I suppose it is vain to hope that the gentleman of the ascetic tastes and the Minister for Finance would understand how ordinary mortals such as old age pensioners and persons in receipt of low incomes manage to live and to provide themselves with the frugal luxuries which they are permitted to-day on their slender incomes. I think this tax on tobacco, particularly on the cheaper ranges of tobacco, is going to impose a very real hardship on the ordinary man in this country who is on a low scale of income and that it is going to be particularly hard in respect of old age pensioners. In the case of the old age pensioner who goes into the Post Office on a Friday, collects there the miserable 12/6 which he gets under our old age pension legislation, it has been the custom, perhaps, after collecting the money to have a pint of beer and to buy his weekly supply of tobacco—perhaps two ounces of tobacco. Nobody will say that that is an unreasonable form of recreation to be indulged in by an old age pensioner. Nobody will say that it is unreasonable for him, on the day he collects the old age pension, to buy a pint of beer and also, perhaps, two ounces of tobacco. Yet, under this legislation which we are now being asked to enact he simply cannot do that because of the burden which this taxation will impose on his slender income. Whatever justification the Minister may have for taxing luxuries such as cigars which are consumed by wealthy people—I am prepared to back the tax on cigars on the understanding that those who receive low incomes will be permitted to get their tobacco free from any additional taxation—I think he is acting unreasonably in imposing a tax on tobacco which he must know, as every ordinary man and woman in the country does know, has long ceased to be a luxury so far as the ordinary mortals in this country are concerned.
I know, of course, that we have a rather mystic and ascetic variety of individuals who cannot understand why ordinary flesh should succumb to the wiles of tobacco, and why an ordinary person should indulge in the luxury of a pint of beer after the weekly or daily grind. The fact remains that that is our pattern of life. The masses of our people do that. They are now being asked to do it in circumstances which will impose real hardship on them because, side by side with the additional taxation on tobacco and beer, they are being told by the Government that they must submit themselves to a wages standstill order, the effect of which, calculated on what we know from Government statements, is to endeavour to prevent persons in that position from improving their incomes in order to meet the new higher level of taxation and we have had statements from the Government benches that nothing can be done in the way of increasing old age pensions. The Taoiseach, according to a statement of his on Sunday last, does not intend to increase them because it would mean taking taxation out of the pockets of the people. Taxation is being taken out of the pockets of the masses of the people under the Resolution we are being asked to enact.
If this country were in a state of financial prostration, of agricultural and industrial chaos, one might understand the Minister being driven to extremes in raising money to meet the national housekeeping bill but that is not the case. There are abundant sources from which the Minister can secure his additional taxation if such additional taxation is necessary. I said before—the truth probably will bear repetition—that about 18 months ago the Minister handed back £3½ millions in the form of excess corporation profits tax. That was done by the Minister in the pious hope that the effect of handing it back would be to reduce the price of commodities. The Minister by now must have abundant evidence that the handing back of that £3½ millions to what can only be described as a wealthy stratum of taxpayers, has not had the effect of reducing prices. In fact, prices have risen more rapidly since that £3½ millions were paid back than at any time during the previous eight years.
If the £3,500,000 was handed back in a pathetic belief that it would reduce prices, the Minister's hopes in that respect were based on extremely sandy foundation. That money is available still. The class who previously paid it and who have now got it back are still capable of bearing that additional taxation without its involving the slightest encroachment on their standard of living. Why then do not we expect that stratum of the population, whose backs are broad and who are well upholstered financially, to make a contribution on an occasion like this in the form of additional taxation so as to obviate recourse to additional taxation on tobacco which, because of human usage and our pattern of life, has become an absolute essential for the masses of the people?
The Minister on the occasion of his Budget speech had a simple recipe for those who find the additional taxation on tobacco and beer arduous. It is as follows: If in the past you have taken a pint a day, that is seven pints in the week, take six pints in the week in future, in order to adjust yourself to this crazy type of Budget. He had another recipe, dazzling in its simplicity, for those who use tobacco. For every six cigarettes you are used to consuming, if you consume only five in future, everything will go on all right. The Minister might have gone further and suggested to those people that when they were ordering a pint of beer or an ounce of tobacco, they should ask the retailer to put out the lights and buy in the dark so that they would not know what they were getting. Is the Minister so hopelessly divorced from the feelings of the people as not to know that you cannot suggest that pattern of life to our people? That is something that they are not used to. They have a right to expect that on an occasion like this the Minister would survey the nation's resources and tax the backs that are broad enough to bear it.
During the emergency we raised £3½ millions in the form of excess corporation profits tax. It was given back, for nothing, as a gift to people well endowed with this world's goods. We are now raking taxation out of the pockets of the people who are not able to bear this imposition. I would suggest to the Minister that he ought even now to say to those to whom he has given a very generous gift in the form of remitted excess corporation profits tax that they must yield up that taxation, because in our circumstances it is most unreasonable and unfair that tobacco and the ordinary pint of beer, which have been the right of the masses of the people for generations, should be taxed to the extent that they are being taxed in this Supplementary Budget. The wealthy classes in the community, who have escaped the devastation of war and who saw their property protected by the ordinary working-class people who joined the Army, ought to be glad to yield up their surplus wealth, their unwanted money, some of their deposits in the bank, in order to express even in token form the gratitude which they have a right to feel for the whole nation and for the masses of the people who comprised the nation's Army during the emergency. Yet, in this Resolution the Minister is putting his hand down as far as he can get it into the pockets of the ordinary working-class people, the ordinary agricultural worker, the small farmer, the artisan and general labourer, while the wealthy classes are escaping relatively scot-free under this Budget.
The Minister's concern in his Budget statement was for the lowly and the weak. It strikes me that the Minister's concern in this matter is the kind of concern a greyhound has for a rabbit. The imposition of this taxation is unfair so long as there are other sources of wealth which can be tapped, even if we were again to tap excess corporation profits. We ought to tax excess profits. We ought to rake off every halfpenny of excess profits in a crisis of this kind. While that course is open the Minister ought not hesitate to take it, and thus avoid the imposition of these new taxes on the masses of the people who are not equipped to bear them.
Apart from excess corporation profits tax there are other sources of taxation. There is an abundance of luxuries in this country which are being purchased by those who are going scot-free under this Budget. The Minister is not without resources for making them pay, in the national interest, a higher price for these luxuries, many of which are bought in dollar countries and the purchase of which contributes to our financial difficulties. So long as these sources of taxation are available it is most unreasonable that the Minister should seek to impose on the ordinary people this additional taxation in the form of extra duties on tobacco and beer.
