Dáil Éireann debate -
Friday, 9 May 1947

Vol. 105 No. 19

Committee on Finance. - Resolution No. 11—General (Resumed).

Mr. O'Leary

When the House adjourned last night I had dealt with a number of subjects. This morning I want to tell the Minister that his Budget is not popular, so far as the working class is concerned. Increased taxes are being imposed on tobacco and cigarettes and on people who go to the cinema but there is no increase in the tax on wines and champagnes brought into the country for the rich to drink. Apparently no class could be found after the war to bear increased taxation except the workers and the poor in general who were held down by standstill Orders and who could not seek any increase in wages while the war lasted. These are the very people, people with small incomes, called upon to pay the piper, when the Budget is introduced. Fares on buses and trams have been increased but there is no increase in the tax on luxury motor-cars which have to be imported.

The Minister is certainly not carrying out the policy which the Fianna Fáil Party said they would put into operation at the time they were clamouring to get into power. They promised then to provide work for everybody in the country and even to bring back emigrants who had to leave the country to seek work. During the emergency we were told of all the schemes that were to be put into operation after the war but to-day we find more unemployed than ever although the war has been over for two years.

We find countries which were under the heel of Germany during the war sending goods into Eire. The present Minister answering a question some months ago said there was no Dutch chocolate sold in this country. I wonder could the Minister say that to-day? The people of this country are often without sugar, but, nevertheless, we had sugar to export. Even in the restaurant in this House, which is subsidised by the Government, there is sometimes not a spoonful of sugar to put in one's tea. Speaking as the poorest man in this Dáil, I want to say to the Minister that the meanest law in existence in this country is the miserable means test under which the wife of an old man who works on the roads or with a farmer, will get no pension when she reaches 70 years of age, because of the fact that he is working. Is it anything to boast about, that the wife of a man earning 44/- per week as an agricultural labourer, cannot get the old age pension because he is working? I have here the case of a widow in the town of Wexford who had 9/6 widows' pension and who, because she did a few days' work, got this letter:

"As your revised net weekly means exceed the maximum rate of pension (9/6 per week) hitherto payable on the basis of your having no net weekly means, it has been decided that you are not entitled to further payment of pension as from 21st March, 1947."

An Ceann Comhairle

That is administration and a matter for the Estimates.

Mr. O'Leary

The Minister for Finance has to deal with the money end of it.

An Ceann Comhairle

It is a matter for the Estimates.

Mr. O'Leary

Whatever matter it is, it is a scandal and a disgrace to an Irish Government.

An Ceann Comhairle

It is not in order on this Resolution, which has to do with general financial policy.

Mr. O'Leary

I am talking about the means test. The Minister, and members of the Dáil and Seanad——

An Ceann Comhairle

That is a matter for the Estimates and will be discussed on the Estimates.

Mr. O'Leary

——have to pay no income-tax, but they make laws compelling everyone outside to pay it. Is it fair that people should take advantage of their privileged position to pile up taxes year after year? Fianna Fáil says: "Look at all the social services we are giving you," but, as a member of a local authority, I can say that any time a social service, such as free boots, is being given, the ratepayers have to pay a certain amount. When you have to pay anything, there is nothing free about it. At one time, it was "Grow more wheat"; now it is, "Go out and pick moss and put it under the cattle to make manure". That is to be the great boon for the farmers. As a trade unionist, I believe it would be better for the country if the policy of one man, one job, were carried out, and if the elected representatives of the people would devote their time to the people's interests and not be looking after sidelines, because that is what is happening. One can see it by the attendance in the House this morning—people who are being paid to be here are not here. I see Deputy Briscoe smiling but, of course, Deputy Briscoe does not like to hear the truth.

Mr. Briscoe

I do, very much.

Mr. O'Leary

In rural Ireland to-day, there are people who are worse off than the people in foreign countries about whom we are worried and I am prepared to get into any Minister's car and go down with him to my constituency and show him people who are in want in a country in which there should be an abundance. There is no use in saying: "We are giving you doles and social services and we intend to give you free doctors." It is the country which will pay for it, and the ratepayers are paying the piper for everybody, except the members of the Dáil, who pay no income-tax or anything else.

Mr. Briscoe

Do they not pay rates?

Mr. O'Leary

Some of them may not be even paying rates, especially the Fianna Fáil fellows. I have heard that said before. You just tell a good story to the Fianna Fáil club and it is all right. At the moment, no housing schemes of any kind are being carried out. We are told in the Wexford County Council that the contractors' tenders are too high. Tenders for the erection of 18 cottages in County Wexford were accepted, but last Monday, at the meeting of the general purposes committee, the number was cut down to 13.

An Ceann Comhairle

What has that to do with general financial policy?

Mr. O'Leary

It surely is relevant when a sum of £2,000,000 is to be devoted to building up Dublin Castle. There should be no such thing as the building of a house for a working man being too dear, when there are subsidies for everything else. What good is giving a man a few shillings to-day when the cost of living goes up further to-morrow? Why do the Government not take action, as they did during the emergency, by means of a stand-still Order, to stop the increase in the cost of living? Until they do that, there will be no peace in the country, because there are certain sections who have to live on very small incomes who are forgotten altogether. If the cost of living were kept down, there would be no strikes.

Everybody is greatly disappointed with the Budget and I cannot understand any Deputy congratulating the Minister on his income-tax proposals. I say that it is the duty of any Government to come to the aid of the down trodden people. Some weeks ago we saw G.A.A. matches being stopped and we had appeals to farmers to work on Sundays, but now in the middle of spring every farmer in the Twenty-Six Counties is in Dublin at the Show, instead of being engaged in producing food. The whole country to-day is in Dublin and people say: "There is no poverty in Ireland. Go out to Ballsbridge and see all the people there and look at all the motor cars lined up in O'Connell Street." The Government made sure that they did not tax these cars, with the result that the men who pay hackney licences are squeezed out of existence. Wholesalers, merchants and shopkeepers have been allowed to fleece the people for five or six years and to-day these people do not know what to do with their money. They are knocking down walls and extending their premises, buying new motor cars and getting away scot-free, while the unfortunate old people must pay 6d. extra for their two ounces of tobacco and the unemployed must pay a penny for a cigarette.

The Government took away the food vouchers and gave money instead. Why? Because they wanted to get the butter which the unemployed received so that they would have a certain amount to give to the luxury hotels. There is no milk in the country. How could there be, when you have the slaughtering of calves to the extent indicated by the figures given here last week? Where do we intend to stop? The butchers in Dublin closed their premises for one day and now beef has gone up in price. There is something wrong.

The Government are, probably, behind the scenes and are mixed up with some of these rackets. That is why they do not interfere. Until Fianna Fáil came into power, the slaughter of young cattle was never allowed to take place in this country. We are told that the reason the entertainment tax was increased was the black market in tickets. Fancy a man who is going to the "four-pennies" looking for a black market ticket, or fancy a person going to the ninepenny seats looking for such a ticket. It was only the people who did not want to stand in a queue and who could afford 5/- for a 3/- ticket who were purchasing black market tickets. The Minister will try to defend his policy and members of the Government Party will, probably, have to do the same, whether they like it or not. They cannot speak as I speak. I do not care about any man. I speak my mind and I tell the plain people that Fianna Fáil is ruining the country. Farmers and everybody else are "fed up". Increases of taxation are passed on to the community. We have one section of the people living in luxury and another section almost dying of starvation. The last Government made one mistake. That was the time they cut down the old age pension, although 10/- then was worth double that amount to-day. There is an increase in respect of national health insurance, and a sick man is to be made up with a payment of 22/6 a week. The next cry is "Cure tuberculosis, public enemy No. 1; do not spit." We have that sort of stuff on posters all over the country. Tuberculosis is increasing, and why would it not? There is only one cure for it and that is food. Do not talk about sanatoria. The Hospitals Sweepstakes have £8,000,000 and, when the exParliamentary Secretary, Dr. Ward, was questioned about it, he said there was only £2,000,000 for sanatorium purposes.

An Ceann Comhairle

That has nothing to do with this Budget.

Mr. O'Leary

I am just putting it before the Minister.

An Ceann Comhairle

It has nothing to do with this Budget.

Mr. O'Leary

Is not the Budget supposed to cover everything—all those expenses?

An Ceann Comhairle

The Budget does not refer to the hospital sweepstake funds.

Mr. O'Leary

Why are they not doing something about them?

An Ceann Comhairle

It is not in order. If the Deputy cannot keep in order, he will have to resume his seat.

Mr. O'Leary

I will not resume my seat.

An Ceann Comhairle

Then, the Deputy must get into order.

Mr. O'Leary

This thing of "resuming your seat" is being worked too often. It is not fair for the Ceann Comhairle to be ordering me to resume my seat every time I speak here.

An Ceann Comhairle

The Deputy must keep to the rules of order, the same as every other Deputy. It is not in order to discuss on the Budget what should be discussed on the Estimates. The question of the hospitals sweepstakes does not arise now. That should be clear to the Deputy.

Mr. O'Leary

I grant you that, but is it any harm to ask the Minister for Finance where the money is?

An Ceann Comhairle

It is, if it is not relevant. It has nothing to do with this Budget.

Mr. O'Leary

What is the use of having it stowed away and not a bed in the country for any sick person? That is what I am trying to come to.

An Ceann Comhairle

And it is not in order.

Mr. O'Leary

Of course, it is not in order because it is too blooming straight. I listened to the Minister and his Party in years gone by talking about the cost of running the country. The cost is now three times what it was then. Why? Jobbery, civil servants and inspectors. They were never thought of before but they are in operation now. We were told about the Army and the Navy. The people training the Navy are not Irishmen but they are getting a big salary from Éire. Is not that a fact? I want to impress on the Minister that the first thing he should do—I hope the Deputies sitting behind him will agree—is to modify the means test. That is the worst weapon the Government is using against the poorer sections—widows, old age pensioners and people with pensions from other countries. The same applies in the case of employers. If a man works for 50 or 60 years, his employer can give him only 6/- when he comes to 70 years of age and retires. In all, he has only 16/- on which to live. These are the things that want to be remedied. The people with the money are all right. I have here a cutting showing our Minister in Paris distributing aid to the poor of that city. I wish some of our Ministers would go down to the rural areas and the towns and distribute some goods to the poor people. They would be doing an act of charity. But for certain organisations, such as the St. Vincent de Paul Society and local charity, many of our people would be dead of starvation. I ask the Minister, if he introduces another Budget, to give some relief to the poor people and not be piling on the taxes every time he comes into the House.

An Ceann Comhairle

Surely discussion of the next Budget is not now in order?

Mr. O'Leary

I agree with you there. Perhaps, the Minister might be out of power by the time the next Budget comes round. I appeal to the Minister to abolish the means test in the case of widows, old age pensioners or any man on a small pension from the British Government. Plenty of revenue can be got without taking it off these people.

Mr. Murphy

In the statement which the Minister made in presenting the Budget, there was a passage that struck members of the House as representing very fine ideals, stated in very grave words. At the conclusion of his statement the Minister said:

"The general impression left by a survey is that we are a people who have a decent respect for the past, a vigorous and balanced approach to the problems and opportunities of the present and a firm determination to transmit to our children a broader basis for a better material and cultural life."

