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Dáil Éireann debate -
Tuesday, 1 Jun 1948

Vol. 111 No. 1

Finance Bill, 1948—Second Stage.

I move that this Bill be now read a Second Time. The main purpose of the Bill is to give effect to the Resolutions that have recently been passed by the Dáil. It is usual to take the opportunity presented by a Finance Bill to clear up any matters that have to be cleared up arising out of difficulties discovered during the year. There are only three matters to which I think I should call attention as being away from the Financial Resolutions that were recently discussed and passed. The first is in relation to Section 2 of the Finance Bill, which confirms an agreement about double taxation, an agreement which was entered into between my predecessor in this office and the then Chancellor of the Exchequer in England, which is set out as the First Schedule to this measure. I am proposing to confirm it. It is a very difficult agreement and if any points arise on it I hope they may be put to me during the Second Reading so that I can get an opportunity of having them considered in detail and replied to at a later stage.

The other two matters are contained in Sections 11 and 12. They are of minor importance. Section 11 exempts from stamp duty certain transactions affecting land or any interest in land where the land or interest in land has been acquired by or on behalf of a Minister of State. The situation is that, under the recent imposition of extra stamp duties, if a Minister of State took a conveyance on behalf of a Department of Government an arrangement had to be made whereby the duty had to be paid or credited as being paid and then recovered out of a particular Vote. It is proposed now to exempt such transactions from payment of the stamp duty.

Section 12 is a very slight amendment of the existing law. Up to date there are certain exemptions in respect of customs bonds that are taken in regard to goods that are eventually either shipped as stores or transhipped or taken out of the country by sea. It is proposed to apply the same exemptions in regard to goods similarly treated but borne by air. These are the only three matters occurring in this measure outside the ordinary financial resolutions.

In the first section, the measure sets out the rate of income-tax and surtax for the year 1948-49. Sections 3 and 4 deal with the increased duty on hydrocarbon light oils. Section 5 gives effect to the remission of duty which was imposed by financial resolution in respect of wine. Sections 6 and 7 confirm certain Orders that were passed remitting the duties on beer. Section 8 is exactly the corresponding provision regarding the remission of the duty on tobacco. Section 9 is a small matter, taking leave to grant licences for the importation without duty of certain articles of sugar confectionery. It is a power which had already been taken by an Emergency Imposition of Duties Order. That Order is being repealed, but this section takes its place as from a particular date. It is thought better to have this power generally than to have it under the special Order to which I have referred.

Section 10 makes arrangements regarding the new rates of duty to be levied in connection with entertainment. Sections 11 and 12 I have dealt with already. Section 13 permits of the transfer to the general Exchequer Fund of certain payments from the Road Fund. These are payments derived from the extra motor duty imposed by the Supplementary Budget last October. Under Section 14, the old-time interest rate of 2½ per cent. is again permitted in respect of deposits in the Post Office Savings Bank. Section 15 is a transitory provision, permitting the date for the winding up of the Transition Development Fund to be postponed until the 31st March, 1949, instead of the date previously arranged, which was the end of this year. Section 16 deals with certain repeals. Section 18 is the usual general one and Section 19 is the Title and construction section.

In giving us figures as to the financial position which he envisages for the coming year, the Minister for Finance explained to the House in his Budget statement that the tax revenue for the year amounted to £56,636,000 and that, on the basis of the increased yields which are expected from the present taxes, he foresees during the coming year an increase of not less than £3,000,000, bringing the amount to £59,660,000. There is also an addition of £910,000 expected from the new imposition upon petrol and the reduction in the tax on wines is expected to bring an additional yield of £250,000. There is also, through the Minister's device of collecting what properly belongs to 1949-50 as if it pertained to 1948-49, in respect of beer, the sum of £450,000. There is, in addition, at least £100,000 more expected from motor vehicle duties. I do not know what the Minister expects from entertainments during the coming year, but leaving entertainments out of the question it is clear that on the basis of the taxes that were in force before the change of Government or which were in contemplation and the new items I have mentioned, an addition of £3,000,000, plus £1,710,000 more, will be extracted from the taxpayer during the coming year, that is to say, £4,710,000. The Minister claims that he has reduced taxation by £6,000,000. It will be interesting to see how he can argue that a Budget which proposes to take, even on the rather conservative estimates which are generally given in this House in this connection, another £4,700,000 at least from the taxpayer, represents a reduction of £6,000,000.

One of the purposes the Minister declares that he, like his predecessor, has in mind is to curb inflationary pressures. Inflationary pressure arises from there being too much money in circulation and the purchasing power of the community being out of proportion to the goods available. In these circumstances the question arises as to what steps the Minister for Finance should take. He is responsible not alone for balancing his Budget and taking charge of the national purse, but for meeting his obligations from year to year. Having regard to the general economic interests of the community, what from the long point of view as well as from the short point of view are the measures best calculated to maintain the national credit, to keep the economy of the country in a healthy condition and to dissipate the idea which the present excessive circulation of money must undoubtedly have created amongst the community, that they need have no heed to the future, that this buoyancy of the revenue and this seeming prosperity which arises from the great increase in the circulation of money is likely to continue indefinitely.

We know that after the First World War a terrible depression broke, and we are not sure that a similar depression, or a recession, as a minor depression is sometimes called, may not be in sight. What we do know is that anything we can do in this country regarding our finances or our economy generally, from the Government point of view, sometimes cannot curb, control or counteract forces which are let loose elsewhere and which are entirely beyond our control.

We have to have regard to our position in the world and to the fact that our economy must be affected by powerful movements elsewhere, for instance, in the United States of America. Such movements have a great deal to do with the level of prices, the cost of living, the amount of employment, the amount of production and the general state of trade in the country. In 1946 it was expected that, due to a seeming approach of normal conditions through the establishment of peace between the belligerent nations, the world was on the high road to normal conditions and that once peace had been declared and real peace established between these belligerents normal conditions would supervene and the world would gradually settle down to a position where normal trade carried on under private enterprise and as we knew it in pre-war days would again develop. That expectation was not justified. In the first place, early last year agriculture all over Europe suffered a severe reverse. Consequently, we had not the peace we had expected. International conditions, instead of settling down, gave rise as, everyone knows, to really grave situations not alone in Eastern Europe where the whole of that part of the Continent seemed to pass under the tutelage of the Russian system but also in Western Europe where civilisation itself seemed to be in danger for a period.

Then we had the position in the United States where, due to the high level of employment and the economic pressure to get the greatest results possible from the system, prices were forced up, with the result that wheat and other basic commodities ruled very highly last summer. All these conditions meant that we in this country could not possibly prevent their reaction upon our own economy. Although in the Budget of 1946 the Minister for Finance was able to give relief to the extent of £4,000,000, we found that the Budgetary position last year assumed an entirely different aspect, due to the conditions to which I have referred. In the case of subsidies for food, these, when the Budget was being introduced last year, were expected to amount to some £6,000,000. However, before the end of the year the Government was compelled to introduce a Supplementary Budget in order to try and keep the cost of living at least at the May figure—a figure which was described by the present Tánaiste as not being sufficient. I remember that the present Tánaiste attacked the Government last year because a reduction from the threatened figure of November last back to May was not sufficient to satisfy him. He wanted price reductions not alone in bread, tea and sugar—which were obtained for him—but also in meat, vegetables, clothing, boots, shoes, household commodities and necessities of all kinds. He suggested, when a Supplementary Budget was introduced imposing heavy additional taxation in order to keep the cost of living at at least the May level, that the Government were not playing fair by the working people. I wonder what satisfaction the Tánaiste will get from the present Budget, as far as the cost of living is concerned. The Minister for Finance, despite all his devices and all the explorations he has made to try and balance the accounts, and despite the fact that he has been favoured by the drop in wheat prices which enabled him to take a windfall of £2,500,000 reduction in the cost of wheat, is nevertheless budgeting for about £12,000,000 this year in order to meet subsidies which the former Government had had to introduce to keep the cost of living at least from getting worse. We had not intended to continue these subsidies when they were no longer necessary. However, rather than have the situation that we were going to be confronted with wholesale conflicts with regard to wages, stoppage of national work and the holding up of productive effort at a critical time, we felt there was no way out but to continue the policy of subsidies until there was a break in prices or a change in the international situation that seemed to indicate that we were in for a decline in the cost of living generally.

The most noticeable feature of the present Budget is that, in spite of the boast of reduced taxation, no item of food—no necessity that I can see—is going to be any cheaper under the Minister's proposals than it was before they were introduced.

Is the Deputy reading his speech?

The Deputy was consulting notes.

I am not reading my speech.

Deputy Derrig is quite capable of making a speech.

I want to say that, in spite of the fact that the Minister for Finance has reduced food subsidies by £3,250,000, he is now in the position that he has to admit that it will bring about some increase in the cost of living. We do not know what the exact increase may be but we know that in respect of certain items of food— butter, margarine and oatmeal—there will be either a direct or an indirect imposition of some hundreds of thousands of pounds yearly upon the consumer. In the case of sugar and tea, in spite of the transfer of the burden to the manufacturers or the traders and caterers, there will also be an indirect transfer of part of it to the consumer. Nobody is going to believe that the manufacturers of jam or other sweet products are going to shoulder the whole of the £300,000 which the Minister expects to collect from them without transferring some of it to the consumer.

They have been paying it already.

I cannot see the ordinary grocers—either in respect of sugar or in respect of tea on which the Minister says he is going to reduce their margins by 2½d. and thereby reduce the subsidy by a sum of £332,000, in addition to the £300,000 which in some way or other the manufacturers will have to endeavour to recoup to themselves—shouldering the whole burden. Of this total sum of £630,000, a considerable amount of it will be passed on if not in respect of the commodities in question then upon other commodities through which the business community will recoup themselves.

Food is the main item in the workingman's budget. In spite of the jibe of the Tánaiste, on the occasion of the Supplementary Budget, that we thought that bread, tea and sugar were sufficient to maintain people, that they had no other interest, that that represented our conception of maintenance or sustenance for people, it is a very remarkable thing that the Tánaiste has not been able to secure any reduction in the cost of any commodity of food or any necessity of the household so far as the working people are concerned. On the contrary, moneys have been released, by reductions in taxation and other commodities not so necessary as food, which will flow into the general pool of expenditure by private persons. In spite of the efforts of the Minister for Agriculture and the promises that he made to us last October, when he told us that within 12 months, if he were in the position that he at present occupies, he would restore the pig population and he would provide every farmer and every consumer with all the bacon they would want and leave a substantial surplus for export to Great Britain, I think we will have to agree that there is not very much likelihood in the immediate future of the eggs and rashers that the Tánaiste and the Minister for Finance were so vocal about some months ago appearing on the breakfast tables of ordinary working people at a price that these Ministers would consider, when they were stumping the country, to be fair and reasonable and not such as would increase the cost of living on the worker.

In his Budget statement the Minister told us that expectations have not been fulfilled with regard to certain commodities, some of which bring in very large proportions of the finances upon which our economy and our national administration depend. In the case of beer, however, he told us that it brought in some £300,000 more, and in the case of betting £73,000 more. In spite of the fact that, according to the Minister, the entertainments duty did not come up to expectations, according to the comparison I have made between the figures for 1947 and 1948, there has been an increase in the amount of money collected in entertainment duty from £642,520 to £887,950, or £245,430. I wonder is the Minister satisfied that that £245,000, a large proportion of which he proposes to remit during the coming year—I do not quite know the proportion—would not be better and more profitably expended in trying to reduce the cost of the main food items which the housewife at present finds such a difficulty in obtaining.

Does the Deputy say that I am losing taxation on entertainments?

No. I am saying that we are losing a certain proportion, at any rate, of the £245,000 of an increase since last year. Does the Minister tell me that he expects to receive the same amount from entertainments duty during the coming as during the past year? I do not know what the estimate the Minister has in mind may be. In the case of wines there was an increase of £92,000, from £600,000 to £692,000. In the case of tobacco there was an increase from £11,308,000 to £15,010,000. no less than £3,700,000. The Minister informed us that of the £4.7 million additional taxation imposed in the Supplementary Budget he was remitting £2.9 million of taxation on tobacco, beer and entertainments. The figures that I have given indicate that the purchasing power and the habits of the people are such that very substantial increases have accrued, in spite of the fact that some of the additional taxation imposed on these commodities was described as failing in its object. At any rate, the point is that a very much larger sum of money, £3,700,000 in the case of tobacco, was collected during the past year. That would seem to indicate that there is, indeed, a huge amount of money being spent. I do not think that the Minister or anybody else will claim that the whole of the £15,000,000 collected in taxation on tobacco in the past year represents an altogether healthy position, if, on the other hand, we are to take it that the most urgent and stringent efforts must be made to relieve the cost of living, to relieve the burden on the housewife, and to bring down taxation on the commodities which spokesmen like the Tánaiste and others have emphasised to us were altogether beyond what was fair and proper even at the level of May, 1947.

Spirits, of course, have not been touched. Looking at the figures one can see that the Minister had very good reasons for leaving them as they were. According to the figures supplied in reply to a Parliamentary Question, the additional amount collected in excise duty on spirits during the past financial year was £760,000, bringing in a total of £3,659,000, and the amount collected in customs, at a figure of £1,294,000, represented an increase of £287,000. Between the additional amount from excise of £760,000 and from customs of £287,000, there is a total increase in respect of the taxation paid upon spirits of £1,048,000 in the past year. That does seem to indicate that there is money in circulation, money being spent on things that are not necessary, while relief is not given on items that figure very largely in the Budget as far as households are concerned.

The Minister has tried to justify the impost on petrol. In that connection, it is interesting to note what the present burden on petrol users is, and is likely to be during the coming year. The increase last year was from £1,241,000 to £1,514,000, an increase of £273,000. This year the Minister is adding on another £910,000, which will bring the total amount to be collected from petrol during the coming year— I should say that the estimates given are rather conservative—to something between £2,400,000 and £2,500,000, a total increase of £1,200,000 nearly, during the past two years. The Minister tells us that he is anxious to save dollars in that connection. I seem to have a recollection of the British Chancellor of the Exchequer being faced with the position where he had either to cut down on food and to cut down on raw materials, which, in the long run, must bring about unemployment if it were to be adopted and a reduction in the production targets that he has in view, or to cut down on tobacco and films. We know what the choice of the English Chancellor has been. Our Minister for Finance, on account of having reduced the taxes imposed in the Supplementary Budget on tobacco, beer and entertainments to the tune of £2.9 millions, placed himself in the position that there was no escape for him, except to impose this heavy additional duty on petrol consumers. That is not the only tax that the motor industry has to pay. Last year the customs duties on motor car parts and accessories increased from something over £500,000 to nearly £1,200,000.

When was that done, and who raised that tax?

The point is that it was raised.

It was raised and the Minister proposes to take the benefit of any rise that there was, and to take more from the motor industry.

I am wondering if the Deputy objected to it last year.

I certainly object——

You did not.

——to taxes which are imposed for the purpose of maintaining the cost of living at a certain standard and which embrace a wide field. I certainly object to the Minister taking a tax off certain commodities because it is good politics to do it and leaving it on other important branches of the national effort and other important sections of the community like income-tax payers because neither income-tax payers nor petrol consumers are in as strong a position as, let us say, the Irish Postal Workers' Union to compel the Minister to do what they want. They have not got the votes; they have not go the organisation and they have not got Ministers to represent them in the Coalition Cabinet. There is £2,000,000 taken for the Road Fund, and there is £1,175,000 on motor car parts and accessories.

Is that extra?

£2,500,000 on petrol and £2,000,000 on the Road Fund.

What does all that tot up to? Is it not about £6,000,000?

It is over £6,000,000.

And I am responsible for very much less than £1,000,000.

The Minister is responsible for introducing differentiation in the treatment he has accorded to one or two particular sections of the community which are already contributing considerable amounts to the national Exchequer, but he apparently has entirely forgotten them in distributing the largesse which he considers it necessary politically to distribute in other directions.

What is the differentiation between strikers and scabs?

Perhaps the Deputy will explain?

What about the teachers?

Ask the Tánaiste about the National Health Insurance strike. Were the people throughout the country who worked, so as to enable national health insurance contributors to draw the allowances that were due to them, given allowances for the period of time during which they worked in paying out that money? If the Deputy chooses to interrupt me he will not get away with it. He is a new Deputy in this House, and because of his name I would rather not say what I think I should say about him, but if he persists in trying to interrupt me I will soon let him know what I think about him.

You will get an overload of it back.

What about the teachers?

They are not mentioned in this Budget.

They were let down.

You were talking about differentiation.

The Deputy ought to be allowed to make his statement without interruption. All interruptions are disorderly.

On a point of order, arising out of the Deputy's references to the Irish Postal Workers' Union and other associations, it seems to me that that should not be done unless the Deputy is prepared to explore the matter further.

The Deputy is entitled to make his speech according to his own discretion, and is not to be called on to explain or retract it at the suggestion of any Deputy.

I hope we are soon going to reach the time when these young Deputies who have very little experience of this House will cease from jumping up like so many jack-in-the-boxes when something is said that they do not like. They will have to get accustomed to hearing things that they do not like.

The Deputy is very worried about them.

They woke you up.

There is nothing in this Budget for the teachers, and the teachers have taken note of that fact. In spite of all the Minister for Finance has said about the colloguing, the conferences and the addresses of the Minister for Education, there is nothing in this Budget for the teachers.

After all they spent during the election.

I think I can leave that part of my speech by saying that if the only case the Minister can make for his contention is this: that this Budget aims at bringing about a reduction in the cost of living and that the only items he can refer to are the smokes and the liquor, then, considering the political history of the past 12 months of those who supported the Parties which have described the preceding Government as being tyrannical peggers of wages who refused to give fair play to labour in this country and to give the wage earner a fair deal— then I wonder what all those people will think of this Budget?

The Minister proclaimed that his idea was to have retrenchment on the largest possible scale, to throw his net as widely as possible, to ensure retrenchment over as wide a field as possible. It is very noticeable that nearly all the retrenchment which the Minister has in view is aimed at expenditure under the heading of capital expenditure. I know of no country or no Government, which has ever posited financial retrenchment of the type that the Minister has given us in this Budget, the type of abandonment of national policies and national projects to which he has committed the Government. I know of no country where a policy of that kind, retrenchment of that nature, could have been advocated as a serious effort to remedy the inflationary pressures which the Minister has in mind. It is not going to reduce the cost of living; it is not going to reduce the cost of production. It is not going to increase production in any way or give any additional employment. On the contrary, it is going to reduce employment as we have seen— reduce employment in certain avenues where at least work of a productive nature was being done, where it was producing wealth for the community. It is not seeking a reduction of expenditure on the side of bureaucracy or in administration about which Ministers were so eloquent some months ago. Not a single civil servant according to the Minister is going to be in danger of losing his position as a result of any economics he is making.

A Deputy

Do you want them to lose their positions?

No, but I say the pretence that you can get retrenchment by cutting down on the narrow field of capital investment and by the State leaving all this machinery of administration, all this bureaucracy about which you were so eloquent, is certainly neither going to bring in the millions you require nor is it going to have any effect in remedying the cost of living position or on the policy of increasing production and increasing exports which the Minister has in mind.

The Minister assured us during his speech that so far as he can see, there was nothing irreconcilable between the policies of the various Parties and certainly there would not be, apparently, anything irreconcilable until a general election is in the offing. Perhaps, however, it will be these irreconcilable factors which will compel a general election in the long run. The Minister, at any rate, admitted that when a general election comes, the different Parties which compose the Coalition will presumably have to put their different policies before the country. Even at the present time, it is very interesting to observe the irreconcilability between statements made and proposals at present before us and still more between statements made by certain Ministers in comparison with what the Minister for Finance has promulgated in his Budget statement. We have the well-known philosophy to which the Minister treated us for many years in regard to social services, when he informed us that the social services were simply something to be ashamed of, that they were badges of a servile State. Only last year the Minister told the former Minister for social security, in dealing with the question of social services and the national economy generally and in expressing his attitude regarding the whole question, that the then Minister should contemplate with equanimity the disappearance of his own Department, and look forward to the time when it would be wiped out from the Estimates and when all these subventions would disappear.

The Minister for Finance could see no purpose in having a Department of Social Welfare, and he expressed himself quite candidly. He told us that the social services were simply grants-in-aid to the annuitants of a servile State. He told us that last October. Last May he told us, not for the first time—we were listening to him until we were almost nauseated—that through social services the Fianna Fáil Government were recreating institutions of slavery. That is the respect the Minister has for the Constitution and the directives in the Constitution, under which we are bound to do our utmost for the poorer, weaker and more necessitous members of the community.

What about the teachers?

What about them?

They are still worrying him.

Deputy Blowick, the present Minister for Lands, was one of those who was clamouring for schemes of national development. It was only last year that he told us that the only remedy—a very simple one—to deal with the emigration problem was to change the Government. He said that the lack of suitable employment at home was one reason for emigration; the other was the failure of the Minister for Finance to provide funds to enable the Minister for Lands to deal with the land question. The great complaint of the Minister for Lands was that sufficient provision was not being made for national drainage, that the £250,000 provided under the Drainage Act was altogether insufficient. "Afforestation," he said, "must be dealt with on a big scale; nibbling at it will not be effective. I fear it will be difficult to stop emigration so long as Fianna Fáil are in power." Perhaps we need not take the Deputy too seriously when we consider that he stated in this House that he himself had assisted from 1,800 to 2,000 young people from Mayo to go to England. I was listening to him. I do not know whether the Deputy was really proud of the fact that he had helped these young people to leave the country. He went on to tell us that he had assisted more people to leave this country than any Deputy in the House.

You taxed the taxpayer to wash and disinfect these people.

I shall deal with that. I want at the moment to call the attention of the House to the fact that all these great national schemes of land division, drainage, afforestation and so on about which the Minister for Lands and some of his colleagues were so eloquent not very long ago, do not seem to have seen the light yet.

The Minister for Finance talked about the steps that had to be taken to enable Irish emigrants to secure entry into Great Britain when they were going there to seek employment. He quoted a memorandum, again without giving the text of the memorandum to the House, which he suggested put up certain proposals to the former Government regarding emigration. He read, as is usual with him, one paragraph from the memorandum. He failed to state the most important point in the memorandum, which was that any person who had a visa, a travel permit or travel identity card, any form of document which would identify him—and some 170,000 Irishmen were reputed to have such documents when the Bill which the British authorities put before Parliament last January became law—could obtain free entry into Great Britain. Since the large number of men and, I presume, women also, who had these documents could get free entry, in what way was it suggested the Irish Government could prevent them? There were two alternatives before any Government in those circumstances— to come in here to the Legislature and put up proposals to prevent such people from leaving the country or to face the situation that, unless it decided to take that drastic step and prevent emigration by law, any other alternative they put up is simply a pretence. It is the same kind of pretence as the Commission on Emigration which the present Government set up.

