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.