That passage represents very fine ideals and views to which everybody can heartily subscribe. It represents, in fact, all the ideals for which the people struggled for many generations and the very ideals on which the establishment of this House is based. That passage seems to be very much out of harmony with many other parts of the Budget statement and, indeed, very largely out of harmony with the whole policy of the Government at the present time. If that passage had opened the Budget statement, one would have expected very important developments; but nowhere in the statement or in the Minister's policy, so far as we have any evidence of it to-day, is there any indication that the views so enshrined are being put into effect.

In the course of his statement, I heard the Minister talk about an increasing measure of opportunity for our people and of greater opportunities for the young people. I feel sure he cannot be entirely unaware of the present position in that respect. There is not a member of the House, so far as I can judge, who has not had the frequent and painful experience of receiving from constituents an appeal for just a small and very modest measure of those opportunities of which the Minister has spoken. Boys and girls, not alone of good national school education but of full secondary education, with matriculation or leaving certificates, are writing frequently and they are available in very large numbers and are ready to grasp at a very modest opportunity. To me and to those who examine the matter closely, there seems to be no opportunity for them to make a living in their own country.

The facts are indisputable. Not alone in the professions—one could readily understand that emigration was, perhaps, for certain professions, to some extent inevitable—but generally speaking, emigration has been going on for a very considerable time and is likely to continue in the most widespread form possible. While I cannot controvert the Minister's figures, and put forward any substantial argument. my view is that the figures he has given are an understatement of the actual position. However, even if we take the Minister's figures, they are grave enough to make us realise that the life-blood of the nation is being steadily drained away in this manner.

I heard here last night for a very brief period a moving description of the work of the old Congested Districts Board and a statement that neither of the two Governments we have had in 25 years had endeavoured to provide any machinery to replace that board. In getting sidelights of that kind on views that prevail, one is sometimes tempted to believe that the main objects of our struggle for self-government have been to a great extent defeated. It is a fact that, over the whole 125 years during which records of the population have been taken, never has the population been lower than it is at the present time. In spite of that fact, we have all the evidence of economic decay still prevailing.

There can be no hope of a broad basis for the development of life in this country in the cultural and material sense, as long as the present methods prevail, as long as we depend on the labour exchange, on vouchers and public charity of one kind or another, to deaden our conscience for the time being to the neglect of our people. Surely, there can be no better test as to the direction in which we are travelling than the fact that our population has steadily declined and that we have reached the red light which indicates that, over a period of 125 years, the population has never been lower than it is at the present time?

One has to be fair in matters of this kind and one does agree heartily that there were certain matters referred to by the Minister that are worthy of commendation. The inauguration of the Transition Fund and the stimulus that the reduction of interest in the matter of housing loans will ultimately give to housing, are very creditable things and one does not want to say anything but what is praiseworthy of those matters. In themselves, however, very worthy as they are, they are items in the life of the country that cannot, on their own, be held to justify the Government's policy as a whole.

We know that the test of a country's progress is the measure of contentment and stability enjoyed by its people. While entirely endorsing the Minister's view as to the need for increased output, and in raising my voice, for whatever effect it will have, in echoing his plea for the fullest co-operation of the workers of the country in the matter of increased output, I should like at the same time to point out to him that our most urgent problem at the moment is the appalling increase in the cost of living. I readily grant that whatever wage increases have been given they are not in any way effective in improving the position because, in a short time, they are swallowed up in meeting the increased cost of living. I think that the whole policy in this matter will have to be reviewed in a short time. I am apprehensive about the results of allowing the present position in regard to the cost of living to continue, and of the consequences that may ultimately flow from it. I would ask the Minister to take the earliest possible opportunity of urging on his colleagues in the Government to bring to the House proposals for a positive control of the cost of living. One does not quarrel with certain increases and certain improvements in the matter of prices which agriculturists got recently, but one does seriously quarrel with the cost of clothing, the cost of household goods and of the various other commodities. No matter what one may be told to the contrary, the general viewpoint of our people is—I think it can be generally subscribed to by members of the House—that, in certain respects, the prices of very many commodities here in the last few years have been altogether too high. Any attempt that is made to meet that problem will bring more contentment, will do away with more unrest and will avoid more industrial strife than anything that might be done in any other direction.

I do not think the Minister has solved, or that he has even made a reasonable approach towards solving, the problems that exist in the Gaeltacht, in the areas that used to be served by the Congested Districts Board. In my opinion he is not doing that in the proposals outlined in the Budget for the benefit of the people in the Gaeltacht. The undoubted industry, perseverance and infinite patience of the people in those areas call for action of a more positive kind than the proposals set out in the Minister's statement. I do not think that the Minister has any earthly hope of stemming the tide of emigration from the Gaeltacht areas, or indeed from any other part of the country until he is in a position to face that situation in the way that it ought to be faced. The facilities and improvements indicated by the Minister to help the production of poultry in the Gaeltacht are welcome, and certain other proposals indicated by him are equally welcome; but the fact is that in the Gaeltacht, as elsewhere, but particularly I would say in the Gaeltacht areas, the young people are leaving the country as rapidly as they can. The opportunties which, in my opinion, and in the opinion of those who think with me on this matter, should have been utilised to give those people employment at home, and with it stability and security, have been neglected.

In a short time Deputies will be discussing the Vote for the Forestry Branch under the Department of Lands. There is nothing which, in my opinion, would make a greater contribution towards providing for the welfare of the people in the remote areas that I have referred to than the initiation of a large, well-thought out, confident scheme of reafforestation. That problem cannot be tackled simply by taking small plantations of land here and there and carrying out schemes in a sort of unconnected way. During the many years of agitation for the setting up of an Irish Parliament, this subject of the reafforestation of the country was one that occupied a very important place.

Our country to-day has the unenviable reputation of being the most treeless country in Europe, despite the fact that over a period of 25 years we have had the opportunity of managing our own affairs. During those 25 years there has been no indication of a national policy on the matter of reafforestation that would give one any hope that either of our two successive Governments believe in such a policy. The unavoidable requirements of the last four or five years in the matter of fuel have still further, and very substantially, denuded the country of growing timber. To-day, apart from some small increases made in recent years, we are in the same position as that in which we found ourselves very many years ago—that is, we are completely without any evidence of a policy on this question of reafforestation.

I want to say in conclusion that the ideals enunciated by the Minister in the concluding portion of his Budget statement, as well as any progress that I have referred to, are ideals that are worthy of a Minister in an Irish Government. Not only were they worthy of being given a place in the Minister's statement, but they are worthy of being given practical effect to. I see no evidence that they have been given effect to up to the present. May I hope that, as a result of the reminders which the Minister has got in the course of this debate, an effort will be made to give practical effect, in the economic life of the country, to those very excellent phrases which round off the Budget statement?

Captain Giles

The Budgets which are presented to us year after year are becoming bigger and bigger. We would not have so much reason to criticise them, big as they are, if the people were in a position to meet the increased taxation and to produce at a higher level. The fact is that over the last couple of years, while the annual Budget shows an increase, our production is going down and our population is getting smaller. The Minister should realise that something is wrong somewhere, that some screw is loose and that it is time there was a tightening up. I would not mind if the Budget were harmful only at the top but the headline set by the Government has been followed right through the country.

As the Government behave, so do the people behave. At present there is squandermania at the top and that is followed in every household. The Government must accept responsibility for the headline they have set. If the people got a headline from the Government of thrift and hard work, this country could be a place fit for honest men to live in. At present it is not. The Government should realise that the burden is far too heavy and that some effort should be made to reduce it or to give the people a means of bearing it

This country is not down and out. There is plenty of money but the money is in the wrong places. We are pegging money into turf and into timber. There is money flowing into this country from emigrants. These are only temporary palliatives while the main essentials to the life of the country are being forgotten. If that money were put into the little homes in the country, our country would be in a balanced position. Unfortunately, the money is floating around, doing immense harm. Our people are living from hand to mouth, in many cases not paying their way. I would like to see our people adopting the teaching of Collins and Griffith, leading simple lives on happy homesteads, each man living his own life in his own way in peace and contentment, rearing his family, not for export but for a future in their own land. The present unbalanced position is brought about by mad political nonsense. There is no use in saying that mad political nonsense is all on one side. The country is fantastically wrong. The people hate to think of the efforts made here by generations to bring about our freedom. We were told that when we would get our freedom we would be a great little country, a contented country, that could prosper under our own Government but, unfortunately, the reverse has been found to be the case. Instead of advancing we are retreating and depending on every country to help us.

Education is at fault. If more money were spent on the proper type of education we would not be in our present position. I agree that there is no use in growling on this side of the House about increased taxation unless we put our own house in order first. There must be a united and vigorous effort by those in opposition if they are to be in a position either to put out the present Government or to tighten them up and make them do their job. But, while we on this side are able to criticise the Government like the devil, we should make constructive efforts to be the alternative Government so that if the people want a change there will be an alternative there for them. We must put our own house in order before we are in a position to tackle the Government in a manly, vigorous and national way that the people can understand. As far as I see, education at present is all wrong. We are not educating our people for the simple way of life, for life in the countryside, for life on the land, for honest work. We are educating them for export and for the cities and towns. We are teaching them typewriting, shorthand and big business. We should educate 90 per cent. of our people for a plain, country home life. As one who was reared hard, in a small way, I say that home life in the country far exceeds anything to be found in the biggest city in the world. One can have complete happiness at home on one-fifth or one-third of the money one needs in the city. One can live in contentment in a small way in the country provided one enjoys the normal good health that God will give if He is asked for it. I would like to see our people receiving a proper education, not so that they will be looking far afield but so that they will see the grand things in their own country, in the farms and in the fields. I am satisfied that all our little families could live far more comfortably if they were educated to that end. The whole tendency is to go in for big business, big motor-cars, big picture houses. It is a big job for a country or a Government to tackle that problem. Why do we not stand up to that? We are taking the line of least resistance. The country is being run on money from here, there and everywhere but the money is not directed into proper channels, into the homes of our people, to help to make them happy.

There is no use in criticising the Budget or the Government if we do not all try to come to an understanding of what is wrong in the country. We all know that there is something wrong. The Government knows it. Deputy Dillon knows it. I know it, as one who served and who made an honest effort to make our life happy. I am satisfied that if this House does not pull itself together and make an honest effort, people outside will do it and I do not blame them. When I have seen this House carrying on with highfalutin nonsense, making no effort to satisfy our people, I for one would go outside with the other people. Why should I stay here?

I know it can be done. We can make our people happy and contented, and we could balance our Budgets and have small Budgets. Our people do not want big money. There is plenty of big money. That is not what should count. Plain living, simple life and happiness should be our aim. Our people have been upset. I know families down the country that have more money than they know what to do with, but on Saturday night they have not a bob and many of them owe shop debts and are not meeting them because they are spending the money in the wrong places. They are pursuing the pleasures of life. They know that some day they will be up against it, as the nation is running up against it. The biggest job we have is to unravel the tangle we have made. It can be done by a united effort. Therefore, I say to the Government, as one who has nothing against anybody, as one who would like to see things going right, I would be quite happy to stay in opposition all my life if the Government were doing the right thing. If the people had a good Government, I would say, keep them there.