And which that memorandum proposed.

Which that memorandum did not propose.

Which it did propose—go to the second last paragraph.

The Government did not give the recommendation five minutes' thought——

What did they recommend? What did they do?

——because to set up a commission of students, administrators and academic persons as this commission largely consists of to deal with the population problem is simply putting these gentlemen in an entirely false position. There is an attempt to transfer to their shoulders a burden which properly lies on the present Government. Ministers of this Government have been campaigning the country for years past denouncing their predecessors for driving the young people out of their native land, for forcing them out of the country, for failing to take measures to develop our resources and to provide employment for them. Was that or was it not the cry from all their platforms?

Now they are trying to get out of the dilemma by setting up a commission and, when the commission finds itself in the position that it can only take certain hypotheses as to what the future of emigration and population trends generally will be, and, on the basis of certain assumptions, give their ideas of what they think the results will be for this country over a period of years to come, the gentlemen in office expect that by that time their promises will have been entirely forgotten—everything they had said about the necessity for national development, the plans they had in mind and the millions they were going to spend. They did not think a great deal of the taxpayer at that time. Even Deputy Davin and the present Minister for External Affairs and others were prepared to mortgage the whole credit of the country, to get the printing machines busy, if necessary, in order to have the necessary credits against our national wealth and resources—let us go all out as if it were a war period. Since the life blood was being drained out of the country and the Fianna Fáil Government, we were told, were standing by and doing nothing to stop it, these gentlemen were going to mortgage fully the resources of the country, to go outside the financial system altogether, if necessary, in order to mobilise all the national effort to stop emigration. There is precious little about it in this Finance Bill, but it is no harm, however disagreeable it may be to the gentlemen opposite to listen to me, to point out to them some of the things they said.

Would the Deputy advise me as to who was the Minister who put up that memorandum he speaks about?

I do not know what Minister it was. The Minister for Finance has all these documents beside him. He says they were put up by a Minister of the Government. So far as I know, the matter was never seriously discussed.

Was there not a memorandum? Who fathered it?

There were hundreds and thousands of them—memoranda that were never discussed and memoranda that were circulated for information purposes.

Who put up that one is all I am asking?

If it suits the Minister's purpose, he will be able to go further and quote from official documents.

And so I will.

I merely want to say that he has misrepresented the position.

Was it the Minister for Social Services? I think it was. The memorandum is before the Deputy and it contained a recommendation about a commission on emigration.

Some years ago one of our most distinguished statisticians, dealing with this question of emigration, expressed the opinion that emigration depends far more on the degree of attraction from other countries where economic conditions are favourable and conditions of employment attractive than on their conditions here being repulsive to the young people who are forced to emigrate. He pointed out that the rise in money wages was far greater here than in Great Britain and that in the United States of America and, to a lesser extent, in Great Britain, you had very large communities of Irish people who were prepared not alone to bring their kin across but to pay their way for them and to provide them with employment where they would be living among their friends and in their own communities, but under much more favourable conditions economically than obtained at home.

The Minister used to make great play with the emigration from this country during the war period. It was pointed out to him last year that, during the period he was in office, people were leaving this country at the rate of 27,000 a year.

That is nonsense.

Does the Deputy question the figures?

Mr. T.F. O'Higgins rose.

The Deputy must be allowed to make his speech without interruption and Deputy O'Higgins will resume his seat.

Will the Deputy answer a question?

The total net emigration for 1923 was 28,473; for 1924, 38,222; for 1925, 32,419; for 1926, 33,436; for 1927, 29,377; for 1928, 24,384; for 1929, 25,289 and for 1930, 10,651. For these eight years, the total net emigration from the country was 222,000.

What about 1932?

And during the war period it was 120,000.

What about 1932?

Might I ask the Deputy a question? Would the Deputy give us the figures for emigration for the years 1931 and 1932?

The figure for 1931, which is the lifebuoy to which the Fine Gael Party generally attaches itself when these figures are quoted, is an incoming figure. For the first time for many years there was an excess of persons returning. The figure was 1,861. In 1932 the figure for emigration was 256. What was the reason? Was it due to anything that the present Minister for Finance and his colleagues did in 1931? The Minister has held himself out in his reply to the Budget debate as if it were the Government at that time who brought about that position. The Government had nothing whatever to do with it. It was brought about simply and solely because the United States of America closed down on immigration and people were not allowed to enter it.

It was because the United States of America closed down on immigration. No one could get a consular visa even if his way was paid, or even if he were going to friends, or even if he were promised a job. The American authorities had to be satisfied that the proposed immigrant was a person of private means who would be able to maintain himself and who would never become a charge on public funds in that country. Only in that case was a visa given. That was the position. There were 10,000,000 unemployed in America at that time. Then they try to tell us here that it was due to the Fine Gael Government that there was no emigration.

The figure remained at that stable average of 27,000 or 28,000 during the years up to 1931. It suddenly dropped then. What was the wonderful scheme that this wizard of finance, Deputy McGilligan, Minister for Finance, introduced? What was the wonderful scheme of the President of the Executive Council? What was the wonderful scheme introduced by them that brought down emigration in a single year? This is the greatest humbug that was ever trotted out in this House. I think the facts I have given now dispose of it completely. The Minister for Finance, on a false premise, comes along and tries to misconstrue and misrepresent in his characteristic manner the facts. I am sorry to say that the Minister for Finance is not always scrupulous in quoting official documents, statistics or statements. He knows how to gloss over things. He knows how to pervert truth as well as anybody in this country.

You are not doing too badly yourself.

If the Deputy is able to point to any untruth or misrepresentation, let him do so. He will have plenty of opportunity. This is a national Assembly. Let the Deputy make his speech and let us hear what he has to say for himself.

You will run out.

The Minister for Finance is interested in this matter of a trade balance. At the conclusion of his Budget speech he stressed the necessity—and we are all agreed with him on this—for an increase in our productive effort in both agriculture and industry. He said we must produce more goods and export more goods. At the same time as the Minister has regard to that very important problem, at the same time as he is presumably anxious to have the goodwill of industrialists and entrepreneurs, he is still trying to persuade us that there is some large fund of profit, some large accumulation of moneys in existence in this country which, if he takes the drastic measures he may be driven to take, he will impound for the national Exchequer. As a result of that our productive effort will presumably be all right, our cost of living will be reduced and the purchasing power of the £ will be greatly enhanced. If the Minister has evidence, as he says he has, of indefensible profits being made at the expense of the community, why does he not take the opportunity now of putting an end to that situation? He himself has indicated that he has the power. He has the power under the excess profits legislation on which his predecessor removed the time limit that might have made it impossible for him to deal with the situation after a certain period. His predecessor removed the time limit and any Minister for Finance can come along now and remedy the situation if it calls for remedy. It is only since the beginning of last year that the excess profits tax has not been in operation.

If one were to listen to the present Minister for Finance and the Tánaiste during the past year one would imagine that the Government had deliberately done wrong in remitting this war tax. Certain reasons were given for its remission. The previous Government may have been wrong. Apparently the Minister and his colleague believe they were wrong. They have the opportunity now of reversing that decision and of recouping these moneys. What are they doing about it? The Minister simply appeals to industrialists, wholesalers, distributors and the business community generally to reduce prices. At the same time he says that he has unimpeachable evidence that excessive profits are being taken.

Unimpeachable is a good word.

The Minister said that salaries have been cut and cut desperately. He said that the salaries of human beings who are in the background of the Government service have been cut desperately and that these people and their families are suffering in their health, in the education of their children, from malnutrition, from disease, and even from crime as a result of that. All these things have come about, according to the Minister, because the last Government refused to give full compensation based upon the 1939 standard of living to those in its employment and refused to sanction policies which would have enabled such people to secure from the national pool sufficient to enable them to maintain a proper standard of living. But the Minister had very little to say about these people at the present time. He tells us that the demands of social justice have been met, although he is endeavouring to remedy the distortion which has brought about the peculiar result that one only gets 8/- worth of goods in exchange for £1.

Since inflation became serious and since prices started to soar and difficulties for wage-earners became more acute, the Minister has been harping on this—that the previous Government, if not directly responsible for the reduction in the purchasing power of the £, deliberately allowed that situation to arise. The only criticism he could offer against the Supplementary Budget was that the Government had taken no steps to control the incoming of additional purchasing power from outside, an additional purchasing power which was upsetting our economy and creating all the difficulty in regard to the cost of living and the adjustment of wages to the cost of living and preventing wages and prices chasing one another in a vicious inflationary spiral. Has the Minister given us any indication, or any suggestion, or any forecast, of how he is going to deal with this question of purchasing power created through emigrants' remittances, tourist expenditure and moneys coming into this country from abroad? Why, according to the Minister, on certain occasions we were being unfair to our own people. I think the Minister would not spare himself, and the word "unfair" would be too mild and lenient a term to enable him to express what he thought of our policies. We were unfair to our own people in allowing all these vast sums to go into the national pool to be used on the purchase and consumption of food and other necessities which our own people were driven to the pins of their collars to obtain, even if their remuneration was much greater.

On the contrary, the Minister has diverted a huge amount of money from avenues where it is not absolutely necessary that it should be expended, where it is not always in the national interest that it should be spent, where it is not likely to give that amount of employment, apart from that amount of national self-respect and national independence and all those other things that, in the years gone by, the Minister, I presume, like all the rest of us, was interested in. He has allowed all that money to go into the pool to compete with other moneys for the supply of goods which he admits are not sufficient.

The result of the whole thing is that the efforts he is making, or that he ought to make and that he has failed to make, in my opinion, to curb inflation could not bear fruit, because he has refused to adopt the policy which every Minister for Finance in every civilised country has had to adopt to deal with inflation, by collecting the moneys from sources where the expenditure was not of national benefit and to curtail as much as possible private expenditure on unnecessary things, to gather it up and, if it could not be gathered by way of savings, compulsory or otherwise, then to gather it up through taxation and thereby accomplish the double objective of curbing inflation and placing the credit of the country on a sound basis by proving that one was paying for one's annual commitments and annual services from year to year, paying in the way that in the long run would redound most to our prosperity and material welfare.

The Minister has reduced expenditure on certain capital items, such as mineral exploration. I have stated in the Budget discussion that the Minister is out of date, that in every country which has had experience of the war the effort is to try to get at least some of that national effort that is necessary in time of war mobilised in time of peace, to try to provide a high level of employment, secure employment; to try to improve the community services, the standard of living of the people, the national wealth and the national estate generally.

It is a very noticeable fact that the United States of America, when the war started, had not attained by any means the standard of living it had before the great depression. It has been stated on reliable authority that the United States lost a much greater proportion of its national wealth as a result of the depression than it lost during the whole of the war effort. It is for that reason that the United States is concentrating its energies on getting the very most out of its economic system, in working its machinery at the highest speed and the highest rate of efficiency possible and it is because it has realised the difficulties of a depression—the unemployment, the distress, the prolonged social difficulties that a depression of the dimensions that they experienced creates—that they are determined that such a depression will not visit them again if they can help it.

We have had no war, and we have been told during debates that it is quite unfair to institute comparisons. But the gentlemen on the Government Benches have their own views, and nobody has been more reiterative than the Minister for Finance in trying to prove to us that this country was badly off. We were one of the three or four worst-off countries, according to some publication of the International Labour Office or the League of Nations; we were, at any rate, amongst the worst-off countries. The fact is that we have come out of the war with a national debt which is only a proportion of our annual national income, which is much smaller in proportion to our resources —the amount of our annual production or income, the amount of money in our banks, our population, or whatever way you look at it—than any of the small countries in Europe that can be compared with ours.

We have those moneys there. There is no great field for investment in this country for private enterprise, if the Government do not take an active part, by way of direction and advice and encouragement—if they do not come in and start national enterprises and carry them ahead where it is clear they will be for the economic welfare of the community. Perhaps there may not be a strong case economically; they may not pay 20/-, 15/- or 10/- in the £; they may not pay a reasonable rate of interest on the amount invested, but large projects like rural electrification have surely to be assessed and measured in other terms. We surely have to regard them not alone from the point of view of the addition they will in time make to our national production and national wealth, but from the point of view of the comfort and happiness and general welfare of our people.

The Minister has given no indication in his Budget statement that all these policies and new ideas that are being pursued in other countries are being noted. If you can mobilise your people, your whole organisation, your whole economy for war purposes, why not organise it similarly for essential national work, for the development of Irish agriculture or industries, for the building of your houses? The Minister has some responsibility for the failure of certain interests in this country to face up to that situation and to their responsibilities, by trying to persuade the people that certain trading interests were getting away with millions of pounds of profit wrongfully and unjustly, that they were exploiting the community and it was as a result of their action that the people were suffering in the way they have been suffering when goods were scarce, and in that way they took any incentive from other sections of the community to do their share.

He is in danger of losing the sympathy of those who were prepared to put their intelligence, their knowledge, their experience and their money as well into enterprise in order to develop the resources of this country, to give employment and to build up our wealth; he is in danger of finding himself in the position that even those projects which he has taken over from his predecessor and which he feels that he must continue will be in grave danger of not reaching fruition, unless he can persuade some of his colleagues to use their influence to get their followers and their organisations to change their mind and to change their attitude.

I gave figures on the Budget Resolutions dealing with the housing position and I expressed the opinion that it is the most serious position the Government will have to face during the coming year or two. Nothing has been done about it. A council has been formed, but how can one expect any council, any committee, a local authority or the Government itself to face up to that situation unless those concerned can be made to realise the situation? Unless they face up to their responsibility, the whole issue will be left on the long finger and nothing will be done. Then the thousands and thousands of young people who want to get married, the thousands of persons suffering from tuberculosis——

Mr. Collins

The Deputy is talking from experience.

The thousands of people who are looking for accommodation will be left to wait for a very long period indeed without it.

Because of our connection economically with our neighbours, a considerable redistribution of national income has already taken place. When the Minister tells us that it is his object—and a very lawful object—to see that the middle class, the white-collar workers, have some share of the national income such as they were in receipt of before the war, he will, I hope, bear in mind that on his right he will have to contend with those who would seek to draw away undue profits and get rich quickly at the expense of the community, and he will have on the left other sections who will profit by what they see is happening elsewhere, where the worker, if a certain amount of profit is made in an industry, will say: "I do not work a little harder or an hour longer although the nation should need it or the nation demand it." The fact is that in Great Britain there has been this redistribution of income, this wholesale redistribution in favour of one particular section of the community. They know, and the Minister has emphasised it himself in this House on more than one occasion, that there is a scarcity of labour. Not alone is there a tremendous shortage of labour in England, but in ten years there will probably be only half the number of young people entering industry that they had before the war; in 30 years' time they will have 4,000,000 more older people and 2,000,000 less school pupils. In that situation they are in a strong position to enforce their demands upon the community. That moral or lesson is not lost sight of here and we see the results in regard to the skilled trades. The information that has been given to us with regard to housing and other national work also is that while remuneration has increased, conditions of employment have improved, hours of work have been reduced, the output per man has steadily decreased. If the Minister is preparing another Budget or Budgets, if he prepares information of the type he has given to us regarding our national income and expenditure, if he is able to show how the money in circulation is being spent, how the money invested has been invested and if expenditure and investment are being carried out in the way that is of most advantage to the community, it would be very interesting if he also applied his mind to producing figures showing what our man-power is like, what we are producing and what our output per man is.

There is no use in the Minister telling us that people are leaving the land in this country. We have 381,000 farms of land in this country and only 78,000 of them are over 50 acres. I suppose that at least half of the remainder are under 30 acres. There is not constant employment for the people on the land and there never was. There was no appreciable amount of employment for the people in the congested areas in the West of Ireland, but if they had the opportunities, if they had the organisation, if they had national schemes, you would not get better workers, more efficient workers or a greater standard of production anywhere than you would get from them. But unfortunately these are the people who leave the country. When they go to English factories employers are delighted to have them, even though they have no previous knowledge of technical processes, because they have the aptitude, because they are ready to apply themselves to the task, because they have the good will and because they are not playing ca' canny like some of the natives there. That is one of the reasons why I feel the Minister has not had a proper perspective or else that he has been simply playing with words if he really believes that there can be employment in the congested areas, for example, for these thousands of people, half of whom regularly left the country for America during their adolescence. That was going on from the time of the famine up to the first world war so that the only way to provide for these people is by means of these national schemes. If the Minister is going to turn to private enterprise he will find that he will have to give very substantial guarantees indeed before he will get industrialists to go to the West of Ireland to build factories there, to establish industries and to give employment to the people. He will have to give them very substantial terms with regard to tariffs, with regard to monopolies and with regard to the way they are to carry on their businesses or he will not get them to start industry in this country.

The only alternative is that the Government itself should start large-scale schemes. That is why, during the emergency, we devoted a considerable amount of time—we had a special committee of the Cabinet set up for a long period—to devise plans to see what could be accomplished after the war. Things have not turned out as we expected economically; we have not had the depression that we thought we would have; we have not had the return of our people who went to England; unfortunately, great numbers of them will remain there; they will settle down and bring up their families there. With this new Government, which has so many different enthusiasts who have been so eloquent in putting policies before the country to provide employment for the people, to stop emigration, to build up industries and to build up the resources of the country, I think that it will be a very extraordinary thing indeed if we do not get more from them than the present Budget presages. If we do not, the people in the West of Ireland, the people who are in receipt of unemployment assistance, those 70,000 people we heard so much about, will come to their own conclusions; they will come to the conclusion that there was nothing in the promises which were made but a humbug and a sham and that there was no intention of carrying them out.

You made a lot of promises. You were to bring them all back.

At least let us face the position that the economy of our neighbours is in a very serious state. The Minister for Finance used to be worried about our external assets and wondered were we getting anything for them, should we export our live stock, should we give away what was so valuable in the world for the paper we were getting in exchange. During the past year or two the wheel has turned completely. We are getting so much, at such a high price, that we are in danger, he thinks, of having our external assets dissipated in a comparatively short time. We will soon be back to the position which the Banking Commission wanted us to be in, namely, that our external assets should not be touched under any circumstances but should be left there as a cushion in times of emergency.

I hope the Minister will reconsider that position. I hope he will reconsider his attitude with regard to capital expenditure, that he will not judge it on the narrow criterion he has laid down in the Budget—the amount the taxpayer will have to pay by way of deficit on the income from the undertaking to meet interest and sinking fund. I hope he will have some larger and more comprehensive plans. I hope he will show that he is a man of vision and imagination. If depression should come and if our people should be faced with a situation of which they have had no experience and have not anticipated, and which, in present circumstances, they are not likely to face up to, I trust he will not be found entirely unprepared.

We have listened to a rather extraordinary speech from Deputy Derrig, which was a very able attack on the last régime, able because it came from first-hand information. He has talked about the problem of emigration. He has raved and ranted about criticism being levelled against the last Administration for permitting emigration. The old answer was used: "What were we to do? Were we to prevent people from going to England or elsewhere?" He conveniently forgot the damning thing against the Government of which he was a member, that throughout the years of the war, busy as they apparently were making plans and drawing up blue-prints, they never put a plan or scheme into operation whereby the conditions of work, particularly in rural Ireland, were made sufficiently attractive to keep people at home. As the war went on, with rising taxation and increased prices, more and more people were driven from the land because there was no employment for them there. Deputy Burke talks about national schemes to solve emigration. As far as I can judge from statements made by the Taoiseach and other members of the Government, such schemes will be undertaken and they will be of such a nature not only to create employment but to benefit the country, such as drainage schemes.

That is one of ours. You will carry it on.

I am surprised at Deputy Burke but I am glad somebody did say that. The Deputy has been longer in this House than I have been and he remembers the Arterial Drainage Act which was introduced in this House four years ago and passed with the support and agreement of all Parties and welcomed throughout the country, particularly by the flooded farmers in Leix-Offaly and by the farmers in the West, about whom Deputy Derrig is so concerned now. It was welcomed all along the Shannon. It was welcomed by all of them because of the guarantee it contained that their problem would be solved. It was passed by this House and rapidly shelved by Deputy Burke's Government.

That is incorrect, Sir.

Deputy Burke perhaps does not know a great deal about drainage. There have been very serious drainage problems, particularly during the last 15 years, arising from neglect of drainage schemes and general neglect of rural Ireland. When the Arterial Drainage Bill was introduced we were all led to believe that these problems would be tackled. Four years have passed in which nothing was done but the drawing up of plans and blueprints. I am glad to say that under this Government those plans were put into operation in a short period of three months. Deputy Burke appears still to be amused. I challenge any Deputy to deny that the Brosna drainage scheme, opened by the Taoiseach yesterday, was hastened into operation by this Government, that this Government translated what were merely plans and blueprints into concrete work.

You got the machinery and all in three months.

I would advise Deputy Burke not to talk about things unless he knows something about them. It may interest him to know that the machinery at present engaged on the Brosna is inadequate to carry out the scheme. This Government decided that, rather than wait, as Fianna Fáil have waited for the last four years, it was better to get on with what we had and to start the work. It was thought better to start with the machinery that was available and give the ordinary people down there some assurance that the problem of drainage would now be tackled rather than talked about, as Deputy Derrig talked about it.

Get them to start the turf now also.

The constituency which Deputy Derrig represents has a drainage problem. His constituency borders on the Nore valley. I assume that Deputy Derrig will now become very vocal about the drainage of the Nore but his constituents will not forget that, only 12 months ago, he and his Government were unwilling to meet a deputation led by the Bishop in connection with the drainage of the Nore.

And unwilling to release the coal.

Yes, quite unwilling to release the coal. At that time, Deputy Derrig's Administration were concerned only with passing Acts of Parliament, putting them on the shelves of the Board of Works and then telling the people that everything was all right. It has been nothing short of a national tragedy that, during the years since 1939, when we were somewhat isolated at times from the outside world and when we were forming the Construction Corps here to employ youths and young men leaving school, we did not, even with their labour alone, tackle some of these drainage problems. Of course, nothing was done.

Let Deputies Burke and Derrig be under no misapprehension. This work will now go on—it will go on because the Government in power now is concerned with problems such as this. I suppose the total cost of the arterial drainage of the entire country would be enormous. I understand that the scheme commenced yesterday is going to cost something over £1,000,000. However, that money will be spent and it will be far better spending it on that than on some of the schemes Deputy Derrig is still crying about, as there will be something left.

Apparently, Deputy Derrig is extremely annoyed because of certain actions of the Minister and the Government to ease the lot of the State servants. He has particularly mentioned the Irish Postal Workers' Union. I presume that he is referring to employees in the postal service. He still imagines he is in office, carrying on as his Government did in the past, permitting State employees carrying out very important functions to live on a mere pittance. It is regrettable that he should have mentioned this matter here and I trust he will be able to explain, if not to this House certainly to his constituents, what his opposition is to any increases which the postal workers may obtain.

