This is the section which imposes a tax of 3d. a pint on beer and stout, and the equivalent on the bottle. The Minister's case for this Supplementary Budget is that the money is required. He estimates that, under this section, he will receive in five months over £800,000. In a further breath, he tells us that, if anybody wants to evade this tax, all he has to do is to reduce consumption. The object of the tax will, of course, be defeated unless it brings in the revenue estimated. Let us assume that the Minister is correct in his estimate and that he collects off those who drink beer or stout £800,000 in five months. Remember, the only case for this Supplementary Budget is that it will reduce the cost of living. We reduce the cost of living by putting a new impost of nearly £1,000,000, over a period of five months, on, in the main, the poorest section of the community. One of the two Government Deputies who participated in this debate, when we were dealing with the tax on whiskey, pointed out, in defence of that tax, that beer was the drink of the poor man and that spirits was the drink of the wealthy man. Out of the mouth of that Government Deputy, we have the clear admission that his Minister, in order to reduce the cost of living, is placing a new imposition of nearly £1,000,000 in half a year on the backs of the poorest section of the community.
There are two sets of persons involved in this impost. There is the man who sells the beer and the person who consumes it. There are, approximately 12,000 such traders in the State— unquestionably decent, upright members of the community, the hard core, the spearhead, the centre-piece of every progressive national and social movement. Very few of them are wealthy. The average is of the middleclass, shopkeeper type up and down the country. They are rearing their families decently and doing their best, in a modest way, for them. That section of the community is asked to bear a tax, under this section alone, of, approximately, £2,000,000 a year. In addition, they will pay their increased income-tax and the various other charges. We are told that that is being done in the best interests of the community and so as to reduce the cost of living. The presumption is that the Minister will, for once, be correct, that his estimate will be somewhere near the mark, that he will get the revenue he estimates, that he will get that extra couple of million pounds, mainly out of the pockets of the workman—exclusively out of the pockets of the workman, according to the Government Deputy who spoke here this evening. We are told that that is to reduce the cost of living.
Let us take the case of the moderate drinker, the steady, hardworking man, the man who has one pint at dinner hour and, possibly, another at night. You are putting a direct imposition on that man of, approximately, 4/- a week. In the same Budget, you are giving him a relief equivalent to less than 1d. per head per day of his household. It is all very well to be talking of official figures and of reducing the cost-of-living index figure. If we are realists, if we are really facing up to the situation of the back-broken man and heart-broken woman struggling with a progressively soaring cost of living, we may be able to argue that, through this Supplementary Budget, we are reducing the cost-of-living index figure, on which beer and tobacco do not figure, but, in fact, we are increasing the actual cost of living in the majority of homes.
The Minister knows very well that the recreation of the workman in Dublin and rural Ireland, the abstemious man, the regular worker, is this—to sit and smoke and chat over a pint at night. To reduce the cost of living in the homestead of that abstemious man, who never drinks to excess, who is a good husband and good father, we are proposing to clap on this tax. If the cost of living is reduced in that homestead, or in such homesteads, it will be only because the tax drives the person concerned to give up that little bit of comfort. If it drives him to that extreme, then the tax will be a complete failure. Instead of bringing in revenue, there will be a heavy loss of revenue. Parliament and people are entitled to a direct, straight lead from Government, not a lead like the flight of a jack-snipe, zig-zagging, relying on one leg and one set of arguments one day and on another leg and an opposite set of arguments the next day.
The argument is used that the people concerned can evade the tax by reducing their consumption of stout or porter. If that device is adopted, then this proposal is a sham. Not only will it not bring in extra money but it will bring about a slump in the revenue. From the human point of view, from the point of view of the welfare of the honest man, who is working with bone and muscle, I have no hesitation in describing this tax as an exceptionally brutal tax, as a tax which is nationally unjustifiable. I should not subscribe to the arguments put forward earlier in this debate by Deputy Corry but I invite Deputy Corry and other Government Deputies who feel like him to stand up to their public statements by their vote. Let everybody who considers this a just imposition on the people vote for it.
I move to report progress.
