Would the Minister inform the House as to how much he expects to get out of income-tax this year?
Committee on Finance. - Finance Bill, 1949—Committee Stage.
Question proposed: "That Section 1 stand part of the Bill."
I expect to lose £750,000 this year and £1,000,000 next year.
What is the total?
The figures of income-tax show that there is £725,000 over from last year and that I will lose £750,000 in this part of this year.
Does the Minister know what he is going to get? There was over £13,000,000 anyway collected in the year before. The point is that the Minister used to growl about the unjust burden that taxation imposed upon the people of this country when the Vote for the Central Fund and Supply Services was around £65,000,000. In the last year of the Fianna Fáil Government, the year ending in April, 1948, the expenditure issued from the Exchequer for Central Fund and Supply Services was £65,000,000. This year the Minister has budgeted for the Central Fund and Supply Services for the sum of £72,916,000, which is almost £8,000,000 more than was spent.
On income-tax?
On income-tax, the Minister has admitted that he will get at least over £13,000,000, and if he had lived up to the promise of his leader he would have reduced taxation by £10,000,000. He would have budgeted for £55,000,000 this year instead of £73,000,000.
The Deputy must keep to income-tax; it is what the section deals with.
Income-tax could have been nil. Instead of having Section 1 of the Bill, the Minister could have had several other sections reducing taxation all round. He could, in fact, have reduced taxation, if he had lived up to his promises by £18,000,000 this year.
The Deputy is endeavouring to make a Budget speech.
I do not intend to make a Budget speech but I ask the Minister to recognise that at one time he declared that the income-tax was an unjustifiable burden on the people and an extortion. He calmly proposes this year to collect by way of income-tax the sum of £13,000,000, although if he had lived up to his promise, he could have reduced that income-tax to nil and have about £5,000,000 left for the reduction of other taxes. The Taoiseach down in Bantry a fortnight ago said that there had been a reduction in taxation of £7,000,000. If that were true, half the income-tax might have been avoided.
The position is, and it seems that it must be evident even to the Deputy's mind, that before the Budget of 1948 this Government remitted to the people the taxation on beer and tobacco which had been collected by Fianna Fáil and that cost the Exchequer over £6,000,000. This year I am giving back £750,000 and that is £7,000,000 to any simple mind. If the Deputy lives long enough to attain the use of reason, he will recognise that that is an easy calculation. In addition, there were increases in old age pensions and widows' and orphans' pensions and it becomes further evident that while reducing the burden of taxation by £7,000,000 a year, certain further additions were given. I calculate that if they had not been given, the reduction in taxation could have been £11,000,000. It is quite true that if I had not bothered to take the tax off beer and tobacco, there could have been heavy reductions as far as income-tax is concerned, but we decided to do it the other way.
The Minister has not denied the figure he gave in his Budget statement of £72,916,000. That is more than £7,000,000, nearly £8,000,000 more than the sum spent by the Fianna Fáil Government in 1947-48 which was £65,165,000. The Minister's leader in that year went around the country saying that he was going to reduce taxation by £10,000,000. That would have meant that he would have reduced it to £55,000,000 instead of £73,000,000. There is no denying those figures as the Minister has published them in the Financial Statement 1949, which was circulated at the time of the Budget. In view of that fact of the additional £8,000,000 being collected from the people, the taxation has been increased by £8,000,000 instead of being reduced by £10,000,000.
The Taoiseach misinformed the people when he said that they would reduce taxation. The rate of taxation has been reduced with regard to tobacco and certain other things, but the rate of taxation in regard to certain other matters has been increased and the Minister has not only increased the rate of certain existing taxes but has imposed totally new taxes. He has collected money for Central Government expenditure by increasing the national health stamps.
This section deals with income-tax and surtax.
And it is a section for which the Minister does not even tell us what he expects to get. We know that it is more than £13,000,000 which was collected in the year to which I am referring and if the Minister had lived up to his promise he might have reduced taxation to nil.
The situation I have to make clear to the Deputy is that while the gallop of Fianna Fáil was stopped by the people, they left us a Book of Estimates which showed that they were going to budget for £70,500,000, plus Central Fund £7,000,000, that is £77,500,000. I cut that down—it is cut down already. The Deputy has insisted a lot on what Fianna Fáil spent. That was the last time they got a chance to spend. In the Supplementary Budget of 1947, they put on extra taxation because they had additional proposals to spend £10,000,000 or £11,000,000 more in the year. That is a gallop which we stopped, and we made the savings.
If the Deputy says that I have increased taxation, he must face up to this. The beer and tobacco duties were remitted. They were going to bring over £6,000,000. On one single tax, the remission of 6d. in income-tax, there is £1,000,000 in a full year. That is £7,000,000 in total in a full year. That is all taken off. Would the Deputy say what has been put on? There was one major tax last year— on petrol—which was offset by an extra subvention to the people, an increased allowance of tea at the subsidised price, and a variety of other things. If the Deputy says we are spending more than what Fianna Fáil did spend, he is forgetting that Fianna Fáil had contemplated spending £77,500,000 at least in the year 1948-49, only that the people thought better of it and decided they would not stand for that taxation.
The Minister speaks about "the Fianna Fáil gallop" when the actual expenditure in that year was £65,000,000. If it was a gallop to spend that, it is a runaway to spend £73,000,000. It is admitted, of course, that the rates of taxes on beer and tobacco were reduced. They were increased to meet a very special occasion and it was found in the next year, when the budgetary position was being examined, that more money could be got even if the taxes on those particular things were reduced. If the Minister had lived up to his promises to reduce taxation by £10,000,000, he would now be budgeting for £55,000,000. Instead of that, he is budgeting for £73,000,000 for Central Fund and Supply Services. There is no getting around those figures, which have been published by the Minister.
I am budgeting for £7,000,000 less than Fianna Fáil was budgeting for.
The Minister is budgeting for £8,000,000 more than Fianna Fáil spent in the last year.
That is all they were allowed to spend.
Apart altogether from the budgetary figures, the Minister is taking the extraordinary step of taking extra from black market or half-grey market tea and sugar, and getting an additional £500,000 from the ordinary postage stamps.
The Chair will have to close down definitely and insist that this section be discussed on the basis of what is in it—incometax and surtax.
I hope to answer the Minister's question, and his challenge across the House as to what he did, if the Chair would bear with me for two seconds. In addition, the Minister took £220,000 from widows and orphans and took the extraordinary step of taking from the Post Office Savings Bank £500,000. All these are additional and queer types of taxation, all to make up the additional £8,000,000 which the Minister proposes to spend this year.
This is totally irrelevant.
On the 1948/49 Estimate, the calculation Fianna Fáil had for their expenditure that year was £70,500,000. If you add £6,500,000 for the Central Fund, there is a bill of £77,000,000. Faced with that, I made certain economies. The first thing we did in relief of the people was the remitting of taxation amounting to £6,000,000 on beer and tobacco, with £1,000,000 this year in income-tax. That is, to the simplest mind, a saving of £7,000,000.
It is not a saving if you spend £8,000,000 more.
It is a saving of £7,000,000.
Question put and agreed to.
Sections 2 to 7, inclusive, agreed to.
SECTION 8.
Question proposed: "That Section 8 stand part of the Bill."
Major de Valera
I take it that this section has one purpose only—to meet the decision in Cafolla's case. I should like to know whether I am right in that premise.
Yes.
Major de Valera
Therefore we have incorporated in this Bill a specific section designed to meet an individual case which was recently decided in the courts.
It does not touch that case.
Major de Valera
I want to get at that now. It may touch the people for the future?
Yes.
Major de Valera
A certain decision was arrived at in the Supreme Court adverse to the Revenue Commissioners. Substantially, the matter is a question, where a parent and his children are in a partnership, of collecting tax. Whatever about arguing the principle of that in general terms, the Minister does not say this does not affect the case. Clearly it does not affect the case up to the moment, but if—and probably it will happen—the particular set of circumstances which gave rise to this particular case continue as from the date of the passing of the Act, it seems to me that those particular persons will be subject to assessment under the terms of this section. In other words, there is a peculiar retrospective effect here. An arrangement was come to, in the particular circumstances of that case, before the passing of this Bill, and the rights under that arrangement, already subsisting at the passing of the Bill, have been determined and adjudicated on by the Supreme Court. The effect of the Supreme Court decision was merely to determine the actual legal relationship of the Revenue Commissioners on the one hand and these persons on the other, in relation to a certain set of circumstances which existed before the Act. This set of circumstances will continue for the future. It seems to me that, on the application of this section, whereas assessments for the past are not interfered with, on exactly the same set of circumstances these people are going to be assessed for the future.
