If the Minister will consult the Registrar-General's figures for 1943 and compare them with the figures for 1944, he will find an extraordinary position. I have not the documents before me, but I went through them to-day and I found extraordinary errors. I want to know from the Minister what figures are we to rely upon. I would ask his advisers to check the two reports and they will find that there is an extraordinary discrepancy in the figures given for these war years in the 1943 report as compared with the 1944 report. There is a complete hash of figures there. I mention this matter because I feel that one of the essential problems which we have to face in this country is the settlement of our people on the land. The first question before this House and the Government is to find some solution for providing for the old people on the land, so that the sons and daughters of these old people may settle on the land before they reach middle life and at a time when they will be in a position to rear families. That is one of our crucial problems.
The second problem, as Deputy Corry quite rightly pointed out, is to provide amenities in the country that will compare favourably, and more than favourably, with the urban amenities. That will, I hope, come in due time as a result of rural electrification and other projects at present under way.
In addition to that, we have to face up to the problem of our industrial position here and definitely decide how far we can go towards a policy of full employment in industry. At the present time a considerable percentage of our national income is going abroad in foreign investments, something perhaps in the neighbourhood of £25,000,000 to £30,000,000 per year. Certain experts calculate that no less than 10 per cent. of our national income is going abroad in investments. I put it to the Minister that here is a fund which can be utilised for the development of Irish industry and also of Irish agriculture. I do not want to see the State becoming the fairy godmother for every service and need and want in this country. I do want to see the State giving a directive so that Irish investors will realise that it is as remunerative and certainly less risky to put their money into Irish enterprise as to send it to the far-flung corners of the earth.
So far as I can make out, the amount of investment in Irish industry would be in the neighbourhood of between £6,000,000 and £7,000,000 per year. I submit that the amount going abroad in investments is in the neighbourhood of £25,000,000 to £30,000,000 per year. I suggest that, given a proper directive by the Government and by the policy of the Government to ensure that stable productive industries and enterprises were started, there would be a possibility of checking that flow of investment abroad and directing it home. I am not suggesting that the Minister should intervene to control investment, as has been done in other countries, but I would go so far as to say that he should take steps to ensure that our investors appreciate the problems that are here, and that our Government, if necessary, should go even so far as to engage in propaganda on behalf of Irish industry, not on behalf of a particular firm or industry, but on behalf of industry as a whole. If these two matters were tackled, we could get somewhere towards solving our unemployment problem and keeping our people at home. But I submit that a drastic surgical operation is needed and that these temporary palliatives of social sops will lead us nowhere. They are not leading us anywhere. Our population is still going despite all these sops.
Now, I want to fit this Budget into its proper perspective as against the background of the social and economic position as visualised by this document published by the Minister in March of this year. Apart from the fact that we have a declining population and that we have, in addition, considerable emigration to Great Britain, anybody studying this document will discover that our cost of living has increased in the war years by 70 per cent., that wages in industry—I am taking the table as a whole—in non-agricultural employment have, as a result of Government policy, increased only to the extent of between 20 and 25 per cent. In other words, these people employed in industry have to tighten their belts to make up for the difference between a 70 per cent. increase in the cost of living and a 25 per cent. increase in salaries and wages.
You will find that this works out in a very peculiar way. For example, taking food, you will find that, despite all the talk we have here about feeding ourselves, putting our food prices on the same level as 1938, we are spending on food £2,000,000 odd per annum less than we spent in 1938. What does that mean? It does not mean that the gentleman who pays surtax or excess profits tax or the gentleman who can afford to pay the extra 2/7 per bottle on champagne or the 2d. extra for a glass of whiskey is pulling in his belt. It means that those below the £150 limit who do not come under the survey of the Revenue Commissioners at all have to pull in their belts and do with less food to-day than they had in 1938. That is one aspect of it.