It is the people who are responsible for the Budget, not the Minister for Finance. If the people want big Budgets, give them to them, but let the people realise where they are going and where the country is going. I am satisfied that there are one hundred and one small things that could be rectified without big money. The worst thing we did in this country was to spoonfeed the people. I believe in looking after the old, the sick, the infirm and the destitute, but I would stop at that. Let our people earn their own living in their own way, but give them the means of doing it. This thing of looking for sops, the farmers looking for sops, labourers looking for sops, and the Government, when approaching an election, throwing sops to all classes for the purpose of gaining popularity, is wrong, mean and dirty and un-Irish. Half the people who are getting sops at the present moment would be far better off without them. If they were told that there were no sops for them they would take their spade in their hands and go out to work and do without the sops. Sops are no good. I would ask that all these sops would be cut out because, when you give a sop of any kind, it means the creation of new jobs and an increased number of civil servants and inspectors to administer the few pounds that are given to the farmer or the worker, with the result that 50 per cent. of the provision has been expended before it goes for the purpose for which it was intended. I would prefer to cut them out.

I am satisfied that if we find work for our people and let them fend for themselves this country can be run with 50 per cent. more efficiency. I am satisfied also that it would be no harm to slash red tape.

We have not made the slightest effort towards securing stability in agriculture. We know that agriculture is our main industry. There is no alternative. We may have industrial development to a certain extent but it can only be in proportion to the mineral wealth of this country. The country possesses small, poor and insignificant mineral wealth. Therefore, our strong arm is agriculture. The arm of industry will never be as strong as the arm of agriculture. The mineral wealth is not in the country and we cannot change what God has ordained.

I want to see cottage industries carried on by our people in every little home. I want to see poultry in our people's yards. I want to see pigs in our people's yards. I want to see knitting, sewing and other handicrafts in the homes. I want to see our farmers and labourers 80 per cent. self-sufficient. I am satisfied that that can be done. At the present moment there is hardly a self-sufficient, or even semi-self-sufficient man in this country. They are running to the shops for practically everything whereas quite easily they could have their own knitted goods, wheatenmeal, eggs, poultry and bacon. Unfortunately, at the present day, there is hardly a person in the country who has one or the other. That is why I want the simple home way of life given to us by an Irish Government and thus get back to bedrock again. I am satisfied that in that way big businesses, chain stores and big hotels would be put on their proper level. Our people would not have to worry about money. They would be happy and content and able to pay their way in the little country districts and live honest, clean and healthy lives instead of worrying about cinemas, pictures or dancing.

They would be happy and content and live their lives in peace devoting their time to the rearing of large families. We are satisfied that the families our fathers and grandfathers gave to this country for the last 30 or 40 years were of a fine and noble type. They came from the little bogs, from the hills and the dales where our unfortunate grandfathers and fathers toiled and worked from morning to night. Although they had little money and plenty of hard work they always had a smile on their faces and were happy and content. Money does not make for happiness. It is the contented mind which makes for happiness. We have hardly a contented mind in this country. We have a lot of highfalutin nonsense and a stop will have to be put to it. The Minister for Finance has a job to do and that is to change the whole position of this country—to change it upside-down. I do not mind if the Budget is £100,000,000 so long as our people are able to produce and able to bear it, but at the present moment the burdens are unjust, unfair, and un-Irish. The Government is dealing with a Christian and a Catholic people and it should see that way of life here is kept unimpaired. This country is following the line of least resistance and taking the lead from other countries. This country should take the lead from itself. We must keep to our Christian foundation and we must build on that foundation. The foundation of Christianity is home life and the family circle. If we go back to the family circle we shall make the country worthy of a Christian people. Then our people will have work. Then our people will develop their own way of life and have contentment. Then the wage-earner will be the father or the brother and not the female labourer. In this country over the last 20 or 30 years the trend has been for the female labourer to spread out all over the country and to take up men's work. I am not against any female earning an honest living but I would much prefer to see these female labourers, whether they are in big or in small jobs, at home in the family circle rearing children and minding the home for the man who is the bread-winner.

If the thousands of girls who to-day are employed in our country were, instead, married to the men who are idle, and if these men were employed and earning honest money do you not think we would have a grand and a happy little country? I want to see a system of education here which will educate our people to realise that the destiny of woman is in the home. The destiny of man is to be the hewer of wood and the drawer of water. If we were to bring that position round within the next 20 or 25 years we would have the foundation of a happy country. I do not like to say these things. I know what any girl will say: "What is this fellow talking about, and what right has he to say these things." I am saying it for the good of the girls and for the good of the young men. I would say that our young girls should get married if possible between 20 to 25 years of age. They should be educated on family life, on how to run a house, on how to cook, to bake, to run the poultry yard and on how the family knitting and sewing is done. At the present moment we have too many unhappy homes, because all our young girls of 16 or 18 years of age fly up to Dublin to tap a typewriter, often at a wage which hardly keeps them in Dublin. By the time they pay their digs, I am satisfied that at least 40 per cent. of them have to write home for a little support and if it were not for the fact that they have aunts and uncles to help them they would not be able to stay in Dublin. Men should have these jobs. Men should be the earners and should bring the money into the homes. These young girls should be living happy, contented married lives in their own country districts. We do not want the big things at all. The big things are crushing our country.

I am quite satisfied that we are going to have a denuded country and that Dublin will be a vast, big colossus, with the rest of the country trying to keep it. I say to the Government in all earnestness that our people should be brought back to the country, to happiness, peace and contentment. It can be done. We do not need much money. I was disgusted with the speech made by the Minister for Education. He is the one man in this country who is practically responsible for the denuding of this country because of the type of education he allows. He talks about secondary education, knowing full well that the people are not getting the education they need. We want to give an 80 per cent. or 90 per cent. education on country life. We want to stop our girls doing typewriting and shorthand. Our young men should be allowed to do that work.

An Ceann Comhairle

The Deputy will have an opportunity of discussing that point soon. It is the next Vote.

Captain Giles

We want to see first place given to agriculture. We want to see co-operative markets amongst our farmers. Take my own little country town. I know families there who have eight, ten and 12 dozen eggs waiting and for the last three or four weeks no man has come to collect the eggs, with the result that they are stale. Yet people in Dublin are crying out for eggs and they cannot get them.

An Leas-Cheann Comhairle took the Chair.

Captain Giles

We have not co-operative marketing and proper market centres at present. We have never educated our people to work in co-operation with each other. We have never tried to get marketing centres where we could have depôts for our surplus produce and from there send it to the bigger centres. Our farmers have not been educated in any of these things. Most of them live in a slipshod way as best they can. They keep no books and hardly know what they get from one year to another.

One of the biggest dangers confronting this country is the emigration problem. I know it provides an outlet for people in the West of Ireland. But I live in a county where in former years we had no emigration to any extent and we were better off without it. But in the last ten or 15 years we have had a vast amount of emigration from Meath. The people are flocking out of the county. While a fair amount of money is sent back to the family circle by emigrants, emigration does a certain amount of harm. People in the country districts are watching for the £8, £10 or the £20 which comes from England or Scotland. I would rather see them trying to make a living for themselves. I am satisfied that this emigration and the flowing in of money here from emigrants has made our people slack and soft. There is far more grit in the ordinary man than people realise. Men do not realise what they are capable of doing if they are put to it. It is unknown what a man can do if he has to do it. I have seen men who had a comfortable way of living and who were always pulling the devil by the tail. On the other hand I have seen men of a good type who said to themselves: "I will make good by my own work", and they did make good. To-day they are paying their way and they are happy. They have welldeveloped bodies with plenty of muscle, brawn and sinew from hard work. They are living in contentment and peace. These are the things that should count, but they do not count.

I would say to the Government: "Do not think that, because you are giving a lot of employment on the bogs and have a lot of people cutting down trees and have emigrants sending in money here, you are doing good for the country." You are absolutely sinking the country. I want to see the money concentrated on the little unit in the homestead. I want to see the money being earned by the people at home, especially by the male population. I do not want to see all these big bombastic schemes which are all a lot of nonsense. You are pouring our resources into a drain and there will be no return from them. All the money is being lost. I know that in future you may be able to produce turf on a machine won basis at a reasonable cost. But at present turf production is an absolute waste of money. I am sorry to say that we cannot help that during the emergency, but we should not carry on these things in future when conditions are normal.

We have a Drainage Act passed and we were told that when the emergency was over drainage schemes would be carried out which would give work to the people. Yet there was not a shovel put into a bed of a river for the purpose of draining this country. I am satisfied that we could reclaim 10,000 acres of swamps and bogland and make that land fertile. We are not doing it because of the money which it would cost. I am satisfied that any money expended in that way would give a better return than the money which is being expended on the bogs and in denuding our country of woods and forests. Look at what the country will be like in a few years if this policy of tree-felling continues. It will be a most miserable barren-looking waste. We are talking about bringing tourists to this country. Would you like to bring a tourist down to the centre of our country now? What would he see there? Belts of woods cut away and briars and thorns growing where there used to be trees. It would be a most miserable sight for him.

I know big ranches on which there were most beautiful trees. I am happy to say that many of these ranches have been taken over and given back to the people. But there were big forestry belts and woodlands on these ranches. The owners of them knew how to plan and they planned with vision. It is their planning which provided us with the fires which we have at present. We have cut down these woods and what have we put in their place? We have put nothing.

An Leas-Cheann Comhairle

That might come up on the Forestry Estimate.

Captain Giles

I want to show where money could be spent. I want to see these barren lands taken over and where possible made fit to provide food for our people. Any of the cut-away bogs fit for forestry should be drained and planted. In that way good national work would be done. It is not being tackled. The Government have been tackling the wrong type of work. There was a time when the Minister for Finance went around the Counties Louth and Meath and he knew the homesteads there. I followed him around in 1922 and 1923, and I knew where he slept. He slept in the bogs and on the hills and in the two-acre and five-acre farms. He even lay on the ground in a sack. Would he do that to-day? He would not. He came up to Dublin and got into big society. He went to the Park Races and the Curragh Races and mixed in the wrong circles. Why has he changed in the last 25 years? Big business and big money and a big salary brought him into social circles. He should throw his mind back 25 years and realise how he came into those social circles from the time he slept on the sack in a cottage in a bog. It is from that that he got to where he is to-day.

An Leas-Cheann Comhairle

The Deputy must keep to the Budget.

Captain Giles

I am entitled to say this.

An Leas-Cheann Comhairle

I do not think you are. This is general.

Captain Giles

That is why I am making it general. I think it is unfair that you should hold me up.

An Leas-Cheann Comhairle

The Chair is not behaving unfairly.

Captain Giles

I heard Deputies travelling from North to South and from East to West in their speeches.

An Leas-Cheann Comhairle

Not in the manner in which the Deputy is doing it.

Captain Giles

I want the Minister to throw his mind back some 25 years——

An Leas-Cheann Comhairle

The Deputy is quite right in doing that.