Now, I wonder if that is a fair thing. I hasten to tell the Minister that I know nothing of the particular circumstances of this case beyond what would be available in official reports. I have had no personal dealings with the case, nor do I know anything about facts that have not come out in court. It would seem that the Minister is creating under this section a precedent. In 1937 and onwards, the law was in a particular form, and, if these people wanted to come to some arrangement at that time, we can credit them with having come to their arrangement in their knowledge of the law as it was at the time. For purposes of argument, we will assume that these people decided to do this in the light of legal advice. Now we are changing this, having allowed the matter to be adjudicated on in court and having allowed it to run for some time. The result is to deprive these people of the certainty of a particular statutory condition as existing at that time. I wonder is that desirable. It takes away all certainty in the matter of people's rights in such contractual or quasi-contractual matters. Is it desirable from the point of view of certainty of rights?
It simply means that you are establishing the precedent here that, no matter what a person does in the light of the law existing at a particular moment, and despite the fact that a decision upholding the rights of these people has been given, notwithstanding the fact that their rights are upheld on that basis, a Department of State for one reason or another comes along and, finding itself defeated in the court, is able to go to the Minister responsible and get a section like this passed. It seems to me to be a type of legislation the principle of which, if admitted, would ultimately deprive the private citizen of almost all rights. Having regard to the danger of that precedent and to the fact that, I should imagine, the revenue yield from such a provision would be relatively small, will the Minister not agree that the section had better be omitted?
I must confess that I do not understand what the Deputy is driving at, except that he is trying to make the point that what the law is at one time it should remain for ever. Take income-tax—I could not therefore reduce the income-tax rate by 6d. People would have made arrangements on the basis of a 7/- income-tax rate, and it would be quite wrong for me to put them in the new position in which they would have to pay 6d. less. The Deputy forgets that the Act of 1922 was brought in for the purpose of defeating attempts made successfully to evade payment of income-tax. That law was passed in 1922, but later, further loopholes were discovered through which people were able to make their escape, and, in 1937, the Party to which the Deputy belongs stopped some of these loopholes. A new loophole has been found, which I am stopping. I am not interfering with the rights of people who have contested a case in court— they are left alone. I am dealing with the future as from the date to which the Budget relates.
Major de Valera
I appreciate that point on the Minister's part, but the point I am making is that you are affecting a decision of the court. I would agree with the Minister if he were to say: "I will stop this loophole from a future date" and that all such arrangements entered into as from the date of this enactment would be affected in the way the Minister wants. The point I am making, however, is that an arrangement was come to, perfectly legally—whether it was evasion from the Minister's point of view or not—and was come to anterior to this Act, under which certain rights accrued to these people.
That happened in 1937 and the then Government blocked it.
Major de Valera
That does not make the slightest difference to my argument. I am trying to deal objectively with this point, that, under an arrangement made anterior to this Act, certain people had certain rights. These rights were determined by the court and these rights were attached to an arrangement made before this section can come into operation. I think this amendment is the type of amendment which goes very far in an undesirable direction. I would have no objection if the Minister were to say that it would apply to all such arrangements which have not been come to as from a certain date—let him go back to the 4th May or whatever reasonable date he wishes. What I am objecting to is this ad hoc legislation which specifically defeats for the future the rights of these people and people in similar circumstances whose rights have accrued and are actually vested by reason of an executed transaction prior to the passing of the section. There is a distinction between that situation where rights are vested and the point the Minister has made about amending the income-tax rate. It might be desirable to limit this section to prospective operation. The amount that will be involved for the Exchequer will be negligible and, as I say, there is a fairly substantial principle involved.
The principle was broken in 1937. We are not doing anything more than that.
Question put and agreed to.
Section 9 agreed to.
SECTION 10.
Question proposed: "That Section 10 stand part of the Bill."
I should like the Minister to give us the rates of taxation on the various weapons as they stood, in order to compare them with the rates in Schedule 10.
The present rates are: Rifle, 5/-; pistol or revolver, 5/-; shotgun for limited use, 5/-; shotgun, general use, first certificate, £2; and shotgun, general use, second or subsequent certificate, 5/-.
We have the rather extraordinary situation arising whereby the Minister for Justice allows people belonging to an illegal organisation to carry arms openly, while the Minister for Finance proposes to quadruple the tax payable by a person who has a .22 rifle. That is going a little too far. The farmer who has a shotgun for killing vermin, for killing crows and foxes which are running away with his fowl, will have to pay double what he paid last year. I know that I cannot convince the Minister that the Fianna Fáil Government was not a rapacious Government which robbed the poor taxpayers, but we did not go to the length of doubling the tax on the farmer's shotgun or quadrupling the tax on a .22 rifle, while leaving people illegally to carry arms openly without any tax. They can have machine guns, but the person who paid 5/- on a .22 rifle is to be charged four times that amount hereafter, according to the Minister's proposal. I cannot see that the Minister is so short of funds that he must behave in this fashion towards people who have admitted that they have arms and are prepared to pay a State tax for the right to hold them.
In the matter of the details, the Minister is behaving in a rather extraordinary way. He proposes to raise the £2 for a game licence by 5/-, that is, increasing it by one-eighth, while he proposes to double the farmer's licence—the farmer who pays 5/- for the right to carry a shotgun on his lands for the destruction of vermin.
A shotgun!
A firearm. Number three in the schedule describes a firearm limited to the use of killing animals and birds or game on the lands of every person to whom a certificate has been granted.
I do not think the Deputy is reading it correctly.
It is in fact a shotgun for the killing of vermin on farmers' land. If the Minister thinks my interpretation of number three in the schedule is not right then he should seek advice. All these words boil down to this: that the farmer who confines himself to killing vermin has to buy a shotgun certificate for 5/- and the Minister now proposes to double that, making it 10/-. That is a 100 per cent. increase and at the same time he is only putting one-eighth increase on the others who want to kill game and who have hitherto paid £2 for the licence. Why should there be that big difference? The Minister talked about the difference in the value of money from the time this tax was first imposed but the shillings in the £2 licence have depreciated to the same extent as the shillings in the 5/-licence for the farmer's gun. Why should the farmer's licence for a shotgun be doubled when the Minister is only increasing by 12 per cent. the £2 game licence?
The other thing I want to say in regard to this is that it is completely wrong to quadruple the licence for a .22 rifle. The Minister for Defence and others would like to see the young people who joined the defence services trained to be good marksmen. The young man who gets a licence and has someone around to teach him can go into the Army as a marksman and save the State that amount in training. He can also join the Local Defence Services and when he does he enters as a marksman.
I think we should encourage miniature rifle clubs and the young men of the country to shoot straight provided that they do it in a legal way. It is all wrong that we should discourage people from carrying arms in a legal way and encourage them to carry arms illegally and free. The Minister made a very bad shot at increasing taxation when he increased one tax by 100 per cent. and only increased another by one-eighth.
You want the one-eighth increased four fold.
I object very strongly to this increased taxation. Indeed if the Minister had reduced taxation by £10,000,000 instead of increasing it by £8,000,000 he could not only have reduced these licences but could have given a machine-gun to every person in the country. I hope Deputy O'Higgins is not going to support this particular distribution of taxation because he is one of those who went around the country complaining about the rapacious, grasping Fianna Fáil Government that had increased taxation.
The Deputy ought to deal with the section.
I would like Deputy O'Higgins to explain to the farmers in Leix-Offaly why it is that this great Government in existence are so short of money that they have to double the gun licence of farmers for killing vermin.
You can get that in West Cork.
You can give a preliminary canter of the arguments for a cross-roads by getting up to explain the Minister's action
It is to bring in £30,000. If this Government had not decided to reduce by £7,000,000 the tax on tobacco, beer and income-tax we might have been able to go and erect a giant edifice in the Phoenix Park.
The Minister is again repeating a statement which is completely false. He has not reduced taxation by £7,000,000. He reduced the rate in the Emergency Budget on beer and tobacco. He was complaining when taxation was only £65,000,000. It is now £73,000,000 and it is of course this £73,000,000 that the Minister is scrounging around to find, and it is to do this that he has to increase the tax on the .22 rifle and double the tax on the farmer's shotgun. There is no other reason for this increase. Would the Minister explain why he came to the decision to double the tax on the farmer's shotgun and only increase the game licence by one-eighth? I object to it being increased at all.
Why did you not say that?
Question put.
The Committee divided: Tá, 58; Níl, 45.
Tá
- Beirne, John.
- Belton, John.
- Browne, Noel C.
- Browne, Patrick.
- Byrne, Alfred.
- Byrne, Alfred Patrick.
- Coburn, James.
- Commons, Bernard.
- Corish, Brendan.
- Cosgrave, Liam.
- Costello, John A.
- Cowan, Peadar.
- Crotty, Patrick J.
- Davin, William.
- Dillon, James M.
- Dockrell, Maurice E.
- Donnellan, Michael.
- Doyle, Peadar S.
- Esmonde, Sir John L.
- Fagan, Charles.
- Finucane, Patrick.
- Fitzpatrick, Michael.
- Flynn, John.
- Giles, Patrick.
- Halliden, Patrick J.
- Hogan, Patrick.
- Hughes, Joseph.
- 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.
- Madden, David J.
- Mongan, Joseph W.
- Mulcahy, Richard.
- Murphy, William J.
- Norton, William.
- O'Gorman, Patrick J.
- O'Higgins, Michael J.