If the Deputy read the newspapers, he would see a statement from the secretary of the Civil Service Alliance regarding the differentiation which they claim was made by the Minister for Finance between the general body of civil servants and the Post Office workers. That was what I objected to, as they did.

I may take it from that, if I still understand the Deputy correctly, that if he appeared at any time to object to such increases as were proposed to be given to the postal workers, he now withdraws that objection.

He did not give an increase to the teachers.

The Deputy has also made one or two references to policy. When he was a Minister in the Fianna Fáil Government, that Government was concerned chiefly with the big men and the rich men. The ordinary people will never forget that for Fianna Fáil and will never forget their famous election circular. Now that he is in opposition, Deputy Derrig apparently is forgetting those people. As I understand his speech, he is almost prepared to join in the appeal made by me and by Deputy Dunne and others on this side for the reimposition of the excess profits tax. I do not want to reopen that matter, as the Minister dealt fully with it. However, if the Minister finds it necessary to reimpose that tax, I hope he will remember the advice given by Deputy Derrig and at least will have the satisfaction that the Minister's speech on the Budget has converted one of the members of the former Government.

During the Budget debate, I drew attention—as did other Deputies—to the hardship caused by the new petrol tax on owners of Ferguson tractors. This is a time when greater agricultural production is required and as that is one of the most important tasks facing us I would appeal to the Minister to alleviate in some way the imposition of that tax on Ferguson tractors, so as to assist those engaged in agriculture and using agricultural machinery.

I am delighted that Deputy O'Higgins has referred to the increased petrol tax, which is definitely a very severe hardship on farmers using Ferguson tractors and lorries. I have many letters from farmers in my constituency. One of them who is farming in a fairly decent way has given me a tabulated statement and says this tax will cost him approximately £180 a year more. Other small farmers whom I have met say it will cost them anything from £60 to £140, but £60 is about the minimum. These people are employing labour in production and I suggest the Minister should not interfere with that production at a time like this. I hold that that is definitely interfering with production, making it more expensive. Farmers at all times are under a severe handicap. They have to withstand the weather changes and if a bad year comes and some of the stock dies, they are not like the business man, as they cannot charge something extra to pull them up on their losses. They have to sell in a very competitive market and the Minister has asked for increased production. It is possible that the unfortunate farmers may not have the same influence with the Minister and his Party as other sections of the community. I know I am speaking for my constituents when I say that it is a very severe hardship. I know a number of these unfortunate people who have bought lorries and tractors. Some of them have, possibly, had to go to the bank or by some other means procure the money with which to buy the machinery to enable them to carry out the tillage which is so very much required. The farmers should not be handicapped in this respect; they should be encouraged in every way.

I hold that this tax is quite definitely an impediment to greater production. I should like to see more money put at the disposal of the farmers if the national purse can afford it. They would then be enabled to live in a decent way and, at the same time, to pay their workers a proper wage. The position very often is that a farmer gets less than the farm worker who works for him. An example is frequently taken of the odd wealthy farmer in a district. I know the majority of the farmers in my constituency which is, I suppose, one of the premier counties in Ireland, and a number of them find it very hard to make ends meet. The Minister and his Government are well aware of all this. They are making life harder for the rural community in spite of all the talk we hear from time to time about making rural Ireland a nicer place in which to live and in spite of the fact that they want to know why the people of Ireland are going away from the land. Instead of encouraging them to produce more and thus earn more they are taking the very opposite line by trying to make the cost of production dearer. If that is the position, after all the crocodile tears that have been shed about the farmer and the farm worker, I can only say that I am very disillusioned. I would appeal to the Minister not to increase the burden on this section of the community. The Minister is aware of the standard of living amongst our farm workers. The Government knows well that anything that can be done to raise the standard of living of that section of our people should be done so as to make the farms in rural Ireland worth working and living on. These people are as entitled to look after their children properly and bring them up well as the industrial worker in the towns and cities. I repeat that more money should be given to the farmers if the national purse can afford it. Under the Fianna Fáil régime as much as £3,000,000 or over was given for the relief of rates. We tried to bring in a number of schemes. We tried to subsidise the farmer's produce—of course that was to keep down the cost of living.

We introduced various subsidies to help them in every way possible. Now we find that the particular section of our people from whom we expect so much and on whom we shed so many crocodile tears is the very section whose position is now being worsened. I have heard a number of statements from time to time about the flight from the land and about the plight of the people in rural Ireland. Even at that, the scheme we introduced when we were in office for the reconditioning and building of farm buildings and out-offices is, if I am interpreting the statement of the Minister for Agriculture in this House to-day correctly, as a result of some unforeseen circumstances, to be put in abeyance and it may be for years and it may be for ever. That was a scheme in which the farmers in my constituency were very interested and I had occasion to make numerous representations to have it put into operation. What is the present Minister, who was so good at criticising when he was in opposition, going to do for the farmers? He criticised the cost of living of the rural community when he was in opposition but he is not doing anything to relieve the burden now that he is in office. I am really surprised that he should have the backing of the Party of which Deputy O'Leary is a member—the fellows who cry out about the condition of the farm workers and who can at the same time take the broad view of things.

Are you worrying about them? Fianna Fáil did not.

The members of that Party will not raise their voices now, of course. The farmer must be put into a position so that he will be able to pay a decent wage instead of having to carry on from hand to mouth as is the case with a number of them at present. As far as rural Ireland is concerned, I can only say that the farmers have failed to get the ear of the Minister and of this particular Government to do anything for them except to impose more taxation on them and to make the cost of production higher for them. In addition, this Government does not mind imposing another £200 a year on to the already heavy taxation of the struggling farmer who is employing labour. Even the sand and gravel man who is trying to eke out an existence by doing useful work will have to pay increased taxes. Mind you, that has been voted for and supported by people who would expect you to build sunshine homes in rural Ireland. The Government should take this matter seriously. Fianna Fáil did not introduce a Budget in my time nor even prior to it in which something was not done for the farmers of Ireland in an effort to encourage them to produce more. This Budget has the support of the Clann na Talmhan Party who represent the farmers.

What about the slaughter of the calves?

Yes, indeed.

Clann na Talmhan has voted for this measure. Not one member of that Party has said that the farmers should not be put into this position.

Would the Deputy mind if I ask him a question? Was the petrol tax ever increased under the Fianna Fáil Government?

I will deal with that later.

No, answer me just now, while you are on the point.

The Deputy must be allowed to make his own speech.

I was dealing with the Farmers' Party which is crying all the time about the unfortunate farmers and the way they have been treated by different Governments. But there is nothing in this Budget to help farmers to produce more or to encourage them. We were anxious about the schemes that we had introduced to encourage the farmers.

You increased the price of tobacco.

Mr. Burke

They are just putting that on the long finger. That is being put into abeyance. That word has been used so often that I suppose I am privileged to use it again. They are also putting this taxation on the farmers by the petrol tax. I should have liked to see the Minister go further and, if it were possible, to take the whole petrol tax off the farmer, the ? tax completely off, because I think it is necessary to do it. If we are to carry on, we shall have to continue helping that section of our people who from time to time have to put up with a good deal from adverse weather conditions, loss of their stock, and various other things.

How long has the Deputy been in this House?

Four or five years.

For three of these you had this tax on petrol by your own Government.

I shall answer the Minister on that. We have heard a good deal about the arterial drainage scheme which was mentioned a few minutes ago. The arterial drainage scheme was introduced by Fianna Fáil. One Deputy said that that was one of the works of national development which they were going to carry out. I put it to the House that that scheme had been pushed by us, by those on the back benches as well as by those on the front benches. We were continually pressing the officials and engineers dealing with that scheme to try to expedite it.

How did you push it from the back benches?

I have been four years in this House and Deputy Collins is one of the most intolerant Deputies I met since I came into it. He reminds me of a political seagull.

The Deputy ought to cease interrupting. We must not have a chorus of interruptions.

The arterial drainage scheme, which we have heard so much about and which we heard about to-day from Deputy O'Higgins, was the work of the much-despised Fianna Fáil Party. To hear some Deputies talking about the drainage scheme you would think you had nothing to do but to go out with a spade and shovel and start digging in a river or doing something like that. A lot of planinng had to be done. This was a very big job. Certain machinery had to be procured and we were passing through a time when this machinery could not be procured. Undoubtedly, the present Government are definitely reaping the reward of the very substantial efforts that we put into this drainage scheme. I congratulate them on reaping the benefit of our work. I should like to be assured, however, that the present Government will keep pushing on with this scheme and expedite it as far as possible, not alone for the Brosna but for other parts of the country as well. As a matter of fact, there are a number of small rivers in County Dublin——

The Deputy should reserve that for the proper Estimate.

I bow to your decision.

Some of the Budget debate arises on this, but this is the Finance Bill.

I am only dealing with a question that was raised already.

The Deputy is raising the question of some small rivers in County Dublin.

I have heard a number of remarks made here about the teachers. When Deputy Derrig was speaking, he was continually taunted from the other side about the teachers. I was one of the Deputies who agitated for the teachers and so did the former Minister for Education. He made a good case for them. I must say that the teachers are very disillusioned at present with the Government because they expected something big from them. I hope the teachers will not be disillusioned all the time. They will waken up to your promises, just as we wakened up to them. The question of emigration has also been spoken of. Of course we have got a plan for emigration, we have got a commission dealing with the matter. With the exception of one scheme which was started yesterday and which we had already under consideration, there is no other national development worth while being started in this country to relieve emigration. Of course we have the inevitable answer— a commission is sitting and the commission will report. As my colleague has already said, we shall probably have forgotten a great many of the promises that were made by the time the commission will have reported. However, they are a body of men who have got a job to do.

When we had an opportunity of doing something to find out what were the mineral resources of this country and when the Minerals Exploration Bill was introduced it was at least worthy of consideration as an experiment. We had been told that there were mineral resources in this country and that they presented an opportunity of increasing the national wealth of the country and of creating employment. From a national point of view I deplore that the mineral exploration scheme has been scrapped. I regard as a shortsighted policy the cutting off of the niggardly sum of £85,000 for mineral exploration which might have been responsible for creating national wealth.

Is the Deputy serious?

I dealt with Deputy Collins before. Does he want me to deal with him again?

Deal with that point.

I believe that an effort like that to explore the mineral resources of the country would be more profitable than this Commission on Emigration which is at present sitting. We have heard so much about our population going down that I think the scheme ought to have been given a trial. The people opposite talk a lot about schemes and compliment themselves on them—schemes that we had almost in operation when they came into office. I think this mineral exploration scheme should be given a chance, and I hope that the Minister for Finance will reconsider the decision that he has taken on it.

There is another matter, indeed it may be described as a national one, that might be undertaken. I refer to coast erosion. If a scheme were undertaken to repair the damage which it is doing it would give a great deal of employment and would result in the reclamation of great areas of land. There are thousands of acres in many counties being destroyed. Their reclamation would provide the country with a national asset. Perhaps the members of the present commission might be advised to visit the coastline and see for themselves the damage that coast erosion is doing. A great deal in that direction has been done in Holland, for example. Of course, work of that kind is a national necessity there. I should also like to see the work on rural electrification expedited. That was one of the things in the Fianna Fáil programme.

The rural electrification Bill.

Was Fianna Fáil?

Yes. We put the Bill through the House.

Now you are talking. Do you remember the year in which it was put through?

I am anxious to see that electricity will be made not only available in every homestead in the country but that the price will be made cheaper than it is at the moment. Even with the 50 per cent. subsidy, it is still rather dear for people in the rural areas who wish to avail of it.

For the short time that Deputy O'Higgins has been in the House he seems to be rather eloquent in misrepresenting facts. I was rather surprised at the statement he made here a few moments ago, that Fianna Fáil were concerned only with one section of the community—the wealthy people. I think he will find a contradiction of his statement in the speech of the Minister for Finance, who said that our social services and other things have gone really as far as they can go. If the Deputy reads that speech he will get an answer to his statement. He will find there that we definitely looked after all sections of the community. I believe that we should, and that, if the national purse permitted it, we should make every effort to make every section of our people as happy as possible. I know there is a limit to all these things. If, as I say, the Deputy reads the speech of the Minister for Finance he will get there a contradiction of his own statements, and I am sure that will satisfy him.

As regards housing, no effort should be spared to provide more houses for the people. We know that from 1939 to 1946 it was practically impossible to build houses. It was very hard to get supplies. While I have the greatest possible confidence in the man who has been made director of housing, I still do not like to see any particular Minister shelving the responsibility of his office. He was appointed by the Dáil to do his job, and so I would like to see any Minister for Local Government, no matter what the cost might be, within reason, trying to get away from what I might describe as the legacy of centuries of bad housing conditions, not only in Dublin City and County but throughout the country.

The Deputy does not agree with the setting up of a housing board?

I agree with anything that will expedite the building of more houses.

And yet you say that the Minister is shelving his responsibility.

It is easy for a Minister to say that he has a housing board dealing with the matter, but I am dealing with the cold facts apart from political eyewash. The housing position in this country is bad. Every means ought to be tried to provide more houses. I know that delays occur because of difficulties arising out of the acquisition of land. There may be a shortage of skilled labour as well. The present position is that you have two or three families living in small houses. I have seen up to 18 persons in one house.

Where did the people who built the swank houses around Dublin get the materials?

At the moment I am dealing with the people who are not in a position to build a big house or to pay a big rent for one. I know that building costs are high. Even the cost of building council houses is so high at the present time that high rents have to be charged for them. I would ask the Minister for Finance to subsidise, as far as the national purse can afford it, the building of those houses. Otherwise, the occupiers of those council houses, mostly rural workers, will find it very hard to pay the rents. Their position is bad at the moment. It is quite true to say that quite a number of people in the urban areas find themselves in the same position.

I want to say a word in regard to the position of artists who were formerly employed in theatres. Representations have been made to me by a number of artists who usually were employed in the Theatre Royal and such places for short shows. They feel that they are going to lose some of their employment as a result of this Budget.

In the Theatre Royal?

Perhaps I should not mention the Theatre Royal. I am not going to mention any theatre. These people were constantly employed for short shows in certain theatres and under a section of this Bill, the Minister proposes not to be so charitable in future so far as the remission of taxes goes.

So far as the Theatre Royal is concerned the position is not changed.

I am not dealing with the Royal.

I should like to know where these artists are employed.

The Capitol.

That is in the same position as before. I am afraid the Deputy is wrongly advised.

I should like to see the remission of these taxes continued because the present proposal is going to discourage managers of theatres in the employment of such artists.

They were not employed to amuse the people. They were employed only to get over the tax.

If the Deputy likes to put it that way he can, but anyway the men who are drawing the money were able to earn something in this way. I suppose we all employ somebody because we have to. We do not employ him for the mere love of him. Nobody employs a man for the love of him. He is employed because he is of some use. The same applies to musicians and employees in dance halls.

There is a difference.

They are employed because it suits the employer to engage them.

Might I interrupt the Deputy for a moment? If he has a list of 400 or 500 artists who are threatened with unemployment I should like to know where they are.

I did not say 400 or 500.

I should like to know where they are employed.

I shall give the Minister the particulars. I have nothing more to say at present in relation to the Bill.

I think the Minister will agree with me that the most important problem we have to face in this country, perhaps more so than any other country, is the question of housing. I am sure that every one of the various Parties supporting the Minister in the House will agree with that statement. I do not see how we shall be able to increase production if we are not first able to house the people. I think that is the first essential. It is true that the cost of housing is at present excessive. Perhaps if we apply the standard which the present Minister used to employ formerly, namely that the £1 is now only worth 10/-, housing might not appear to be so expensive. At the same time those who will occupy the houses that we propose to build must be prepared to pay very high rents and if we are now in a period of inflation which will be inevitably followed by a period of deflation, the position of these people will be more difficult. I once said here in the Dáil, discussing this matter of housing, that some form of co-operation should be developed. In fact I suggested that the many unions we have—the transport union and other unions—should give their full and complete co-operation to such a scheme.

So far as the advisory committees set up by the Minister are concerned, I believe that they are a good gesture but only a small gesture. When we consider the high cost of housing before the Budget and the higher cost of housing now, due to the increased interest on local loans, one can only come to the conclusion that the question is not looked upon with a great deal of seriousness. I am not attaching an enormous amount of blame to the Minister. In fact, I attach more blame to the workers of the country who are going to enjoy these houses. I think that with certain rules concerning apprentices and other matters, they have left the country in a very difficult position, so far as building is concerned. I am not a member of a local body, but I understand that there is considerable difficulty experienced by contractors in getting the necessary help or the necessary technicians. We had a limited number of apprentices when in 1921 housing started on a very small scale. We started on a very extensive scale afterwards. No matter what may be done for the next 20 or 30 years, I do not believe any Party or combination of Parties will ever exceed the rate of progress made by Fianna Fáil in the matter of housing up to the time the war started. We complained of the excessive cost of houses at that time but the cost in comparison with present-day costs was very reasonable.

I do believe in all sincerity that if costs were reduced, if the interest on local loans were reduced and if the labour unions would try to co-operate in every way possible, we could solve many of our difficulties in this respect. I have not very much hope that any advisory committee would be able to get over the difficulty. I see the Meath County Council doing their utmost and I find that they are often disappointed in their efforts to promote housing. Contractors often pull out and refuse to sign their agreements. I see the greatest difficulty arising in that way and I would suggest that some very big national effort will have to be made to provide housing for the people.

Would the Deputy make a definite suggestion?

I have done so.

That is only a platitude. Everybody over there seems to be giving expression to these.

I have made my suggestion.

By the time we are 15 years in office we will get somewhere.

That is a line to you. It is a suggestion possibly that would help in providing houses for the people and especially for the workers. The city, of course, is in a bad position, but the country districts are in a far worse position. We have certain houses which could be repaired.

The Deputy is now going into details which would be more suitable for discussion on the Estimate.

I am aware of that, but I believe housing to be of such great importance that every opportunity of adverting to it should be taken. Drainage is the next important item, and I was very glad to hear on the wireless yesterday that the whole Government went down to open the Brosna drainage scheme. It certainly indicates its importance and it is now revealed that there is no more machinery there than we put there, but the whole Government succeeded in getting that machinery into motion. That is all to the good.

And better than was done.

I hope they will continue until they have drained the whole country. I would prefer, however, to see a great deal more attention paid to housing at the moment than to drainage. My reason for saying that is that housing is fundamental to production and we are short of production. Our production is, and has been, extremely low, and, being low, is the greatest possible incentive to emigration. If we could increase our production and increase our housing, we would have found one of the great solutions of the emigration problem. I do not believe for one moment that this commission which has been set up is anything more than a type of eyewash. I do not think the commission can produce any solution other than the solution of increased production. Neither can any remedy for low wages be found, except through increased production, and I was rather surprised that the Minister was so hard pressed in his Budget as to tax production, and especially agricultural production.

Since the introduction of the Budget, I have made inquiries of a great number of people engaged in the milk industry. I had some hopes that the producers would not have to pay the extra tax on petrol. I now understand that the freight is deducted from the cheque they get each month, which puts the producer in a strait-jacket. The farmer cannot possibly pass that increase on—he has no chance whatever of doing so. It is a rather smart, clever way of doing it, but I think it is highly objectionable and will lead to a good deal of trouble. I hope the Minister will approach the distributors in Dublin—the Lucan Dairy and other people—and see that they change their system. Producers have informed me that that tax will have to be met by them. It is true that it is so small in the beginning that it is not felt for a month or two, but the cheque is reduced to that extent and quite a number of these producers in Meath are small men with five or six cows, and sometimes even less, and the increase is pretty hard on them, considering that milk is not a very profitable business. It may pay the man with three, four or five cows, if he is able to milk them himself, but if he has more cows and has to employ labour his profits are very meagre.

I think it is an unwise system and it is unwise for the Minister to tax that commodity, especially when the tax cannot be passed on. Much the same applies to the Ferguson tractor, but the Minister very rightly promised me that he would do his best to see that there would be exemption in that case. I hope he will take steps to provide exemption in the other case, too, because it is very undesirable to make farmers disgruntled in that way. Their costs are quite high enough and their difficulties in making any profit are extremely great. It is only through them that production can be increased and every effort should be made to enable them to increase production and not to penalise them.

There were several other ways of raising the £900,000 involved. It is true that some £70,000 or £80,000 will come from Córas Iompair Éireann and the extra tax imposed on buses or lorries using crude oil will be paid entirely by the workers of Dublin. I remember that, in 1946, petrol was reduced by 6d., and, if I am not quoting him incorrectly, the present Minister for Agriculture made the statement that the reduction was not designed to assist production but as a subsidy to Córas Iompair Éireann. If it was a subsidy, it is very obvious that the tax now imposed on petrol is a direct tax which will fall on some section of the community but to a large extent on the farming community. Milk is now carried almost entirely in lorries, and, as the Minister for Agriculture will inform the Minister for Finance, the distances are becoming greater. For some reason, milk production does not seem to be economic within a certain radius of the City of Dublin, nor does it seem to be economic in the portions of Meath close to Dublin. Milk production is extending into Westmeath where the land is possibly not quite as good and the poor law valuation is not so high. We find the same with regard to the creameries. It is only a fair criticism to say that the County Limerick as a creamery centre is rapidly declining and that other poorer districts in the south are taking over milk production.

Milk is an extremely important item as a food. It is in fact the most important food we have and the Minister would be well advised if, so far as the carriage of milk is concerned, he removed that tax or arranged it in such a way that the consumer or the distributor would have to pay it. If it is left in its present position and the producer has to pay the only result will be that production will gradually decline. One of the fundamental ways in which we can increase production on the land is by lessening taxation. This Government has taken fairly obvious steps to increase taxation.

On the land?

On the land. The Government has taken every possible step to increase taxation, both direct and indirect, on the land. I appeal to the Minister to consider these points. I ask him to give an opportunity to our prime producer to increase production. He has got no opportunity up to the present. The fertility of his land was given away to the people in the cities and the towns. To a small extent some return of fertility has been made available to him at the enormous price of £12 10s. 0d. and £13 10s. 0d. a ton for manure. If he could get all the manure he wants, even at that price, it would be a good thing. He was told that he could get plenty. Then it was discovered that the manure was not there to be got. The Minister for Finance, the Minister for Agriculture and the Minister for Industry and Commerce informed all and sundry that there was plenty of manure to go around. The people were in somewhat of a difficulty naturally when they discovered that there was not enough to go round.

