We have debated this Budget resolution for the greater part of three days. I have taken a large number of notes of points made by different Deputies but, when all are boiled down, I find that little was said by way of constructive criticism. Most Deputies did what Deputy Coburn has just done —adverted to the size of the bill which we were presenting to the country, and asked that something be added for the benefit of sections in which they were interested. Yesterday, a Deputy suggested that a couple of hundred thousand pounds should be spent upon a harbour in the town of Wexford. He said that that sum would be too large to be borne by Wexford and that it should be given by the State. I should like Deputies to tot up the cost of the various proposals which are made here by them from time to time and ask themselves whether the total, if added to the Budget items, would not be too large for the State to bear, having regard to its present level of production. Wexford cannot afford to pay £200,000 for the building of a harbour because it is of a certain limited size and has a limited population and income. If Wexford were a much larger centre, it could take this £200,000 in its stride. If our production, and business generally, were on a bigger scale, not only could we take £50,000,000 or £55,000,000 in our stride but we could take a much larger sum.
A peculiar statement was made here yesterday by Deputy Coogan. He pointed to the savings effected here, particularly during the war years, and said that those savings were an indication of lack of enterprise. He contended that the growth in bank deposits was a sign of lack of enterprise. If we are to regard large bank deposits as indicative of lack of initiative and small bank deposits as indicative of vigour and enterprise, then a country such as America should have no bank deposits. Quite a number of deductions made here during the Budget debate were as absurd as Deputy Coogan's deduction in that regard. However, I shall come to that matter later.
I desire to deal, in the first place, with a couple of hares started by Deputy Dillon and Deputy O'Higgins and chased all over the place by the different Deputies who followed them in the debate. Deputy Dillon made the allegation that the 6d. reduction in the price of petrol was made in order to benefit Córas Iompair Éireann. He said that it would bestow a "substantial benefit on Córas Iompair Éireann because the present consumption of petrol by them equals that of the rest of the population". In making that allegation, Deputy Dillon had about his usual margin of error, because the fact of the matter is that all the railways—Córas Iompair Éireann, the Great Northern Railway, the Lough Swilly Railway and others— get between them less than one-seventh of all the petrol imported. Of the fuel oil imported, the railways, canals, ships and road vehicles get a little over one-fourth. Of the kerosene imported, the railways and tramways get one gallon out of every 160 gallons. If we take the three fuels combined, the railways and ships get less than half the fuel given, say, to agricultural tractors, and they get less than one gallon of fuel out of every nine imported. Those are the facts of the case and they show that Deputy Dillon, in making his allegation that Córas Iompair Éireann gets one-half of the petrol, was exaggerating to as great a degree as he usually does.
Deputy O'Higgins took it up, of course, and thought this was too good a point to miss. He went one step further and said—I am quoting his exact words, as given in column 2557 of the Official Report of May 9th:—
"The most fabulous and fantastic fortunes that ever were dreamt of in this country were made in the turf transport racket and are being made at present in that racket of dragging turf up from the country to the city. ...We know very well that, even with this petrol coupon system in operation, any one of them—the turf hauliers—will give 25/- for a gallon of petrol any day and convince you that it is good business; and that, by buying at 25/- a gallon, they still make money on the day's haulage."
First of all, I want to say that there was practically no limitation on the distribution of petrol to those who wanted to haul turf or wood. I do not know whether many of the hauliers made great fortunes or not, but I know that very many of the people engaged in the hauling of turf worked very hard. For some years, I have never gone down the country late at night, in the early morning or in the middle of the day, without seeing them hauling away; and the miracle of the turf dumps in the Phoenix Park, the fact that this city was able to keep going, was due to the hard work they put in. If they have got enormous profits, the profits were there for anybody, since anybody could contract if he had a lorry.
I want to point out that this statement made by Deputy O'Higgins is as completely untrue as Deputy Dillon's statement about the percentage of petrol that went to Córas Iompair Éireann. He said the turf hauliers were prepared to pay 25/- a gallon and still could make a profit. That represents 7½d. per ton mile in an ordinary four-ton lorry—that is what Deputy O'Higgins says turf hauliers could afford to pay and make a handsome profit. What are they getting per ton mile? Recent contracts were 3d. a ton mile and no contracts have been issued for some years—or, I think, at any time during the war—at more than 5d. a ton mile. Therefore, Deputy O'Higgins' proposition, boiled down and examined, is that a turf haulier can afford to pay 7½d. a ton mile for petrol and receive from Fuel Importers, Limited, from 3d. to 5d. a ton mile and still make a profit. That is the usual Fine Gael method, but, as Deputy O'Higgins himself said:—
"An assertion made with a loud enough voice and a sufficiently brazen manner, at all events, if it is not true, it carries conviction."
That is given in column 2557 of the Official Report of the same day.