- O'Higgins, Thomas F.
- O'Higgins, Thomas F. (Jun.)
- O'Sullivan, Martin.
- Palmer, Patrick W.
- Redmond, Bridget M.
- Reidy, James.
- Reynolds, Mary.
- Roddy, Joseph.
- Sheehan, Michael.
- Sheldon, William A.W.
- Sweetman, Gerard.
- Timoney, John J.
Níl
- Aiken, Frank.
- Allen, Denis.
- Bartley, Gerald.
- Beegan, Patrick.
- Blaney, Neal T.
- Boland, Gerald.
- Brady, Brian.
- Breathnach, Cormac.
- Brennan, Thomas.
- Buckley, Seán.
- Burke, Patrick.
- Butler, Bernard.
- Childers, Erskine H.
- Colley, Harry.
- Collins, James J.
- McCann, John.
- McGrath, Patrick.
- O'Briain, Donnehadh.
- O'Grady, Seán.
- O'Reilly, Matthew.
- Ormonde, John.
- O'Rourke, Daniel.
- Rice, Bridget M.
- Corry, Martin J.
- Crowley, Honor Mary.
- Davern, Michael J.
- Derrig, Thomas
- De Valera, Eamon.
- De Valera, Vivion.
- Flynn, Stephen.
- Friel, John.
- Harris, Thomas.
- Hilliard, Michael.
- Kilroy, James.
- Kissane, Eamon.
- Lahiffe, Robert.
- Lemass, Seán F.
- Little, Patrick J.
- Ruttledge, Patrick J.
- Ryan, James.
- Ryan, Mary B.
- Sheridan, Michael.
- Traynor, Oscar.
- Walsh, Richard.
- Walsh, Thomas.
Tellers:—Tá: Deputies Doyle and Kyne; Níl: Deputies Kissane and Ó Briain.
Question declared carried.
SECTION 11.
Question proposed: "That Section 11 stand part of the Bill."
Has the Minister any reason for proposing to pass this section?
The allowance was originally given as a compensation for the increased cost of manufacture due to certain excise restrictions. The operations of this company over the years have resulted in the excise restrictions being modified to a very extreme degree. Therefore there was not the same case at all for the allowance. The necessity for the compensation is not there. This company is a monopoly company enjoying certain privileges.
Does the Minister hold, in respect of the original 5d. per gallon which was meant as compensation for the additional cost put on the Industrial Alcohol Company, that the costs have been reduced?
Yes, to an extreme degree.
Does the Minister now reckon what the cost is beyond the norm for complying with the Revenue Commissioners' regulations?
I could not answer that precisely, but there is no reason for this 5d. Then there is the monopoly situation as well.
Question put and agreed to.
SECTION 12.
Amendment No. 3 is out of order and, therefore, may not be moved or discussed.
I do not understand actually why it was ruled out of order. It was far from my intention to do anything that was wrong.
There is nothing wrong in putting down an amendment. It is for the Chair to decide whether it is in order or not. Shall we put amendment No. 4 first? Then we can have a discussion.
I move amendment No. 4:—
In sub-section (2), page 6, to add at the end of the sub-section the following:—
and shall be charged, levied and paid as aforesaid at the following rates:—
|
Where the payment for admission, excluding duty, |
Rate of Duty |
||||
|
s. |
d. |
||||
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exceeds |
4d. |
and does not exceeds |
6½d. |
1½ |
|
|
,, |
6½d. |
,, ,, |
8d. |
2 |
|
|
,, |
8d. |
,, ,, |
1s. 0d. |
3 |
|
|
,, |
1s. 0d. |
,, ,, |
1s. 8d. |
4 |
|
|
,, |
1s. 8d. |
,, ,, |
2s. 0d. |
6 |
|
|
,, |
2s. 0d. |
,, ,, |
3s. 0d. |
9 |
|
|
,, |
3s. 0d. |
,, ,, |
4s. 0d. |
1 |
0 |
|
,, |
4s. 0d. |
1s. for the first 4s. and 1s. for every additional 4s. or part of 4s. |
The section has been changed.
Amendment No. 4 is for the purpose of substituting a new series of rates of duty for those previously announced. This means, in fact, that I am reducing the imposition to what it was in 1946. It costs me in revenue about £35,000 or £40,000 in the year.
What will the net be this year?
The original estimate of revenue is £110,000—say £35,000 less than that.
That means that the Minister is proposing to impose £75,000 additional taxation this year and to collect it in the form of a duty on dances.
The people will dance with annoyance.
That was not the plea of a lot of the Deputies now forming the Coalition Government in the days when the dance duty was being collected and when Fianna Fáil was in office. The particular Minister who is now proposing to collect this £75,000 on dances and céilidhes was the gentleman who not only objected to the extortionate bill, as he called it, which the Irish people had to pay to Fianna Fáil but who proposed to reduce it by £10,000,000. Instead of that, he has increased it by £8,000,000 —and portion of that £18,000,000, which he was out, is this tax on dancing. He knows very well that this particular tax is going to hit a number of voluntary organisations in the country which depend for their revenue on the subscriptions of their members or on the profits, if any, of the social functions—céilidhes or dances—which they run from time to time.
We all know that if there is to be any life, particularly in the country districts or small towns, a means must be provided whereby the young people can come together and enjoy themselves and, at the same time, raise some funds for their football club, Gaelic League, Red Cross branch or what not. I think it is ridiculous that we should pay lip service to the idea of making rural life more enjoyable while at the same time we impose taxes that make it more difficult for the young people to enjoy themselves and make it very difficult for voluntary organisations of a cultural nature or sports clubs to collect the necessary funds or make profits.
When I was Minister for Finance I proposed to the Government that we should abolish this tax. I pointed out in this House, when justifying my decision, that it was a rather expensive tax to collect. There are certain existing taxes from which we could get additional yield without a penny extra expense, but there is no doubt about it that if the Revenue Commissioners' officials have to attend all dances or have to inspect all dances within three miles of every centre of 500 population in the country they will be inspecting practically the whole of the country except the tops of mountains. If anybody likes to draw circles of three miles round every centre of 500 population I think he will find that he brings in practically the whole of the country Charitable organisations under this particular tax arrangement have to prove that their expenses are less than 50 per cent. in order to get exemption. We have all had the experience of charitable organisations running a dance or a céilidhe. If they do well, their expenses are less than 50 per cent. If they do badly and lose money, they have in addition to pay a 50 per cent. tax on their intake. I do not see how the Minister can justify this particular tax. At one time he said that, if there was any good reason for spending money, we could print it. He denied that in the general debate on the Budget and challenged me for the quotation. I gave him the quotation. I should like to know from him now, seeing that he did not reply to that particular point in the general Budget debate, why, if he is short of money at present——
Monetary reform does not come into this. That is obvious to everyone.
There certainly can be a substitute for the £75,000 he proposes to collect in this way.
That is absolutely dishonest.
The Deputy must not repeat that statement on every section.
If Deputy Cowan thinks it is dishonest, I have no objection.
You can create money for a constructive purpose.
For a good purpose. Is not all this money for a good purpose?
Will the Deputy please come back to the amendment before the House.
This £75,000 which the Minister is proposing to collect by this tax on dancing forms portion of the £73,000,000 total. We take it that this £75,000 will be spent for some good purpose. I want to know why the Minister proposes to collect it by a tax on dances. He used to speak of the crushing burden of taxation when it was £8,000,000 less. Now he is imposing this £75,000 extra on dancing, although the Fianna Fáil Government, even in the emergency Budget, when they wanted to collect money refused to collect it in this particular way. We all know the temptation for charitable organisations when they have done badly in running a dance or a céilidhe to write down their expenses to a figure below their real expenses. If they are subject to a tax when their expenses are over 50 per cent., there is a temptation to make a return of expenses below 50 per cent.
That is a nice slander.
I said the temptation is such——
Why do they not resist it?
I hope people will resist it in the same way as we resisted the temptation to take over the King and put him in the Park. That would have cost a pretty penny on dances and other things. The Crown ceremonial here would have cost quite a pretty penny.
Not as much as the new Parliament building.
The new Parliament building——
Does not arise on this.
It does not. I would, however, rather build a new Parliament building than bring the British monarch over here. These red republicans of the present moment——
I do not know how the Deputy can make this relevant to the amendment.
I am making it relevant to interruptions. I want to ask the Minister to forego the collection of this tax. It is a bad tax in every way. It reduces the opportunity for young people throughout the country to enjoy themselves in a legitimate way. They have as much right to dance as to drink beer or cheap wines, but the Minister believes in cheap wines and beer and dear dancing. I hope he will withdraw this particular tax. It is bad for the country; it is a brake on local initiative. Football clubs and charitable organisations of a parochial and other kinds are entitled to have a dance or a céilidhe to collect funds without having the revenue officials on their heels and putting the commissioners to the expense of sending round inspectors to attend those dances. If a revenue official finds that there are 500 present at some céilidhe or dance and only 400 have paid the tax, the committee or the person in charge has to be hauled before the local court and all that requires a lot of money. This is one of the most expensive taxes to collect. It was found to be so in the past and will be found to be so in the future. If the Minister wants to raise money by taxation, surely there are a large number of ways of getting it and more desirable ways than this. A very slight addition to some of the existing taxes would bring in very much more revenue than this £75,000. The Minister has reduced the price of beer.