The high cost of that artificial manure is a tax on the community, but it would be some consolation to the farmer, even at that high cost, if he could get a sufficient quantity of it. I have used some of it myself and it has given excellent results. I used some of it last year and it is still giving excellent results. It cost me £12 10s. a ton. I think the Minister for Finance and the Government would be well advised to reconsider the whole situation in an effort to find out what can be done to make artificial manure available at a lower cost. Something should be done too to ensure that that manure is distributed fairly so that farmers will not be disappointed. In my opinion, despite the opinions held by the Labour leaders, by the trade unions and by politicians, if we cannot increase our agricultural production, we will never be able to overcome any of our difficulties, not even our housing difficulty.

I would not have attempted to intervene in this debate or to prolong the discussion upon the Second Reading of the Finance Bill, in view of the protracted debate on the Budget Resolution, were it not for the very unsatisfactory nature of the Minister's reply in that debate. I am not now referring to the many defamatory and false statements which that speech of the Minister contained but rather to the unsatisfactory and facetious way in which he dealt with matters of important public concern.

The debate on the Budget Resolutions is usually regarded as the most important of the year. Certainly it affords a new Government an excellent opportunity of explaining the principles of its policy. Instead of getting a serious exposition of the Government's policy or an elucidation of the principles, if any, which underlie it, we got a tirade of misrepresentation and something not very far removed from personal abuse with a complete avoidance of the many important issues which had emerged during the course of the discussion. The Minister for Finance in his Budget statement expressed the view that we have here an inflationary situation. In doing so he repeated what he had previously said on another occasion with regard to the problems it created for this country.

Having re-read the Minister's Budget speech, I have come to the conclusion that the portions of it which were in any way concerned with general issues of public policy must have been prepared by somebody who was not aware of the particular proposals which the Minister intended to submit to the Dáil or, alternatively, that the statement was prepared by the Minister as an introduction to an entirely different set of proposals from those which eventually emerged from the Cabinet meeting which considered it. If we have here a situation such as the Minister describes in which our people have too much money to spend in relation to the supply of goods that money can purchase, then the proposals of the Minister for Finance are completely inadequate to minimise the dangers resulting from that situation to our people. I questioned, on the basis of facts known to me, whether, in fact, we have an inflationary situation.

Would the Deputy say is there much change since last autumn?

There has been a change even since I spoke.

Since you spoke?

There has been a change since last autumn on the basis of the economic figures published in the Irish Trade Journal; inflationary pressure had ceased and there was reason to believe that we were passing from an inflationary situation into one in which the problems of deflation might be the ones that would most concern us. I am not professing to have all the information which any person would desire to have before offering an authoritative opinion on a matter of that kind. It would be foolish to dogmatise. I pointed to the indicators published which appeared to support a contention different from that put forward by the Minister. Since I spoke the situation has changed and it is a situation which is always liable to sudden and unexpected changes

There has been a stock market boom in the United States of America. There are indications there, arising out of the American rearmament programme, that a third inflationary wave may sweep over the world. It could be that the Minister was more correct than he knew and that we will have to deal with an inflation not carried over from the war years but one arising from the preparatory measures now being taken throughout the world in anticipation of a possible third war.

My complaint against the Minister is that if he does believe there is a situation in which inflationary pressures are at work, or if I am correct in my fear that, whatever present circumstances may be, a new inflationary wave may be mounting up, then the Minister failed completely in his Budget to deal with that situation. He made no serious attempt to deal with it. What would be the normal line of policy to follow? If the situation here was one in which we had too big a supply of money in relation to the supply of goods available clearly we should budget to absorb some of that excess purchasing power through taxation. We should try to expand the supply of goods. We should endeavour to reinforce price control. We should endeavour to work out a practical wage policy. We should endeavour in every sphere to build up confidence in the future of the country, a confidence which would induce our people in industry and agriculture to maximise output.

I say that the Minister and his colleagues in the Government are doing the reverse of what sound policy requires in circumstances which they themselves say exist. Instead of budgeting for a surplus we have got a series of devices all intended to bring into this year and to spend in this year revenue which does not belong to this financial period at all. The extraction of one month's beer tax out of next year's revenue for spending in this year, the postponing to next year of the task of raising a sum of money that will be spent this year in flour subsidy, together with the policy of remitting the duties upon beer, whiskey and tobacco are all designed to create a situation in which the excess of spending power, which the Minister alleged existed, will be further enlarged. Against that increase in spending power which will result from the budgetary policy of the Minister, we have the Minister for Industry and Commerce talking about restricting imports, even imports of goods we do not produce, on balance of payment grounds.

When was that?

The Minister spoke about that on several occasions at various dinners he has attended since taking office. He suggested there were balance of payments considerations which would require us to impose restrictions on imports, not because of any desire to increase the output of those goods at home or as a protective measure for local industries, but in order to balance our accounts with other countries with which we have trading relations.

The Deputy is referring to luxuries.

Does it matter? If we have an inflationary situation here in which people have more money than they can spend on goods available, it does not make any difference what type of goods you have available on which to spend money. An increase in the total supply of goods does check the inflationary pressures which the Minister for Finance professes to fear. The people will spend the money in some way. If they cannot buy goods in the shops they will spend it betting on dogs and horses, on drink and on amusements of various kinds. That has been the experience of Great Britain and other countries. Even if the only additional supplies we can make available are chocolates or sweets or nylon stockings, it is desirable to have them so long as it is possible to arrange it without any undue strain on the balance of payments. It is in that manner that you can meet a situation in which people have more money to spend than can, in fact, be spent on the total supply of goods available through normal sources or through our own production.

Thirdly, if we have this inflationary situation, one where excessive purchasing power forces up prices, we should be expecting an intensification in the enforcement of price control. Instead of getting that intensification in the enforcement of price control the Government are now going in the opposite direction. Traders who were convicted of profiteering, of selling goods in excess of the fixed price or in excess of the ration, and who lost their right to trade because of those offences, have had their licences restored. The Minister for Industry and Commerce has been, in public at any rate, discouraging his inspectors from enforcing price control Orders. The whole trend of the Minister's speeches has been to discourage interference with business by Government officials, even for the purpose of enforcing price control.

Similarly, when we have now got, or are likely to have, a dangerously inflated situation, it is about time the Government developed a wage policy. I thought the Minister for Finance was going to give some indication of the general wage policy of the Government during the course of the Budget debate, following a brief reference to wages in the Budget statement. Instead of that he appeared, in his speech, to run away, when he was concluding the debate, from the line which he had given some indication of taking up. Generally speaking, there is no indication that the Government have given any real consideration to this problem of wages in relation to the inflationary situation which they say exists and which may develop during the year.

We had to face that situation last year. As the Minister for Industry and Commerce no doubt knows, I had discussions with the representatives of both trade union congresses and we got agreement in principle on a wage policy. I agree that these discussions terminated before these principles could be translated into a detailed agreement, but there was agreement in principle and so far there has been no indication that my successor is either contemplating proceeding on the same lines with a view to getting the results I was aiming at, or adopting some other line which would have relation to the situation with which the Government are professing to deal.

There was no disposition towards budgeting for a surplus to mop up excessive purchasing power through taxation, even if the taxation had to be put to reserve so as to enable more money to be given back to the people for spending on consumption in a time of possible deflation in the future. Instead of expanding the supply of goods, we have them talking about curtailing that supply. Instead of enforcing price control, it is being relaxed. Instead of the formulation of a wages policy, there is a policy of drift. There is no serious effort to deal with what Ministers must know exists, namely, a lack of confidence in the future, arising out of recent political developments, which will encourage people to invest money in new forms of production which, as Deputy O'Reilly said, ultimately must be the solution of our problems. You will not get that by speeches. You will get it only by actions which inspire confidence in the stability of political conditions and the continuity of policy, irrespective of changes of Government, designed to facilitate and assist expanding output, particularly in industry.

The Minister for Finance spoke about prices. He will get nowhere—and this statement is based on personal experience—by confining himself to exhorting traders to restrict profits or workers to reduce their wage demands. Not alone has it been my experience for a considerable number of years as Minister, but it has been the experience of everybody in industry, that in a time of inflationary pressure mere exhortation will get nowhere. If there is inflation, if there is money to be spent, then it will find an outlet somewhere and prices will rise. They will rise either through the variation of Government controlling Orders, or they will rise in the black market. There is no point in this new Government proceeding in these matters in complete indifference to the experience of every country in recent years. In many European countries they endeavoured to enforce price control in an inflationary situation by the most drastic measures, not excluding the enforcement of the death penalty for convicted profiteers, and they did not succeed. The inflationary pressure broke down all controls and prices went sky high.

The Minister will get nowhere through a policy of confining himself to exhortation. The root cause of these economic disturbances must be tackled by the Government, because only the Government are in a position or have the power definitely to influence them. In that connection I am seriously perturbed by one statement made by the Minister for Finance which appeared to suggest that he is getting completely wrong information concerning the trend of prices. The Minister said that prices have broken and that raw materials are coming in now at lower prices. Surely, the outstanding and most noteworthy factor in the whole international trade situation is the rise in prices of industrial raw materials. During April the prices of wool and cotton rose respectively by 50 and 30 per cent.

The Minister can study the wholesale price index published by The Economist. The position is that there has not merely been a rise in wholesale prices during the last fortnight but that there has been a very substantial rise in British wholesale prices in May, 1948, as compared to May, 1947. What prices have broken? I take it that the Minister's remarks were mainly addressed to drapers. As far as I have been able to discover, there is no indication that the wholesale price of drapery goods is moving downwards: on the contrary, all the appearances are it is moving upwards. If the Minister was talking about foodstuffs the same is true. There was, of course, a temporary abnormal rise in wheat prices last year but the break in that price has not resulted in reduction to a level that was expected. As far as Irish agricultural prices are concerned, the Irish Agricultural Price Index, published only last week, shows that there has been a substantial rise in prices in May, 1948, in comparison with May, 1947.

The last time you spoke, these things added up to deflation.

The Minister can make any point he likes out of that. I said that the Minister had quoted various figures as justification of his opinion that inflationary prices were still rife. I referred him to economic indicators published in the Irish Trade Journal, in the most recent issue of that trade journal, where all the figures appeared to show the contrary. I am not going to dogmatise. I confess here and now that I was premature in arriving at that conclusion. The effect of the American rearmament programme and similar developments throughout the world indicates that it is more likely that we will have another wave of inflation this year. We could have expected deflation after the war. It happened just about this length of time after the conclusion of the last war, but apparently it is not going to happen now because of the preparatory measures which are being taken against the possibility of a third war. Therefore I will concede to the Minister that Government policy should be based upon erecting safeguards against the dangers of inflation, dangers which are caused mainly to the workers.

That is a great change from your speech.

The Minister did not deal with this at all in the speech which he made at the conclusion of the Budget debate. He carefully avoided it as far as he could.

I asked you if it was your view that there was not inflation and you said yes.

If the Minister's arguments applied, even on the basis of his own conclusions, the Budget is a bad one and not likely to give effect to the sound policy which his own conclusions should have led him to.

You now say that my conclusions were correct.

Or that they may be proved to be correct.

Will you make up your mind?

I will not make up my mind because now only a fool would attempt to dogmatise.

The Minister's speech at the conclusion of the debate on the Budget convinces me that he is concerned only with politics and that national interests will, for a time at any rate, under this Government be placed second to political advantages.

That comes well from you.

It is obvious that the Minister in only anxious to score over the Party on this side of the House. He even has made distorted statements and read misleading extracts torn from the context of confidential official documents. I resent bitterly the statement that Fianna Fáil was a corrupt administration, that individually its members were corrupt or that in any way they carried on the business of this State in a corrupt manner. I resent that as a rotten falsehood. I am not going to enter into competition with the Deputies on the opposite benches in making allegations of corruption. I do not know what national advantages they think can be secured by suggesting that any Irish administration elected by the free votes of the Irish people could under any circumstances act corruptly. Poor and all as I think the members of the Government are, I will make no allegations of corruption, even on the basis of facts that appear to require an explanation. I am expressing in the most vigorous way that I can my resentment of these allegations that were made by Deputy McGilligan and which were repeated over the week-end by the Taoiseach——

Did not the Deputy say himself that the whole basis of this Government was corruption and that it was a sordid political bargain?

I would expect nothing better than these present allegations from the Minister for Finance because the defamation of his political opponents is his main weapon in controversy, and, of course, it was in complete accordance with the despicable line taken by all the Deputies of the Coalition Parties in the recent election campaign.

Not to mention Deputy MacEntee.

Some efforts have been made by the Minister for Finance and by some of his colleagues to support these allegations of corruption against the Fianna Fáil Administration by referring to specific things. May I remind the Minister for External Affairs that shortly before the election he made a public statement with regard to certain revelations affecting certain persons close to the Government? This was carefully timed to make it impossible to give any answer to it before polling day. He is now a Minister, and all his colleagues are in Government Departments and they have access to confidential records, but we have heard nothing of these allegations since.

Would the Deputy like that the information supplied to the Government with regard to these matters should be supplied to the House?

I would like the Miniter to check up on the accuracy of whatever information was given to him as a result of which he made these allegations.

I understand that some of these papers are in the hands of the Attorney-General, but if the Deputy is anxious to have the facts I am sure that permission could be got to place them before the House.

That is the type of suggestion which I resent. The Minister knows that if the papers are in the hands of the Attorney-General, he cannot have them put before the House, but when the papers leave the hands of the Attorney-General we will see how accurate the allegations were.

If the Deputy wants them now he can get them.

That was only one of a multitude of allegations. Are we to take it that the normal tactics of the Party on the benches opposite is to be to make charges of corruption against the former Government? If you want to fight on that basis I will fight, but do not think that the people opposite are not entirely surrounded by glass. They cannot throw stones as freely as some Deputies seem to think.

I want to deal with a specific allegation, the allegation that my Parliamentary Secretary was appointed for the purpose of influencing branch managers in their selection of gangers. Was not that allegation made here? Is there any Deputy over there who knows any of the functions of employment exchanges or who knows that a branch manager has nothing whatever to do with the selection of gangers? Is it not well known that the sole function of an employment exchange or of any branch employment office is merely to supply to an employer the men he designates or men of the type which he describes? The selection of gangers or of any other type of person for employment upon relief schemes or other forms of public work is solely a matter for the employing authority and no branch manager has any right whatever to send to the employing authority any other person than the employing authority asked for. The Parliamentary Secretary or the Minister has nothing whatever to do with the giving of instructions to branch managers in that matter, and if there is a suggestion that any instruction was given to branch managers or to any single branch manager in that matter, let that be produced here.

That is not the allegation.

That was the allegation. It is quite true that one of the functions of the Parliamentary Secretary, which was previously a function of the Minister for Industry and Commerce, is the appointment of branch managers. He also has the personal responsibility of appointing temporary clerks in employment exchanges. That was the position before Fianna Fáil took office. It was the position while Fianna Fáil was in office. It is still the position. The Minister for Social Welfare, who inherited these functions of the Minister for Industry and Commerce, has the responsibility of appointing branch managers and of appointing temporary clerks when required, to employment exchanges, but I invite him to examine the records which he took over from the Department of Industry and Commerce and he will find that, right from the beginning, I was pressing, first of all, for a reduction in the number of branch employment offices and their replacement by employment exchanges staffed by permanent civil servants and, secondly, the giving to these temporary clerks, who were not temporary in the ordinary meaning of the word inasmuch as they were employed continuously, year after year, the opportunity of obtaining established status, and so to staff the employment exchanges that temporary clerks would be required only for temporary periods to deal with abnormal additions of work. I pressed for that. The Department of Finance resisted it because that system which I was anxious to inaugurate would cost more. It will cost more now but, if the Minister for Finance is really sincere in his desire to eliminate that very small part of the functions of the Minister for Industry and Commerce in which it could be alleged that patronage might enter, he can do it by adopting now the proposals which I, as Minister for Industry and Commerce, repeatedly put to the Department of Finance. Get rid of these arrangements. The branch managers are underpaid anyhow. They are handling public funds. There is a record of defalcations. It is a bad system.

And has been.

Get rid of these temporary clerks where possible. Give the existing temporary clerks the opportunity of acquiring permanent status. They are seeking that. There was a confined examination some time ago. There could be another now.

Why did not you give it to them within the past 16 years?

Because, out of considerations of economy, my colleague the Minister for Finance would not agree.

That is cheeseparing.

We know how they economised.

I am putting it forward as a good suggestion now. I always thought it was a good suggestion.

To avoid corruption, is it?

I say it is a better system of administration. There is no basis for that allegation of corruption. The Deputy has learned his political tactics in a bad school.

I am only following the Deputy's argument.

A very old French philosopher once laid down this rule for politicians, particularly young politicians, "Never attribute to your political opponents motives meaner than your own." If the Deputy will write that down on a sheet of paper and keep it before him, he will be a better politician.

Would the Deputy write that down and leave it in front of his colleague, Deputy MacEntee?

Let the Deputy who is now interrupting start the good example.

Do not put Deputy MacEntee's sins on Deputy Lemass's shoulders. That would not do.

We had the Taoiseach speaking over the week-end about co-operation between Parties and he endeavoured to represent this Party as standing aloof from a combined national effort, embracing all Parties, to do useful public work. Is that the way to get co-operation, with these allegations of corruption against the whole Party and individuals? Do you not think we are men enough to resent these allegations? Do you think we have anything but contempt for those who make them and who in the same breath talk about co-operation? Keep that talk about co-operation until you are prepared to fight clean.

Would the Deputy come in with this Government and fight with them?

No, sir. I have got to have some evidence of reformation over there before I will have anything to do with them. May I suggest that common decency might have suggested to the Taoiseach or to the Minister for Lands or the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Finance, who were down yesterday at the Brosna, that they might have paid some little tribute to the men who framed the legislation which made that scheme possible, the men who prepared the plans, the men who got everything ready to start that scheme so that the Taoiseach had to do nothing but blow his whistle to get it going?

Is that so?

That is so. Do you not think that some single word of tribute to those who had done the work should have been paid? Do you not think that would have been a small price to pay for co-operation?

Would the Deputy have been satisfied if the Taoiseach had paid the same tribute to the national drainage scheme as he paid to the Shannon scheme in 1932?

I challenge the Minister for Industry and Commerce to produce one word spoken by me here since March, 1932, which could be even misrepresented as casting any reflection of any kind on the Shannon scheme. I have criticisms to offer to that scheme. We all know it did not work out precisely as was originally proposed but, when I was custodian of the national interest, as Minister for Industry and Commerce, in charge of it, I never said one word of criticism; I never by any implication in a sentence cast the slightest reflection on it. I challenge the Minister to produce one sentence from the Official Debates to disprove that statement.

We were talking about tributes. Did you pay tribute to the men who were responsible for the Shannon scheme? We are not talking about blame.

I did not go down and blow a whistle to start it.

You could not do that because it was started before you.

The Deputy's Party will never get the thanks they are looking for in regard to drainage. It was my Party that forced them to pass the Bill. There was not a word about national drainage until Clann na Talmhan entered this House, in 1943. That is the first thing. You passed the Bill as the bait for the farmers and left it there since. We had the pleasure of operating it yesterday.

Let me get some facts over. First of all, the Bill was based upon the Report of the Drainage Commission, which was set up before the Deputy's Party was even organised.

All right, in 1939.

What the Fianna Fáil Government decided to do was to accept in their entirety the recommendations of the Drainage Commission and to implement them in legislation.

It was very unfortunate you did not do it before our Party entered the House. Most unfortunate.

During the period since the establishment of the Drainage Commission and the enactment of the legislation, drainage work on the scale contemplated was impracticable, as the Minister well knows. Since 1945 and the passage of the Bill, efforts have been made to procure the machinery which is now at work on the Brosna. However, history will record that, as a contribution to the start of that scheme, the Taoiseach did blow a whistle.

Let me say a few words about turf. I want to begin by thanking the Minister for Finance for exposing the inaccuracy of the statement issued by the Minister for Industry and Commerce to the effect that I had taken a decision that the production of hand-won turf in county council bogs was to cease this year.

Will the Deputy quote that from my statement?

Deputy Lemass said he would bring it to-day.

I never make a promise of that kind without keeping it: "A statement by Mr. Morrissey, Minister for Industry and Commerce, that the decision to discontinue hand-won turf production was taken by Mr. Lemass."

In what paper?

The only paper that tells the whole truth. "Some unemployment was inevitable as a result of Mr. Lemass's decision on the 12th February to discontinue hand-won turf production but neither he nor the Government had produced any proposals, let alone plans, to deal with that situation." Is that in the statement?

Yes. Go on. Is that it all?

I can read the whole statement and my reply to it.

Will the Deputy tell me where in that statement is the reference to county council bogs that he has been talking about all the time?

The implication in that statement is——

This is important.

The implication is that all hand-won turf production was involved in the decision.

Is that stated in that statement? The Deputy has described that as a false statement.

It is a supplied statement.

An official statement. Would the Deputy justify that? The Deputy has stated further, both to-day and last week, that I had stated it in relation to county council bogs. Is there anything about county council bogs in that statement?

Let me deal with this.

You are cornered again.

On the contrary. Is it agreed now that I did not take a decision that hand-won turf production on county council bogs should cease this year?

The Deputy is not going to get away with that. He has made a very serious statement in this House—the statement that I issued a false official statement, that that statement had stated that he had taken a decision to abandon hand-won turf in bogs formerly worked by county councils. The Deputy now finds that that is not in my statement and he is seeking to shift his ground. Can I expect or dare I expect that he would have the decency now to withdraw his assertion that that statement of mine was a false one?

I think that there is a clear implication.

Now did I make it or did I not?

Let me read it.

Stick to the point.

I am sticking to the point. I said there is a clear implication in these words:—

"Some unemployment was inevitable as a result of Mr. Lemass's decision on the 12th February to discontinue hand-won turf production, but neither he nor his Government had produced any proposals, let alone plans, to deal with that situation."

It is on the basis of that quotation that I accuse the Minister of issuing the statement which implies that I took a decision concerning hand-won turf production on county council bogs which I did not take.

May I ask the Deputy to read what he said on interjection to me on the Financial Resolutions? He said that my colleague, the Minister for Industry and Commerce, had issued a statement which was untruthful—I think he put it worse than that. Here is the quotation of what he said:—

"Did the Minister for Industry and Commerce issue an official statement to the effect that I had decided that the production of turf on the county council bogs was to stop."

That statement is clearly not withdrawn. The Deputy read it a couple of times.

My statement clearly does not imply that.

Is it agreed now that I did not take a decision that the production of hand-won turf on county council bogs should stop this year?

I ask the Deputy is it agreed now that when I issued an official statement I did not say in it that he had taken a decision to discontinue hand-won turf on county council bogs? Does the Deputy agree with that?

What the Minister has said has been quoted, but what his colleagues have interpreted it as having said is well known to everybody.

The Deputy is living up to his old form. He has never made a true statement. The Deputy is wriggling as he has always wriggled. He is a bluffer.

An impartial spectator looking at the two of us would not say it was I who was wriggling.

They would say you were in full retreat.

However, is it now agreed that I did not take that decision?