Deputy Dillon made a general attack on the policy of turf production and spoke in very favourable terms about camel dung being a much better fuel. For a number of years he condemned the policy of wheat growing—he would not be got dead, he said, in a wheat field—but if there had not been sufficient wheat fields for Deputy Dillon to die in in comfort in any parish in the country before the war, a lot of people during the war would have died in grass fields. If he thinks that camel dung is a better fuel than turf, he may burn it if he likes. I wish to goodness that ostrich feathers were good fuel as, judging by the way he sticks his head in the sand and waves his feathers around, they are easily grown down around Ballaghaderreen. We have to face the fact that the fuels we imported heretofore at very cheap prices are not likely to be available in large quantities at low prices in the future. We have to turn to our own resources, if we want to ensure that at all times we will have a reasonable supply of fuel at the lowest possible price at which we can produce it.
That leads me to say that I wish Fine Gael would make up its mind about turf. Where do they stand? If this country is to debate a policy and arrive at decisions which will be a guidance to the people, they should at least know where the major Parties stand as Parties, on the various big questions of social and economic policy. Deputy Coogan, as a Front Bench member of the principal Opposition Party, has on various occasions in this House attacked the policy of producing turf. Does Fine Gael stand for that? Are they for or against this country trying to utilise the resources God gave it in abundance in order to produce fuel for our people?
If they are for it, why do they allow one of their principal spokesmen, one of their principal Front Bench members, Deputy Coogan, to attack it and to tell wild untruths about turf? Deputy Coogan here the last day, Deputies will remember, alleged that the fuel which the Electricity Supply Board were getting in the Pigeon House during the war had three times the calorific value of turf. In actual fact, the calorific value of the fuel that the Electricity Supply Board got into the Pigeon House during the war was very much less than that of the pre-war coal that they imported. Forty per cent. of it would pass through a one-eighth inch sieve. They had on occasions, I have heard, to spray it with oil in order to get it to light. One of the biggest organisations in the country, the sugar company, tell me that they could not have carried on with the fuel they were getting if it had not been for turf. They say:—
"If we did not use turf, we would not have been able to reach the high average which our factories maintained throughout the past campaign. Over the four factories this was a record in the history of the company and was also a record for three of the four factories taken individually. We also made a new record in the total throughout for any one day. The high volatile content of turf as a fuel made it possible for us to dry the immense quantities of pulp involved. No amount of coal of the quality at present available would have permitted us to do this, apart altogether from questions of cost. At two of our factories it was established by experiment that we could utilise more fully the calories available in turf than we could in the case of coal."
It is also within the experience of all Deputies who travel on the railways that turf briquettes made it possible for the railways to keep going. In these circumstances, why should a principal member of the Fine Gael Partly be allowed by that Party to get up and try to create a feeling of hopelessness in the country in regard to the question of turf? We know that turf per ton has not the same number of calories as good coal, but we know that, not only in this country, but in Germany, Russia, Holland, Sweden and various other countries throughout the world, large industries are running on it. The industrialist does not burn fuel for the sake of its appearance. He burns it because it is available and because he gets more calories per 1d. or per 1/- out of it than he can get out of an alternative fuel. Judging turf by that test, I believe that in future, if the turf industry is properly organised, we shall get more calories per 1d. or per 1/- by burning turf than we shall get by burning imported coal.
Another allegation made by Deputy Dillon and others was that we took off the tax on dances in order to benefit dance hall proprietors. I hope that not a single penny of the tax remitted will go into the pockets of dance hall proprietors. Those who attend dances have a right to see that the prices of admission are reduced by 20 per cent. If they are foolish enough still to pay that 20 per cent., I cannot help them. They are entitled on the basis of the figures to get a reduction of 20 per cent. in the admission charges. The tax on dancing was hitting more than the dance hall. It affected every village and every parish throughout the country. Whenever any organisation, political, cultural or of any other type, wanted to hold a function of this kind, if they were a charitable organisation, they had all this writing to go through and all these accounts to prove, in order to get back the tax. If they were not a charitable or an educational organisation under the Gaelic League they had to pay. I think that it was an impediment to local initiative. I think it is a good thing to encourage local people to raise funds for local purposes. We were able in this particular year to get rid of this tax and, when we offset the cost of collecting it, we are not going to lose the total amount. Therefore, I think it would be a good thing for the country to abolish it, and I hope Deputy Dillon will not continue to speak against a reduction in taxes which I think will be valuable to the country as a whole.
One other item that was criticised was the provision of £1,000,000 which we propose to spend in order to enable farmers to increase the wages and to give complementary reliefs to those under £20 valuation. I pointed out in the Budget statement that the employment portion of that sum—the £6 10s. 0d. per head—would last for two years, and that thereafter the Government would bear three-fifths of the rate on agricultural land under £20 valuation and on the first £20 of the larger holdings and on one-fifth of the valuation above £20. This £1,000,000 was given not as derating but to enable farmers to increase wages. I stressed that in the Budget statement and I want to stress it again. The Government have agreed as a permanent measure to bear three-fifths of the rates on the first £20 and on one-fifth over that in order to guarantee to local authorities that they have an interest in the height of the rates in the various counties.