Substitute taxation cannot be discussed on this amendment.
I say the Minister has many other ways of collecting £75,000 than by imposing this particular tax. It will be very expensive to collect and will have bad social effects anywhere it is successfully collected.
I think it is only right that the Minister should get some advice and, possibly, criticism from this side of the House. I may be occasionally a little irrelevant, but I promise not to bring in the new Houses of Parliament or the King.
I do not even anticipate irrelevancy.
Deputy Aiken has informed the House that this tax was taken off in 1946 and that it was a very costly tax to collect. It is regrettable that the Minister did not inform the House in reply to a question on the Order Paper of the amount that it cost to collect the tax in 1946. It would possibly help us to come to a decision as to whether or not it was advisable to reimpose it. The £75,000 which he hopes to collect by imposition of the tax will not be any great addition to the revenue. Offset against that £75,000 will be the cost of the expense of collecting. We will have to pay an office staff, the rent of at least two offices in Dublin City and, I understand, a number of other offices throughout the country. We will have to pay the wages and expenses of inspectors going around the country to inspect those places of entertainment. So I honestly believe that when we offset the expenses in collecting this tax the Minister will find, as his predecessors did, that very little revenue will accrue from it.
It is admitted that when the tax was in operation before it was only paid generally by what are known as commercial halls, and then it was only paid fully where the entertainments were held by the proprietors of those commercial halls. The social clubs referred to by Deputy Aiken, the football clubs and the Red Cross functions and even the dances of political Parties, I do not think were an exception. From my own knowledge I know that the branches of all political Parties in this House from time to time have dances. I would not take the liberty to accuse them but I do suspect that the members of those branches could not see why they should pay a revenue which they looked on as a type of income-tax before they were guaranteed their own expenses out of the functions they were running. They did previously—before this tax was taken off—adopt various methods to avoid payment of the tax and protect themselves from losing money instead of making a little money at those functions.
Where the dances were held for charity, first the promoters had to convince the revenue officer that the dance was for charity. I believe they had then to purchase the tickets and after the function was over send a return back to the revenue officer. If their expenses were under 30 per cent. they got a refund of tax. Deputy Aiken told us that some of them adopted the subterfuge of reducing their expenses. For instance, where there were receipts for £30 and the expenses were £10 or £11 they generally made it a little less than £10. That is only one way. A much easier way was to increase the receipts. There was no opportunity for the revenue officers to check the receipts. They might have an opporttunity of checking the expenses but if the promoters were questioned on it they simply had to increase their receipts.
I heard this personally from people who went round the country. The revenue officers found it practically impossible to get the co-operation of the patrons of dances when they went into the ballrooms to inspect the tickets. The people there resented it. They treated them as they would a bailiff. They gave no co-operation and they generally objected and refused to hand up the portion of the ticket to the inspectors. I know that the law provided that if people who went into dances, when challenged by the inspectors, did not hand up their tickets they were liable to a fine.
The poor inspector went into a ballroom and met some jovial fellow who is in the habit of attending dances. He simply said, "You want my tax ticket? Is that it? No?" Then he would have a search through his pockets. He would pull out six or seven tickets and would then say that he could not find his tax ticket. The inspector had to ask for his name and address and he got a name and address. This tax was practically impossible to collect and I definitely suggest to the Minister that it was never collected at all in the rural districts where the members were known to the committee and were told, "It is all right, Paddy. Give him a tax ticket," and it was done. It was then handed back and the one tax ticket was used several times.
It was incidents like these that I believe induced the previous Minister for Finance to abolish this tax altogether. Now the present Minister in his wisdom is reintroducing this tax. He has taken into consideration the areas where it was difficult to collect the tax and he has made it legal for those law breakers to continue running dances as against the people who previously always paid. I believe it is unfair, illegal and unconstitutional to make one person living on one side of the street pay a tax and not somebody else who happens to be a few yards away on the other side of the street and possibly outside the three miles limit of the population of 500. What Deputy Aiken says about this three mile limit is not altogether correct. If you take a range of four miles outside Malahide you will find several ballrooms outside the three mile and inside the four mile range.
Whatever the Minister's intention, he has not treated the people who previously paid tax fairly. He has actually put it up to them to try and find some way in the future of avoiding this tax. I believe the people will adopt every possible legal method to avoid payment. It is an extraordinary state of affairs to see ballrooms in the Malahide district and places like that that have been built up during the past years—a lot of money was expended on them in order to conform with the county council regulations— having to pay tax while a few miles further on you have a great holiday camp at Mosney, the general population of which is not more than 50. Mosney will be free, but the ordinary people who run ballrooms and dances in the cities and towns will have to pay. I think that is completely wrong and that the Minister should take cognisance of it.
I know that clubs which organised dances previously always objected to paying this tax. The people going into ballrooms object to being interfered with during the course of their enjoyment. The reimposition of this tax is going to create a great stir as well as an amount of resentment throughout the country. I fear that people who will be compelled to pay, while they see others getting away with it are going to adopt every possible means that they can, without breaking the law, to protect themselves and their interests. I am not a person possessed of a trained legal mind like some of the Deputies. I sometimes think that it is not the man who has a legally-trained mind that is always correct on matters of law. As I understand it, the entertainment tax in the case of cinemas and theatres has not to be paid if 51 per cent. of the entertainment is a stage show.
That has been changed.
I was interested in organising an entertainment some years ago and, to put it bluntly, we got away without paying the tax by having a few duds on the stage for an hour and five minutes.
There were a few duds in the Government in those days.
History repeating itself.
As regards this tax, what are we imposing it on? I suggest that, when a boy and a girl go into a ballroom, they entertain themselves and are not being entertained at all. They are the actual entertainers themselves and, therefore, why should they have to pay this tax? I think that the only people who should be liable to pay tax are those on the balcony who come there to look on. As I said at the outset, the amount of tax collected is going to be offset in several ways. First of all, there will be the cost of the collection. In addition, we have to face the terrible position that will be created by the great number of people who are going to be thrown out of employment. I can state with very definite knowledge that, if this tax is reimposed, those engaged in the ballroom business—the proprietors, promoters and people who run clubs—feel that in existing circumstances they will not be in a position to pay. Consequently, it has been brought to my notice, in the case of all the ballrooms in the city and of a number in the country where clubs had made reservations to run dances during the summer and winter, that practically all the dances booked have been cancelled. Proprietors who had engaged bands and orchestras to play in their ballrooms have given them notice. If this entertainment tax goes on they will be compelled to close their ballrooms on three or four days a week. That will mean that the members of the bands and numbers of the staff will be out of employment.
It may be generally thought that it is only the bands and staffs who are going to suffer if the ballrooms are closed. That is not correct. The position will be much worse. As well as the members of the orchestra you have the night staffs, and it has to be remembered that taxi-drivers and caterers derive a good part of their livelihood from those who attend dances. Generally, the position will be that people earning their livelihood in ballrooms and dance halls will be knocked out of employment and naturally they will go back on the dole. They will be collecting back some of the revenue that is brought in. It is to be remembered, too, that a number of the men engaged in orchestras on seven days a week pay a big amount in income-tax. If they lose their employment and their income there will be no income-tax to get from them. Instead, they will have to seek unemployment money.
I should like to hear from the Minister what prompted him to reimpose this tax. I feel that he did not do so merely for the purpose of balancing the Budget. One might assume that he felt that he was going to be short the sum of £110,000 and decided to get it by putting a tax on dances and by increasing the price of the pint. I do not believe the Minister approached the matter in that way. I should like to hear from him how he arrived originally at the figure of £110,000, or how, by going back to the old fees charged in 1946 he arrived at the figure of £75,000.
It has been suggested in some of the morning papers that the Minister has surrendered to the opposition offered on this dance tax. I would like to say, as one of those who led a deputation to the Minister in connection with it, that I do not accept that. I feel that those who approached the Minister do not think that they gained any victory at all. While we gave the Minister permission on the Second Reading of the Bill to reimpose the tax that was knocked off in 1946, my view is that we did not give him permission to increase it by one-third, which is the figure that he put before us to-day. Consequently, there can be no foundation for the suggestion that he has surrendered at all. I regret exceedingly that the Chair found it necessary to rule out my amendment because I had gone into this matter carefully and, as a supporter of the inter-Party Government, I did not want to be in the position of opposing the Government. I believe that the tax will not be collected and consequently I wanted to suggest a way out to the Minister by which he could collect the tax easily without any expense to the revenue. I suggested to him that instead of making the boy and girl who go to a ballroom pay this tax at the door that the ballroom proprietors should pay. If that had been done there would not be the general resentment that there is to this tax as far as ballroom proprietors are concerned. What they would have to pay proportionately would not be very much. The proprietor of a small ballroom would pay a small licence, but as the ballroom grew the price of admission would also go up and they agree that the annual licence would be greater.