It is clear that the Deputy said the Minister issued a false statement officially.

It is now agreed I did not take that decision and all the Deputies opposite who said I made that decision were wrong. They were misled by the words of the Minister for Industry and Commerce. They misinterpreted his statement.

In case the Deputy has any doubt, it is not agreed.

This is where we start all over again. It is quite true I took a decision that the hand-won turf scheme operated through the Kildare camps by Bord na Móna was to cease this year. Deputies are aware of the history of the scheme. The production of hand-won turf was no part of the Bord na Móna programme. They undertook it as agents for the Government with extreme reluctance, in consequence of the very great pressure put upon them to do so. They were anxious to get back to their main task of organising machine turf production. In connection with their enlarged programme for machine turf, they wished to procure the release of their staffs and of their workers at most of these camps. The Government had decided, because progress on the machine-won turf scheme was more rapid than had been anticipated, that the size of the scheme should be doubled and that legislation should be introduced this year to authorise Bord na Móna to organise the production of machine turf on a scale which would ultimately mean 2,000,000 tons a year. I want to know if that enlarged scheme is being undertaken. The Minister for Industry and Commerce in his statement said that the Fianna Fáil Government had not introduced any proposals, not alone plans, to deal with that situation —that is to say, the situation in which the emergency production of turf was ceasing and a long-term programme would begin.

Is the Deputy talking about the 200,000 tons of machine-won turf?

No, I am talking about the 2,000,000 tons. The original Bord na Móna programme, which was approved by the Dáil when the necessary legislation was passed, involved producing machine turf at a rate which would increase from year to year until it would ultimately have reached 1,000,000 tons a year, at the end of ten years. At a stage in last year, Bord na Móna reported to me that they would attain the production of 1,000,000 tons in five years instead of ten. I then went to the Government with a proposal that they should be authorised to expand their activities to bring new bogs under machine production and aim at an output of 2,000,000 tons, instead of the original target of 1,000,000. As regard plans and proposals produced by the Fianna Fáil Government let me say that the Minister for Industry and Commerce was misinformed.

Is the Deputy going away completely from turf?

Would the Deputy extend to me the courtesy of allowing me to give just a quotation from the official statement?

Certainly.

The Deputy has quoted from the official statement that I issued—and which he described as false. Might I give a quotation from the same statement:

"When Mr. Lemass was framing the estimates for his Department for 1948, he decided that no provision should be made for hand-won turf schemes under Bord na Móna turf camps. He was satisfied that this decision would involve no unemployment in Kildare, Laoighis and Offaly. When Mr. Lemass made this decision, he had no idea as to what its effect would be on the employment position in other areas. He also decided that his Department should examine the question of discontinuing future hand-won turf schemes by county councils."

May I suggest that that is the part of the statement which the Deputy has refused to give out of the official statement?

I was coming to it.

May I put this point, with the Deputy's permission? Not only did I not accuse the Deputy or imply that he made a decision with regard to turf formerly produced in county council bogs, but I stated explicitly, as it is there, that that decision had been deferred by the then Minister. The Deputy, of course, gave only part of the quotation.

Deputy Lemass should withdraw his accusation at this stage.

I am quite prepared for a mutual withdrawal of allegations.

There is no allegation in that statement.

May we know what the Minister is quoting from.

I quoted from the Irish Independent. Did the Irish Press suppress part of the official statement? Is that what Deputies are laughing at over there?

The official minute, which I never saw but which was quoted by the Minister for Finance, is that the question of the position of hand-won turf by county councils should be further examined.

Yes, that is what I have said.

That the question of future production of turf by county councils should be examined. These decisions were taken at a conference in the Department of Industry and Commerce on February the 12th, six days before the new Government took office.

Now will you withdraw?

No, sir.

I would prefer that he would not.

While it is true that the Minister issued the statement he quoted it is also true that he continued in these words which I quote:—

"Some unemployment was inevitable as a result of Mr. Lemass's decision on the 12th February to discontinue hand-won turf production.."

There is no qualification there. There is no indication that the decision was limited to one part of the turf scheme.

"...but neither he nor his Government had produced any proposals...."

Will the Deputy give the title of the document from which he is quoting?

I am quoting from the Minister's official statement as published in the Press.

The Irish Press.

It was published on the 5th April, 1948, in all the Press. I concede this to the Minister. I decided that the hand-won turf scheme operated by Bord na Móna in the Kildare camps was not to operate this year.

After that disclosure it does not matter.

That is precisely the facetious attitude towards important questions which I resent. I did so because these camps and all the local workers who were employed in connection with them and all the supervisory staffs were, as I understand it, required by Bord na Móna for the enlargement of the machine-production programme. Can I get any information from anybody as to whether that enlarged production programme is going to proceed or not? In the Book of Estimates there is a sum of £1,900,000 to cover the cost of hand-won turf on county council bogs this year. That is already voted to the Government. What is going to happen it? A Vote on Account has been taken. The Budget has been passed. It is presumed that the Government will remain in office long enough to get the financial business completed. They will have £1,900,000 voted by this Dáil for the purpose of financing hand-won production on county council bogs. What is going to happen the money? These are questions I want answered. The main point is that we have been told by the Minister for Industry and Commerce in his statement that there were no proposals for a long-term plan for turf production.

I say that that is more serious than anything else in the statement because it indicated that the Minister did not know what had been proposed in relation to turf and had not even referred to the documents which had been published in that connection. I have here the White Paper which was issued by the Fianna Fáil Government in January, 1946, entitled "The Truf Development Programme", in which a long-term plan for turf was set out in detail. I say here and now that all this controversy about who was responsible for the present position in relation to turf, all the anxiety in the turf-producing areas, can be forgotten if the Government will say here and now that they accept that turf development programme published by the Fianna Fáil Government in 1946. It is a practical plan. It is designed to create not merely the organisation for turf production but also a market for turf. I invite them to study it, not in the usual Coalition spirit of denouncing everything or opposing everything with which Fianna Fáil is identified but to study it as a plan prepared by people who have been working upon this business of developing an economic market for Irish turf for a number of years and who put their conclusions into that document which was published, as I said, in 1946. Even in this matter of coal supplies the Minister for Finance could not stick close to the truth.

What about the French philosopher?

I am going to prove that he did not. It is quite true that we made arrangements last year to bring in approximately 500,000 tons of American coal. I say that if, during the winter now concluded, coal supplies had been as anticipated no later than November last there would not be a ton of that coal left now, nor would we have had sufficient coal to carry us all through the winter—certainly not on the basis of unrationed sale. It is quite true that in the trade negotiations with the British Government last October we arranged for an increased delivery of British coal this year of 1,000,000 tons.

It is entirely wrong for the Minister for Finance to suggest—he must know the facts—that that 1,000,000 tons of coal was to be delivered as from November last. Despite the fact that we pressed the British Government to expedite the commencement of the delivery of the 1,000,000 tons, they told us that they could not commence delivery earlier than the 1st April, 1948. When we were purchasing that American coal the prospect appeared to be that we would get all through this winter no more than the 17,000 or 18,000 tons of inferior coal from Great Britain which we had been receiving since the resumption of deliveries about April, 1947, and that, as everybody knows, was inadequate to meet the essential requirements of important industries—apart altogether from the possibility of making a supply available for domestic use. As it happened the British commenced to deliver coal unexpectedly and without previous notification to us about the middle of December. We found that coal was beginning to flow in at a rate equivalent to current weekly consumption. In these circumstances we derationed it and in these circumstances the supply of coal and other fuels was sufficient to ensure that the stock of American coal which had been built up with great difficulty over the year against that winter period would not, in fact, be required. It is easy for the Minister to scoff now about the large supplies of fuel in the Park. On the other hand it might not have been there. Deputies need only cast their minds back to the previous 12 months to realise what the situation might have been if these efforts had not been made to accumulate the reserve. It is foolish for them to exaggerate the size of that reserve stock—six weeks' supply of coal is not an excessive reserve to have in present international circumstances.

I should have thought that cautious people would have regarded it as an inadequate reserve. Even if we count in the whole of that reserve stock and all the supplies which we anticipate we will get from Great Britain in this year the total coal supply in this year will not exceed 60 per cent. of our normal requirements. There is a stock of turf there. It is not a very large stock compared with that which we carried from year to year during the emergency period. There is a large stock of timber which is not moving out because nobody will buy it at the price.

Why the timber in the first instance?

Because last year, as the Minister for Lands probably knows, was a very bad year for turf. At any rate at the commencement of the year it seemed almost certain that no turf would be produced at all.

Last year?

Pure nonsense.

There was ice and snow up to May. Turf production which normally begins in February did not begin until June. Fortunately, in June the weather changed so definitely that it was possible to expand turf production far and above what appeared possible in May. We decided in the light of the weather circumstances in May, in the light of the fact that not a sod of turf had been cut before May, to make good any possible deficiency in turf supplies by organising the collection and preparation of firewood. As it happened everything came right. The turf production overtook the original leeway. Timber production was more than had been anticipated. American coal came in in excess of the quantity originally allocated to us by the European Coal Organisation; the British began to deliver coal four months earlier than they assured us it would be possible to do so, and we had no fuel scarcity. Deputies regard that as a catastrophe.

Agreed that the turf situation was serious and that the frost and the snow did continue very late last spring—up to this time last year— when the weather changed and it became known to the Government and to the Minister for Industry and Commerce that the chances were reasonable that a normal supply of turf would come in, why did the timber still continue to come in up to the 18th February?

The Minister misunderstands the position. It was not anticipated as late as the 1st December, 1947 —nobody could anticipate it—that it would be possible to make a ration of coal available for domestic use. If coal had not been available the bulk of that timber and turf would have been disposed of by this.

You could have controlled the timber and other fuel which was coming in.

I want to make a suggestion. There is a stock of wood fuel in the Park and in other Fuel Importers' dumps about the country. Nobody will buy it at £4 per ton. It cannot be sold at less than £4 at the price which the Government is charging for it. Against the price of 52/- for turf, it is bad buying. There is no point in leaving it there until it rots. You will have to cut your losses and reduce the price and make it available to the people in Dublin who will gladly buy it.

Cut your losses. They are your losses.

We always anticipated during the war years, when we were building up reserve stocks, that there would come a period at which certain reserves would have to be liquidated, possibly at a loss. No one could expect that the country could move smoothly from a state of emergency to normal conditions without some problem of adjustment like that. If we had been in the war, we would be disposing of war stocks at a far greater loss.

You are crying out about not continuing the cutting of turf on the county council bogs.

I am criticising you because you have no turf programme.

What about the turf programme on the 18th February?

I say that if you set out to organise a market for turf on the lines of the White Paper you will get a market for turf capable of absorbing all the turf you can produce and that you will not have to stop turf production. You can create a market for turf with which coal cannot compete. I am telling you now that you can organise turf production on a scale and in a manner which will make it impossible for coal to compete with it. That is what I said when introducing the turf development scheme and that is still my faith.

Everybody agrees with that. Why did you not do it.

You have the responsibility now. We would be doing it if we were in office. Is it possible to get this matter considered by the Government on any other basis except trying to blame their political opponents for things they do not want to deal with? Is it possible to make any constructive approach to it?

Will you start off by not making propaganda for stopping a certain turf programme which you yourself had decided to stop?

There we are back again where we started. I could not pin the Minister to the truth anyway.

Would Deputy Lemass, if he were Minister, have continued the county council hand-won turf scheme this year?

Let me say this in reply to the Deputy. There is all the difference in the world between an approach to this problem by men who have a belief in turf and the approach of men who have always opposed every effort to exploit our turf resources. You know that the Fine Gael Party always opposed a policy of developing our turf resources. They derided and scoffed at it. Their approach is, of course, entirely different from that of people who believe in it, who want to build it up, who believe that we have available an asset which has been neglected for years and that it is our job to go after it in the same manner as the Russians and the Germans and the Danes have done and make out of our turf resources one of the most valuable assets.

That is not answering the question.

I do not know all the facts.

Would you have continued the hand-won county council turf scheme?

I would have gone into this problem of turf with the ambition of creating a market which would absorb all that could be produced.

I cannot get you to answer the question.

I am not going to deal with a hypothetical question. I had all the facts before, but I have not got them now. Deputies can scoff as much as they like.

I am not scoffing. I am asking a question.

I suggest that the Deputy be allowed to make his speech without further interruption.

Let me turn from turf to wheat. The Minister for Finance, in the course of his long discourse the other night, said that I had put a blister on the taxpayers of this country by buying wheat in the Argentine at £50 per ton and he suggests here to-day that I could have bought it much earlier and cheaper. Each of these statements is untrue.

I did not say anything about cheaper.

It could neither have been bought earlier nor cheaper.

I said that the people whom you sent to the Argentine in May, 1947, could have brought back that quantity of wheat at that price.

That was wheat of the previous year's harvest. I am saying that the wheat of the 1947 harvest in the Argentine could not have been purchased earlier than February, 1948. I suppose Deputies know that the Argentine is in the southern hemisphere, that its seasons are the reverse of ours, and that the wheat crop comes in about January and February.

And they have a carry over.

Yes. I say here and now that no officer of the Department of Industry and Commerce or the Department of Agriculture who had anything to do with this question of buying wheat will say that one ton of Argentine wheat could be bought earlier than the date upon which the deal was concluded and that it could have been bought cheaper. We were not anxious to buy Argentine wheat. The Minister for Finance in the Fianna Fáil Government seriously discussed with me the desirability of reducing the bread ration rather than pay this exorbitant price for wheat. I urged that, despite the high cost, we should obtain the wheat and maintain the ration. The Government agreed and we bought the wheat. It was possible that we might have taken the other decision, which I have no doubt the present Minister would have taken. It was a black-market price for wheat from the Argentine that stood outside the international organisation and was cashing in on the scarcity conditions. We had no alternative to buying that wheat other than to reduce the bread ration. Any suggestion to the contrary is not supported by the figures which the Minister for Industry and Commerce gave to-day.

It takes roughly 10,000 tons of wheat per week to maintain the present ration. You cannot distribute bread and flour on the ration unless you have a certain minimum stock in the country. We always regarded eight or nine weeks' supply as the minimum working stock which made the smooth working of the rationing scheme possible. At one period we were forced to go down as low as five weeks. But, on the basis of a reasonable working stock and a weekly consumption of 10,000 tons, you require 200,000 tons to maintain the ration between this date and the 1st September next, and you have not got that even with the Argentine wheat. Not merely that, but there is now no possibility of getting it. I take it you have got the maximum allocation which the United States is prepared to make. Additional wheat has been purchased in Australia, but there is no physical means of shipping it to this country so that it can arrive here before 1st September. You are therefore in this position, that if the purchase of Argentine wheat had not been made, you could not possibly maintain the present ration. It could not have been purchased earlier or purchased cheaper and any suggestion to the contrary is untrue.

You are always getting away from the main point. Could it have been purchased the next week by the new Minister?

Possibly. But why should I have taken the risk? There was a commodity which was scarce in every country in the world, a commodity for which all countries were competing in the Argentine. It was as a result of the competition that the price had gone up. I had got this offer from the Argentine economic director of 75,000 tons of wheat. I closed on that deal then. I had no reason to assume that, if I did not take the wheat when offered, some other country would not have stepped in and taken it the next day. I mentioned to-day that in the early part of 1947 there was a proposal made by the late Mayor La Guardia that all the countries in Western Europe should combine to appoint one buyer for Argentine wheat in order to keep down the price. We agreed and, in accordance with the spirit of the agreement, we held off buying Argentine wheat until a final decision was taken on the arrangement. We found, however, that most of those countries who had agreed in principle to this central buying arrangement were at the same time shipping the maximum quantity of Argentine wheat into their countries which they could get pending the conclusion of the agreement. With an experience of that kind, do you think I would be justified in letting that 75,000 tons of wheat go, knowing that if we did not buy then this country would be unable to get it, because there was no other place in the world where it could be obtained?

Then the 17th February was not the only date that it was on offer.

If the Minister leaves office with as clear a conscience as I had when leaving he will be doing all right. I see that Clann na Poblachta are opposed to the abandonment of the short-wave station but they would not vote against it because they could not single out that one item from all the others. That single item can be brought up for discussion on the Estimate for the Department of Posts and Telegraphs, it can be brought up by way of amendment to this Bill or by way of resolution. I do not want to deprive Clann na Poblachta of the credit of saving the station, and so I invite them to put down a motion here to express disapproval of the abandonment of it and of calling on the Government to reverse their decision. If they do I promise them the motion will be passed.

We are not going to go to you to learn the practice.

Clann na Poblachta will do that if there is any sincerity in them at all. Do they not realise that this decision to abandon the short-wave station is a minority decision taken against the wishes of the majority of this House? Is that the type of democracy that we are going to get under this coalition? However, the Deputy has his chance now, and I invite him, if he is sincere in his declaration of opposition to the decision taken by the Government, to get a reversal of that decision. I am prepared to let him get the credit of that reversal by putting down a motion. It will be put down, anyway. The Deputies will not avoid having to vote on the motion by refusing to put one down. Obviously, if they put it down themselves the capitulation of the Government will be automatic and the station will be saved. Otherwise, we are going to have a situation where a minority of this House can dictate the policy of the majority in an important matter of this kind.

The old age pensioners are more important than this station.

You are not going to jeopardise the position of a single old age pensioner by saving the short-wave station. There have been developments concerning the European recovery programme. We have refrained from making any reference to that programme here because we thought that possibly what we might say would embarrass the Minister for External Affairs in his negotiations concerning it.

Is that reference by the Deputy to the Deputy's helpful articles in the Irish Press while I was away?

What the Deputy says appears over his name in the Irish Press.

And sometimes he becomes "a Dáil reporter."

I think that the Deputies of this Dáil are entitled to have a statement from the Minister or the Government on that position. Further than that I am not going to say at the moment. The time has long since passed when the Minister can convey what he has to say in that regard in Press releases or Press interviews. It is about time that the House was informed as to the position. I have nothing further to say now. There were many other things to which the Minister for Finance referred in his statement that I would like to deal with, but other opportunities will arise for doing so. I think, however, that he will recognise the desirability, when concluding this debate, of adding to the allegations, insinuations and abusive remarks that he will make about Deputies on this side of the House a few serious observations on the things to which I have referred.

An Ceann Comhairle resumed the Chair.

The House, I am sure, will commend Deputy Lemass for the vehemence of the statement of his position but if we are to take one particular aspect of his remarks I think the House will require also to charge him with a dereliction of duty. Deputy Lemass stated in regard to this question of corruption that even on the basis of the facts—which would seem to require explanation—that he would not proceed to charge any member of the Government with corruption upon the basis evidently that it would do no good to the country as a whole or to the nation that any Government should be charged with being corrupt. I submit that is an idea, a type of mind, which is very harmful to this House, to our national position and to our ideas of integrity, because were Deputy Lemass in the possession of any facts which would seem to require explanation in the direction of corruptibility it is, I suppose, his bounden duty to acquaint this House with these facts and to press the charge home in the proper quarter against any individual Minister or corrupt Ministers in the present Government. I think that he is shirking the issue and is lacking in his duty if he has such facts and withholds them from the House. I think that, on the basis of his remarks, he has completely misunderstood the whole question of corruption as it arose in this debate and in the previous debate on the Budget. I refer him to the exact words of the Minister in regard to this question. I am quoting from volume 110 of the Dáil debates: column 2059:—

"I said that, as far as I knew, no person belonging to the Party with which I am associated said that there was any personal corruption alleged against any member of that Government (that is the Fianna Fáil Government) with the exception of the matter that was tried before a tribunal which led to the disappearance of a Parliamentary Secretary from that office."

He definitely qualified what he meant with regard to corruption by talking about the administrative corruption of the Party, and at column 2062 he said:—

"With all these things on record, am I doing the Party very much injustice when I say that they built up their whole Party system on administrative corruption? I think they did, and I assert here now that they did. There is clear evidence of it. It takes some little time, I may tell you, to get people who are put in under such a system just smoked out, but the process is on, and I hope it will be continued. We will get an Administration which will be based on merit."

Then the Minister goes on to talk about his hope of an incorruptible Administration in the future. The vehemence of Deputy Lemass on this question would give Deputies in the House some inclination to think, perhaps, that he was covering up in regard to matters about which there was no need whatsoever to cover up. Everyone who is politically minded in this country is quite aware of what that term "administrative corruption" meant. The exact use of the word "corruption" might perhaps not be quite correct, but administrative corruption was known throughout the whole country as part of the Party system. It was part of the system in this country under Fine Gael. It was equally part of the system under Fianna Fáil.

That is a falsehood.

It is not a falsehood. If the Deputy will have patience for a moment——

I will not wait for a moment. I tell the Deputy it is a falsehood.

How can you say what is a falsehood until you know what I am going to say?

Apologising for the Minister.

I am not apologising for the Minister. If you had the decency to wait to hear what I had to say, you would hear me assert what I assert now, that I do not agree that you will have anything very much better under the present Government. Put that in your pipe and smoke it. I am going to tell you what I mean about administrative corruption.

What has this to do with the Finance Bill?

It has been discussed for over an hour previously by Deputy Lemass and I do not think any other Deputy should be deprived of his right to make a contribution on the same basis as that on which Deputy Lemass was permitted to speak. This is how the matter is understood in the country. A Fianna Fáil Government was in office. It was in office by virtue of the political machine that put it into office.

By the votes of the people.

I am not saying that I do not agree with you. Do not think that I disagree with you at all but everyone knew, as was pointed out by the Minister, of the case brought up by Deputy T.J. Murphy, as he then was, in regard to the appointment of a sub-postmistress. That is a sample of it. Everyone knew that there was preference throughout the country and that this preference derived from the nearness of your association or affiliation with the then dominant Party in the country as it did under the previous Government and as I have no great doubt it will continue to do under this Government.

It has continued.

I shall give a typical case of what is meant by corrupt administration. There are in my constituency certain large industrial concerns such as the cement works at Drogheda. The Fianna Fáil Government had undoubtedly a great measure of credit in regard to the building up of these works, the starting of them and the carrying on of them for the time they were in office. It was inevitable that should be so. A very large number of workers in such a concern as that obtained their positions through introductions from the local Fianna Fáil Deputies. There is no doubt whatever about it; that was the pass-word and that was the method of obtaining employment. At that time, when Fianna Fáil was in power, I think that any worker in Drogheda would be a complete simpleton to go with an introduction from the Fine Gael Deputy to the works manager to try and get a job. We know that. Everybody knows that is perfectly true. Everybody knows that the same applied in the boot and shoe factories.

We cannot have a review of the conditions in industries throughout the country.

I have given that as one example of what is meant by corrupt administration.

This is not a thesis or a discussion on administrative corruption.

There is no foundation for it.

There was so much foundation for it that Deputy Lemass got 20 minutes to try to disprove it.

