Whatever may have taken place, I consider that your Party was well paid by a much bigger and wealthier group. However, in so far as the Supplementary Budget was an indication of what was coming this year if the Fianna Fáil Party was in Government I think it is true to say that its Budget would not have been a pleasant surprise. To the extent of having been relieved of having to bear the Fianna Fáil Budget, that seems the chief argument that most people find in its favour—whatever their criticism of the details of the Budget or of its failure to deal with the different problems that require attention at the present moment may be.
Budgets are exceptionally important not merely from the point of view of providing an opportunity for a discussion on policy but also because they are probably the main instruments for giving effect to Government policy in the course of the year in question. Budgets are required not merely for the purpose of raising a certain sum of money and spending it but also to give effect to the industrial, commercial, economic and social policy of the Government in power. Therefore, they have got to be regarded not merely from the point of view of good accountancy but also from the point of view of the social and economic policy it is intended or hoped to achieve. I want to be quite frank that while I feel the Minister has carried out an exceptionally difficult job in a capable manner, I am not entirely happy about it. At the same time, and in order to stall the Fianna Fáil Deputies from asking me the same question which they have been asking me for the past few days, I am going to vote for this Budget because, if I were not to vote for it, I would be voting for something else, even worse.
Taking the Budget as a whole, I think even the Minister himself will agree that, even aside from the difficulties he had to face in regard to the short period of office and the legacy he inherited, and merely looking at the Budget in principle, it is not in any way satisfactory from his own point of view. Recalling many of the speeches made by him in the House, I do not think it expresses even what he hopes to include in a later Budget, because definitely the Budget is a fairly desperate attempt to meet a fairly desperate situation and that attempt had to be made under great pressure at very short notice and under tremendous handicaps. By this time next year, I do not think it is unfair to say that the Parties who go to make up the inter-Party Government can look forward to an improvement on the present Budget. I am not talking merely in terms of taxation or finance, but of the Budget as an instrument of policy, of directing the industrial and agricultural development of the country, and of providing the means and the pressure for improved wealth capacity. I do not think the Minister will quarrel with that principle. In the 12 months ahead, I think we will find that there will be an attempt on the part of the Minister to try to provide a basis on which a Budget can be formulated with these objects in view.
So far as the present Budget is concerned, I have stated that it has to be regarded in the light of the legacy left to the Minister and of the time factor and, from that point of view, I think it should be accepted as a good Budget. It has at least brought to an end a period during which there was a continuous rise in the pressure of finance on the backs of the masses of the people, with a continuous disregard of the claims of one of the sections of the people who are unable to make reasonable provision for their own needs because of old age or ill-health and other causes of that nature. It is also made a beginning in relating expenditure, not to the needs of a political Party or to a grandiose conception of the country's prestige, but as to the needs of the country from the point of view of providing facilities for the production of the national wealth which the country needs in the form of the products in the land and factories. With that beginning I think, as I said, that next year we will be able to get a Budget which will be, not only good from the point of view of the immediate situation, but which will give us a prospect also for the future.
So far as the actual items of the Budget are concerned, Deputy de Valera made considerable play with the repeal of the Supplementary Budget taxation. He suggested that there should be some kind of balance between the price of beer and the amount paid in income-tax. My quarrel is not that the Supplementary Budget taxation was taken off but that we have not had a more drastic approach to the question of income-tax. Similarly, in regard to the provisions set out in the Budget for an improvement in regard to old age pensions and widows' pensions, and particularly an adjustment of the means test, these are in themselves quite frankly merely the first steps and it is expected outside this House that considerably more will become available later this year for the sections of the community affected.
Deputy Lemass, in the course of his speech, said that if Fianna Fáil had remained in office a general social security code would probably have been put into legislation by now. I doubt that very much. I doubt if they had got past the figures stage, even if we give them credit for desiring to introduce such a social security code. However, we have the advantage now that we are not depending on the political foibles of Fianna Fáil. When that social security scheme is to be introduced is a matter that we can decide, because there is not only unanimous opinion on this side of the House in regard to it, but there is a unanimous call in the country generally for improvements in regard to old age pensions and widows' pensions assessments and the conditions with regard to the means test at a later period of the present year.