I regret that you did not find it possible to allow that amendment to stand and I am terribly disappointed that the Minister did not give it more careful consideration. I state with all the knowledge that I have—not legal but practical knowledge—that the Minister would gain more money if he adopted the method I have suggested. I would like to know how the Minister arrives at the figure of £75,000, which he said he expected to receive from this tax. I do not believe he will get that amount. I am not going to guess how he figured it out.
He is re-enforcing a tax that will be resented. He will be held responsible, whether correctly or not, for closing down ballrooms all over the country two or three days a week and throwing out of employment numbers of men and women who are engaged in orchestras or on the staffs. He will also put out of employment people in the catering business, taxi owners and others. I appeal to the Minister, even at the eleventh hour, to reconsider his decision and withdraw this tax.
For the information of the House, I will explain why this amendment was ruled out. The amendment should be based on a financial resolution which would have to be introduced in Committee on Finance by the Minister. No Deputy could introduce such an amendment. That is the reason why it was ruled out.
I am sure the Minister has received all sorts of representations in this matter. The fact that he is making a certain concession indicates that. The pity is that he did not withdraw the tax and adopt some alternative. I am sure many Deputies on the Government Benches have also received very strong representations. I have received them myself from various clubs and organisations which will be hit very severely by this tax, especially in big centres where you have well-equipped ballrooms and where people have gone to considerable expense setting up their establishments and have developed a kind of goodwill with people from all sorts of scattered areas belonging to rural clubs, beagle and sporting clubs of various kinds, as well as cultural clubs—clubs with a public interest, but which could hardly be regarded as charitable institutions, although they, too, will be hit.
These clubs will be driven to hold their dances in small halls where they cannot possibly afford to have the bands they like. There are certain bands which are very popular and which charge high fees. It will be impossible in these circumstances for these organisations to employ them. The tax will definitely hit the particular halls which have been catering for these institutions. The blow will be very severe and, as Deputy Fitzpatrick said, it will throw a great many people out of employment.
It will not be easy to mend your hand in another Finance Bill, because once you do this you will possibly bankrupt some of these proprietors. You will certainly scatter the staffs and it will take some years again to build up that particular type of business once you allow it to be destroyed by this tax. I ask the Minister to reconsider the matter very carefully. In order to indicate our attitude, we ought to vote against the principle of the tax. It has been pointed out that it is an expensive and onerous tax.
It is not expensive.
To collect?
No, 2 per cent. is the estimate, and that was in the time when it was all over the country.
It will lend itself to very considerable abuse.
On the point of expense, it is not expensive.
It is anybody's guess.
No, it is the estimate of people who collected the tax for 14 years under the Deputy's Party's administration.
Why could you not tell me that in reply to my question yesterday?
I told you it was not possible to state it definitely. The information would have been given yesterday if it was asked for.
This tax will hit all sorts of halls all over the country.
It did that for 14 years.
The readjusted situation made it possible for a goodwill to be built up, but that will now be scattered. I urge the Minister to withdraw this section and find some substitute.
I was interested to hear the views of Deputy Fitzpatrick in relation to this tax. It was welcome to hear from Deputy Fitzpatrick some knowledgeable comment on a tax such as this; it was a welcome change from the speech which preceded it, the speech from Deputy Aiken. Of course, no tax imposed by this or any other Government will find a ready welcome everywhere in the country. No tax is popular and all a Minister can do is to try to balance things with remissions on the one hand and perhaps new taxes on the other, in the interests of the community. In this particular instance, under the Budget statement which preceded this Bill the people did get important remissions in taxation, including a remission in income-tax, and that is one of the things which will add weight to the balance.
One would imagine from what Deputy Aiken said to-night that some type of catastrophe had overtaken this country because the Minister for Finance proposes to tax dances. I do not know whether Deputy Aiken dances outside this House, but he frequently dances very queer jigs inside the House. It will be of interest to the country to know that Deputy Aiken is now a reformed character and that the Minister for Finance of an Administration which for 14 years maintained the tax on dances throughout the country now realises that not only was he wrong but that that particular tax is unjustified.
Major de Valera
He remitted it.
I can only say that the entertainment tax such as is contained in this measure was discovered by the Fianna Fáil Administration in 1932 and imposed by them as a new tax. At that time Deputy Aiken was a member of that Government, but he had very little to say against the tax. For 14 years his Government maintained that tax. For some eight years, I think, Deputy Aiken had the honour to be Minister for Finance. He came into the Dáil each year making provision for this particular tax, not allowing his mind to dwell upon the injustice it might be doing to the dancers and the people generally in the country. Ultimately, he removed the tax. He did not remove it because he suddenly discovered after 14 years that it was an unjust tax. He removed it because he came to the conclusion that it was difficult to collect. In my recollection, he himself stated that it was difficult to collect because, in the particular instances mentioned by Deputy Fitzpatrick, dances held in rural areas could not be properly supervised and the trouble of collecting the tax made it quite impracticable. That particular difficulty is recognised by the present Minister and, therefore, the particular areas affected by it are excluded from the scope of this Bill.
I agree with Deputy Fitzpatrick that from the theoretical point of view there does appear to be an apparent argument against that exemption because those who did not pay this tax in the past are now excluded from liability under the law. That may be because the Minister merely recognises facts, but I prefer to think that it is done in pursuance of the policy of this Administration to improve conditions for people in the rural areas and to attract them into remaining in the rural areas. I am sure most Deputies here appreciate that Deputy Aiken's opposition to this particular tax is merely just another exhibition of Fianna Fáil's determination to play any little game that may find any little support for them anywhere in the country. I am quite certain that the people recognise that this is a fair tax balanced against the good that has been done by the remission of income-tax where the smaller income groups are concerned and by the provision of increased social services for the people generally.
I am not concerned in this connection as to whether or not it is feasible or impracticable to collect this tax. I am not concerned with Deputy O'Higgins' remarks as to whether or not we are playing a game. I am concerned with the fact that since this tax was remitted in 1946 quite a number of ballrooms and dance halls have started in this city. The proprietors of them have put money into the business and ploughed the profits back into it. Deputy Fitzpatrick, who is a ballroom proprietor himself, has made a very sensible and sound case in my opinion; I hope that the Minister, as Deputy Fitzpatrick said, will realise even at the last moment that he has done so. Chiefly I am concerned with the fact that, though the Minister has met the dance hall proprietors, I do not think he has met the Irish Federation of Musicians. That body asked the Minister to meet them.
I do not think they did.
I have a copy here of a letter which was sent to you.
What is the date?
Asking you to see them and you have not seen them to date.
What is the date of that letter?
The 31st May, 1949.
Personally, I got no such letter.
It is addressed to "Mr. McGilligan, Minister for Finance"—that is you.
I go no such letter.
The Minister says he has not seen the letter and, therefore, he does not know the facts. Attached to that letter was a letter from the dance hall proprietors informing the federation that they would have, as Deputy Fitzpatrick said, to close their establishments on certain days during the week. I met a deputation from the Irish Federation of Musicians and, therefore, I am speaking of facts. They informed me that this will mean the disemployment of some hundreds of musicians and other personnel. The Minister has remitted another tax. He has reduced the tax on wine. He will create more lounge bars. His reason for remitting that tax was that the imposition of the tax created unemployment. He will now, under this Bill, impose a new tax to collect a miserable £75,000. That will not be the nett collection despite what he says about 2 per cent. He is putting on this tax on dancing with the certainty of creating unemployment.
Do you remember the Deputy said last year it was a certainty too because of what somebody else described as "dud shows".
But I was perfectly right last year. I rub shoulders with actors and with others who make their living on the stage. The Minister knows nothing about it. I was perfectly right last year. Since the tax was imposed last year many variety artistes have been idle more than half the year.
Deputy Fitzpatrick described them as "dud shows".
People can be as "smart Alec" as they like.
But that is from a man in the business.
I am seriously concerned about the people who will be disemployed.
Nonsense!
Deputy Sweetman says "nonsense". To my mind every interjection of Deputy Sweetman's is either irrelevant or nonsensical. Deputy Fitzpatrick has told us that it is not nonsense and he is qualified to know whether it is or not. Last night I met three of the largest ballroom proprietors. One assured me that out of a staff of 20, he would have to let ten go; another said that he would have to let 12 go; and the third said that he would have to let 14 go. The Irish Federation of Musicians assure me that the tax will affect some hundreds of their members, either full-time or part-time. I appeal to the Minister to listen to reason. In my opinion, the only thing Deputy Fitzpatrick did not say about this tax was that it is an iniquitous tax. I think it is a miserable tax. The Minister would serve a better purpose if he reimposed the duty on wine and remitted the tax on dances. It is all very well for his supporters who troop in here behind him and who shout "nonsense"——
That comes well from a Deputy who for 14 years levied the iniquitous tax.
The tax was remitted by the then Minister for Finance when he realised that it was impracticable to collect and iniquitous in itself.