The other aspect of it is that these same people, whom I shall call the poor, for want of a better term, are spending less to-day on clothing than they spent in 1938 to the extent of £7.9 millions. Again, I say it is not the gentleman who can afford to pay 2/7 extra on champagne who is not buying the suit of clothes, or the shirt, or the pair of socks, or the pair of boots, but the unfortunate people below this level who do not come under the Revenue Commissoners' surveillance at all. Again, you will find that they are paying £5.7 millions less than in 1938 on fuel and light, so that we get this position—they are underfed; they are underclothed; they have no heat; and they have very little light. That is the position as I see it. That is the position that we have to put into its proper perspective when we consider this Budget. Seventy-two per cent. of our people earn less than £250 per year. We have something like—I am quoting all the time from this document—198,301 people above the limit of £3 per week, and it is these people who will have to find the money for this Budget. That is the position in this country to-day.
Now the Minister for Finance very suavely says to the farmers: "You are prosperous—so prosperous that you have money in the bank; not only have you sufficient money in the bank to put your farms into a properly serviced condition and to improve your capital equipment, to buy machinery and fertilisers and all that sort of thing, but you are able to provide for future prosperity and hand down prosperous farms to your sons and daughters; and, in addition, you have enough money to pay the £470,000 odd that you owe by way of arrears of annuity." I submit to the Minister that again his own figures are against him. During the five or six years of this war, it is stated in this document, capital development suffered to the extent of £15,000,000 per year in 1938, and in the current figures to the extent of £20,000,000 per year; and that, applied to the farmer, means that he was working his farm with his capital during this war, that he was working the land without fertilisers and manures, and that he was sowing and reaping his crops with out-of-date and battered machinery, and that, whatever he did put into the bank, as a result of any increased prices during this war, he will have to outlay that immediately fertilisers and machinery become available. Therefore, instead of having any money in the bank, when this job has to be done now, or as soon as materials become available, he will have to outlay more than he has put into the banks. It is no good our priding ourselves on the fact that we have increased deposits in the banks, and post office savings, and so forth. The position is that we require a gross capital development in this State, according to this report, needing £100,000,000; and the experts who prepared this report say that they are very doubtful if that £100,000,000 will meet the bill. I will quote from the document itself as regards this:—
"If the figure of £24,000,000 for 1938 be regarded as ‘normal' there has clearly been a considerable falling off in capital formation, as defined, during the emergency period The average during the years 1942-44, indicates a deficiency of £15,000,000 per annum at 1938 prices, or more than £20,000,000 per annum at present day prices. The deficiency over the whole period would seem to be of the order of £100,000,000 at present day prices. No doubt, it would be possible to dispense with some of the capital goods on works as defined for the purpose."
Now, in addition, they say that:—
"These figures, accordingly, set in a new perspective the value of the forced savings of this State during the war. It is doubtful if these savings will suffice to make good the capital deficiency which has piled up during the war years, let alone provide for more intensive capitalisation."
Now, what I have said with regard to agriculture applies with a greater degree of intensity to industry. There the job, if the Minister for Industry and Commerce is not painting too rosy a picture, will be that the industrialist will have to capitalise within the reserves which he was forced to put by during the war period; and, again, I submit that, whatever reserves were put by by industry during the war period with a view to eventually investing in industry here, they will not be sufficient to do the job. So much for the savings and the prosperous conditions of the farmer, the industrialist and the worker.
Now, what are we asked to do in this Budget? We are asked as taxpayers in this country to find an extra £3,000,000, less £5,000. That is £2,995,000 more this year than we had to put up last year and that, mind you, despite a reduction of 1/- in the £ in income-tax, and despite the fact that there is 1d. off sugar and 10/- off the turf. We in this country have in Central Fund services to meet an extra £313,000 and in Supply Services an extra £263,000; and on the entire Budget an extra £2,995,000. Despite a reduction of 1/- in income-tax the Minister is estimating an increased yield of £1,250,000, or thereabouts, from income-tax this year, according to the paper he has supplied to us. He is also expecting an increased yield of something like £2,000,000 from customs. Now, who is going to pay the customs —the ordinary householder, the ordinary worker, and the ordinary housewife.