I did not know that.

It is a dastardly charge.

I do not know that Deputy Lemass made a charge against anybody.

I made no charge.

If the Deputy made no charges——

He referred to what he called wrong statements about corruption. Surely one is entitled to prove that the statements were accurate, and it is proposed to do it out of the mouth of the man who admitted it.

I have listened to the Deputy for 20 years and he has not changed in the slightest.

I have given one quotation from Deputy Moylan and I leave it at that.

I suggest that it is so true—I do not want to deal with it at any great length—that it came up in the debate before and I quoted the columns.

What I fail to see is: if nobody made a charge against anybody else of corruption, how does this question arise?

Deputy Lemass introduced the matter and it has been discussed already.

As I understand it, nobody made a charge against the Minister.

Deputy Connolly is making up for it. He is making charges against everybody.

Deputy Lemass did make a charge. He made a charge of dishonesty in relation to a quotation which I gave from Deputy Moylan. I do not think he will deny that.

That is a specific case, not a dissertation on corruption.

It was made in a discussion on corruption.

To finish the matter, I shall just reiterate the one point I made. I charge Deputy Lemass with a dereliction of duty if, as he stated, even on the basis of facts which would seem to require explanation, he would not propose to charge a member or members on these benches with corruption. I think that is a dereliction of duty and we shall leave it at that.

To get on to matters which I think will not be in any dispute whatsoever in relation to the question of the Finance Bill, the more serious matters, as they ultimately will prove, will be the question of the relationship which the Finance Bill will attempt to establish between wages, prices and other economic factors. These undoubtedly are of far more importance and should be attended to. The Minister made certain exhortations and, as far as we are aware in this House, unless the Minister has proof to the contrary, it would appear that these exhortations to the traders, manufacturers and business community generally have fallen on deaf ears. He stated when he made these exhortations that he knew the position of these sections of the community in regard to the profits which they had derived in excess of the normal rate of profits during the emergency and he proposed, rightly we all thought, that these funded profits should be used by the manufacturers in the interests of the community generally.

My submission is that these general exhortations addressed, either to manufacturers or the business community, will be as futile as the exhortations which he addressed to trade unionists and workers generally. I think more positive action is required than that. I do not believe, from my experience, that there will be any use whatsoever in the Minister making these general appeals to the workers to refrain from seeking higher wages and better conditions. It is quite obvious from the recent movement in regard to better wages in the bakery and flour milling trade that what I am saying is correct—that something more positive and definite is required.

I would suggest to the Minister that there are several sources open to him. First of all, as he evidently relies upon a voluntary movement on the part of the economic sections which have in their power the influencing of prices, he should address to them, having thought out the matter carefully within the limits of the economic machinery, a direction as to the extent to which he would desire a brake on prices in regard to the whole economic picture or any definite sections of it. He should single them out and it should be possible for him, with the data at his command which he talked about—he mentioned that he had the full facts at his finger-tips now, that he was not talking from newspaper reports but knew the position exactly—to determine whether one section of the business community should be able to cut prices by 5, 7 or 10 per cent. or whether the facts of the situation would warrant an all-round decrease in prices of 10 per cent. or 5 per cent.

If he gives an indication more specific than he has given by general exhortation, a movement might be made in that direction, because, as things are now, all that will happen is that one section of the business community will hold back to see what another section will do. In that situation, if anything is done, it will be done at a very slow pace. Postponement will follow postponement until quite a considerable period runs out, without any relief to the consumer or any appreciable decline in the price level. There is the other method, the more direct method, of making definite suggestions to them with regard to the profit level or rate obtained in certain directions. It should, I think, be within his competence to make out a general outline, a plan of campaign, something in the nature of a planned economy, if you wish, in regard to this matter.

The alternative to that, an alternative of which I would feel more enamoured, is that the Minister should commit himself to the establishment of a prices and profits court but not upon the basis put forward in the Industrial Efficiency and Prices Bill, 1947. That has many defects which I do not wish to discuss here, but its whole modus operandi, through the system of a commission, would not achieve the results which a prices court would achieve. The idea of a prices court which would run parallel or complementary to the Labour Court would force section after section of the different businesses in regard to which disputes existed to come before it and prove that they had the right to charge the prices then obtaining to the public.

There are certain organisations of consumers—there are many groups of organised housewives, such as the Countrywomen's Association — who keep a very keen eye on price movements and who would be only too anxious to avail of such a court in order to make a case on behalf of the consumers as to why prices should be reduced in respect of certain given commodities. If the manufacturers, the wholesalers and the retailers—right along the line— were forced to defend their case there, the publicity alone, even without considering the powers which would be given to that court, would be sufficient to enable us to bring down the cost of living in many directions.

I do not want to stress that point in more detail. I give it to the Minister as a worthwhile suggestion which will enable us to mitigate somewhat the impact of the many industrial conflicts which may be looming up, because, no matter what the Minister says to the trade unionists, he will receive the same reply as was received by Ministers in a Labour Government in Great Britain. The trade unionists will always return the answer: "What about prices?" Whenever an appeal is made to them to stabilise wages, to go slow in the matter of asking for increased wages, they will want to know what is being done in regard to prices to make their real wages of more value than they are at present.

The figures the Minister gave in regard to wages, production and so on prove conclusively that none of the workers at present are making extravagant claims, that they are merely attempting to do what he said, that is, to get back to the real wages they received in 1939 or before the war, to make the money they earn of real value to them in purchasing power. On the basis of the figures the Minister quoted, the workers as a whole are producing more for less wages than in 1939, and, in effect, the difference is yet about 15 per cent., that is, they have to bring their wages up by another 15 per cent., according to the Minister's figures, in order to bring them anywhere near the value they previously had.

It is only by the strictest control of prices—and I do not think we ever had very strict control for the past 16 years or during the period when there was an attempt to operate price control machinery; it certainly did not work in a way which would appeal to the public as doing what it was intended to do —all the way through, from the manufacturer or the importer through the wholesaler to the consumer, that wages can be given anything like the purchasing power they had. Without that strict control of prices, there will be nothing but futility facing any Government which addresses its remarks to workers in regard to wages movements. Not even the trade unionists—the Trade Union Congress or the Congress of Irish Unions combined—could halt this movement which will naturally cause grave concern to the Minister in relation to its effect upon the whole economic structure.

The workers do not believe the Minister's statement, which is quite common among orthodox economists, that an increase in money incomes is rapidly swallowed up by rising prices. This has never been proved satisfactorily. In fact, the workers generally believe that their attempts to secure increased wages are efforts to keep up with rising prices and they have never been able to do so. They have always lagged behind, and there has always been a time lag, and the fact that one section of industry secures an increase in wages does not necessarily have an over-all effect upon the cost of living. If we had a prices court such as I suggest, we could examine into profits and into the whole mechanism, and see whether any of the increases put on from time to time are in fact justifiable.

There have been cases before the Labour Court, as the Minister is aware, in which the employer automatically answers any demand for wage increases by showing, or attempting to show, or alleging, that these increases will mean an automatic increase in the cost of whatever unit the employer produces. In one particular case I know of, instead of its representing, as alleged by the employer, an increase of 2d. on the unit, it worked out at something around a farthing. We could find many more examples of that type of thing. If we had such a court as that we could, perhaps, tackle this question of the bread strike from an angle which might lead to more advantageous results than have been evident up to the present. I do not want to go into the merits or demerits of that strike. It is sub judice to some extent. No doubt the question in the minds of the workers is whether or not the employers are able to afford these increases and whether their profits are of such extent or magnitude as to permit of an increase in wages. Sometimes a question like that is considered to be one requiring no argument. It is taken for granted that the employers' profits are sacrosanct and must not be touched and that they should be permitted the prevailing rate no matter what that rate is. There is a continuous exhortation to the working classes to make greater sacrifices, to stabilise conditions and to withhold demands for increases. In order to have an informed public opinion on existing affairs, such as is required in a democratic country under a democratic Government, we should see to it that there is an examination into the profits of the manufacturers and into the profits of all those who employ labour in order to ascertain whether such profits cannot be reduced for the general good of the community in the prevailing situation. I think the proper place to argue all these points in regard to profits and prices is before a court complementary to the Labour Court.

In the same way as we have exhortations to refrain from asking for increased wages we have repeated pleas from the Minister for Finance and the Minister for Industry and Commerce, echoed by all responsible members of this House, for increased production. These exhortations fall upon deaf ears if there is no definite incentive for increased production. Obviously the main incentives for increased production are decent or improved wages, better housing conditions, price control, social insurance and a financial and industrial policy which will support and protect industry on an efficient basis. All these things are, of course, correlated with much wider issues than I have indicated here.

I am not suggesting for one moment that the establishment of a prices and profits court would usher in an era of increased production and would enable us to have a more efficient economy than we have at the present time, because we must take world factors into consideration. World factors are beyond our control. We have to withstand the impact and effect of these upon our own economy if they are adverse; and we have to court and use them to our own advantage if they are of advantage to our general economy. In regard to increased production it appears to me that in the past we have not given sufficient protection to those industries which would prove the best basis for an increased production. Naturally a tariff policy requires a considerable time to work out. There are many snags in it. A Government must feel its way and learn how best to operate. I do not speak in a critical manner when I make that statement. I do not wish here to criticise policy but I do think that there are examples of a lack of proper consideration for the type of industry we have, particularly the boot and shoe industry.

Taking the boot and shoe industry, it seems to me that we have very little understanding of the importance of that industry. We have done very little to protect this country in relation to that industry. There are some truly astonishing figures. If I refer to the Board of Trade figures for the periods December, 1947, and March, 1948, I am sure most of the Deputies in this House will find cause for wonder. I want to show the importance of this country to the British export drive and to show how we underrate the importance of it. The total export to 42 foreign countries of British footwear in December, 1947, amounted to £236,611. The amount exported to Éire was £137,634.

Is your first figure exclusive?

Yes. The first figure was the total to 42 foreign countries and the second figure was the total to Éire. In March, 1948, the total to 42 foreign countries was £219,705. The total export to Éire was £223,633. In other words, we are a better market for British footwear than 42 foreign countries combined. We have a higher rate of consumption. I have talked about this before. I am sure that the present Government will afford greater protection to this industry than it has been afforded in the past. It is an industry which requires encouragement and assistance. It is an industry which was commented upon favourably by Deputy Lemass when he was Minister for Industry and Commerce in the following terms:

"The boot and shoe industry has prospered from small beginnings to an industry of major importance and considerable efficiency. I think it would be true to say that in the years before the war many of our boot and shoe factories were producing boots and shoes of equal quality to the boots and shoes produced in Great Britain at equal and, in some cases, lower prices."

I am sure the present Minister for Industry and Commerce, no matter how much he may disagree with Deputy Lemass in other things, will agree with him in that. How is it then that we are neglecting this market which is more valuable to Britain than 42 foreign countries combined. Undoubtedly efficiency could be promoted even in this industry. Undoubtedly efficiency could be improved. We have agreements with Great Britain and, in regard to these agreements there has been discrimination against our own industries. We permit the import into this country of many products of British industry while they refuse any reciprocal movement of our goods. That is a matter requiring the attention of the Minister for Finance in order to secure for us an export market in those industries in which we are efficient or in which efficiency can be promoted. Efficiency could be promoted in many of these industries on the basis of this type of consultation between employers, employees and nominees of the Minister, such as the working parties, as they are called, in Great Britain.

One thing that struck me in regard to the Budget was the orthodoxy of its form. I am not quite certain whether it is too late to make a suggestion this year, but it is obvious from the remarks of Deputy Derrig that the Fianna Fáil Party has now extended the life of the Government. He said that the Minister would be required to bring in a second and a third Budget in order to do certain things. If the Minister will bring in a second and a third Budget, I trust he will not keep so rigidly to this orthodox idea of balancing the Budget year by year. I do not know whether there is any special merit in it as things are—unless there is some special international reason for doing so, perhaps to impress the financial controller of the Marshall Plan—but I am of the opinion that it would be much better to have a planned economy extending over three, five or seven years—to run the whole economy of the country on a basis of some years in advance.

Very little can be done from year to year. It would be far more informative for the House, and it would be a better method of stabilising business and giving a feeling of security and progress, if we knew what the whole system of taxation and income and expenditure would be over a period of years. It would enable us to plan for development, to develop industries and transport and to have drainage, afforestation and all these things, which necessarily must be spread over a period if they are to be done efficiently and effectively. It may be for the purpose of book-keeping or balancing-up that we have the present system, but I think a more extended type of Budget should commend itself both to the Minister and to the House.

On the question of Finance, I think the Minister has not exhausted the many ways that can be found of raising money from taxation. To limit taxation to the well-tried sources that have been used in the past does not show the imagination with which we might credit the Minister. There are many other forms of taxation, many methods of skimming the cream off the sections of the public who are not definitely engaged in productive enterprise and who are not building up the economy of the country. The Minister would do well in the future to pay some attention to these methods of achieving a greater income so as to enable us to embark upon more ambitious schemes of industrial development.

A great deal has been said about retrenchment and there may be justification for it, but retrenchment for its own sake is not a policy which would commend itself to me or any progressive-minded person. If we are to have an extended economy, the present and succeeding Budgets should be the means of fostering it. We should aim at an expanded national income. With an expanded national income we could have a more expansive economy which would tend towards the benefit of the country as a whole.

Perhaps I shall be allowed to open with some of the detailed points that were raised on the Second Reading before I come to deal with the more general aspects. Deputy O'Higgins, and Deputy Burke from the opposite benches, raised the question of the Ferguson tractors. I said, when I was closing the debate on the Financial Resolutions, that efforts were being made to get a scheme which would enable the Ferguson tractors at least to be released from the new taxes imposed this year on petrol. I cannot give details at the moment of what scheme has been arrived at; these details are still being worked out. I can, however, say that the Ferguson tractors and all unregistered tractors or implements properly used as tractors will get a certain remission of tax.

Whether one ought to start by giving a full remission of all taxation on petrol, or whether one should start with a small remission this year and then later try to come to a conclusion as to how much evasion has been practised and make further remissions in a second year, has yet to be determined. Deputies will realise that one of the difficulties in giving a concession to certain types of vehicles may lead to a considerable evasion that will work out beyond the definite object of a bounty of that type. If there is considerable evasion, the result of imposing the tax will be lost and one will have to seek elsewhere the revenue which would then not be sufficient for its purpose.

I am inclined to treat the appeals made in connection with the Ferguson tractor not as seriously as I am sure they were intended to be made. I heard Deputy O'Reilly and Deputy Burke lamenting in a most heartfelt way the taxes on food. The tax on petrol would now appear to be regarded by some Deputies as a tax on food. It is a pity they did not think of that a long time ago because, so far as the petrol tax is concerned, it is of many years' standing. Long before Deputy Burke joined the Fianna Fáil Party, but at a time when Deputy O'Reilly was still a member of the Dáil —back in 1932—there was a very small tax on petrol—round about 4d. It was raised by Fianna Fáil to 10d. and in 1941 it was raised to ? on the gallon. Deputy O'Reilly, apparently, did not use any persuasive methods with his own front benchers to get them to realise that a tax on petrol would be, as he puts it now, a tax on milk production, or agricultural production generally, as Deputy Burke said.

For years agriculture suffered under Fianna Fáil, in so far as that was a tax on agricultural production. In June of 1946 it was reduced, but that is the only time that Fianna Fáil thought that this tax on production should be remitted to the agricultural producer. Even doing my worst with regard to this matter this year, I have not put it back to the point at which it was from 1941 to 1946. Those who are now so very anxious about farmers' production costs should examine their own consciences, their own experience and their own practice over the years because I am quite certain that they were able to salve their consciences in some way during those years when the production costs were so very high. Even those Deputies, Deputy O'Reilly and Deputy Burke—of course Deputy Burke has not so much on his soul as Deputy O'Reilly because he has not so much influence in Party circles—should think of this when talking of haulage of farm produce and saying that vehicles are going to be very badly set back by the tax on petrol and that there will be a restriction on production. Even with the tax I suggest that I will do better than Fianna Fáil could do and I hope to announce that there will be a remission of the tax with regard to Ferguson tractors and other implements at a later stage.

I think it was Deputy Burke who raised the question of rural electrification as a Fianna Fáil scheme. Deputy Derrig had of course spoken of it earlier. I wonder again if those Deputies knew anything of the history of electrical development in this country. When electrical development was started you could easily pick out of any gathering those who belonged to the Fianna Fáil Party because they were those who opposed that development. Generally speaking, Fianna Fáil opposed electrical development. It was of course very, very openly criticised by Deputy de Valera who said that all the money was, of course, going to the benefit of England and that very little of the money which was spent on this scheme would go to the benefit of the Irish people.

Deputy Lemass went to the length of telling us that the scheme had failed and that the citizens of this country were put in the dilemma of having to allow greater expenditure than was first contemplated or of having the whole scheme collapse in insolvency. However, the matter was persevered with and it was said in Dáil Eireann that so much information was not given about any other project. Among the many items of information that were given—Deputies can read the original report and the comments on the report —was advertence to the fact that a scheme for the electrification of rural areas in this country was a part of the general plan for Shannon development. Deputies criticised that away back in 1926 and 1927 and they continued to criticise it when they came into the Dáil in 1932 and were supposed to get the responsibility for running the State. Even when they unwillingly accepted and decided to work the whole project, they apparently forgot that provisions were made in the original scheme for the electrification of the whole country. We are expected to commend them now and to commend rural electrification as a Fianna Fáil scheme merely because very late in the day they decided to go on with rural electrification. I mentioned before with regard to the provision of electrical units that they did not make a move in this matter until very late, until after the Great War had started, and it was completely impossible to get the machinery required for any further development in the nature of the electrification of the country.

Deputy Derrig has gone over a lot of general ground most of which was traversed by Deputy Lemass. Deputy Derrig feels that I am in a difficult position in having to explain to the people of this country how the present Government has reduced taxation. If one takes the amount of money which was exacted from the people in taxation last year and the amount which it is proposed to exact this year, the latter sum will be found to be greater than the former. That is so of course, but I was faced with a Book of Estimates which proposed to impose upon the people of this country an expenditure of £70,500,000, which of course meant taxation, with expenditure from the Central Fund in the region of around £6,000,000 or £7,000,000. Taking those Estimates into consideration, I had to see what economies could be made and I know that the late Government would not have made economies in the way which I had to devise and for which I got so much criticism. Deputy Connolly criticised me for covering myself in an unorthodox way and moving outside the financial year in my device about the wheat. But Fianna Fáil would not have done any of these things. They would have had to find at the lowest £8,750,000 more. Two Deputies opposite did admit that not only would taxation to the full amount have been imposed upon the people of the country but more, because instead of economies they required greater expenditure, and that, of course, means greater taxation on the people.

But they did not mind that; it was no trouble to them. They would have welcomed the idea of putting an additional £10,000,000 on the people. I suggest that in comparison with that I have saved money. I have saved the people of this country from a great deal of expenditure without doing any harm to anybody with the exception of the major tax on petrol. In order to reduce the gap that had to be met I had only to put on one major tax and one other slight tax. Deputy Derrig, however, came to the conclusion that I had got a windfall of £2,500,000. His colleagues said that I had taken that sum on very abusive terms, that I would not be able to pay for this year's bread, that it was bad finance, that I was rocking this State to its very foundations and that I was bringing the State to ruin within the ambit of one year.

If Deputy Derrig reads in a little bit more detail what I have said with regard to the social services he will agree, I am sure, that the quotation which he gave this evening did not entirely represent my views. He referred, out of the context of my speech about social services, to the institution of slavery. If the Deputy goes back on that speech he will find that I made a contrast between the two policies regarding aiding people or helping people to aid themselves when they come up against the ordinary incidences in life of sickness, temporary or permanent, old age or periods of unemployment. One policy is to enable people to meet them themselves by putting wages on a level in accordance with the quotations I gave from Papal Encyclicals the other night, by giving them wages which would not only allow them to live in frugal comfort but which would allow them to put by enough to acquire a little property. If they can acquire a little property they need no longer be dependent to the same extent on social services provided by the State. The pride that we are taking in increasing the social services is bad. As far as I am concerned, it came from a bad spirit because it seemed to regard it as a good thing to have people dependent upon the State. I do not think that that is a good thing. We should aim at a way of life in which you could dispense with all social services. Some people have been brought up to take for granted conditions where wage levels are not enough for people to meet their necessities when they failed in health, when they fell into unemployment or when they came to a certain point of old age, and that therefore one had to keep up the social services to some extent.

I have always paralleled the phrase quoted by Deputy Derrig with another phrase that, if you do not restore the institution of property— and that is not property for capitalists but property for everybody—there is no alternative but to restore the institution of slavery. You must get people in such a condition that they will provide for themselves out of what they get or else you are going to throw them more and more dependent upon a State system. I do not believe in the State system. At least, I believe in minimising it as much as possible. I aim at the position, I do not know whether it will be achieved or not, in which the people concerned will have less and less need of State assistance of this type and will be able to depend upon their own resources and what they are able to contribute to certain schemes.

One question. What are the people to do while they are waiting for their salaries to be raised to the point at which they can depend on themselves?

Clearly, there must be social services.

What are the poor people to do while they are waiting for their salaries to be increased?

The Deputy has not understood my phrase. I have said, I have always said, that you cannot take society as static. You cannot say: "We are going to do this and everything will be all right after a certain point." You must agree that there are certain people not able to provide for themselves. They must be met.

What did we do 40 years ago? We went through hard times.

I do think there was a desperate decline in the last 15 years. People were being asked to regard as a good thing that more and more they were being provided for by the State. I do not think that was a good thing. I do not think that that is what humanity requires. I do not think it was good for humanity to have it trained along those lines. I prefer the other system. All the same, one must have time. There are certain people who must be provided for at a particular time. Possibly, some of those people will never be able to provide for some of these instances and they will have to be maintained and carried along but, it is a bad thing to come along boasting about the extent of social services. I would rather have people boasting about the standard of life people achieved for themselves through their earnings, the reward they get in return for the services they give to the community.

Deputy Derrig has pleaded that in time of war people in different countries were mobilised for war tasks so here, in peace, we should mobilise people for productive effort and have better results in the way of productivity. I waited to hear from him where he felt the mobilisation should have taken place or where there had been any impediment to such mobilisation. If he thinks that it is a mobilisation of people for productive efforts and results to have a lot of people grouped around a transatlantic air service or the short-wave station, I do not agree with him on either of these things. Neither was a productive effort. I would rather keep people away from being mobilised around these which I regard as wasteful matters and try to get them mobilised along better lines. I do not know that there is any line of development that was either thought of, argued about, investigated and found to be at all likely to be productive, where there has been a failure to attempt to mobilise the effort of people in this country. If there is any such failure, I would like to have it pointed out to me and we will soon remake the error or repair the omission.