One important thing about the Budget is that we have had no large increase of that most objectionable feature, namely, indirect forms of taxation. So far as petrol is concerned, the increase is limited in scope and I can see no reason why the effect of it should be passed on to any extent so far as fares are concerned. The question has been asked in the House whether there will be an increase in bus fares in the City of Dublin.
When one realises that Dublin is already contributing a surplus of some £300,000 per year to the general transport system of the country, I think the time has come when Dublin citizens should be looking for concessions instead of adding to that very large surplus which is now thrown into the common pool. Generally, I think the Budget can be regarded as a good one in the sense that it has steadied the position, met the immediate claim that the electorate made on the Parties on this side of the House to repeal the Supplementary Budget taxation, and has given commitments so far as improvements in social services are concerned.
Having paid those tributes to the Budget to the extent to which it is entitled, it is equally fair to indicate in what way we feel the Budget could be improved, if not for this year, at least for next year. The Budget is a particularly awkward problem for an inter-Party Government to handle because, no matter what may be the consultation as between the members of the Cabinet, eventually when it comes down to the real task it becomes a question for the Minister for Finance and, naturally, his political views and his personal idiosyncrasies affect his decisions. It is, I think, indicative of the possibilities facing the inter-Party Government for some considerable time ahead that on this first and most difficult problem it has been possible to arrive at a Budget that, while not meeting the viewpoint and the requirements of all the Parties associated together, has not given rise to any great difficulties of acceptance on the part of those Parties or their members.
So far as the Labour Party is concerned, we feel that the main characteristics of the Budget that we as a Party will be looking for next year, when probably we shall be much more vocal and critical than this year, are in the direction that the Budget will give to the country definite guidance in regard to improving the productivity both in industry and agriculture. Recently there has been a somewhat new development in so far as the organised trade union movement is concerned in that it has been accepted, probably for the first time in any largescale sense, that the trade unions must take an active and leading rôle with regard to this problem of productivity. It has been laid down on behalf of the national bodies that, while they accept responsibility and while it is essential in order to improve the standard of living of our people that there must be a greater capacity for producing wealth in goods and services, the production of that wealth must give to those who produce it a certain return in the form of guarantees that that increase of wealth will be applied to the needs of the producers and the masses of the people generally and will not be merely a further source of enhanced income for those who already live upon the wealth-producing capacity of the people as a whole. Secondly, that there will be afforded to the workers and their organisations reasonable and growing opportunities for participation in the actual management of industry.
We have reached a period, both in this country and other countries, when the workers have shown by their capacity that they are as capable as any section of the community of undertaking supervising and managerial rôles in industry. If they are to be required to accept responsibility as part of the community, then they must have the same rights in regard to industry that they enjoy to-day with regard to the political control of the country —the right to participate and take an active part in the higher councils of supervision and management in so far as industry and commerce are concerned.
There is one other matter to which reference has been made on a number of occasions both by the former Minister for Finance and leading speakers of the Fianna Fáil Party, and that is the need for bringing about a more equitable distribution of the national wealth and the national income of the country as a whole. The other day, having listened to Deputy Lemass, I looked through the report of the Revenue Commissioners and discovered that so far as the payment of death duties is concerned, it is only related to estates which exceed £1,000 in value. I found that the total number who come within the purview of the Revenue Commissioners in this matter is less than 100,000 out of a total population of 3,500,000. It is easy to realise, therefore, that there is need for some more equitable distribution of wealth in this country than we have at the moment. I agree that the extremes of wealth and its opposite are not as marked here as they are in other countries, but yet they are marked sufficiently to require some adjustment. Unless that adjustment is made you are going to have the social stresses and strains that are common to all countries living under the present capitalist system.
I recall that Deputy Aiken, when he was Minister for Finance, accepted the point of view that a Budget should have that objective before it. He may not have agreed with the actual extent of the objective, or with the actual redistribution that should take place. But definitely something should be attempted in that direction. It should be one of the prospects kept in mind in the formulation of the next Budget.