I think that is all that we should do in this matter. Personally, I would rather see farmers enabled, by reasonable prices and by their own industry in production, to pay their rates rather than that the State should pay all their rates as has been suggested from time to time, with no incentive left to the farmer to improve his methods or to improve his output. We have here a system of price guarantees for agricultural production in regard to many products, and I think it is much better that farmers should be paid according to what they produce for the community rather than by the area of land they hold. Derating in toto means simply giving a man, out of the pockets of the general taxpayer, a bounty according to the area of land he holds and not a price according to the number of units that he produces. Portion of this £1,000,000 will be devoted in the next two years to enabling farmers to increase the wages of their workers. The remainder of it has been devoted to giving complementary relief to farmers under £20 valuation, and the three-fifths under the first £20 and the one-fifth over £20 valuation, is intended to be a permanent measure. That, of course, will not cost anything like the total of £1,000,000.
I want to go back to what Deputy Hughes said yesterday in relation to agricultural wages. He said the difference between farm wages in Britain and this country was immense. I cannot understand Deputy Hughes, who represents himself to this Dáil and to the country as a farmers' representative, making propaganda to encourage farm labourers to leave this country and to go abroad. Not only did Deputy Hughes make that particular form of propaganda—he is very active in promoting it—but his example is being followed by the members of the Clann na Talmhan and other Parties. When comparing rates of wages and salaries paid here with the salaries in other countries we have to take into consideration the level of taxation, as we had to point out, in relation to a salary demand, quite recently. Deputy Hughes should not encourage agricultural labourers to leave this country in the belief that they are going to get a higher effective wage over in England without warning them, at the same time, of the costs and taxes that have to be paid by the people of Britain and Scotland. A very big number of people who were induced to leave this country during the war and since then, because of that type of propaganda, have returned, much disappointed that England was not the El Dorado painted by Deputy Hughes and other farmers like him.
It was contested here the other day that the figure of 78,600, which I gave as being the net emigration figure of the last five years, was too low. That figure is the result of a very close scrutiny of all the facts available to the statistics branch of the Department of Industry and Commerce, and it is a true figure so far as they can discover it. Deputy Hughes and some other farmers in this House are disappointed that it is so low. I am disappointed that it is so high. We will want to build up this country in the future. We want the services of a great number of the skilled men who left this country in the last five or six years because the work that they were engaged in had to shut down owing to a shortage of materials. The savings that this State has made, with the increase in its foreign assets that has taken place, represent not a lack of enterprise, as Deputy Coogan said, but a shortage of supplies of the essential materials that would have enabled us to keep these emigrants at the work which a large number of them were engaged on before they left.
For the seven years before the war, we were engaged here on a very big housing campaign. It was rather difficult to get that campaign started because a number of our people throughout the country in key positions, representatives of local authorities and others, had the same general outlook that Fine Gael displayed during their régime as a Government. However, we got the campaign under way, and in five or six years, notwithstanding the stresses of the economic war, and notwithstanding the doleful prophecies of Fine Gael, we did build and reconstruct nearly one-fifth of the entire houses of the State. I feel that, having proved to ourselves that not only could we survive the economic war and build that number of houses but that we could survive the greatest military war in history and be as well off in a physical way as practically any other country in the world: having proved that much, in future years we will be able to absorb the skill and energy of our people in order to build here somewhat better conditions for all our people.
There is no use in Deputies demanding very large increases in social services unless they can show that we can afford them, and the only measure we can use to see whether we can afford a higher level of social services is the index showing the level of our production. If we can increase our production during the next five or ten years, if we could add 25 or 50 per cent. to it, we could still give sufficient awards to those who produce to encourage them to continue in production and have something left over to take care of those who cannot take care of themselves. In that regard we should be content to move with the times, to move with the production. If we attempt to move in front of it, to ask our people as a producing community to bear burdens which will retard their efforts in production, we might very well kill the goose that lays the golden eggs and have nothing to distribute.
I gave certain figures in the Budget statement which go to show that if we have the will to work here, to use our energy and skill on the resources which God gave us, we can produce an increased standard of life for our people. We have certain capital assets. If we use prudently our external assets and the assets we have in lands and factories and in the skill of our people to increase our production, all will be well with us. But if we go on a spending spree, simply to dissipate the assets we have accumulated, neglecting to use them to increase our capital wealth, then sooner or later will come an end to our ability to support even the existing services.
I believe that in this year our community can afford the burden of taxation that we have placed upon them. It is a high burden. I do not believe that they should be asked to pay more; otherwise I would not have proposed to the Government that we should reduce taxation, but would rather have proposed that we keep up the level of taxation and use the money in various ways. Taxpayers of all sorts had a heavy burden to bear during the war and I must say they bore it without too much growling. They growled a bit, as is very natural, but they did not stop work in order to growl. They growled while they worked, and we do not mind that. But if we were to continue the burden of taxation through the present financial year that the community has borne willingly during the last four or five years, I am afraid some of them would stop work in order to growl.
The reductions that were made were for the purpose of encouraging all sections of our community to bend their energies to greater production, so that the total of our national income would be increased. Deputy Dillon, I think it was, or one Deputy on the Fine Gael Benches, made the suggestion that instead of taxing to get the £3,000,000 necessary to send supplies to Europe, we should have borrowed it. I think it is only right that our community should, by taxation——