In the rural areas.
The then Minister did not give that reason.
Perhaps when these men lose their employment the Minister for Industry and Commerce will offer them employment on the bogs. We shall have the spectacle then of violinists and pianists at the labour exchange being offered work at Clonsast. When they refuse to do that work, we shall have the spectacle of them looking for unemployment assistance.
I do not know what actuated the Minister into reimposing this tax. Some years ago there was quite a lot of propaganda about dancing in the country and about the danger of the commercial dance hall. We had a considerable amount of propaganda of that kind which resulted in the passing of legislation requiring the licensing of dance halls. I am just wondering if there is any similar purpose behind the reimposition of the duty. The suggestion has been made—I have heard it myself—that dancing is evil, that it should be condemned, that it is bad for the community. I have heard that said but in the part of the country from which I come, there was always dancing, and 35 years ago there was more dancing than there is now. It did not seem to do the people any harm then and I do not subscribe to the views of those who say that there is any evil whatsoever in dancing.
As I have already stated on the Budget debate, I am worried about the possibility of this tax resulting in unemployment. If the tax will result in musicians and staffs becoming disemployed, and in unemployment for other people connected with the dancing business, I think the collection of £75,000—even if that amount is collected—would not be justified at all. I think that the proprietors of ballrooms have put a very reasonable proposition to the Minister as an alternative, that is, that he should tax ballrooms rather than the dancers who go there to dance. Probably if the Minister were to give some consideration to that proposal, he would find that he would get the same amount of money as he proposes now to collect and he would collect it in a much easier way. If he were to impose a tax, say, on the basis of the legal capacity of the hall, a hall with a legal capacity of 500 would pay £500 a year—that is, a £1 per person. It would bring in a considerable revenue. From a dance hall in Dublin with the capacity of 500, it would mean £500 a year or, roughly, £10 a week. That is a burden that can be carried, apparently, by these dance halls, but if the proposed tax is imposed it will be a more severe burden on the business. If the Minister wants to consider that proposition, he might be able to make it very convenient for the proprietors of these halls to pay their tax by monthly instalments in advance. There is a serious objection from many parts of the House to taxation on the prices of admission per head, and the other proposal seems the more reasonable one.
Whatever the result of this discussion may be, and whether there is a vote on the matter or not, I should like strongly to support Deputy Fitzpatrick in recommending to the Minister that he might reconsider this matter in connection with the alternative proposals that have been put before him. Dancing in the cities and towns has become a business, just like any commercial venture, and on that business quite a considerable number of people depend for a livelihood. I think this is not the time for doing anything that may disturb people in their employment. It is certainly not a time for creating conditions that may lead to unemployment. I like to see young people dancing and enjoying themselves. I think they are much better occupied in dancing than in spending their spare time in some other ways.
I cannot do very much more than to renew the appeal I made to the Minister when the Budget was under discussion to reconsider this whole matter. If his idea is to get £75,000 this year, I think he can get it in a very much easier and cheaper way than by the imposition of this tax. The Minister has said that the cost of the collection of the dance tax is 2 per cent. Two per cent. would mean that the cost of collecting £75,000 would be £1,500.
I should have corrected that statement long ago. It will bring in £65,000 only and there is a collection cost of £1,300 on that.
I do not know. There are some of these calculations——
That is an estimate.
It is one of these estimates that it is very hard to stand over because it means a couple of minutes of somebody's time and a couple of hours of somebody else's time. Certain people will be occupied even in writing up the data for answering Parliamentary Questions arising out of the tax. It is very hard to know what it will cost. I do think myself it would cost more than 2 per cent. because, obviously, there must be inspectors if the tax is to be enforced. Those inspectors must go round. They have got to pay for their admission to dance halls and to pay for a car to take them there. They will have certain incidental expenses with regard to the journey and, if all the items were totalled up, it would be surprising if the sum total of the cost of collection were not more than £100 a month. However, that is not the most important part of it. If it is a good tax and if it costs only 2 per cent. to collect it, that is not bad but the most objectionable feature of the tax is that it will result, and apparently has resulted, in threats to cancel bookings. For some reason or other I understand that the dancing business is not prospering at the moment. I understand that dance halls, which used to have an average of 350 or 400 dancers are lucky now to have an average of 100, so that the business is not hitting the high spots at the moment. If that is so, and if all the interests concerned believe that the imposition of this tax will further depress the business and will lead to unemployment, I think there is a strong case to be made to the Minister for reconsideration of the tax.
I would like to say this in conclusion: we are endeavouring and I am endeavouring to put forward to the Minister reasonable suggestions with regard to this tax and I think we would be helped by contributions from all sides of the House that would have that for their objective. I think that the contribution by Deputy Aiken here this evening did not help in any way and particularly when Deputy Aiken, as he has done on other occasions in this House, went back to the dead to make references to people who are dead in a slighting way to their relatives here in this House. I think that does not help the case here at all. I think it is a low form of political propaganda and I think Deputy Aiken should be ashamed of himself. The references which Deputy Aiken made to the late Kevin O'Higgins were references he has no right to make.
On a point of explanation. The two Deputies O'Higgins are constantly interrupting me in this House. I simply referred to a paragraph, a chapter, in a book, the biography of the late Kevin O'Higgins which was issued with the sanction of his relatives, and I pointed out that he wanted to take the British King over here, crown him and keep him in the park.
That has nothing to do with the debate.
Deputy Cowan may think that is a slight on the late Kevin O'Higgins but his own family did not think so.
That has nothing whatever to do with this tax.
We are anxious to put forward to the Minister a strong case based on reason. If Deputy Aiken did that there might be to a large extent an identity of interests with regard to this thing, but when he uses the occasion to make remarks such as I have objected to——
I was interrupted.
You certainly did use the occasion.
And I will use the occasion when Deputies interrupt me.
This happened repeatedly during the last few months in this House.
You are not bad at it yourself.
When any observations are made by either of the Deputies O'Higgins we have this type of observation from Deputy Aiken.
When people interrupt they may get sharp answers.
Low answers.
The Minister is a judge of low answers.
There should be some respect for the dead.
The Deputy should come to the matter which is before the House and not initiate a debate on this subject.
I am not initiating a debate but protesting against this blackguardly insult to a man who was once a Minister of this House.
I want to protest against the expression Deputy Cowan used. I merely referred to what was in the biography of the gentleman in question which was published by his relatives and that cannot be held to be a black-guardly attack.
The word "blackguardly" is to be withdrawn, as used by the Deputy.
If the Ceann Comhairle orders that it should be withdrawn I certainly withdraw it in the interests of order in this House, but I say that the observations which were made this evening should not have been made.
The Deputy has said that four times and might now get on with the business.
I want to maintain my right to characterise the observations made in this debate by another Deputy in this House as a foul slander on the memory of a man who was respected in this House and in this country.
The Deputy maintains his right to repeat a thing four times despite the Chair's request not to do so.
On a point of order. It is quite obvious that the Deputy has broken your ruling. He has withdrawn the word "blackguardly" and substituted "characterise as a foul slander" a reference to a historical fact published with the authority of the late Kevin O'Higgins' family in his biography.
If Deputy Aiken has finished I will finish. I hope it will not be necessary for me on any future occasion——
The Deputy will please drop that matter.
I am simply saying that I hope it will not be necessary for any Deputy in this House to make a protest such as I have just made.
You cannot rewrite history. "The moving finger..."
I am sure that the Minister as well as every other member of this House who is anxious to discuss this matter on its merits will agree that Deputy Fitzpatrick presented his alternative proposal in a very fair and convincing manner. I am not saying that he has done that because he has a knowledge of those associated with the ownership of ballrooms. I think from my knowledge of the views of my constituents that Deputy Fitzpatrick has presented the viewpoint of the man in the street on this matter, and I hope for that reason that his alternative proposal will receive the careful consideration of the Minister which it deserves. Dancing is a popular pastime in my constituency and the overwhelming majority of dancehalls or ballrooms are in the possession of commercial dancehall or ballroom owners. Some of the best of them are owned by local authorities and others are under the control of the parish priest or the Catholic Young Men's Society and bodies of that kind. In every one of these cases, no matter how small the area may be whether it is a rural area parish hall or a commercial ballroom in an urban area or even a county courthouse or town hall owned by a local authority, the Minister will on inquiry be able to satisfy himself that a very high charge is always made to the promoters of dances.
I know of no dance hall in my constituency where the charge is lower than £3 3s. It may be £5 5s. for a parish hall in a rural area and it goes as high as £10, £15 and in some cases £20 for a commercial ballroom in an urban area. These people should be liable in the ordinary course of events to a higher rate of taxation than the nominal stamp duty which they have to pay whether the hall is situated in a rural or an urban area. Deputy Fitzpatrick suggested as an alternative that a higher stamp duty tax—if that is the correct way to put it—should be imposed on the owner with a lower cost of collection and that would bring in the revenue the Minister and his advisers are looking for. I doubt if the Minister personally is responsible for the introduction of this tax, but I have no doubt whatever—and I had better be quite frank about it, though if there is a division on this, I feel in honour bound to vote with the Government side—that this will be an extremely unpopular, irritating and annoying kind of tax. It is going to be annoying, not to the ballroom owner, whether he be commercial or local authority, but to the dancers. That was the real reason, I believe, why the Fianna Fáil Minister for Finance, under the strong representations of every Fianna Fáil Cumann in the country, removed that tax in 1946. They knew it was a popular thing to do and I suppose they were responding in the ordinary democratic way to the almost unanimous demand of their own members throughout the country. This reimposition will cause irritation and annoyance, not to the ballroom owners but to the dancers.