I also think that a Budget ought to have regard to the ever-increasing burden that has developed in the country in the form of indirect taxation. I asked the Minister the other day, by way of Parliamentary Question, whether he could give figures indicating the relative proportions of that burden in the form of direct and indirect taxation. He was clearly not able to give the figures and referred me to a Government publication. It would not be unfair to say, I think, that, in the main, the cost of Government is borne by indirect taxation of various kinds of taxes, customs duties or stamp duties that are passed on in the price of clothing, food, drinks and a thousand and one other commodities that are used by the ordinary man and woman with low incomes, while the amount of direct taxation, contributed by those better endowed with the world's goods in the form of income-tax, death duties, etc., represents a much smaller portion of the burden. It seems to me that that is a wrong principle. What it amounts to is that, in fact, we are taking the greater amount required for the government of the country from those who have got the smallest proportion of its wealth, and we are taking it in a most objectionable form—in a hidden form— which does not convey to the masses of the people the actual burden that they are required to bear.
There is one important feature of a Budget which, I think, we have got to stress. It has already been touched on in the present Budget, and that is that a Budget should be utilised as a means for directly or indirectly increasing purchasing capacity in the hands of the masses of the people—that is the ordinary working people in town and countryside. We should all realise that we have here a very large section of the community existing on such low levels of income that they are not able to purchase either our agricultural or industrial products. We have there a vacuum which requires to be filled. For a long time we have had about 80,000 people living on various forms of public assistance. If you add to that 80,000 their families and dependents, you get masses of people representing a tremendous potential market both for our agricultural produce and our industrial products if they were provided not merely with purchasing power but with the means which, possibly, in many ways would put them in a position of being able to take their part in the Government machine. When a man or a woman reaches the lowest rung of the ladder he or she requires not only a helping hand but a push. Measures of social security are not merely intended to be a form of State assistance for those who have been stricken by the ills of the flesh. They also have got a very positive part to play in the general economy. That is to be achieved through the distribution of the national income—the result of taxation policy—and the spreading back of part of it in the hands of those who will utilise it for the purpose of buying commodities, thereby adding to the market that we require for our producers on the land and in the cities. These are some of the main features that we have got to keep in mind as an inter-Party Government. No matter who is responsible for the formulation of the Budget we must accept it that we are going to carry out the responsibilities we have accepted as individual Parties.
So far as this Budget is concerned, the Fianna Fáil Party, while critical of everything that is being done under it and of what is not being done, had very few positive proposals of their own to make. They are quite entitled, of course, to take up that attitude. At the same time, I felt, as I did on those occasions when I had to criticise the Budgets introduced by that Party, that it is just not enough to tell a Minister for Finance that he should not do this or do that. One should try at the same time to put forward one's own proposals. A peculiar thing about all those who spoke from the Fianna Fáil Benches on the Budget was that not one of them, except Deputy Vivion de Valera—and he referred to it in a very limited way—made any suggestion whatever as to how and in what way they would have obtained the money that is being budgeted for. Fianna Fáil, of course, would have had to obtain a much bigger sum. Even such economies as are being made were not envisaged by Fianna Fáil and have been resisted by the members of that Party. It would be interesting to hear them on that particular question from that point of view.
There is one criticism that I want to make of this Budget. I think, in view especially of the Minister's personal statements in this House on many occasions, that it is regrettable that ways and means have not been found of reimposing the excess profits tax. I appreciate, of course, the fact that the amount of money that would be collected in the first year would be very limited, and that its collection might give rise to very practical difficulties. I feel, however, that from the point of view of the public morale, and seeing that excess profits clearly arise from the advantage that is being taken of the buying public, steps should have been taken to indicate that that situation is not going to be allowed to continue and that, therefore, the excess profits tax should be reimposed in some form.
The income-tax rate has been increased by 6d. in the £. I think the increase should have been more and should have been related to the higher income brackets. I do not think there was a great deal in Deputy Vivion de Valera's criticism of the increase in the income-tax rate as to how it will affect the white-collar worker. I do not think that either the white-collar worker any more than the manual worker is going to be called upon to pay any excessive amount in the way of income-tax. We do know, however, from the various white papers that have been circulated that during the period of office of the Fianna Fáil Government quite a large number of people managed to creep into the income-tax brackets running from £5,000 a year and upwards. I think they would be quite well able to pay much more than they will have to pay now. One has only to go to the Spring Show or to any large social function to see evidence of the fact that there is quite a lot of loose, idle money lying around that could be picked up to serve a very good social purpose. It is money that could be taken off those people, and might be put to a good purpose on behalf of the community as a whole. Some steps should be taken I suggest to make sure that large sums of loose money are not left floating around the country, money secured either from normal sources of income or through the more objectionable form of excess profits.