Captain Giles

I want the Minister to remember the simple way of life of those people and what they did for him and for the country and what they suffered for the country. I want him to realise that they are now being neglected. They are living in destitution and misery and we are making no effort to help them. I want the members of the Government to go to these homesteads that sheltered them in the days of danger and find out what the people there have to say about the country and the Budget and their way of life. I am satisfied that it would open the Minister's eyes. I do not want any political kudos from what I am saying. As an old Nationalist who suffered a good deal and who is prepared to do it again, I want the country to realise that we won freedom for the masses of the people and not for the few rich speculators in Dublin and the industrialists and the "bookies" with their 20 and 30 horse-power cars which they got at the expense of the countryman. I want to see the country built up and a simple way of life introduced.

If the expenditure proposed under the Budget was directed to the rehabilitation of Ireland's homesteads, we would be able to say to the Minister: "More power; you are doing good work; carry on." But the money is not going to the places where we want it to go. Therefore, I say to the Minister: "You are doing your job in the wrong way. The Finance Minister before you did his job in the wrong way. Therefore, you should reverse your machines and put them working in such a way that they will place money where it is needed, namely, in the reclamation of land, afforestation, and building up agricultural units in every homestead where people will have pigs, poultry and eggs and horticulture and where the women will be doing all those things which make for happy homes." These are the things which should count, but they do not. I want to see the male population doing the work and marrying the female population and giving them peace, contentment and happiness in a home, instead of pushing a typewriter, for some big merchant. After ten or 15 years of that, these girls may marry, but they do not know anything about how to run a home. At present our homes are not being run as they should be. If these girls were married between 20 or 30 to working men they would be much better off than pushing typewriters.

An Leas-Cheann Comhairle

The Deputy is repeating himself.

Captain Giles

It is not a bad thing sometimes. The Minister is imposing a colossal burden on the people. The Government are forgetting the people who put them there.

Mr. McCarthy

In an age when the general outlook is so much influenced— too far influenced—by the mint and how much money is to be made out of this or that project, I think it is a very satisfactory thing that the Minister has had some regard to our national traditions and to the people who have upheld them down through the ages and who, in our generation, expect from us something to enable them to make progress in the distant parts of our land where they have held on to the old homesteads. The Minister, in his Budget, has indicated some help for industry in the Gaeltacht areas. In addition to the scholarships already established in the university for their better education, he has, I am glad to say, arranged for 50 scholarships, applying to the whole country, for people who are upholding their national language there and who are willing to take it into the higher spheres of study.

I regret one thing, however, in this matter of education and national tradition, and that is that the Minister did not see his way to help in some manner those who have borne the brunt of that struggle; that is, many of the national teachers who have gone on pension. Something has been done in that way for civil servants and for the Garda, but those who have upheld in a great measure the national cause through the country deserve some little consideration on the same lines as was given to the others. We have heard the argument advanced repeatedly that the national teachers' case could not be taken on a different basis from the others, but the point is that when the others were dealt with the national teachers were not dealt with at all and, as one member of the Dáil, I regret that exceedingly.

Mr. Dillon

How will the Deputy provide for his troubled conscience?

Mr. McCarthy

Deputy Dillon has mentioned something about my conscience. I want to tell him this, that I am responsible here for my own views on matters that come before this House and that I am open to conviction and, if I am convinced by arguments in the House, I have no hesitation in saying so. At the same time, I do not hold myself up as a paragon of knowledge and if my leaders hold that a certain course of action is a better way of dealing with particular items than the one I think of, I am quite willing to follow my leaders and I make no apologies for that, even though it may be against my own convictions. As I have said, I do not hold myself up in this House as a paragon of knowledge. I am open to conviction, and I think everybody should be.

At any rate, to proceed with the matter properly under discussion, and from which I digressed owing to Deputy Dillon's interruption, I wish to say that severe criticism has been launched from some sources against the Minister in regard to this Budget and there has been so much confusion, people being anxious to have matters both ways, that it is no wonder we have heard some of the illogical statements to which we have listened during the past couple of days.

Our principal industries, as everybody knows, are agriculture and the industries which make use of our primary products. We have heard that agriculture should get more financial support and at the same time that prices should be kept down to such a level that the ordinary people can spend their money to better advantage. We cannot have these things both ways. If the farmer is to get a decent price for his produce it is only natural to expect that the market value of it will in consequence be higher.

We see that the Government are giving £5,936,000 by way of subsidies for food, fuel and other things. What is that for? In the first place, to try to keep a balance so that the farmer will get a decent price for his produce and, at the same time, the price to people who are not very affluent will be such that they will have a chance of buying their requirements reasonably. As well as agriculture, we want a development of industry. Agriculture cannot provide for the whole population—that is quite obvious. We have a project now for the use of peat moss litter. It is a kind of by-product of the ordinary turf, if you like, and we propose to make use of that commodity. There are people here prepared to sneer at these new industries.

There is one thing in regard to Irish industry that I would like the Minister to do. I think everybody, even Deputy Dillon, will agree that much of the machinery in this country needs renovation and replacement after the emergency years, when it was very difficult to get machinery. We want here the efficiency about which Deputy Dillon is always speaking. There is no doubt about that. We want our industries to be as efficient as those in any other part of the world. When wages go up we all know that the right thing is that we should have more production, and unless our machinery is efficient we cannot provide for that very desirable state of affairs. I understand that in other countries, when new machinery is installed, there is a rebate, so that the capital value of that machinery will be recoverable in a reasonable number of years, and that enables those who show progress in that regard to meet competition at home and abroad.

I think that if the Minister gave a rebate to those who show initiative in that regard, it would be to the advantage of the country because products here and there would be more bountiful and in consequence a better return would be obtained for our labours.

No doubt we all regret emigration but we can only stop emigration by improving industry. We cannot put more people into industries which are already fully staffed. There must be expansion in industry and in consequence everything that tends to bring about more productivity should have general support. The new projects that the Minister has mentioned— extension of facilities for poultry rearing and the growing of tomatoes in the Gaeltacht, turf production and kindred products in the Midlands and other parts of the country—all will help to keep more of our people at home. That is the only way to bring about a diminution of emigration. We cannot expect people to stay at home unless some proper provision is made for them. We must depend to a great measure on the initiative of the people in providing industries to help out the Government in this matter.

Deputy O'Leary criticised, perhaps rightly, luxury hotels. I have not yet seen any of these luxury hotels. I have seen hotels that are perhaps beyond my means, just as they are beyond Deputy O'Leary's means but they have grown up in the natural course of business. Surely we do not want to bring everything down to one dead level. If people choose to spend their money in these places rather than leave it tied up in banks, in consuming the products of the country, I think that is a very desirable thing, a thing with which we cannot interfere. Of course the Deputy was altogether wrong in his statement that motor cars which he saw at the Show were escaping tax. Everybody who has any sense knows that motor cars are taxed according to horse power, consequently the bigger cars are taxed at a higher rate than the smaller cars. They are also allowed more petrol even under the present restrictions and, therefore, pay more for petrol.

If the people who can afford these things indulge in them reasonably and pay more taxation than those who are not so well off I think that is quite understandable. We cannot regiment the whole nation, and it would be wrong to try, into the channels along which our own narrow minds run. I have no brief for these people at all, but if they have improved their position in life by their own initiative in a fair way, they deserve to enjoy the fruits of their labours. I make no apology for the existence of conditions of that kind.

In the main, the Budget to my mind is as good as we could expect at the present time. Undoubtedly there has been some increase in taxation on cigarettes and tobacco but the ordinary pressed tobacco, in regard to which Deputy O'Leary had such a grievance, receives a rebate of 2d. per lb. I should not mind taxing cigarettes even more. As a matter of fact if the Minister did find some way of taxing the particular type of liquor used in cocktail bars or put a special charge on the licence of those who install such bars, I think it would bring him a very welcome source of revenue. I have no objection whatever to a little drinking, a conviviality or sociability of that kind in moderation, but we all object to intoxication. I think that developments such as I have mentioned are not good for the health of the young men and women of the country and are not to the national advantage. Taking all in all, those who want amusements should be made pay for them. They are a luxury. Perhaps they are a necessity to a certain extent but they are becoming a luxury by reason of the fact that the people are becoming too much addicted to them. Things can be taken too far. Those who want dearer seats in the cinema will have to pay proportionately higher taxation than those who go to the cheaper seats. I think that is an equitable system of taxation and I do not think that Deputy O'Leary or anybody else can find any great fault with it.

The Minister, in this Budget, has continued his policy of making money available at a low rate of interest for public authorities. I am glad of that, even though some authorities are very slow in making use of this money. In the first place, I do not think they expected it and were not prepared for it. There are, of course, certain other difficulties in embarking on public works, but I know that eventually such facilities will be very helpful. One of the factors that have driven people out of the country is not so much want of work as want of continuous work. It is necessary now that continuous work should be provided for our skilled workers for years ahead on the housing programmes, which are so much behind because of the emergency, so that such workers will be able to provide for themselves and their families. I think that the Minister has contributed in a great measure towards the solution of that problem, if the public authorities will co-operate, by the facilities he has offered.

As I have said, I am glad that the Minister in such a prosaic matter as the Budget, full of statistics and commonplace details, has made a national appeal for a better effort for the preservation of our traditions. I think that the inspiration that he has given in that regard all through life cannot fail to have a satisfactory effect. So far as I am concerned, at any rate, I am not one of those doleful, gloomy people who always look at the dead black side of the picture because we have scarcities and cannot help our neighbour across the water or the people in other lands who are suffering more than we are. I think that even when we are considering such prosaic things as finance and statistics, the higher things of life should yet have an appeal for us, that the old patriotic sentiments which led our people on in years of struggle should still be uppermost in our minds, and that here or elsewhere our ideas should be to uplift the nation financially but also in having regard for these higher things which lift the minds and hopes and hearts of our people from generation to generation, so that this land may be what it was intended to be by Pearse and the others, by those who suffered and died for it, Gaelic and free, and that the ideals which they had before them may be attained.

Mr. Dillon

The trouble with Deputy McCarthy is that, fundamentally, he is a decent man, and the result is that he finds his conscience on occasion a very turbulent thing, hard to drive in the direction where, in his heart of hearts, he feels it should not go. However, that is a good complaint in this troubled world. The majority of people have no consciences at all, so far as I can see.

Mr. McGrath

Including the Deputy himself.

Mr. Dillon

The Minister for Finance winding up a long statement announced triumphantly that he wanted to point out that "total State expenditure to be met in the coming 12 months amounts in all to £69,356,000". That represents expenditure at the rate of £23 per head of the population, or rather more, and £140 in respect of each family consisting of a father, a mother and four children. Is it any wonder that Deputy Giles should say to the Minister: "Do you remember the time when you were going round from houseen to houseen in Louth and South Monaghan? Would you have told a countryman and his wife, with three or four children in the kitchen, that you were struggling to get control of this country in order to get the opportunity of spending on their behalf £140 a year which would have to be raised by taxation or borrowing?" I doubt it, and I think it might do the Minister no harm if he were to take Deputy Giles' advice and think back to those days when he was familiar with the average holding in this country, to dismiss from his mind the exalted circles in which he now moves and realise that these exalted circles represent a very small fragment of our total society, that the bulk of our people are the kind of people whose total income does not exceed £140 per annum.