Deputy Fitzpatrick has a very intimate knowledge of the conditions prevailing in the ballrooms in the cities and towns, and I have a little knowledge of what goes on in the country. The Minister surprised me when he stated the cost of collection does not amount to more than 2 per cent. of the total tax revenue. It is a fact that the supervision of the dances carried out in rural and urban areas is done by the local customs and excise officer, who has other duties to perform, and I doubt if any part of his salary is taken into the 2 per cent. cost which is being given by the Minister as approximately the cost of collection. Is it not a fact that the majority of dances held in rural or urban areas are held on Sundays and, if that is so, is it not a fact that the customs officer must get extra pay for the Sunday duty, over and above the ordinary salary? If he has to travel, as he must in every case, to dances held in his area, he has to hire—and I know he does—a local taxi. He has other expenses to incur. The amount he pays for admission to the dance hall is trivial, but I suspect he goes in and has a "quick one", if it is inside the licensing hours, with friends of his before the dance. There is a certain amount of that going on.
Apart from that, the average dances are not confined to the boys and girls of the rising generation. The middle-aged people go to the dances held in parish halls, and particularly to those organised by political clubs and other bodies for charitable purposes. For instance, the trader in the town, whether he is a good dancer or not, feels himself under a moral obligation to go to the dance held for a political or charitable purpose. He advertises his existence and his business when he goes there, and if one trader goes his next-door neighbour is expected to go. If there are two publicans in the village and one goes and the other does not, the person who does not go is better known to the people who organise the dance than the one who does. I know, from my limited experience, that the visit of the customs officer to a dance hall when a dance is on, and his usual inquiries, which he is bound to make amongst the dancers, for the production of tax tickets, cause irritation and annoyance which has a reaction.
I admit that my knowledge is very limited compared to that of Deputy Fitzpatrick, but I assure the Minister that the organisers or promoters of dances for every and any purpose, in cities and in urban and rural areas, would far prefer to pay a higher fee to the owner of the dance hall than go to the trouble, annoyance and expense caused by the reimposition of this tax. Is it fair, I ask the Minister, that the owners of these dance halls, whether they be in city, in town or in village, should get away with this nominal stamp duty fee of £1 or thereabouts? Is it fair that Butlin's, who have distinguished directors, some of them including members of this Oireachtas, should get away with the same licensing fee as is paid by the owner of a parish hall in my constituency, when the people who go into Butlin's Camp must pay a minimum of £9 9s. 0d. a week for their maintenance there?
What has that to do with this?
I do suggest seriously to the Minister that it has a very definite bearing on the case. The people who own Butlin's Holiday Village—I am sorry I called it a camp; I was pulled up last week, not inside the House but outside, for calling it that—are a commercial concern and should be in a better position, by way of their huge income, to pay a higher licensing fee than the owner of a village hall which is used for dancing purposes. I appeal to the Minister to reconsider, if possible, this whole business, for the very good and convincing reasons given by Deputy Fitzpatrick. If he does so, he will meet the reasonable wishes of the dancers and of the ordinary people of the country.
Major de Valera
One must be struck by the argument put forward by Deputies Fitzpatrick and McCann in this instance, as both of them have got more than hearsay or secondhand knowledge of what they are talking about. Arising out of this, there is a counter suggestion, which has been supported by other Deputies, of a pro rata fee on the dance hall proprietor. That would be preferable in many ways to the type of tax proposed here. The only question I can see arising from that suggestion is that it would cover only established routine dance halls. I am still somewhat in the dark as to how logically to follow such a proposal in respect of casual functions. Some club or body whose activities do not normally include dances may want an occasional licence for an occasional dance during the year. That would be a specific problem to be dealt with in this counter-proposal by the Deputies in question.
Moving aside from that, on the whole question of this section, I think we had better get it into perspective in regard to the whole Bill. We are on the section specifically, but it can be looked at only in relation to the whole Bill, which is a Bill to implement the Budget. On the Financial Statement for 1949 and the explanatory tables connected with it, both officially published documents, the first thing is that the Minister budgeted for a surplus of £35,000.
The Deputy cannot deal with the whole Budget.
Major de Valera
I am not. This £35,000 is immediately related in this way. On this section, the Minister has brought in an amendment which absorbs practically £35,000, if the calculation which he gave is correct; so that the effect of the amendment, plus the section before us now, is to absorb that surplus from the Budget. That leaves the position that the Minister cannot forego this section and maintain his Budget figure, without making some other adjustment. That should be kept in mind when discussing the section. He has to face a certain expenditure and he has to provide the revenue for it. He has already foregone now, on the amendment to this, a sum equivalent to his nominal surplus. I recognise that it is a nominal surplus and I realise the elasticity of that in the Statement, but nevertheless, formally it is gone. He is in the position now that he cannot reject this section without making some complementary adjustment.
From a purely financial point of view, what is the case for the section? The necessity for it is brought about by the fact that the Minister has undoubtedly given releases in certain respects in regard to taxation—a matter of about £7,000,000, he claims, in reliefs in certain directions. But it is also indisputably true on these figures that he must seek to collect in the coming year nearly £8,000,000 more than any Minister for Finance who went before him.
The Deputy has gone wide of the amendment.
Major de Valera
If the Chair will bear with me, it will see that my remarks are very definitely related to the section. If I am trying to put a case logically, I must be allowed to put my premises before I put my conclusion. We are dealing with a shifting of the incidence of taxation, coupled with an all-round increase in taxation, and the question is fundamentally whether, in view of the fact that the Minister must find more than any of his predecessors had to find and in view of the fact that he has shifted the incidence of taxation otherwise, this particular shifting of the incidence is a good thing.
The first objection is, as has been stated, that this is not an economic tax to collect. The Minister has given a figure of 2 per cent. Like other Deputies, without having any specific information, I should be inclined to question that. Supposing the tax had to stand on its own, it would be a conservative estimate to say that ten revenue officers at least would be required and these ten officers would be paid at least £500 per year.
Full time.
Major de Valera
That would represent £5,000 — well over the 2 per cent. The Minister is quite correct in saying full time, but, as against the hypothetical ten I suggest, on the part-time basis, there would be very much more and an estimation of the time that a part-time officer devotes to any particular matter is largely a question of the manner in which you care to apportion it, and, as Deputy Davin pointed out, there are factors which would lead one to expect that this would be a fairly expensive tax for the State to collect and one which the Minister's predecessors thought was relatively expensive to collect.
They did not think so. It was never so said.
Major de Valera
I am not in a position to say whether it was so said previously, but I understood Deputy Aiken, who is one of the Minister's predecessors, to say so, and I gathered that that was his opinion.
He did not.
Major de Valera
If he did not, it is my mistake.
Why, then, go on with the mistake? Originally what was said was that it was a dangerous and difficult tax to collect.
Major de Valera
A difficult tax.
The emphasis was on the danger in the country areas and we are cutting that out.
Major de Valera
It was a difficult tax to collect and off-hand I should imagine it was relatively, compared with certain others, an expensive tax to collect. I will give the Minister his 2 per cent., however, and simply make this comment, that, when the costs of administration are going up — and these costs are going up under the Minister's administration — there will be an extra 2 per cent. in respect of this tax on that cost. This tax represents now a further increase in the cost of administration, whereas I think that, in the case of other taxes, it would be possible to achieve the revenue without a corresponding increase in that cost. Therefore, the objection straightway is: is this a good tax to collect, admitting that the Minister would have to do it to maintain his Budget figures? It is going to involve some administrative costs. It is not a sufficiently general picture of the situation merely to relate that to a percentage of the tax collected — over all, it is an actual increase in the cost of administration.
We could discuss this matter a little more tightly if the Minister could give us some figures with regard to other taxes and their collection, but if we take that and couple it with the argument of Deputy Fitzpatrick, namely, that it is a difficult tax to collect, a tax which, in its nature, lends itself to evasion, a tax which is a temptation to evasion, the Minister has either to organise a relatively tight system which will mean expense or take the risk of foregoing revenue by being content with a more or less average collection of the tax, with the abuses which will follow. The worst feature of these matters is that some people get away with something and others do not, and any tax which brings about a situation like that is fundamentally objectionable.