There are some other taxes that might be considered—possibly they were and were turned down owing to the fear that some practical difficulties might be encountered in their collection. Having regard to the large number of guests from outside countries to whom we seem to be giving hospitality, I do not think it would be objectionable to ask them to make some small contribution in the form of a tax on the hotel business. It is a very common form of tax in other countries. Perhaps it is that some practical difficulties would arise in enforcing that tax, but I think, dependent of course on the amount of the tax, it could provide a considerable sum for the Exchequer.
Similarly, we might have considered a tax on the importation of luxury motor cars. The first comment that one hears from visitors to this country is directed towards the very large number of highly-priced luxury cars we seem to be able to afford. I have little objection to anyone driving a large limousine but I would have still less objection if I knew that he had to pay a considerable tax when importing that car and that that tax was being utilised to assist the country in its financial difficulties. I mention these forms of taxation because I have some criticism to make in regard to some of the economy measures that it has been found necessary to introduce. I do not know what is the explanation—possibly the Minister will give us some explanation in his concluding speech but so far none has been forthcoming— as to the reason for cutting off the provision of £85,000 for mineral explorations. That seems to me a measure of economy which should not be introduced. The amount involved is very small and year after year we have been pressing for adequate and scientific exploration of our mineral resources. Even if it means that we have to try to find the money from some other source, I think we should have continued that provision. Possibly we may get an explanation similar to that made in regard to some of the other Estimates. We may be told that the reason that no money is being provided for this purpose is that no steps have been taken to carry out the exploration work for which provision had already been made and that as soon as the work can be done the money will be made available. I think some explanation is required from the Minister on that particular item.
In regard to the withdrawal of the subsidies on margarine and oatmeal, the amount involved is not very great, something like £195,000, but having regard to the fact that one of our primary aims is to reduce the cost of living, I think we should not take any step which even in an infinitesimal way would add anything to the cost of foodstuffs. Again without knowing the full explanation as to why the subsidies on oatmeal and margarine were removed, I think the matter might be reconsidered unless, as I say, there is some convincing explanation offered by the Minister for the Government's action.
In regard to the price of wheat and the arrangement which the Minister is proposing to make, I have no objection to spreading the actual form of the subsidy over five years but I do think we should be careful in regard to the price of wheat itself. As far as I understand the matter, since the commencement of the buying programme for the European Recovery Plan there has been strong pressure exercised on the price of wheat in the United States, and it may be that the price will start to rise again. If that is so, we may find ourselves in a difficult position. However, having regard to the financial position which we inherited from Fianna Fáil, it was inevitable that certain risks should be run in trying to reach a balance; but if we find later that our expectations in that regard have not been realised, we shall have to go back and try to rectify the position.
Speaking generally, while I feel that the Budget is acceptable in present circumstances, there are some features of it that I think call for further consideration in regard to what we should have in mind, so far as future developments are concerned—and I make Fianna Fáil a present of what capital they may try to make out of that statement. In addition to the Minister's actual Budget statement, he had a number of general remarks to make. He spoke of the need for economy and of curtailing expenditure as much as possible without, at the same time, seeking economies merely for the sake of economy. There is very grave need to avoid that danger. I think there is also a particular need to ensure that when we find ourselves, as we have done repeatedly, up against problems in which large sums of money are involved or under which commitments have been entered into for certain purposes, the justification offered for such expenditure should be carefully examined. We remember, for instance, the justification offered for the transatlantic air service.
We listened to Deputy Lemass making his plea almost with tears in his eyes but the only justification he could offer as to why we should initiate that service was that a question of national prestige was involved. I do not know what prestige there is in providing a luxury air liner for some foreign lady or gentleman to cross the Atlantic while our own people have to travel steerage.