This is a spurious Budget. It has a false front. When you get behind it, you will find that the social and economic condition of this country is very far from the rosy picture that this Budget would suggest. May I put it to you this way: if Atlas were relieved of the burden of carrying the world on his back he would certainly give a great sigh of relief, but Cathleen Ní Houlihán has been carrying almost as heavy a burden as Atlas did, and because Cathleen Ní Houlihán's back has been eased slightly of this grievous burden that was breaking her back until now, we are expected to throw up our hands in a pæan of praise, and song, and glory, and say: "Thanks be to God, or thanks to the Minister for Finance, or thanks to this great Fianna Fáil Administration for giving us those reliefs." We have got very, very little relief in this Budget. As far as I remember, the Budget of 1939 was about the £33,000,000 figure and it was regarded as a phenomenal Budget, calculated to break the back of the country. Here we are getting a £53,000,000 Budget and the war has been over for more than a year. Let us not delude ourselves that because we were asked to carry an almost impossible burden during the war that this is any considerable relief now. This is no great relief to industry. I admit there is some relief in it, but I respectfully submit that the relief is nothing like what industry expected and what industry needs if the programme visualised for us by the Minister for Industry and Commerce is ever to reach the practical stage. As to the farmer's relief, again I say, let the farmer not be deceived by this. There is considerable temporary relief given in this £1,000,000 by way of derating to the farmer but it lasts only for two years. It stops at the end of two years and the farmer is told quite bluntly: "Set your house in order within these two years." That is the only inference to be taken from the Minister's statement.
He tells them they are prosperous and will be in a position to do great things, that everybody must be reasonable, industrialists must not expect too great profits, neither must the farmer; the worker, above all, must not expect too great wages; we must all pull together. But I can see a position at the end of two years, if this present relief is stopped and, according to the Budget statement, it may be stopped, in which we will be faced with a very serious load of taxation. Because, whatever may be said for the present Budget, we are facing abnormal, increased expenditure for the next five years in this country. We are facing a position in which we will have to find £1,000,000 for public health. I do not know how many millions we will have to find for sanatoria and tuberculosis clinics. We have to find £350,000 this year for the tourist industry and the Minister for Industry and Commerce, on the Second Stage of the Tourist Bill indicated to the House that he proposed to embark upon a scheme of fixed-term loans for people engaged in the tourist trade and told us quite clearly that there was no limit to the amount of loans that may be demanded of this House. When you consider that these loans are based on advances made to the Tourist Board which can be wiped out with the consent of the Minister for Finance and the Minister for Industry and Commerce, wiped out as regards principal and interest, I would ask the House seriously to consider where we are heading. We are definitely faced with increasingly heavy demands year after year by the local authorities and I have no doubt in my mind that the local authorities' rates will go up and up and up for the next five years and until such time as many of the schemes now adumbrated become operative. So that, if there is any temporary relief given here, I respectfully submit it is merely given as an offset to that spiral of increase in rates that the Minister foresees.
As to the reduction in the price of turf, I want again to say to the Minister that I am not in the least turf-minded. I come from an area where we raised coal for the past 300 years and I confess that I am entirely coal-minded. But when the Minister for Industry and Commerce was introducing his Turf Development Bill to the House, he clearly indicated that the cost of machine-won turf on the bog would be in the neighbourhood of 20/- to 25/- a ton, and he also clearly indicated, in reply to Deputy McGilligan, that at least some quantity of that turf would find its way to Dublin.
Deputy McGilligan asked what would be the cost of shifting it from the bog to Dublin. He did not get a very clear answer but the Minister seemed to agree that it would not cost more than 10/- to shift it from the bog to Dublin, so that we would have the turf in Dublin, wholesale, at 35/- a ton and it would not be unreasonable to add another 5/- for the wholesalers' profit. On that basis we would have our turf in Dublin at £2 a ton. I respectfully submit to the Minister that turf at 54/- a ton of the kind that we are getting at the moment is uneconomic, extravagant and altogether beyond the means of the smaller householder to meet and I hope that this is but a beginning, that in next year's Budget the 14/- will come off and that we will have this turf in Dublin at £2 a ton. We would want to have it in Dublin at £2 a ton if we were to have a fuel in any way comparable with coal, even the worst quality coal. Taking the worst quality coal which we are getting to-day, Welsh anthracite from the Welsh coalfieds, one ton of it is equal to two tons of our turf.