now. Plans have got to be laid; efforts have got to be made now, for dealing with the situation which will then develop, but the Minister kept us in the dark completely as to what plans the Government have in mind. I suspect that they have no plans; they never had a plan.
We tried to suggest to the Government two years ago that it might very well set up an economic council for the purpose of dealing with a situation of that kind, for the purpose of planning industrial development. The Taoiseach then told us that his Ministers were really all economic experts in their various Departments, and that they in fact were a kind of economic G.H.Q. I am sure there is not a Minister vain enough to-day to claim that he is an economic expert in his own Department in the matter of employment or supplies in this country. The whole position has been completely muddled in respect of planning to deal with unemployment or with supplies. Even now, the Taoiseach, who at one stage believed in the setting up of an economic council to plan development and to deal with the necessity for making economic changes, ought to be convinced that reliance upon the methods which he relied upon in the past has not given satisfactory results and is not calculated to give satisfactory results. The Government now ought to realise that the situation in which we live, and the war situation which exists all round us, will compel us to abandon methods which in peace time gave such bad results and which in war time are yielding still worse results so far as the nation is concerned.