Take the average ten-acre farmer west of the Shannon. Of how many of them could it be said that their weekly income is £3 per week? We are blessed with a Minister for Finance who glories in the fact that in the next 12 months he is going to spend on their behalf £140 in respect of each house-hold consisting of a man, his wife and four children. He is mixing things up. He is beginning to believe that all the households are like Raglan Road residences and forgetting that the bulk of them are like the houseens in Louth and South Monaghan in which he was glad to take refuge 20 years ago, and in which, if he casts his mind back a little further, he will remember that his neighbours, as my neighbours, were born and reared.

Earlier in this speech, the Minister blandly announced that indeed in this situation it is desirable that the State should sweep some of the surplus money into the Exchequer through taxation. That is a very lofty principle, always provided that you keep clearly in mind what you are going to do with the money after you sweep it into the Exchequer. It is very easy to sweep it into the Exchequer and it is great fun to go around spending, providing a little dole for this one and a little benevolence for that one, but it is very bad finance. If the Minister had said that, in times of shortage of goods and surplus of money, it would be very helpful for the Government to maintain taxation at a high level and to reduce the burden of debt accumulated in the past by the surpluses which annually exist in the Exchequer, there would be a good deal to be said for that point of view. But the Minister announces blandly that the total debt of the nation now is £100,000,000, not to speak of the debt of the local authorities, and that, as a result of the rate of taxation he is maintaining, he has graciously forborne from borrowing what he would otherwise have borrowed last year and in the coming financial year.

Does it ever occur to him that in times like these there is a very grave duty upon him to start repaying what he borrowed in years gone by? The representation in past years was that there was not enough money in the hands of the community to purchase the goods available and therefore we should not pile on taxation, in order to ease the burden on the people for the time being. Now, we have reached the stage when there is too much money and too little goods. We do not then proceed to employ our surplus in paying off the burden of debt which we created in the years of abundant goods and short money, but we announce that, for the time being, we are not going to add to the burden of debt still more. Under what circumstances do we intend to start paying at all? If we have not got a surplus in existing circumstances, where there is so great a surplus of money that the Minister talks of sweeping it into the Exchequer, when will we have a surplus, or has it gone out of fashion altogether in democratic countries to budget for a surplus under any circumstances? Is it argued now that any individual, community or State can go on for ever spending more than it earns and postponing until the Greek kalends the question of repayment and get away with it?

If my memory serves me well, somebody once approached Adam Smith with that dilemma and said:—

"Can you tell me, sir, if people go on spending more than they are earning and if they never take any action to try to repay their debts, must not a State ultimately go bankrupt?"

Adam Smith's reply was:—

"Well, sir, it takes a long time and a great deal to bankrupt a country."

And this gentleman will be long dead and mouldering before the consequences of his actions fall to be endured. That is a very comforting thought for any Minister for Finance, but it is scarcely a sound procedure for somebody who is concerned for the welfare of this country.

It seems to me perfectly clear that, if we are to reconcile ourselves to a permanent, adverse trade balance, combined with a permanent deficit, combined with permanent unemployment, mitigated only by the granting of doles and visas for emigration, something is bound to burst somewhere sooner or later. I quite agree that it can be longdistant so long as you are living in an inflationary spiral such as at present engulfs the whole world. But, when that is over and we discover we have made no provision during this inflationary period for the deflationary sequel, then I think this country will find itself in an extremely awkward situation. I should have hailed as courageous and prudent a proposal from the Minister this year to raise a revenue of £69,000,000 if he had announced that he anticipated a surplus of from £6,000,000 to £9,000,000 at the end of the year which he intended to use for the redemption of debt, and that he proposed to continue to budget for large surpluses of that kind so long as the money-income of the people far outstripped the accessibility of goods. But a proposal to raise £69,356,000 of revenue and to appropriate it all to current expenses is to create a situation in which our people will look to the Government for that measure of activity and responsibility in their ordinary lives which the expenditure of so vast a sum makes possible. When it is no longer possible to raise revenue on that scale, the Government will have created wants and desires on the part of our community for assistance from the central authority which it will no longer be able to satisfy. Then, we shall be confronted with a very critical situation, indeed, in having to withhold from the people many things to which, they have been taught, they are entitled.

These things must, perforce, be withheld, because there will be no money to pay for them. The proposal to raise almost £70,000,000 for expenditure in the coming 12 months without an adequate appropriation for redemption of debt is sheer lunacy. The Minister responsible for it may not live to reap the whirlwind. It may be that few in the community will ever trace back to him responsibility for the whirlwind which must ensue. But I doubt that, even with his very elementary knowledge of public finance, the Minister does not realise the nature of what he is doing and the cowardly avoidance of duty which this course implies.

I should have expected the Minister for Finance, in introducing his Budget this year, to dwell shortly on the implications for this country of the Bretton Woods agreement. As I understand, from the 1st July the British Government have undertaken to the United States Government that they will make current earning in sterling freely convertible into dollars without conditions attaching thereto. Our current earnings of sterling for the past 12 months have been of the order of £31,000,000 or £32,000,000. We have financed the difference between the sum and the £70,000,000 worth of goods we imported out of our accumulated sterling assets. Now, from the 1st July, as I understand, under the Bretton Woods agreement between America and Great Britain, we shall be entitled to demand from Great Britain the full £30,000,000 of our current earnings in the shape of dollars. If we do so, Britain will have to pay us and, presumably, allow us to purchase our entire requirements in the sterling area by paying for them out of our accumulated sterling assets to which the Minister referred in his speech. Have any discussions taken place between us and the British Treasury with reference to that matter? Surely, this House is entitled to be informed of them if they have. I shall not deal with this subject exhaustively at the moment. Another occasion will present itself for that.

Remember, the agreement between the U.S.A. and Great Britain requires that Great Britain will make dollars available unconditionally in respect of current sterling earnings. The implications of that to this country are very grave. I find it hard to believe that they are not under discussion and I await an authoritative statement from the Minister for Finance in that regard which we can discuss. Pending that statement, I do not propose to pursue the matter to-day save to say that it should be and must be brought to the attention of this House in good time so as to ensure that no political folly of the Government will precipitate the country into a very acute economic crisis.

I admired the gracious and agile way in which Deputy McCarthy dealt with the question of emigration. He regretted it—of course. He hoped something would be done about it and then he passed on to the national spirit and the traditions of the Irish race. That took the harm out of the emigration business. I wonder what sort of speech Deputy McCarthy would make if he were on this side of the House and a Minister had to admit that, by a slight miscalculation, he lost track of 120,000 of the emigrants, that he just discovered them the day before yesterday and, now, instead of having 90,000 persons out of the country we have 120,000. I can see Deputy McCarthy coming in draped in crêpe, and an order going out to all the members of the Fianna Fáil Party to wear widows' weeds, like the statue of Strasbourg in the Place de la Concorde and to remain like that until returning innocence began to creep in. I do not observe any crêpe or public lamentation. Rather do I observe a profound reluctance to delay unduly on this painful topic.

It is a lot of people to go away from this country, most of them between the ages of 18 and 26. If it goes on, we are going to acquire in Europe the odd distinction of having the highest percentage of old age pensioners and infants of any country in the known civilised world. What an odd consequence of 25 years' independence? Oliver Cromwell could not do it, Queen Elizabeth could not do it; Henry the Eighth could not do it, George the Third could not do it—we had to wait for de Valera. Is it not remarkable? Mind you, Henry the Eighth, Oliver Cromwell and George the Third all succeeded in driving away their quota, but their quota used to go with lamentation.

Mr. McCarthy

Cromwell just murdered them on the spot.

Mr. Dillon

That is true. A very merciful man—he did not drive them out to starve slowly. Those who died on their hearthstone or who fled, lamented their going, wished that they might stay at home, because they loved the home they were leaving. I am bound, however, to testify that, under Taoiseach de Valera's dispensation, whole parishes seem to be most anxious to get away and claim as they depart that, bad and all as is the place they are going to, it could not be worse than the one they are in. What a very odd consequence of 25 years of self-government—and this under a Government whose Minister for Industry and Commerce declared as he entered office that one of his first troubles would be to repair the docks, to lay down new entrances to the country, because surely the tide of emigration would be reversed and that which had gone out on the ebb tide would return on the flow. Does Deputy McCarthy remember the days when we were getting ready to receive back the emigrants who had left this country in the dire days of yore? How little any of us thought that their company was to be swollen by an addition of 110,000? Deputy McCarthy wonders: "What ought we do? It is most distressing; something must be done about it." What does he think we ought to do? He has not the faintest notion.

Mr. McCarthy

I certainly have.

Mr. Dillon

Why does he not make the Government do it? Is his troubled conscience going to suffer another enforced imprisonment?

Mr. McCarthy

It is not troubled in the slightest.

Mr. Dillon

God grant it never may be. I know what could be done and should be done, what must be done and what will be done ultimately; but I think we will have to root this lot out before we can get it done, as I have abandoned the hope of educating them. The only consequence of educating members of the Fianna Fáil Party is to put them in the same danger as Deputy McCarthy stands in—neurasthenia, constantly knowing the right thing to do and finding himself compelled to do the other thing. It is bad enough as it is, but if they all became neurasthenics, then we would be really on the high road. The best and safest thing is to root them out and when we root them out we can set about staying the flood-tide of emigration.

I would like to tell the Deputy how. There is only one way. This country is poor: it will never provide for its population the material standard of life that is obtainable in highly industrialised countries with great mineral wealth and we shall never be able to retain within our shores, and should not try, those elements of our community who value that kind of material wealth above all other things. I do not deride them; every man is entitled to have his own standard of values for his own life. Those who want material wealth, prosperity and grandeur had better go—and God speed them. Our only concern should be that, if they set their sails for America or Canada, for Australia or Great Britain, or wherever they choose to venture, then as a result of the educational policy pursued in this country they will set forth for those foreign shores as well equipped as we can make them, to use the gifts God gave them to the best advantage in whatever nation they elect to make their home.

No one ought to be forced out of this country and it is not necessary that anyone should. The emigrant who wants to go, not because he is under any economic compulsion but because his heart longs for the wide open spaces and the distant horizon, so far as I am concerned, is welcome to go. He is doing something useful not only for himself but very likely for the country he leaves behind and the country to which he is going. But that any fellow or girl should be driven out by economic necessity should be a cause of shame and rebuke to us all and it is they I am concerned to deliver from that economic necessity, which in the past has driven their forebears from this country.

There is only one way they can be delivered and that is by the exploitation of the sole natural resources that this country has from which to earn wealth for the maintenance of its population—12,000,000 acres of arable land. It is less land than Denmark has, but because we refuse to use it to the best advantage, we are pouring our population away to industrial countries, while Denmark has not enough hands to do the work that awaits doing. Deputy McCarthy, like so many others, is completely befuddled by his concentration on price. The price of agricultural products does not matter: it is the profit that matters.

Mr. McCarthy

I would like the Deputy to tell the farmers that—that the price does not matter.

