Yesterday evening, in the few minutes I had to speak on this Bill, I was protesting at the idea of giving an increase of £1,500 to an individual who had already a salary of £5,000, plus £5,000 expenses, and whose household was costing the State something in the region of £52,000. I regard that as pure waste of the people's money, since it is from the taxpayer's pocket and from the people in general the money must be found to provide all these increases in salaries during the past few months. It is the duty of those who represent the ordinary working people to stand up and protest here as loudly and as strongly as they can at such squandering of public money. The President's Establishment is a more expensive one than this country can maintain at its present rate, even though legislation was passed here a few days ago which guaranteed a certain amount of money for the upkeep of that mansion. When we demand even £1,500 more for its upkeep we are moving a step too far and some day this squandermania will have to stop and our friend, the President, will have to be made realise that this country cannot afford such expensive luxuries as Árus an Uachtaráin or, as it was previously called, the Viceregal Lodge.
When we take into consideration the number of people destitute throughout the State, the number of small wage earners who, despite their best efforts and their hardest work, cannot earn more than £2 10s. 0d. or £3 a week, we will say to ourselves that an establishment costing £52,000 a year should definitely be abandoned. The Government Party seem to have their eyes shut to the fact that there is anyone in need at all. To those people who have to work hard, or to those thousands of emigrants as they line up for sailing tickets or passport visas at the various offices, it is very poor consolation to know that we have a President whose salary of £5,000, plus £5,000 expenses, is not sufficient and that he must get another £1,500. I am sure they will feel gratified when they go over to England and pick up one of the Irish newspapers and see how the money they should have got to help them out and carry them along earning their livelihood here is spent by the wonderful democratic Party which happens to be the Government and which, years ago, could see no justice in giving anyone more than £1,000 a year in this State.
This has been described by a previous speaker as a cynical joke. It is more than that, it is a very expensive joke, so expensive that it is time it was stopped. As I am always agitating inside and outside this House, there is only one way to put a stop to these expensive amusements in the shape of Presidents and Viceregal Lodges and Árús an Uachtaráin that is, to remove from power the Party who are so generous to these well-paid officials and have so little consideration for those hard-working individuals who are being denied an honest living. We were told in a proclamation issued about 21 years ago that we were not to model ourselves on empires but on countries whose resources mostly resembled our own. I wonder what we are modelling ourselves on at the moment, when we set out on this mad jamboree of spending. The old saying "The sky is the limit" seems to be the motto now and I wonder if the sky is the limit so far as this expenditure is concerned. From the introduction the Minister gave to this Bill and from the general tone of what speakers have said here, there does not seem to be an awful lot of use for this President at all.