Deputy Derrig has apparently thrown overboard the whole Congested Districts Board districts in this country. He announced to-night that it was his view that in these areas private enterprise will not work, that you will not get anybody to go down to the Congested Districts Board areas and invest their money and that the Government must take over. That is a very big decision for one to be required to take just casually in the course of a debate like this. I ask myself what evidence was there that Deputy Derrig had to come to that conclusion. As far as I can make out, the only thing he prides himself on is this amazing proposal to have glasshouses in the Gaeltacht. If Deputy Derrig is in any doubt about the lack of enthusiasm with which that project, when first announced, was greeted by members of his own Government, I would like to show him the file. It was not believed in as a project. As far as I can make out, it was a scheme which the ex-Minister for Finance, who had a constituency in Louth, decided to impose upon the Gaeltacht, but most of those Deputies or Ministers who were in touch with the Gaeltacht were in complete derision of the scheme. I wait for contradiction on that if it is not a correct statement. They did not believe in it, the Government that put it forward. I take it that that marks the high-water mark of the efforts which Deputy Derrig and his colleagues were making to get the Government to go to the Congested District Board areas and take over work, having accepted as a principle that private enterprise would not work in the Congested District Board areas. We can only say that, having come to that amazing decision that private enterprise would not work, they had not gone very far along the road to ensure that the Government would fill the gap that private enterprise, in their minds, had left.

Deputy Lemass expressed himself to-night as being very resentful about statements about corruption. He was as resentful as he could hope to have this House believe he really meant to be. In other words, he had all the outward appearance—the rather hoarse utterance as if choked with emotion and being very—on the surface—angry over statements that were made about administrative corruption. I am amazed he did not show that resentment away back in 1943. In 1943, Deputy Murphy, as he then was, brought into this House that famous matter of the branch exchange appointment that was to be made and read Deputy Moylan's letter as sent to Mr. Gilligan, which is to be found at column 2061 of the report of the 25th May. I am parodying the letter, or part of it, where he said: "Do not worry about this. There is to be a board of course that will select people who will be competent." He said that he believed Miss Gilligan would fulfil that condition, that is, the condition that she should be certified as competent and suitable. He said, finally: "I shall appoint the person best suited to the position from a political viewpoint." I want to have this argued here. If people want to interrupt me, I would like to have the interruptions made so that this thing could be threshed out as to whether that is political corruption.

Does the Chair favour that course, Sir?

Nobody has tried it yet.

I should think that what Deputy Moylan meant was that the appointment should be such a one as would stand up against political criticism from any part of this House or the Seanad.

Good effort.

That is a great effort, Deputy. May I read the simple sentence again? "I believe Miss Gilligan will fulfil that condition. From the list certified as competent, I shall appoint the person best suited to the position from a political viewpoint."

Not from a Party political viewpoint.

I should like to hear the Deputy's viewpoint, with your permission.

I do not want to hear him. The Minister is concluding.

You are the judge of order in this House but I put it to you that debate is enlightened and enlivened by interruption.

The Minister is so deadening that we would rather get the thing over.

Deputy Butler does not seem to think that.

The Minister is almost moribund.

Mr. Burke

Will the Minister give us the charity sermon he gave us the last night?

Possibly. What does that phrase mean? I suggest it means that a political job was going to be given. Does anybody think it means anything else? "I shall appoint the person best suited to the position from a political viewpoint." There is nobody facing me so dumb as not to know what that means. "I am going to give a political job"—I suggest that is what it means. When I quoted that letter in this House the other night I prefaced it by saying that in the time of the last Administration one of the Parliamentary Secretaries had got to be more or less given the title of "Patronage Secretary". That I understand is the situation. One of the Parliamentary Secretaries whom I was criticising sat in this House and heard me say that and repeat it and he never denied it.

We heard you talk about Kilbeggan. We know what that amounts to.

He could have interrupted me when I talked about the "Patronage Secretary", but he did not do it. In fact there is no interruption to-night when I talk about the "Patronage Secretary" and when I say that that was the system. I call all that administrative corruption. If people are full of resentment about it now they can be so but I wish they were resentful when that particular programme was adopted. I wish they were resentful during all the years when, apparently, innocent people like Deputy Butler were told that no political wire-pulling or anything else was going on.

I never experienced it.

No, possibly not. There are people who are simple enough to live and not to understand what is going on around them. I do not want any more threats about people being full of resentment. All these things are facts. Nineteen forty-three was the year in which resentment should have been displayed. After that it was disclosed in Dáil Éireann. I think two of the daily papers in this country had editorials headed "The Spoils System". About a year later, at the time of the Fianna Fáil Árd Fheis, a further statement was made to the effect that the fruits of Government policy had to go to Government supporters. Then when there was tagged on to that the phrase "all other things being equal" there was a most amusing editorial in one of the papers which said that if this was really meant as a statement of what was happening under a Fianna Fáil Government there must have been a record number of dead heats since it went into office because it had been discovered that most of the jobs had gone to supporters —and yet. "All other things being equal."

So this is the speech on charity.

I would like to leave this matter there but, in leaving it, I am not in any way withdrawing what I said the last time I spoke. I have gone out of my way to reiterate it in order to show that I believe in what I am saying.

What about charity?

One of the ways of being charitable would be to allow people who merit posts to achieve them.

I am only reminding the Minister about charity.

It would be a charity to allow people who merit appointments, even though they do not belong to a particular political faith, to achieve those appointments. It is rather a lack of charity that the scheme should have been followed out for a number of years on the lines of Deputy Moylan's statement.

And the Cumann na nGael Party.

I thought I had got rid of this turf matter which has been reintroduced to-night. I thought I had got agreement the other night. I certainly think I can get agreement to-night that you cannot have going on in this country at one and the same time the machine-winning of turf by Bord na Móna, the getting of hand-won turf from the county council bogs, and the cutting and installing in the Park of timber for fuel at the rate at which that was being done over the autumn and winter of last year and in the early months of this year while at the same time you are having anything in the order of about 30,000 tons of coal imported per month. If you have 30,000 tons of coal imported monthly there is no room for the machine-winning of turf on the scale on which it was projected. With all the timber brought into this area for sale as fuel and also with the bringing in and dumping in the Park of the vast quantities of turf brought in and got from the county council bogs by the hand-won process something has to go. The ex-Minister for Industry and Commerce made it quite clear that he realised what had to go, namely, the stopping of turf production on the county council bogs as cut by county council workers by hand. I only raised this point—I have raised it three or four times already in this House— because we are being blamed for causing recent unemployment by stopping the hand-winning of turf on county council bogs. Deputy Lemass had intended to do that. Deputy Lemass had made the plans to bring that to a standstill.

So far as county council workers are concerned.

Does it matter in a question of turf who cuts it If the whole difficulty is the volume of stuff being produced, does it matter who cuts it?

It does. It did in that case because it handed it over to Bord na Móna.

All that Deputy Lemass was doing was changing over the system of production. He was going to have all the turf previously cut by hand cut by Bord na Móna. He had also the machine production programme; all the timber in the Park, and 30,000 tons of coal imported into the country. The thing could not last. The Deputy knows it. I invite people to read again the quotations I gave from Deputy Lemass when I was winding up the Budget debate on the 25th May. The quotations are to be discovered in the Official Report at column 2073 and onwards. Deputy Lemass himself knew the thing was coming to an end. I would say, further, that we have not found, so far, any great evidence of unemployment caused by the closing down on turf. For the areas where unemployment was supposed to have been caused by this we had schemes to drain off whatever unemployment there was but we found it hard to get the workers.

They are flying to England.

Why should they fly to England if there are schemes for them? If they are, I am not responsible for their going if there is work provided in substitution.

The work has been provided.

Not at all.

The men cannot be got for this alternative work. I urge Deputies to go to their constituencies and say I am making this point and urge the people who are unemployed to flock into the employment exchanges and register. That is a challenge. They are not doing so at the moment. When we get them at the employment exchanges offering themselves for work we give them work. We are not going to give them easy money. We are not going to give unemployment money so long as there is work available for them.

There are 70,000 unemployed registered for whom you have not work yet.

I am talking of the particular people who are supposed to be specially unemployed because of the failure of the turf schemes. Let us see them.

The Minister is only trading on the ignorance of the public.

What is the ignorance?

The Minister is trying to induce us to believe that it was possible for the people of his Ministry to devise schemes to absorb these turf workers overnight.

I am only saying that we cannot get the unemployed turf workers overnight but that we are searching for them for days.

I will be able to give the Minister 500 in a week's time.

Five hundred from where? From the County Dublin?

From Fuel Importers in the Park.

From County Dublin?

A number of them, but not all, are from Dublin. Fuel Importers are letting them go.

Let us see the list of the 500 people. There is the test.

I would be very grateful if the Minister would give them employment.

The unemployment would have been caused if Deputy Lemass had remained in office. He had taken steps to bring things to a finish. Finally, we have not found any great evidence of unemployment in this connection.

What about all the lorries that are lying idle in the country? There are people unemployed through lack of haulage work.

What about what?

What about all the lorries that were working in the country?

I am talking about turf workers, to start with.

These were employed at turf haulage.

You are talking of hauliers. That is a different problem. I understood the question here was as to the people who worked on the bogs. If anybody wants to know about the people who worked on the bogs let them have a chat with Deputy MacEntee and ask him to detail what were the impressions that he gathered from the meeting that he had with all the people he called in on 9th April, 1947, to put up before them the scheme for the new drive for turf. I think they will get from the Deputy, from his memory, part of the reasons why there is not so much unemployment actually caused by the dropping of this turf scheme.

Do you not know the reason why they are not taking up the work offered?

What is it?

The turf workers were earning very good wages in the bogs. The work that the Galway County Council was able to offer them was not nearly as remunerative. It does not carry anything like half the wages which could be earned on turf work and, therefore, they will not go to work on the jobs offered.

You have to guarantee people not merely that they will be continued on work to produce something that is not required but that you will give them extra wages to do that. Incidentally, what was the rate of wages paid in the bogs in County Galway and what is the rate of wages paid on these other schemes of development?

A man would earn as much as £8 a week on turf work.

I want to know what was the rate of wages paid them for the work because, if they earned a big sum by working overtime, they can do the same on the other schemes.

Will the Minister mention any scheme in Galway on which a worker can work overtime and get the same wages?

Is that what is wanted?

I have given my reply.

I put it to Deputy MacEntee that the group of engineers or county surveyors that he met asked him to close down all Government work and to close down social services and said that it was only when that was done that people would be driven out to the bogs. Deputy MacEntee was given by man after man from the counties statements that people would not go on to the bogs. He was told case after case where certain people had reported men for signing on at the labour exchanges as being available for work and yet, when work was offered on the bogs, they would not take it.

Does Deputy O'Leary accept the truth of that statement or Deputy Dunne?

Deputy MacEntee was told that by county council engineers or county surveyors. Is there not a point in that, that Deputy MacEntee said to that meeting, "I take it that is the common experience"? and the chorus came from the whole of the 26, "Yes."

Does the Minister for Local Government accept that? He is my successor.

That was away back in April, 1947.

It is on the basis of these statements that the present Government have formulated their policy of dealing with turf workers?

It is not. I am throwing it in as a revelation that came to me rather late in explanation of the fact that it was not possible to find so many people unemployed as one might have expected when certain schemes were dropped, because it is quite clear that these people had other things to work at.

Are we to take that as a matter that the Government have definitely determined upon and to which the Minister for Local Government agrees—that the persons unemployed are persons who are not wanting work?

I have not said one word to that effect.

Is that the drift of the argument?

There is no drift— there is the very definite point that the Deputy was told and accepted from the county surveyors that their common experience over the whole country was that they could not get people out on the bogs.

May I put it to the Minister that the point is not what I accepted, but what the present Government accepts in regard to the matter?

I understood that I was so deadening that the Deputy did not want to talk.

The Minister has now become lively and enlightening.

Enlightening to the House. That was what 26 county engineers or surveyors told the then Minister and that is part of the explanation I was given as to why there is not so much unemployment to be discovered. Finally, I may say on that matter that the turf schemes would have been dropped in any event no matter what Government was in power. As to the wheat which had been purchased in Deputy Lemass's time, I wonder could we get the facts clear before we argue as to why certain things occurred. Seventy-five thousand tons of Argentine wheat were bought at the enormous price of £50 per ton. I understand it was the highest price ever paid for wheat from abroad. It certainly puts a blister on this country of £2,600,000 odd by way of subsidy, as against that 75,000 tons purchase of Argentine wheat. These are facts. It is also a fact that that lot of wheat was bought, I think, on the 17th February; it might have been late on the 16th February. Certainly it could not be more than 36 hours before Deputy Lemass went out of office as Minister. Again I am speaking of facts. I want now to assert further that a delegation or deputation or group sent by Deputy Lemass to the Argentine in May, 1947, brought him back news that 75,000 tons of Argentine wheat could be bought at £50 a ton.

I put it to him that, whether then or later, the price was described by one or other member of the delegation as an asinine price. That cannot be regarded as a recommendation of it. That 75,000 tons of Argentine wheat remained there for purchase, or at least a lot amounting to 75,000 tons, whether the same lot or not I cannot say, remained there for purchase at that price from May to February. This was not any question of a sudden proposal that dropped out of the skies and of the then Minister, in his extremity, grabbing at it. It was there in May, June and July and up to the early part of 1948.

It was not there on the 1st January.

My information is to the contrary. Am I right that Grain Importers Limited were not consulted about this buying? I am certainly right in saying that it was not done through them and it was the only wheat transaction that was not done through Grain Importers Limited.

The Argentine purchases of all kinds were made through the same agency.

Through Grain Importers Limited?

Through the same agency.

I want to assert that this particular purchase of 75,000 tons of Argentine wheat was not done through Grain Importers Limited and that they were astonished when they heard about it, and that it would never have been bought had they been allowed to say their say about it.

They would have reduced the ration.

The last point I want to make about this is: will Deputy Lemass assert that that wheat was to be had for purchase on 16th or 17 February and was not to be had for purchase later, or if an attempt was made to purchase it later? I have no such information. My information is that it lay there from May and would have lain there until this month of May. In any event, the Deputy was never warned that it was likely to disappear. In strange contradistinction to leaving the wheat decision over for a week as he had left the turf over, he snapped at this very dear buying. I think all the circumstances surrounding that make it a matter that it is proper for me to raise in this House, and to have the Deputy give whatever explanation he can. So far he has not given any satisfactory explanation. It was a shocking dear consignment, done—why I do not know—within 36 hours before the Deputy left office as Minister, and certainly done without consultation with Grain Importers Limited. I understand it was done against any advice that Grain Importers Limited had given. At any rate, there is the situation. People, one of these days, will find out if anything that I have stated to be a fact to-night is not a fact. I assert that all the things that I have announced are definite matters of fact, and that they require explanation. I have not got any satisfactory explanation so far.

Surely the explanation is to be found in the figures given by the Minister for Industry and Commerce to-day. If you had not got the wheat you could not have maintained the ration.

The question is could the wheat have been bought on the 19th or the 20th February, and might not that be left to the people who had to bring in the Financial Resolution to find the money.

I know what you would say if I had failed to buy the wheat and missed it.

What was the prospect of missing it? There was no remote chance of missing it. It was on offer from May, 1947, certainly up to the 16th or 17th February, and the purchase had to be rushed even though the Minister was departing from his office within a day or a day and a half but the finding of the money was left to his successors.

Deputy Lemass is quite clear now that anybody would be a fool to pronounce as between inflation and deflation. I am going to read what he said on the 5th May. I quote from column 1218 of the Official Debates where the Deputy referred to two indicators:

"These two indicators are, of course, important, because currency notes and bank debits are the most liquid form of wealth, and if, in fact, as I believe, the gap between the supply of incomes and the supply of goods has closed, that the inflationary period is over and that the deflationary movement is now beginning, it is in these two indicators that the first sign would appear."

At column 1219 he said:

"All the indicators appear to suggest that we have passed the stage in which inflationary forces can be said to be at work and are coming into the stage in which there is a danger of deflation."

At column 1220 the Deputy said:—

"I think it is far more serious if the Government has misread the signs and is going to proceed upon the basis of an inflationary situation."

At the same column, lower down, he said:—

"My own view is that there is no indicator at present which appears to point to an inflationary situation here."

At the bottom of 1221 he said:—

"... from the information available to me—the limited information published in the Trade Journal and the facts of day to day economic activities in the country as I know them— that there is not an inflationary situation and that, on the contrary, we appear to be moving to a deflationary situation.”

Finally, in column 1223 he referred to the expenditure of moneys and said it was desirable:—

"... in present circumstances and will in fact be urgently necessary if I read the general economic indicators right, as a corrective to deflationary tendencies."

All that is from a Deputy who now presents himself to the House as being very concerned about this matter. He was quite clear on the 5th May that inflation was over and deflation was on. All the economic and finance indicators were there and were quoted by him, and it was a shocking thing, he said, that the present Government should misread the situation. Now, apparently, he has switched around and thinks there is inflation, and that it is a more likely danger. That is a big change from the 5th May. I am only giving that to show the basis for the Deputy's statements. The Deputy is reckless about statements. He picks up one thing or two things and builds a whole structure of alleged economic thought upon them. That is what it comes to: that what was solemnly said and seriously believed on the 5th May is now thrown overboard.

Now, we get another picture presented to us. The picture now is that we are in an inflationary period, and in that situation, of course, the Financial Resolutions and the present Finance Bill are criticised because certain things are not to be found in them. When the Deputy was speaking I interrupted to ask him what was his view about the situation in the world and here last September. He rather skated away from that. Amongst the many memoranda that I have had the pleasure of reading was a very persuasive one from the Deputy's Department towards the 25th September proving that inflation was around, in fact that there was a terrific danger of a much worse inflationary situation and proposing remedies. One of the remedies was to reimpose the standstill Order on wages. Possibly the Deputy does not remember that. He did put as an alternative that there should be an appeal made to certain people not to look for more wages. I think the memorandum indicated a preference for that. Why then does he criticise what I had to say on the Financial Resolutions? I made an appeal to certain workers not to look for increased wages. Of course, the phrase I used about profits was parodied and distorted—that I was moving towards reimposing a standstill Order on wages. That is not to be found in my words. I rather think, however, that that argument was abandoned before the end of the debate. In the Deputy's memorandum he did suggest what I think was the better alternative, an appeal to people not to look for more wages. I am putting it further—that the appeal should be made to people whether they get more wages or not, not to spend them. Why does the Deputy think it was proper for him as a member of the Government in September to suggest an appeal as the better way of countering inflation and then criticise me for doing it when I have succeeded to Governmental control?

That was not my criticism.

Part of it is that I am not doing the things that should be done if I really fear inflation, and that we should have mopped up the extra money by increased taxation and by restricting prices. That certainly was the proposal in the memorandum in September. It is rather difficult to get anybody trained in Fianna Fáil methods to realise that there are two ways in which one can approach most projects. You can either try to make people do something by some system of control by putting a heavy hand upon them, or you can ask people to behave in a particular way; you can try to persuade them to act for their own good in a particular way. We here have adopted the second system. We do not believe so much in coercion. We do not believe in the business of having someone sitting in Government buildings and deciding a lot of things, and then getting a group of civil servants with a number of Emergency Powers Orders to coerce them to act on certain lines. We prefer to put the facts before them, to argue with them, to try to get them to believe in the dangers that are there.

Even to threaten them?

Even to threaten them. I think you are entitled to say to people: "We are asking you to do this; if you do not do it there are ways we have of taking from you money which we think you should not have ever had left to you." If that is a threat, I have uttered that threat several times.

With regard to inflation we believe in the better method. We are going to try it, in any event, to see if it will work by appealing to the people and asking them to use their judgment. Inflation, to go back to the old song, is a question of too much money chasing too few goods. The money does not begin to chase the goods because it is put into the hands of certain wage-earners. It is only when they go to the shops to spend it and when the money is put into circulation that it is a dangerous thing. We have done two things. We have appealed to the people not to spend. We ask them to remember that if they withhold purchasing for a bit they will get better value later on. They can keep their money with some certainty that they will get better value at a later date.

Would the Minister——

Keep the solemn thought for a tick. In addition we have done this. We have drained off £12,000,000 through a loan. Further, we have reinstated the interest rate on certain savings in the hope that we shall redevelop the habit of saving amongst our people which the last Government had destroyed. What does the Deputy wish to ask now?

The Minister has said that he appealed to those who have money, particularly workers, not to spend it. Would the Minister amplify that statement and let the House know what he thinks is going to become of those people who happen to be employers, manufacturers and shopkeepers, upon whose products this money is not going to be spent? The Minister is, in fact, telling the House that his remedy for the present high cost of living is to reduce employment in order to make an attack upon wages and prices.

In what way am I reducing employment?

I am asking what are the employers and manufacturers upon whose products the money is not to be spent going to do?

The Deputy thinks it is wrong to ask people not to spend money. Deputy Lemass urged me to drain off that money by taxation, by going for a surplus, by budgeting for £4,000,000 or £5,000,000 in excess of requirements and putting it into some fund so that people could not buy the goods that could be purchased by that £5,000,000.

It is not a question of Deputy Lemass' policy but of the policy of the Minister. Would the Minister tell the House what he wants the people to do with these savings that they will accumulate in the way he suggests?

To spend them when there is good spending for them.

And in the meantime?

And in the meantime put them in the Post Office.

What is the Post Office going to do with the money?

What does the Deputy suggest?

The same as the Minister did with the ways and means which he paid off—invest the savings of the Irish people outside this country.

Whatever will be done, the same thing will be done as Deputy Lemass wanted me to do with the £5,000,000 surplus for which he suggested that I should budget. Deputy Lemass is looking very worried at Deputy MacEntee's interruptions because they are cutting across his policy. With regard to the contention about goods, there are not enough goods in the shops to stand up against the purchasing power in the hands of the people. It will be a long day before you drain off sufficient purchasing power to leave the shops with goods on their shelves.

So the Minister thinks that these shopkeepers have the faculty of reproduction and that they are going to multiply their stocks merely by leaving goods on the shelves. Is that the Minister's theory?

I hope I have not descended to that level. I say there are too few goods on the shopkeepers' shelves at the moment. They will be bought but I ask the workers not to join in the scramble for these goods. Let other people buy them if they wish at present prices. Let the tourists buy them at the dearer prices—the dearer the better—and the goods will be brought back to the shelves by the manufacturers of the country.

The Minister's position, he has told us now, is that we have too few goods, too much money chasing too few goods, and his remedy for that situation is to ask the Irish people to deny themselves the use of these goods and to allow foreigners to purchase them.