Mr. Dillon

It does not—that is the difference—it does not matter: it is the profit that matters. What is the use of getting £10 for a pig if it costs you £10 10s. to produce it? Would it not pay the Deputy far better to get £5 for that pig if he were enabled to produce the pig for £4 10s.?

Mr. McCarthy

Of what use is that hypothetical argument with the farmers of to-day?

Mr. Dillon

That is exactly where the Deputy is wrong. We can do that to-morrow, and the reason why we are not doing it is that we are prevented from doing it by our own Minister for Finance. He is the only person who stands between our people and the ability to do that to-morrow. Deputy McCarthy's conscience is going to get stretched again. If we take off the raw materials of the agricultural industry the taxes and restrictions that we ourselves have put upon them we can make every acre of arable land in this country pay a profit within three months. Has the Deputy never realised that fact before? The fact that it does not pay a profit is due to one reason, and one reason only, and that is that our own Government are compelling our people either to use their land to the least advantage, or are placing upon their work on the land taxes and restrictions such as make their costs of production so high that they cannot make a profit on the things which they produce.

Mr. McCarthy

If the Deputy put up a few acres of land for sale in the morning I would like to hear what he would say. I think we would see that it is not as unprofitable as he thinks.

Mr. Dillon

If I put up 50 acres of land for sale in the morning I would have Deputy Cafferky standing on a gate post calling on the Land Commission to come down and take it over. Why? Because my neighbours know that if the Land Commission take it over and pay me £50 an acre for it, they will sell it to allottees at £25 an acre. I do not care whether you are buying public houses, land, cattle, shebeens or outhouses, if you buy them for £10 and sell them to another for £5, you will get plenty to rush in to buy.

An Leas-Cheann Comhairle

The Deputy should keep to the Financial Motion.

Mr. Dillon

If the Government will take the restrictions and taxation that they themselves have put upon artificial manures, feeding stuffs, agricultural implements and machinery, seeds and every other thing that the farmer uses in order to produce his finished product, you will see an increase in the pig population, in the poultry population, in egg production and in cattle production without a subsidy of any sort, kind or description being required by anybody. At the present time the only people who are getting rich in this country out of the work done by farmers on the land are the millers, the artificial manure manufacturers, the agricultural machinery manufacturers, the agricultural implement manufacturers, the seed assemblers and all that gang of parasites who have been saddled on the farmers by our own Government. Deputies should remember that these boys do not live on the kind of farm that Deputy Giles works. They do not live on a ten or a 12 acre farm in a house of three rooms for a man and his wife and four or five children. These parasites live in the Dublin suburbs in houses standing in their own grounds.

Mr. McCarthy

If the Deputy had his way I believe we would not have a single Irish mill working. They would be all closed.

Mr. Dillon

I think Deputy McCarthy is mistaken in that he seems to forget that all the industries that we had built up here, the finest in this country, were there long before Taoiseach de Valera or the Fianna Fáil Party were ever heard of.

Mr. McCarthy

The Deputy would close all the flour mills.

Mr. Dillon

Does the Deputy know who is running the flour mills in this country? Has he ever heard of a firm called Ranks (Ireland), Limited?

Mr. McCarthy

I have.

Mr. Dillon

Do you know where they come from?

Mr. McCarthy

I do.

An Leas-Cheann Comhairle

We cannot have these irrelevant interruptions.

Mr. Dillon

I think it is very relevant. Deputy McCarthy is worrying about the flour millers. Has he ever heard that they came here from Yorkshire? I am not a bit worried about A.J. Rank and Company, Limited. He is able to get along swell. I am not a bit worried about the mills that are run by A.J. Rank and Company, Limited, but I am very greatly worried about the farmers through the country who can get neither bran nor pollard to feed their live stock, or when they can get them have to pay the flour combine a great deal more for them than the British farmer has to pay. That is because of the taxation and restrictions put on by our own Government, the farmer having to pay for his feeding stuffs the prices agreed upon by the milling ring in this country. Does the Deputy forget that we had in this country the firm of Arthur Guinness and Company, Jacobs, the linen industry, the woollen industry, the boot and shoe industry, the ship-building industry, the shirt-making industry, long before the Taoiseach or the Fianna Fáil Party were ever heard of and that all these industries were built up in the full blast of free trade? They asked for no protection and they got no protection. They were built up here in Ireland by Irishmen and employed nobody but Irishmen. They proved that they could meet and beat competition from any part of the world.

An Leas-Cheann Comhairle

The Deputy should address the Chair.

Mr. Dillon

I am addressing the Chair, and I am addressing Deputy McCarthy in the third person. It was not until Fianna Fáil came along that this queer doctrine was preached in this country, that the poor dirty Irish were unfit to undertake any industrial process in competition with anybody: that we were weak, poor and inefficient, and that anything that could be done in this country could be done better and cheaper in any other country. Where did that damnable doctrine first come from? Was it not first promulgated from the Front Bench of Fianna Fáil that you must have tariffs, that you must have quotas and that you must have protection because anything that we did here could be done better and cheaper somewhere else in the world? When Guinness started the brewing industry in Ireland he did not go flapping around this city saying that no one could brew beer here—that they always brewed it in England. He built the biggest brewery in the world in Dublin, on merit alone. When W. and R. Jacob and Company started, they did not go flapping around and saying: "What with Huntley and Palmer, sure no one could make biscuits in Dublin". They made biscuits in Dublin, employed nobody but citizens of this State and drove the British biscuit manufacturers out of the foreign markets which they had monopolised. I do not know if the Deputy remembers, but I remember before the war their products going down on the lorries labelled to the four corners of the earth. Jacob's biscuits covered the Seven Seas.

It was not until Fianna Fáil came into office that we proclaimed before the world that the poor old duds in Ireland could not make anything that could not be made cheaper and better somewhere else. Was the shipbuilding industry in Belfast built on the proposition that we could not do anything in this country that could not be done better and cheaper somewhere else? Harland and Wolff's ships sailed the Seven Seas in open competition and were deemed to be the equal of anything that was produced on the Clyde or the Tyne or anywhere else— the equal, if not better. They wanted no tariffs and they wanted no protection and asked no licence to exploit their neighbour.

Was the shirtmaking industry in Derry built up by tariffs? It was not, but, when the tariffs went on, that part of the shirtmaking industry that had been located in Donegal moved out of Donegal into Derry City because they wanted to get back into the arena of open competition where they could meet all comers and beat them. One of the largest suppliers of the British market in the highest grades of shirts to-day are the shirtmakers of Derry City and that used to include a large stretch of East Donegal going right over to Buncrana. They are out now. Who put them out? Who made it impossible to manufacture shirts in East Donegal for export to the markets of the world? Go up and ask the shirtmakers in Buncrana? Our Government. Not their incapacity to manufacture the shirts and sell them as cheap and of better quality than any to be found elsewhere but because our Government put on tariffs and quotas which made it impossible to bring the raw materials into East Donegal and ship them out again as finished products, with the result that the industry moved out of Donegal into Derry City.

Surely the members of the Fianna Fáil Party are not so completely imbecile as to believe their own fraudulent propaganda. No decent industry has been started in this country by a tariff or a quota. Every one of those industries that has been started here for private profit by a tariff or a quota is in fact a loathsome parasite upon the body politic. Some State monopolies, like the cement company and these have, under the circumstances, proved of certain value but they have cost us a pile of money—I do not propose to go deeply into that question at the moment—but the private industries, established and maintained for private profit under the protection of prohibitive tariffs or quotas, are a pest, a blister on the community and a parasite sucking the blood of our people and making it impossible for those who live upon the land to work the land profitably, and they are creating a situation in which the mere Irish have to fly the country because they cannot make a living here while the new aristocrats grow fat in the suburbs of Dublin, in houses situated in their own grounds, some of the occupants of which by instinct would turn into the gate lodge but by discipline proceed to the front door.

I want to say, before passing from that topic, Sir, that there is one other essential, and that is, that this Government of ours should provide in rural Ireland that measure of education without which we can never enable our people to do on the land what they are capable of doing. Deputy Patrick Giles, with his penetrating knowledge of rural conditions, points his finger to a fundamental fact that in rural Ireland the women are sadly deficient in the skill requisite to keep a house as it might be kept. I have said in this House before, and I want to repeat it, that if the standards of cleanliness obtaining in our rural houses were to serve as the footrule by which our people were to be judged, they would acquire in the world the reputation of a dirty people but I know they are not. I have applied to them the test that matters. I followed them into emigration and lived amongst them and I have seen them side by side with the peoples of other nations who have gone to emigration. There are peoples in the world who bring their dirt with them whereever they go. No one could ever say that of the Irish.

An Leas-Cheann Comhairle

Is this relevant to the Budget?

Mr. Dillon

Strictly, Sir, in my respectful submission.

An Leas-Cheann Comhairle

In what connection?

Mr. Dillon

I advocate that the Government should provide, not exotic forms of education that nobody wants, but practical forms of education that may serve.

An Leas-Cheann Comhairle

Would not that be more properly a matter for the Education Estimate?

Mr. Dillon

May it not more suitably be addressed to the Minister for Finance, who devoted a large part of his Budget speech to the matter of education?

An Leas-Cheann Comhairle

Not a great deal.

Mr. Dillon

I do not propose to dwell on it unduly either, but, in reference to the plans outlined in the Minister's speech, I suggest to him that if he wants urgent, practical and immediate reform in education it would be very useful if the school-leaving age of girls throughout rural Ireland were raised to 15 and parish schools were provided in every parish at which girls from 13 to 15 years of age were required to attend compulsorily, where their general education would be continued and, coincidentally, education in housewifery provided, so that when these children left school at the age of 15 they would become effective helps to their mothers in the maintenance of standards in their own home, good wives to the men who marry them and competent mothers to the children they bring into the world. That, to my mind, is one of the most urgent reforms that could possibly be carried out in this country. I would like to see the day when if one brought a visitor from any foreign land down to rural Ireland one could feel confident and certain that you could bring him into any of your neighbours' houses, without notice, in the knowledge that he would find a house where the standards of cleanliness that obtain in Holland and Switzerland were the normal. I defy any Deputy honestly to say that that is the case at the present time. I think it is not for want of will on the part of the women of rural Ireland. It is for want of the knowledge of how to do it. I would like to provide that knowledge for them through a suitable system of education provided in parochial schools such as I suggest.

Could anyone tell me this? How is it that we have 70,000 unemployed men in this country drawing the dole at the present time and yet, if you want to hire a man, you cannot get him? Does anyone know the solution of that question? It is a puzzle to me. I see the boys lining up regularly at Ballaghaderreen to get a certificate that they are unemployed but if you tried to employ one of them you would not see them for the dust of the road.

Major de Valera

Can the Deputy suggest any solution to that situation?

Mr. Dillon

Yes, I think I can. I would abolish as from to-day the payment of unemployment assistance to any unmarried man without family responsibilities resident in rural Ireland, for I am firmly convinced that over 80 per cent. of such persons drawing unemployment assistance at the present time in rural Ireland have no more right to it than I have. It is purely fraudulent dole paid to them because the sitting Deputy for the local constituency would be afraid to take it from them lest their votes should all go against him at the next general election and possibly result in the loss of his seat. I dare to swear that if Deputy Major de Valera were to draw some of the better informed members of his own Party aside and have a truly confidential discussion with them, he would find that the bulk of them would say to him, strictly under the rose, of course: "Deputy Dillon is perfectly right but it would never do to say so in public." However you will get out of that dilemma I do not know but there is not a single one of the Deputies sitting on these benches that does not know that in his own parish and in his own constituency hundreds of fellows are drawing the dole who have no more claim to it than I have but it would be politically catastrophic for the Party in power to take it off them. I am bound to say that if ever I have a hand in it I will.

