The Minister for Finance, in introducing his Budget, stated that there was a deficit between the estimate for expenditure and the estimate of the yield of taxation now in force. He estimated a deficiency of £8,731,000. The Minister has been complimented by some of the Deputies who sit behind him on his success in making economies. I should like to go into these economies in detail in order to find out, by analysis, what the economies were. The named economies that is the economies which he accounted for in the debate, amounted to £2,509,000 and, in addition to that, there was a sum of £1,122,000 for economies which he stated he had not already in the bag and, therefore, was not in a position to tell the House what they were. Then there were economies on food subsidies amounting to £3,015,000. These economies total £6,646,000, and the balance was made up by increased taxation. Therefore, the first point that emerges from an examination of these figures is that the economies amounted to £3,631,000. I was listening to a very able speech from my colleague, Deputy Esmonde, and he assumed all through his speech that the economies amounted to £8,000,000. That is not so. The economies really amounted to £3,600,000, as anybody who analyses the figures will find out.
It is not enough for the Minister to make economies. He must make a good economy, that is an economy that every reasonable person will approve of. But we find that the first big economy the Minister made was £950,000 from social services. That, I am quite sure, would not meet with the approval of many Deputies—that a Minister who finds himself in a difficulty in balancing his Budget should look to social services for an economy, especially a very big economy of this kind. The first part of the economy on social services is £450,000, which has been voted year after year towards the financing of widows' and orphans' pensions. Having been in that Department for some time, I know that the Department of Finance has always had a jealous eye on this particular sum of £450,000, and the Minister responsible for widows' and orphans' pensions always fought, and successfully fought, except on one occasion at the beginning of the war, to keep that £450,000 there. It is true that it was not wanted from year to year, but the idea was to build up a fund until an occasion should arise when it would be possible to increase the widows' and orphans' pensions without increasing taxation or the contribution to the fund from year to year from that on. At any rate, that £450,000 is gone for this year and the widows' and orphans' pensions fund will suffer to that extent. It is a thing that could not be continued year after year, because the employers' contribution, the employees' contribution and the contribution from the State would not be sufficient to pay the widows' and orphans' pensions at the present rate, both contributory and non-contributory. The amount is increasing year after year. That is only to be expected, because with a scheme like that, where numbers of the population commence contributions, as the years go on the contributory pensions will increase until the scheme is running for, let us say, 25, 30 or 35 years, the ordinary expectation of life of people coming into it, and it is only at that period that we may expect to have what will be more or less from that onwards a steady expenditure under the scheme.
That was the first item of saving. The second was a sum of £500,000, the amount calculated to be payable in the way of increased benefits for unemployment and national health insurance last year, which sum it is now proposed to put upon a contributory basis. That is possibly a thing that would be done by a Minister for Social Welfare at some time or other, but, at the moment, at any rate, it means £500,000 taken from social services for this year and it is calculated that the sum will amount to £900,000 in the full year. Therefore, of the £3,500,000, roughly, in economies which were effected by the Minister, almost £1,000,000 comes from social services as a start off.
The next big item on the list is a saving of £750,000 on the Army. I have not heard from the Minister precise details with regard to this, but I gather from some of the answers given that the big saving on the Army is to be on the reserve and the Construction Corps. Now, it is questionable whether it is an economy to have an Army reserve, to keep personnel, to pay a certain amount to each man on the reserve as a sort of retainer and, at the same time, not to give these men any training, because it appears to me that the country is going to pay for a reserve which will not be as efficient as they should be if they are ever required. It is to be assumed that if the country has a reserve in the Army that they will be there if they are required in any emergency or crisis. If the idea is to have a reserve for a purpose of that kind, surely the country should see that they are going to be efficient whenever they are required. I, therefore, question whether it is a wise economy to save money on the training of the reserve. It might have been wiser to reduce the numbers and have a smaller but more efficient reserve or it might have been wiser to try to make a saving in some other way.
The second point was the construction corps. I do not know what the views of the Minister may be on a construction corps, but I certainly had never heard any adverse criticism of the idea behind the organisation of this construction corps when it was being organised or during the years it was in being. The idea was to try to make useful citizens of young men from the cities and towns who were not able to find work, to give them training so that they would become more useful citizens and be better able to work after doing a couple of years' training in the Army —useful also if they wanted to join the Army as regular members or go into civilian employment.
There was also the item mentioned of £1,122,000 which the Minister hopes to save but in respect of which he did not give details, because, as he said, he had not got it already in the bag. I think that such a procedure is unprecedented. I do not know if any Minister for Finance in this country ever before gave a sum of money of that kind as an expected saving without mentioning where the saving was expected to be made. It is not a very good precedent to establish. If it were followed by future Ministers for Finance it might lead to the point where a Minister could say that he expected to save a lump sum of money and not give any further details.
There are some smaller items, the disappearance of which many Deputies, I think, deplore, but which are not of any great importance from the financial point of view in the sense that they are small. There is, for instance, the £85,000 for mineral exploration. We have had the belief in this country that there might be wealth to be found as a result of proper exploration and proper investigation. A Department was set up to investigate and to explore for minerals. These minerals, wherever found, would be a source of wealth and a saving in our exchange with other countries, but that Department is now to go. I do not know if the personnel in it will be dispensed with, and whether it will be possible, at a future date, to organise this service again and to make it as effective as one would like to see it. There is the small item of £25,000 for athletics. It is a pity that it should go because there does appear to be a demand in many cities and towns for more amenities and better opportunities for our young people to enjoy themselves. One of the things which would help to keep the people in the rural areas which are near the smaller towns is the opportunity of spending their free time to good advantage.