I say that we have not been able to stop tourists coming into the country. The impact of their purchasing power plus the purchasing power now free in the hands of Irish wage-earners will definitely add up to inflation if they all throng into the shops together. I appeal to our people not to join in that scramble, to hold their money. Deputy MacEntee thinks that if that happens manufacturers will not be asked to produce these goods. My answer is that not enough goods are being produced. There is plenty of demand for the goods at present produced. If we get more goods produced we do not care about the purchasing power.

A refinement of the Minister's position is that the Irish people should refrain from purchasing goods in order that they may become cheaper for the foreigner.

In order that they may become cheaper eventually for our own people. If foreigners come in here and are willing to pay dearer prices, well and good, but I want our people to refrain from doing that in the belief that they will get better value hereafter. They will get all the better value.

I wonder how the Minister calculates that our people will get better value when inflation develops?

When inflation does not develop. We are trying to stop inflation. If we get prices down, I do solemnly say, from all the indications I have, that if this present summer and autumn are handled properly and if people refrain from spending, they will get better value next year.

And the tourist will get more goods.

In other words, inflation will develop.

No, we are trying to check inflation and I believe we shall succeed, but we shall not succeed if everybody lumps into the shop together. Our way of stopping inflation is by suggesting to the people to stop buying. We have already got them to save £12,000,000 and we are trying to get them back into the ordinary savings movement. When a better situation develops, there will be more goods for everybody. That is our scheme; it may be laughed at but the Opposition theory is to control prices. When one thinks of the mess made of the control of prices for the last nine years, one must feel very sceptical as to how that plan would develop.

You have made no changes.

In what way?

In any way.

Prices have gone up.

Prices have not gone up.

Margarine and oatmeal.

Margarine and oatmeal, half a point.

And petrol.

And petrol is a tax on production! We believe that there is a danger of inflation and we believe that the way that situation can be avoided is by people succumbing to our inducement to save their money and not to spend it. That is my answer to people who say that, if I am really afraid of inflation, I should be restricting wages. I have a policy with regard to wages. I suggested in my Budget speech that, if people ask for increased wages and if they get them and spend them, they will, in the end, find that the wages have not the purchasing power they expected them to have; in other words, they will destroy the effect of the moneys they get, but I do not want to see them restricted in the moneys they get. I want to ask them, however, to appeal to them to use their judgment and to refrain from spending at this moment in the hope that a healthier situation will develop. They can bring that healthier situation about and can aid its development if they will refrain from spending.

Deputy Lemass was anxious that I should have a wage policy. I have advised the House that his wage policy, as developed in a memorandum last September, was wage control—a standstill Order. But he had the alternative of asking people not to look for more wages, and I am adding to that: "Do not spend the wages," and I think that is a still better policy.

Deputy Connolly asked me about production and incentives to production. I think we have given a considerable incentive in the past six weeks or two months to better production in the remission of the extra taxes, which have been so much criticised, on liquor of all types and tobacco. These things are regarded as amenities of life, as something nearly necessary. They are the things about which one hears great complaint in England—that the workers are deprived of them, and, being deprived of them, have not got the proper incentive to work. The Englishman gets a very much bigger wage than is got here and he has a cost of living which has been kept down deliberately, so that his wages have a bigger purchasing power in respect of the things he is able to get. He is not allowed to get certain things. He is made to save compulsorily and we have the same policy, except that we ask people to do it voluntarily. They had in contrast to the situation here prior to 18th February, an amazingly good situation. We are asking people to save voluntarily. We do not want to subject them compulsorily to the sort of austerities they have in England, and we suggest to them, for their own betterment, that they would be well advised, first, to produce more—and I think they are doing it to some degree —and, secondly, to refrain from cashing in in the way of enjoyment on the fruits of the earnings they get for their better production.

The Deputy asked me about prices and profits control and he suggests that there should be a court, that control should be operated through a court. I should like to have that discussed more intimately with the Deputy. I personally do not believe in price control.

What about the open forum? Why not discuss it here?

So I will, but we cannot discuss it intimately in all its detail in the half-hour available. I believe in open discussion, however, and I propose to discuss it. I do not believe in price control. I think price control has been a definite failure in this country. If there had been a real control, the situation would not have developed which we now have rectified, a situation in which the whole of life and society has been distorted and broken. We are trying to remake it, but it must be done slowly, because, if we rush at it, there is a danger of even worse tendencies developing.

So far as profits are concerned, I suggest that we do not need a court to deal with them. This House is the court for that and the information, if necessary, will be disclosed. I have already said in regard to profits that, whereas, when I was on the Opposition Benches, I had to make my calculations on the odd cutting I got with regard to business concerns, the profits they made and the dividends they declared, I now have a much more concise and definitely more accurate picture from official sources, and I have already made appeals to these industrialists, manufacturers, business men, traders of all types, to meet me, to meet the community and give us some relaxation in prices. Not very much heed was paid to what I said in the first stage and I advanced to the point of what has been called a threat here. If it is going to be regarded as a threat, let them regard it as a threat. I would put it in a different way. I say that these people were allowed to accumulate money for a particular purpose—to cushion themselves against the period in which they bought dearly and yet a price reduction was expected because materials were coming in rather cheaply. I think that situation has been reached, and, if the people who have been allowed to get these moneys for that cushioning purpose do not use them in that way, I think there is a moral right to go back and take them from them, and one of the ways in which I would come near to Deputy Connolly in this matter would be this, that eventually one may have to make public the profits being made by some of these groups.

In fairness to the section of the people whom the Minister——

May I remark before the Deputy makes his point, that one has to attack a big business man before the Deputy gets serious.

In your serious mood?

In my serious mood again—in fairness to the section of the people the Minister is attacking——

——does he suggest that the price of raw materials has declined over the past 12 months?

I had two business men in conversation with me within the past fortnight who assured me it had.

Has the price of cotton yarns, for instance, declined?

I am not talking of cotton yarns.

It is a raw material.

I do not assert that every raw material has fallen in price.

Has the price of steel fallen? Will the Minister cite one staple raw material, the price of which has fallen?

No, I will not; but I will do this: I will say that I have had conversations with business men and one of them went so far as to tell me that all the components of what he produced here have gone down in price.

Does that apply to the generality of raw materials?

It applies more widely than it does not.

If that be the case, the Minister should have no difficulty in mentioning a basic raw material which has declined in price over the past 12 months?

For the time being, I do not propose to go into these matters. Profits are what I am concerned with and they have increased. Profits increased in 1947 over 1946, in the main. There may be an odd minus sign here and there, but, in the main, they have increased, and certainly there was no decline in 1946 over previous years. If that is the situation, what is the good of talking to me about prices of raw materials having gone up? Profits are what I am after. Profits have gone up and Deputy Connolly may rest assured that there are different ways of meeting this situation. I am proceeding by a method of persuasion or—maybe the phrase used here would better apply— by threat. In the end, we may have to say to some of these people: "Very good; if you persist in your attitude and if you try to have the public believe that you are not making money, and not making money beyond what you are entitled to make, give us leave to publish the figures relating to groups of industries and business." I wonder will they welcome that from me, because, if they do not, I will have to ask why.

Does that apply to the Grafton Street traders?

I am not going to be drawn into details about individuals.

Does it apply to the Grafton Street traders?

I am saying that over the whole range of business people, of traders of all types, the 1947 profits were up on 1946. I am speaking of profits before tax was taken off, which is even worse because, in 1946, certain heavy taxes were taken which were not taken in 1947. The profits left after the taxes in 1947 go to show a great advance on 1946. What is the good of talking to me about components in the way of raw material. I want prices broken. I think they should be broken. Deputy Connolly has suggested a method. He has suggested a new court with control over prices and profits. I think Deputy Connolly will agree with me that a simpler way is to bring into operation a scheme with regard to price control and to warn industrialists and others that, whether that price control works out or not, at the end of the year we will have certain profits above a certain standard from certain people. I think a scheme like that, if it were brought into operation, would do more to bring down prices than any investigation by a court. Deputy Connolly, when he reads the debate at the time of the introduction of the Industrial Relations Bill, will see that there I made a specific suggestion in regard to the present Labour Court. I asked that they should be requested to consider whether the wages balance was a desirable one and that they should then add on to it.

One suggestion I made was that they should then discover what would be the result on the community if so much purchasing power were lessened. The then Minister for Industry and Commerce immediately took that suggestion up and said that my aim in putting forward that amendment was that the Labour Court would report that, while a wage demanded might not be completely justified, it would be a good thing to have extra purchasing power in the community. The then Minister for Industry and Commerce said that that would be followed by a resultant period of deflation. I was thinking of the other point, namely, that a wage which might be regarded as justified theoretically could not be given, because it might give too much purchasing power. All the terms of reference suggested by me were brushed aside by the then Minister for Industry and Commerce, who described them as economic theories. He said he did not want his court messed up. I suggest now that we try out what we are at for the time being. If that is not successful we will, if necessary, bring before this House as a court certain details of the business lives of some people who are operating in what I think is an unjustifiable way.

That is almost like blackmail.

Does the Deputy think it is blackmail that I should say to business people who, I think, are in the main suspect by the community of having made too much money over the war years that there is one way of meeting them; that suspicion is either justified or it is not; if it is not justified, then let the business people disclose their profits in public. Why should they not accept that?

But that is not what the Minister is saying. The Minister is saying: "You do a certain thing or I shall expose you". That is what the blackmailer says—you do a certain thing I want you to do or I will expose you.

Is that what the Deputy calls blackmail?

That is what the law calls it.

I thought blackmail was the extortion of money from people by unsavoury means. Where are my unsavoury means? I will merely tell the public what profits these people were making. I do not regard that as blackmail. We will disclose facts to them, and only facts.

The Minister will remember his attempt to make the banks disclose certain accounts on one occasion. He was very sorry afterwards.

I do not remember the occasion.

That was the time when he was the friend of the business community.

I do not remember the occasion and I do not want any innuendoes. Will the Deputy please say what he is at?

The Minister will remember the occasion.

I remember an occasion when the Deputy came into this House and began to talk about the personal income of a member of the Dáil.

When the Minister was previously a Minister—when he was Minister for Industry and Commerce—he will no doubt recall it.

I do not recall it and I want to be reminded of it.

You do not want to be reminded of it at all.

I am challenging publicity.

You do not want to be reminded of it.

Come into the open.

You will get it.

I want it now.

The Minister will get it as soon as I have time to verify my references. But my memory is not misleading me.

It is a good method to say a thing first and verify it afterwards.

And that is what his colleague, Deputy Lemass, did.

Will the Minister consider the question of a specific appeal in regard to the lowering of rates and profits in given sections of industry?

There could not be a general appeal because that would involve consideration of the capital held by different business groups and then telling people that we desired to have such and such lopped off their prices. They know themselves what the actual position is and they know that in the end it is the bulk sum that is revealed. That is what we have to let the public know something more about. I would prefer to deal with these people as a matter of confidence. I have appealed to them publicly. I would like to meet them privately, alone or with the Minister for Industry and Commerce, to discuss these matters with them. I do think there should be some reduction in prices and I am going to take every means open to me to secure that. If that does not work out we shall have to resort to Deputy Connolly's method. I have no belief in control of prices. I would ask the House to say that in certain conditions profits ought to be reduced. I do not think Deputy Connolly's method is the best one. It would be too long drawn out and the element of publicity might not be desirable.

Finally, I ask Deputy Connolly to have regard to the benefit of incomes being slowed up by prices. My phrase will be found in column 1057 of Volume 110: "Recent experience confirms that the benefit of an increase in money incomes is rapidly swallowed up by rising prices." I believe that to be so. I could not quite follow the Deputy's answer to me because he did make the point that in the main wages lagged behind prices. I will agree with that. But, although they are a step or two behind, I still think that what I have said is true and that any attempt to get nearer to the prevailing rate will only result in prices soaring a little higher. I think there is always that danger.

As far as the workers are concerned they believe that an increase in wages will overcome that time lag. They cannot approach it from the other aspect.

Deputy Connolly, take your medicine now like a man. Take your medicine. You are being forcibly fed with Fine Gael theory.

The Deputy evidently does not like a public discussion on these economic matters. I understand Deputy Connolly's point. I know the workers are always complaining that they still lag behind. Experience has shown that they never get in front. Although it is difficult to get these unfortunate people to believe it, it would be better if they could be brought to believe that they would do better in the long run by trying to stand still at the point they are at now, thereby trying to bring prices down. The tendency is the other way. We are doing our best to prevent prices rising but with all the money that is being scattered round there is undoubtedly likely to be a tendency towards inflation. We want to stop that.

I do not think there is anything further I want to say but I hope that Deputy MacEntee at some time, when he has verified his references, will deal with the scandalous innuendo——

It is not scandalous. The Deputy remembers a certain Bill to examine the accounts of the banks' customers.

There was a rule in this House that if a man could not stand over a statement he made he withdrew it. I suppose it would be hard to impose that rule on Deputy MacEntee. I had probably better leave him wallow in that. Sooner or later he will make some attempt to justify it, but I do not think he will justify it.

I will do better than the Minister did in relation to the Locke inquiry.

The Minister has made a point with regard to the withdrawal of a statement. If there was a serious reflection made on any member of the House the statement should be withdrawn but, as the Chair understands it, at the moment there has not been any serious reflection.

The Deputy has heard what the Chair has said—that there is no serious reflection meant. I suppose he accepts that.

The ruling of the Chair must not be made the subject of a discussion here. The Chair has ruled that there was no specific, serious reflection made on any member of the House.

I am not accusing the Minister of dishonourable conduct. I am not alleging he abused his position here in order to advance his private interests, or anything like that. That is not what I meant.

I think nobody cares very much what the Deputy means.

Question put: "That the Bill be now read a Second Time."
The Dáil divided: Tá, 70; Níl, 58.

  • Beirne, John.
  • Belton, John.
  • Blowick, Joseph.
  • Brennan, Joseph P.
  • Browne, Noel C.
  • Browne, Patrick.
  • Byrne, Alfred.
  • Byrne, Alfred Patrick.
  • Coburn, James.
  • Cogan, Patrick.
  • Collins, Seán.
  • Commons, Bernard.
  • Connolly, Roderick J.
  • Corish, Brendan.
  • Cosgrave, Liam.
  • Costello, John A.
  • Cowan, Peadar.
  • Crotty, Patrick J.
  • Davin, William.
  • Desmond, Daniel.
  • Dillon, James M.
  • Dockrell, Maurice E.
  • Donnellan, Michael.
  • Doyle, Peadar S.
  • Dunne, Seán.
  • Everett, James.
  • Fagan, Charles.
  • Finucane, Patrick.
  • Fitzpatrick, Michael.
  • Flanagan, Oliver J.
  • Flynn, John.
  • Giles, Patrick.
  • Halliden, Patrick J.
  • Hogan, Patrick.
  • Hughes, Joseph.
  • Keane, Seán.
  • Koyes, Michael.
  • Kinane, Patrick.
  • Kyne, Thomas A.
  • Larkin, James.
  • Lehane, Con.
  • Lehane, Patrick D.
  • McAuliffe, Patrick.
  • MacBride, Seán.
  • MacEoin, Seán.
  • McFadden, Michael Og.
  • McGilligan, Patrick.
  • McMenamin, Daniel.
  • McQuillan, John.
  • Madden, David J.
  • Morrissey, Daniel.
  • Mulcahy, Richard.
  • Murphy, Timothy J.
  • Norton, William.
  • O'Gorman, Patrick J.
  • O'Higgins, Michael J.
  • O'Higgins, Thomas F.
  • O'Higgins, Thomas F. (Jun.)
  • O'Leary, John.
  • O'Reilly, Patrick.
  • O'Sullivan, Martin.
  • Palmer, Patrick W.
  • Pattison, James P.
  • Reynolds, Mary.
  • Roddy, Joseph.
  • Rooney, Eamonn.
  • Sheehan, Michael.
  • Sheldon, William A. W.
  • Sweetman, Gerard.
  • Timoney, John J.

Níl

  • Allen, Denis.
  • Bartley, Gerald.
  • Beegan, Patrick.
  • Blaney, Neal.
  • Boland, Gerald.
  • Bourke, Dan.
  • Brady, Brian.
  • Brady, Seán.
  • Breathnach, Cormac.
  • Brennan, Thomas.
  • Breslin, Cormac.
  • Buckley, Seán.
  • Burke, Patrick.
  • Butler, Bernard.
  • Childers, Erskine H.
  • Colley, Harry.
  • Collins, James J.
  • Corry, Martin J.
  • Crowley, Honor Mary.
  • Davern, Michael J.
  • Derrig, Thomas.
  • De Valera, Vivion.
  • Flynn, Stephen.
  • Gilbride, Eugene.
  • Gorry, Patrick J.
  • Harris, Thomas.
  • Hilliard, Michael.
  • Kennedy, Michael J.
  • Killilea, Mark.
  • Kilroy, James.
  • Kissane, Eamon.
  • Kitt, Michael F.
  • Lahiffe, Robert.
  • Lemass, Seán F.
  • Little, Patrick J.
  • Lydon, Michael F.
  • Lynch, John.
  • McCann, John.
  • McEllistrim, Thomas.
  • MacEntee, Seán.
  • McGrath, Patrick.
  • Maguire, Patrick J.
  • Moylan, Seán.
  • O Briain, Donnchadh.
  • O'Grady, Seán.
  • O'Reilly, Matthew.
  • Ormonde, John.
  • O'Rourke, Daniel.
  • O'Sullivan, Ted.
  • Rice, Bridget M.
  • Ruttledge, Patrick J.
  • Ryan, James.
  • Ryan, Mary B.
  • Sheridan, Michael.
  • Smith, Patrick.
  • Traynor, Oscar.
  • Walsh, Richard.
  • Walsh, Thomas.
Tellers:—Tá: Deputies P. S. Doyle and Keyes; Níl: Deputies Kissane and Kennedy.
Question declared carried.

When is it proposed to take the Committee Stage?

This day week.

That would hardly give us time to consider amendments to the Bill.

You will have a week.

This day week would be much too early. The Minister would argue in a similar vein if he were here.

Quite often there was not as long as a week allowed during the past five or six years between the Second and Committee Stages. In addition, the Deputy must remember that there is a time point with regard to the taking of this Bill elsewhere.

You want it before the end of June?

I think this day week will give ample time for the consideration of amendments.

Make it to-morrow week.

I think the Minister is most inconsiderate.

The Deputy did not think like that when he was over here.

No, I was always prepared to meet——

This Bill has been on the stocks for only a few days. It has not been considered as a Bill at all.

How many clauses are there in it that can be amended?

I want it this day week.

Sir, I think I ought to challenge that. I think that it is most unfair.

Question put: "That the Committee Stage be taken on Tuesday."
The Dáil divided: Tá, 70; Níl, 58.

  • Beirne, John.
  • Belton, John.
  • Blowick, Joseph.
  • Brennan, Joseph P.
  • Browne, Noel C.
  • Browne, Patrick.
  • Byrne, Alfred.
  • Byrne, Alfred Patrick.
  • Coburn, James.
  • Cogan, Patrick.
  • Collins, Seán.
  • Commons, Bernard.
  • Connolly, Roderick J.
  • Corish, Brendan.
  • Cosgrave, Liam.
  • Costello, John A.
  • Cowan, Peadar.
  • Crotty, Patrick J.
  • Davin, William.
  • Desmond, Daniel.
  • Dillon, James M.
  • Dockrell, Maurice E.
  • Donnellan, Michael.
  • Doyle, Peadar S.
  • Dunne, Seán.
  • Everett, James.
  • Fagan, Charles.
  • Finucane, Patrick.
  • Fitzpatrick, Michael.
  • O'Leary, John.
  • O'Reilly, Patrick.
  • O'Sullivan, Martin.
  • Palmer, Patrick W.
  • Pattison, James P.
  • Reynolds, Mary.
  • Flanagan, Oliver J.
  • Flynn, John.
  • Giles, Patrick.
  • Halliden, Patrick J.
  • Hogan, Patrick.
  • Hughes, Joseph.
  • Keane, Seán.
  • Keyes, Michael.
  • Kinane, Patrick.
  • Kyne, Thomas A.
  • Larkin, James.
  • Lehane, Con.
  • Lehane, Patrick D.
  • McAuliffe, Patrick.
  • MacBride, Seán.
  • MacEoin, Seán.
  • McFadden, Michael Og.
  • McGilligan, Patrick.
  • McMenamin, Daniel.
  • McQuillan, John.
  • Madden, David J.
  • Morrissey, Daniel.
  • Mulcahy, Richard.
  • Murphy, Timothy J.
  • Norton, William.
  • O'Gorman, Patrick J.
  • O'Higgins, Michael J.
  • O'Higgins, Thomas F.
  • O'Higgins, Thomas F. (Jun.)
  • Roddy, Joseph.
  • Rooney, Eamonn.
  • Sheehan, Michael.
  • Sheldon, William A.W.
  • Sweetman, Gerard.
  • Timoney, John J.

Níl

  • Allen, Denis.
  • Bartley, Gerald.
  • Beegan, Patrick.
  • Blaney, Neal.
  • Boland, Gerald.
  • Bourke, Dan.
  • Brady, Brian.
  • Brady, Seán.
  • Breathnach, Cormac.
  • Brennan, Thomas.
  • Breslin, Cormac.
  • Buckley, Seán.
  • Burke, Patrick.
  • Butler, Bernard.
  • Childers, Erskine H.
  • Colley, Harry.
  • Collins, James J.
  • Corry, Martin J.
  • Crowley, Honor Mary.
  • Davern, Michael J.
  • Derrig, Thomas.
  • De Valera, Vivion.
  • Flynn, Stephen.
  • Gilbride, Eugene.
  • Gorry, Patrick J.
  • Harris, Thomas.
  • Hilliard, Michael.
  • Kennedy, Michael J.
  • Killilea, Mark.
  • Kilroy, James.
  • Kissane, Eamon.
  • Kitt, Michael F.
  • Lahiffe, Robert.
  • Lemass, Seán F.
  • Little, Patrick J.
  • Lydon, Michael F.
  • Lynch, John.
  • McCann, John.
  • McEllistrim, Thomas.
  • MacEntee, Seán.
  • McGrath, Patrick.
  • Maguire, Patrick J.
  • Moylan, Seán.
  • O Briain, Donnchadh.
  • O'Grady, Seán.
  • O'Reilly, Matthew.
  • Ormonde, John.
  • O'Rourke, Daniel.
  • O'Sullivan, Ted.
  • Rice, Bridget M.
  • Ruttledge, Patrick J.
  • Ryan, James.
  • Ryan, Mary B.
  • Sheridan, Michael.
  • Smith, Patrick.
  • Traynor, Oscar.
  • Walsh, Richard.
  • Walsh, Thomas.
Tellers—Tá: Deputies Doyle and Keyes; Níl: Deputies Kissane and Kennedy.
Question declared carried.
Committee Stage ordered for Tuesday, 8th June.
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