I see my friend and colleague Deputy Mrs. Rice up there. I hope the next time she addresses a campaign meeting in Monaghan that she will say she heard me use those words. I even dare to hope that one so distinguished as she might add: "and I agree with him". I think if Deputy Major de Valera looks into that question he will find that the solution I have proposed is the only one.

The Ceann Comhairle resumed the Chair.

Mr. Dillon

I want to speak about something which is very dear to my heart and which, therefore, I heard the Minister for Finance refer to with profound regret. I believe the observation of the Minister for Finance relating to the scholarship for students who propose to take their academic course in the university through the medium of Irish is a most sinister and deplorable development. Do Deputies realise what that means? It is the first time a Government in this country has claimed the right to summon the President of the University and require the President of the University to give undertakings to the political Government of the day as to how the day-to-day work of that university is going to be carried on.

If to-day we are entitled to go to a university and offer it money on condition that it puts into operation in the day-to-day working of the university the methods we think appropriate we open the door to a claim by some subsequent administration of having a watch-dog continually in the university to see that nothing is done there, taught there, or said there which the Government of the day does not approve of and that if anything is taught there, done there, or said there that the Government of the day disapproves of the university grants will not be forthcoming in the ensuing financial year. No graver or more disastrous departure could conceivably be made in this country. Only those who deliberately close their eyes to what they do not wish to see can fail to recognise the shocking proposal there involved. It is one thing for this Legislature to say to a university: "Will you accept endowment for a new Chair?" Suppose we want Social Services a reputable faculty in the university—suppose we want Celtic Studies. It is one thing to go to the university and say: "Will you accept from the Legislature endowment for a new faculty?" and for the university to say: "Yes, we accept it." We then give them the endowment but at the door of the university we claim no right to follow—leaving it absolutely to the university to administer it academically at their absolute discretion.

But now, observe, we say: "We will pay certain grants on condition that the method of teaching inside the university conforms to certain requirements." We are now at liberty to go through the door of every building of University College Dublin, Cork and Galway —to enter any classroom and satisfy ourselves through our agent that the conditions prescribed in the scheme in respect of which these scholarships are being awarded are being carried out from day to day—that the students are, in fact, being lectured every day and all the day through the medium of Irish. If the National University of Ireland degrades itself by accepting an endowment of that kind within ten years from to-day they will be the miserable tool of a blackmailing Government. If the National University of Ireland allows any representative of this or any other Government in this country to cross its thresholds for the purpose of dictating the form of instruction which is to be given in the university it would be far better for it to close its doors honourably and to go out of existence as an academic body that never submitted to a tyranny of that kind, rather than to start down the slippery slope which ends by becoming the Louisiana tool of a tyrannical junta. But there is a method by which we could with due regard for the dignity and independence of the university and for the best interests of those who have a claim upon it do a great service to the Irish language and, at the same time, for the cause of education. It should be the ideal in any genuine democratic State to afford to every citizen of the State equality of opportunity. Only fools believe in the chimera of the equality of men. Men are not born equal. They are born with all degrees of potentiality. Some are born fat, some are born thin. Some are born dull, some are born clever. Some are born industrious, some are born lazy. In a democratic State, however they have been born, they are all entitled to an equal opportunity if the resources of the community so allow.

Therefore in this community of ours the ideal would be to afford to every citizen the opportunity of attaining to that degree of education which is available to the son of the richest one amongst us. Our resources in my opinion do not extend to that at the present time, but we could vindicate the principle that that is the ideal and we could give partial, practical effect to that ideal now and at the same time we could create an unconquerable citadel for Irish as a living language which no forces the future might bring against it could threaten or destroy. At the present time all the millions that are being spent on compulsory Irish are being thrown away. While it is true that there are more people who can say: "Tá mé te", it is equally true to say that the Gaeltacht is receding every day and that the language as a living language is dying before our eyes.

The truth is that all the compulsory Irish at present being enforced in this country has two results: (1) that the children leaving our primary schools leave them illiterate in two languages; (2) that every incompetent fraud in this country who aspires to public employment and knows that he does not deserve it goes and takes a grind in book Irish so that at the qualifying examination he can supplant the competent candidate and secure public employment by the fraudulent pretence that he has a competent knowledge of Irish; whereas the man who has a competent knowledge of how to do the job scorns the fraudulent suggestion that, because he is master of the first six books of O'Growney, he has a competent knowledge of Irish to transact all the duties of his employment through the medium of that language. These are the two base and rotten fruits of compulsory Irish—the most damnable curse that ever came upon the language in this country.

An Ceann Comhairle

The Deputy might confine himself to general financial policy and also bear in mind the fact that the second next Vote in the Estimates is the Education Vote which will give the Deputy full opportunity to pursue the line he is now pursuing.

Mr. Dillon

Yes. A few moments ago I was saying that the scheme of scholarships adumbrated by the Minister struck at the independence of the universities.

An Ceann Comhairle

That is also on the Education Vote.

Mr. Dillon

I want to make it clear that there is a scheme of scholarships alternative to that adumbrated by the Minister in his Budget speech which would preserve the independence of the universities and serve the language well, and that is, that we should say to children entering the primary schools that if they will present Irish as an honours subject in the certificate examination at the end of the primary school course they shall have a scholarship which will carry them to the secondary school, and that if at the leaving certificate or matriculation examination they present Irish as an honours subject with whatever other honours subject they like, they shall have a scholarship sufficient to carry them through their university course whatever it may be—law, medicine, arts, commerce, engineering, or whatever they please—provided that in each examination they undertake that they will present Irish as an honours subject and in their final degree examination, when qualifying in the technical degree to which they aspire, they will present Irish as an honours subject. Thereby you will create annually a body of men and women of the highest education who will be fluent Irish speakers and really masters of the language, and that body of people, in the vast majority of cases, having acquired mastery of the language, will rejoice in preserving it and we will thus build up an intellectual aristocracy who will glory in their ability to speak Irish with the same fluency as they speak English.

An Ceann Comhairle

That is some distance away from general financial policy. The Deputy will have an opportunity later on of discussing that matter.

Mr. Dillon

Surely we are entitled to deal with this, as it has been dealt with by the Minister. I want to make it clear that the Minister's scheme of scholarships strikes at the independence of the universities and is a fraud.

An Ceann Comhairle

The Deputy is still pursuing the same line.

Mr. Dillon

I will leave it at that. Is it not strange that in this year of £69,356,000 expenditure we are to be told that it is the intention of the Government to spend £2,000,000 to develop Dublin Castle for the reception of 4,000 civil servants? Was there ever a stranger proposal brought before Parliament? We have watched this mighty army of bureaucrats grow. We have watched the largest individual enclosed space in the known civilised world prior to the erection of Willow Run—I refer to the Sweepstake buildings at Ballsbridge—occupied by this mighty army and, in a trice, converted into a hive of industry. Prior to the building of Willow Run by Henry Ford, I believe that the Sweepstake buildings in Ballsbridge were the largest enclosed space ever created by the hand of man. But the advance guard of this gallant 4,000 populated it in the twinkling of an eye.

I remember going in there once— it was then the Department of Supplies —to make representations on behalf of a constituent. As you stood on the threshold it was like looking into an ants' nest. You felt that your soul was encompassed by a pink file controlling this vast machine which proceeded to grind it and that, at the conclusion of a fixed period, something quite unrecognisable came out the other end, and that was your personality as adapted by the Department of Supplies. Your first reaction was one of horror and loathing. But, on reflection, one came to realise that, no matter how humane the Minister be, it was impossible to arrange it on any other basis. There were so many pink files to be disposed of that, if it were suggested for a moment that any human element could enter into the decision relating to any of the files, the whole machine would break down. The only solution was to lay down six cardinal rules and put in every man in Ireland, whether he weighed 20 stone or five stone, whether he has the intellect of a philosopher or the approach to life of an Australian aborigine, whether he was an artist or a ditch digger, and run him through the same great machine with the certainty that something would come out, and if that thing that came out did not function in accordance with the law, there were always the gaols and asylums in which he could be disposed of and in which people were not infrequently disposed of, some in gaol, some in asylums, and others in their graves. But the majority managed to stagger along after that exhilarating experience of having passed through the mighty mill of bureaucracy.

Having demonstrated their ability to occupy that unprecedented space, they are now gathering to advance on the Castle, not for the purpose of obliterating from the horizon Irish history, but for the purpose of converting its interior at a cost of £2,000,000. I do not know how the Minister for Finance has the face to make that declaration.

Our urgent need of foreign exchange to buy the things without which we cannot carry on, our urgent need of national income with which to finance services on which the standard of living will depend, our urgent need of profits out of which to secure a standard of living for our people which will prevent them from pouring away to other countries, all point to the same thing, and that is that the one natural resource with which God endowed our people must be exploited to its best advantage or we perish as a nation. Twelve million acres of arable land have enough potentiality to provide for our people a decent standard of living and a greater measure of happiness than probably is enjoyed by any other nation in Europe because, great as are the trials and tribulations of the British people, they are now, and will for many generations continue to be, one of the best markets in the world for the kind of agricultural produce that we are in a position to produce.

Nothing prevents us from getting for our people that standard of living but the folly, the wicked folly, and ignorance of our Government. If our farmers are relieved of the burdens of taxation, quotas and restrictions under which they are labouring, every acre of land in this country can be made to pay a profit within 12 months. For all those economic problems there is one common solution. Take off the raw materials of the agricultural industry all taxes, restrictions and quotas, then get out of our way and leave the people who own the land to work it as they know best. Get rid of your inspectors, get rid of your subsidies, get rid of your hodge-podge schemes, let the people who own the land work the land, and then we will make this country pay.

We will never be rich as great imperial nations are; we will never be plutocrats as those whose homes are built upon gold mines and coal mines and iron mines and oil wells; we will never be capable of perpetrating the international savageries that material wealth has led so many other nations to embark upon. We will always see a tithe of our population faring forth to other lands for the more adventurous life the competition in those countries vouchsafes to those who wish to try it. We will always have enough to maintain an independent, dignified, prosperous and happy people here in Ireland to which those who go abroad will feel they can confidently return and to which those who go forward and succeed in the march of the world can look back with pride as a people they are glad to claim their own. But, if we pursue too long a policy of £69,000,000 Budgets, a flood-tide of emigration, the presumption that we in this country can do nothing that cannot be done better and cheaper by somebody else, and that nobody in this country is fit to earn his own living if he does not get a dole or a pension from somebody else, then Ireland will sink to a very low state and we will see the day of bitter humiliation when people with distinctive Irish names begin to change them lest their origin be known. The very thought that such a thing could happen makes one squirm —that those that bore you bear upon them the reputation of futility, incompetence and failure. It is understandable that those who want to make their way should wish to dissociate themselves from that.

We are the begetters of a great race all over the world, something I once described as the greatest spiritual empire the world has even seen. To be worthy of it we do not require to be rich or powerful, great or plutocratic; all that is necessary is that we should be able to render an account of the stewardship of the things of which we have been placed in charge. If we pursue that primrose path of spending more than we have, claiming the right to break into the universities of our country and to tell them what is to be taught there, assuming the position that the Government of this country owns every man and everything and accepts responsibility for them all, we will live to see the day when Irishmen abroad will begin to change their names.

But it is not too late to turn back; it is not too late to realise that independence carries with it its responsibilities as well as its opportunities, and that even if the first 25 years have not produced very gratifying results, that is no reason why the second 25 years should not produce something better. I do not believe there will be any change for the better till we root this Government out and it is no harm, while we are getting ready to do that, to review in our minds the work we will have to put our hands to when the opportunity presents itself, and when we can make it clear enough that we know what we intend to do and that we mean to do it, we will hasten the day when the work of building up can be begun and the work of tearing down will come to an end.

Major de Valera

This Budget has, as usual, evoked a considerable amount of talk in the course of the past few days, but the interesting thing is that the talk has been rather general on the part of the Opposition and there has been very little direct attack on the main provisions of the Budget, for the good and simple reason that there does not seem to be any basis for such an attack. The Budget is a sane one, and, taking into account the situation in this country, a good one. I am glad to see that the Minister has taken a calm, cool stand and has, if anything, been a trifle conservative, which is the proper attitude for a Minister for Finance in a small country like this in face of a very uncertain outside situation. I think the Minister in such circumstances is to be congratulated on the fact that, notwithstanding the decrease in the value of money and the repercussions of a serious economic situation in the world at large and particularly in neighbouring countries, he has been able to balance his Budget with taxes on non-essentials. With the experience of the past and of what happened after the last war in similar circumstances, it would not have been surprising to an impartial student to find the Minister for Finance compelled to impose unwelcome taxes on essential commodities. It is gratifying and a tribute to the Minister to find that in the two Budgets introduced by him since he came into office, he has been able to find all the money he requires from non-essential sources and, at the same time, afford very essential reliefs to meet the strain of the present situation on certain harassed portions of the community.

Before I go into some figures on this Budget which appear to me to be of some interest, I think it well to recall to people like Deputy Dillon that it is impossible to look at the economic situation in this country at the moment without having regard to conditions in the world at large and the situation in England. We have, in particular, to face up to the fact that the value of money has decreased to a great extent owing to the fact that the volume of money is out of proportion to the quantity of goods available and the quantity of goods produced. As our finances and our currency stand at the moment, we cannot avoid the depreciation in sterling and the influences which affect sterling at the moment. In looking at this Budget, we must bear that fact in mind. So long as a country such as this has economic relations with the outside world—and we must have economic relations with the outside world—it cannot find perfect stability at home at a time when there is instability outside. The policy at home must be a compromise between trying to maintain our own internal economic stability and, at the same time, adjust ourselves to the unstable circumstances prevailing outside. What we have to face here at the moment is that, the value of the £ having decreased, prices have increased and that wages have increased to some extent, while the quantity of goods available is not sufficient for requirements. These are the problems which face the Minister in balancing his Budget and he has no alternative but to increase the size of the Budget. There is no way out of it.

The first thing to realise, therefore, when criticising the size of the Budget is that the value of the £ has decreased. Its present value is about half its pre-war value; I cannot give the exact figure. It is not so important; the fact is that its value has decreased. From that fact alone, it must follow that the total amount of money to be budgeted for must be increased. Then there emerges a consideration which should be carefully borne in mind by Deputies. Right through this year, last year and the year before, Deputies in Opposition have been clamouring for certain measures. One Party wants increased social services, increased old age pensions; somebody else wants relief for farmers, somebody else wants to give special relief to another class of the community, and so forth. Cases are made and attention is drawn to the situation and the reliefs given in other countries. Constantly the Government is under a barrage of fire for not doing this and not doing that.

During the year when Ministers who are charged with the practical task of trying to solve the problems of the day come forward and propose schemes such as increased social services or schemes for public health, such schemes are approved and very often the criticism is that they do not go far enough. Deputies here in this House, and the people as a whole have been agitating for increased social services, increased allowances to meet the depreciated value of money.

It is up to the Government to make the necessary provision for such services but let Deputies remember that when it comes to Budget day, these things must be paid for. It is wrong and it is dishonest to pretend to the people on certain days that they should have such-and-such a service and then to complain later of their having to pay for such services. These services or benefits, if they do not come from production within the country and from the efforts of the people themselves, have to be paid for by the Government which simply means that the people themselves pay for them through the medium of taxation. There are no two ways out of it and it is just as well for us to realise that.

In the past few years there has been a considerable agitation in regard to old age pensions, widows' and orphans' pensions, children's allowances, food and supplementary allowances, health services and such matters. Taking the items which I have stated, if one looks at the Estimates this year, a rough calculation will show that these services alone require about £9,000,000. In fact, I think the Minister in his Budget statement indicated a figure of about £12,500,000 or 18 per cent. of our total Budget figure, as the total expenditure on social services. On the headings I have mentioned there is roughly an increase of £5,500,000 on the 1939 figure. It is just as well for us at this stage, particularly when it is the temper of the Opposition to criticise expenditure, to remember this fact in turn, when they come to criticise legislation for social services or some other expansion of public services. When they come to demand a further expansion of services, let them be logical.

Notice taken that 20 Deputies were not present; House counted, and 20 Deputies being present,

Major de Valera

Deputy Dillon's desire to have an audience has apparently made him forget that he was not speaking at the time. It was I who happened to be speaking and it was unnecessary, I think, to call a House, because, when all is said and done, if we are serious in our approaches to these problems, it is not merely for the sake of making speeches that we talk but to contribute what we can in ideas or criticism to help the Executive to carry out their policy. I was commenting on the fact that a very substantial part of the sum budgeted for is attributable to social services and also on the fact that, right through the years, except on Budget day, we hear a considerable amount of talk on the desirability of further services. By one Party in particular, we are constantly reminded of the high standard of social services in certain other countries, and the cry is to do more. I merely wish to remark that, on Budget day, it is well to realise that, if you are going to increase these services and benefits, they must be paid for and, in the last analysis, all we have to do, and what we have to do, is to strike the correct balance between having the services we can afford and the money available. So much for that heading.

Right during the year, too, and it is again well to realise and to refer back to these things on Budget day, there has been a considerable amount of clamour for increases in salaries and wages to various sections of the community, and to sections of the State services. I am not in any way attacking or criticising these increases, or saying they should not be given. What I am saying is that these increases must be met, and that the people who advocated these increases and who were very quick to try to make political capital out of the agitations of various sections at the time these sections were looking for these increases, cannot now legitimately come back and complain of the increase in the sum budgeted for. You cannot have it both ways.

A casual glance through the Estimates will show that the remuneration of the Civil Service, teachers, Garda and so forth has been increased. The increase in these wages and salaries has necessarily meant an increase in every Government Department, and all I am saying now is that it is well to realise that you cannot have it both ways and that in referring back to the Budgets of previous years, making comparisons and suggesting that this Budget has gone out of all proportion, it is not honest to disregard these increases, nor is it honest to disregard the decrease in the value of money vis-á-vis the goods which that money purchases. I am merely making these comments for the sake of asking Deputies to help in letting the people know the facts of the situation. Too often attempts have been made to pretend to the people that money is a fictitious thing which can be created at will. It is well to get them to recognise that, if money has any meaning, its value must be measured in terms of goods and production and that you cannot get anything for nothing in this world.

Two things—expanding social services and an increase in remuneration to personnel paid directly by the State —have, of necessity, involved a big increase in the sum which the Minister for Finance must find in the coming year and for which he must budget. It is well to realise that, in the future, such increases must necessarily be brought into account on Budget day. Deputies who agitate for these things should realise that they must be paid for and they should be prepared on Budget day to pay for them. There are other matters which I have not mentioned which affect the situation, such as agricultural subsidies and Votes for Lands and Public Works. These have all been increased either because of the decline in the actual purchasing value of money or because of demands—demands, to a large extent, agreed to and fostered by Opposition Deputies as well as by Government Deputies. In the main, I think that these things have been beneficial to the country. Again, let us be honest and realise that if we want these things we have to pay for them.

Many Deputies have referred to the problem of emigration. I was rather interested in looking up a comparison of the situation in England with our situation here. It is, indeed, very difficult to understand why, at the moment, people should prefer going there to remaining here. In spite of the difficulties we may have, anybody who has been there recently will realise how much better off our people, both in town and country, are than the people across the water—how much better off they are in food and essentials, how much greater is the value to the people here of the money they have, though they may have less of it in paper than the people on the other side. Deputy O'Leary has complained about the price of tobacco and cigarettes. He knows as well as I do what the cost of a packet of cigarettes now is in England. He knows as well as I do that their economic situation is so serious——

Mr. O'Leary

They have higher pay and pensions in England.

Major de Valera

I shall come to that in a moment. The Chancellor of the Exchequer is actually imposing taxation to the extent of trying to cut tobacco consumption, because they cannot afford to purchase tobacco leaf outside. Deputy O'Leary may not have been across the water recently. It would be very interesting for him to go there and ascertain the value which the higher wages he talks about have. It is not worth while for many people over there to work a full week because, in a lesser number of days, they will be able to earn all the money that will be of use to them. The earning of money beyond that stage is of no use to them because it can purchase nothing.

I come to the question of income-tax. Take an income of £200 a year, which is not a big income. Under the Minister's proposal, a single man with £200 a year, all earned, will pay only £3 5s. 0d. in tax. A married man earning a similar sum will not pay any income-tax here. A single man in England earning that amount will pay £9 10s 0d.

Mr. O'Leary

He has got the money.

Major de Valera

What is the use of his getting money if it is taken from him again? Take the case of persons earning from £300 to £400. That is a class which has a certain amount of interest for me because there are many people in this city—clerks and lowly-paid civil servants—earning about that sum. These people have been hit somewhat harder by the present world position than other classes—either the very poor or the better off. They are a class deserving of great consideration. A single man earning £300 per year here will pay in tax £16 approximately. In England, a man earning the same amount will pay £36. A married man earning that amount is completely relieved of tax here. In England, he will have to pay tax. Let nobody tell me that that relief is not substantial and useful.

Because I am a Government Deputy, I do not wish to throw bouquets at the Minister but I think he is to be congratulated on being able, in face of a most unstable situation outside and with a currency that is not restricted to our own territory, to give these reliefs and find the extra money necessary from a tax on non-essentials, unwelcome though any tax may be. In present circumstances, I say that it is a great achievement on the part of the Minister to be able, notwithstanding the unstable position of the £ and the present tendency to increase social services, to meet all the demands I have mentioned, to give real relief and to find extra taxation from non-essentials. I move to report progress.

Progress reported; Committee to sit again on Tuesday.

The Dáil adjourned at 2 p.m. until 3 p.m. on Tuesday, 13th May, 1947.