That is the second argument and it is advanced by Deputy Fitzpatrick, who is in a position to know. The other argument is the argument mentioned by Deputy Davin and Deputy Fitzpatrick and particularly by Deputy McCann — its possible impact on employment. All these things considered, it seems to me that this is a tax which is really not worth the imposing from the State point of view, having regard to the drawbacks involved. I am not quite sure that the counter-proposal put forward by other Deputies meets the situation. It may, provided the trimmings, and one in particular which I have mentioned, are captured within the scheme. The same money could be obtained otherwise.
I take it that the figure which the Minister has finally decided on as his estimate of the yield is £65,000. The original figure was £110,000.
In the current year, £110,000. I now have a new estimate of £65,000, as a result of my own amendment.
Did the Minister not say a reduction of £35,000?
I was wrong— £65,000 and £110,000 are the two figures in the current year.
Major de Valera
That does a little more than absorb the Minister's surplus on his Budget statement. However, a surplus estimate is somewhat elastic and that would merely be a point on figures, without much substance. He estimates for £65,000. Perhaps the Minister could tell us how that estimate is arrived at. Is provision made in it for the possible consequences of evasion and so forth or is it based purely on the assumption that the returns will be the same as in the past two years? I think it was Deputy Fitzpatrick who suggested that the Minister would not collect what he says he will collect from this tax. Personally, I do not propose to express an opinion, because much would depend on the basis upon which the Minister made his estimate as to the sum that would come in, but perhaps he could tell us whether his estimate makes allowance for such unavoidable losses or extra expenses in ensuring that there is no evasion, or whether it is merely a figure based on the returns of the past two years, which must be adjusted in the way Deputy Fitzpatrick suggests. By and large the section simply comes into the picture as one of the numerous ways that the Minister seeks to make up what he has given away in other directions.
Fundamentally my objection to it is that it is a bad way to get the money which, for the purpose of this argument anyway. I will admit the Minister requires. I am not quite clear as to how one is going to be affected in regard to location. The Minister undoubtedly anticipated that there would be a great clamour in regard to the little dance halls and that he would hear again the arguments pressed on him with regard to the depopulation of the countryside. I take it this three-mile limit which is apparently to be introduced now is the Minister's effort to meet this case, but the 500-centre of population is not a big one and the point is how is that 500 defined.
I do not know if I am entitled to raise Section 13 and take it with this section.
That is a separate section.
Major de Valera
Since this tax is going to now involve yourself in refinements of the other section — 13 — it further opens the administrative complexity.
What is the refinement?
Major de Valera
The refinement is about its application.
With what application difficulty?
Major de Valera
It is undesirable in general terms. Simplicity in revenue law was as desirable as in anything else. The tax provision of this section which takes up so much space is an indication that it is not as desirable a type of provision as others. I put it that it is not the best type of revenue legislation that the Minister could adopt to get the money which, for the purpose of this argument, I admit he requires and for that reason, in addition to the cogent reasons submitted by other Deputies, I think that this section should not be accepted by the House.
I certainly do not intend to follow the lines of Deputy Aiken in this debate. I think it is only fair that if the Minister is to be criticised in relation to this section that Deputies opposing him must at least put up some constructive suggestions to him. It was very noticeable in the course of this discussion so far that anything in the nature of constructive suggestion came from this side of the House and not from the Opposition. I listened to the criticisms of Deputy Aiken and Deputy Alderman McCann and it was only after Deputy Fitzpatrick spoke that other Deputies on that side of the House decided that perhaps there was some argument which could be put up to the Minister other than abuse and what can only be described as utter nonsense.
It was decided that you should reduce tax on wines and champagnes.
The Chair ruled earlier that anybody who interrupts should be given a short reply and I propose to reply to the interruption of Deputy Butler by ignoring it.
I think several Deputies have already pointed out that this tax was in existence for 14 years when the Deputies opposite were on this side of the House. It took them 14 years to decide the tax was not worth collecting. Deputy Aiken had said that the tax was difficult and dangerous to collect. People resented it and it would have to go. Deputy Aiken at that time during that discussion said that he had not got an accurate estimate of the cost of collection. I wonder if Deputy Alderman McCann was as concerned then as he seemed to be now about the question of unemployment that would result and the hardships that would ensue to proprietors of ballrooms because of the reimposition of this tax. One thing that should interest him would be the views expressed by Deputy Aiken regarding ballroom proprietors during the discussion of the section in the 1946 Bill which removed the tax. I think Deputy Fitzpatrick would also be interested in Volume 101, column 1690, Deputy Aiken who was then Minister for Finance and had undoubtedly been advised by Deputy McCann with regard to the position is reported as saying:—
"As far as the commercial dance halls are concerned, I hope they will not benefit a single penny. I hope, as a result of the taking off the expense of managing their halls in such a way as to comply with the Revenue requirements, that, when they are free, they may not only reduce the price of admission by the appropriate amount of tax taken off but by something over and above that which represents their cost in collecting for the Revenue Commissioners these particular duties. If the people of the country who attend ordinary commercial dance halls have any wit they are not going to give, when the remission of this tax comes into operation, the price they have been giving heretofore. I think it would be most unfair if these commercial dance halls were to charge such prices. But let that be between the patrons of the commercial dance halls and the proprietors. The owners of commercial dance halls should reduce the price of admission by about 20 per cent in the lower ranges."
Deputy Aiken made it quite clear when he was removing the tax in 1946 that he had no interest at all in the proprietors of the commercial dance halls, that he was not giving any consideration at all to any extra employment that might be given by this step. He went even further than that and said that, as far as he was concerned, he did not want to see an extra penny piece going into the pockets of any dance hall proprietor, that he wanted all of the amount remitted in taxation to be passed on to the patrons.
I would recommend to Deputy Alderman McCann that he might study that speech of his leader in finance before he talks about resulting unemployment. I would like if some of the Deputies who know more about this than I do, or if the Minister, when replying, would state whether or not the advice given by Deputy Aiken on that occasion was taken. I would be very interested to know, and I think the House is entitled to know, if in fact the remission of the tax on commercial dance halls was passed on to the patrons of those halls. I would like to know if any Deputy can name four establishments in this city or elsewhere in the country that reduced their prices of admission when the tax was taken off.
That is hard on Deputy Fitzpatrick.
I do not care on whom it is hard. At any rate, people on this side of the House are lucky enough to be free to talk their minds out openly and honestly. We are not, as Deputy McCann complained, trooping in a regiment behind anyone when we are speaking on this matter. Deputy Fitzpatrick is entitled to express his views just as I am entitled to express mine. But it would be of some interest to me and to other Deputies here to know what views Deputy Butler was expressing from 1932 to 1946 when this tax was in operation. I am willing to place a wager, big or small, with any Deputy, that the brave Deputy Butler bravely kept his mouth very tightly closed.
I do not wish to interrupt you.
Well, do not. There is no obligation. I do not know whether it would be in order or not, but it would be a matter of some interest to know what the Deputies opposite would recommend to replace this tax. At any rate, Deputies on this side of the House have made concrete suggestions. They have put alternative proposals. No doubt the Minister, when he is replying, will let us know whether the proposals which were put up as alternatives would in fact bring in an equivalent to what he hopes to get under this tax.
Taxed cocktails will bring in much more.
You would lose more money, as the Deputy would know if he followed the proceedings in this House.
The Minister told us he got £250,000 by reducing the tax on wine last year.
Precisely — by reducing the tax.
By reducing the tax he got £250,000 extra. That is the answer I am trying to give the Deputy.
That is good business.
Will Deputy McGrath ponder over that? He will get there eventually.
I think the two minds are probably running on lines closely allied to what in fact is the Fianna Fáil policy. It would not be the wines or the cocktails that would be taxed; not, at any rate, if they had the experience which was met by this Minister, but I think they are still hankering after an increase in the price of beer and tobacco and cinema seats.
You reduced the tax on wine.
Deputy Cowan advocated support for Deputy Fitzpatrick's proposition but, as I say, before a Deputy can make up his mind as to whether or not that suggestion would be adequate to replace the funds which the Minister hopes to get out of the present tax, it would be necessary to get some kind of concrete estimate as to what that particular type of tax —the tax on the licence or the tax on the ballroom — would bring in. It would also be necessary to take into consideration the equitable distribution of that tax. Might we not have an outcry from the people who would have to pay a far greater share in proportion to the number of dances they run than the people in the bigger ballrooms who run dances nightly during the season?
Deputy Cowan also suggested that at the moment dance halls were doing badly, that there was some kind of depression in dancing. I do not know. Deputies more closely connected with the dance hall business may be able to say whether or not that is so but, if that is so, it would seem to me that it is an argument against the suggestion put forward by Deputy Fitzpatrick and supported by Deputy Cowan.
Finally, I would sincerely ask the Deputies opposite to remember — I know this may seem to be impertinence coming from a young and newly-elected Deputy——
We are used to it.
——speaking to a number of white heads and grey heads.
If you live, you will get the grey head yet. Do not worry.
I would sincerely appeal to them to remember that this House has a job to do, that their job is not to hurl personal abuse across the floor or personal slighting abuse at people who are dead and gone but it is to give the Government of the day suggestions and assistance as to how the county should properly be run. I say again that the only suggestions that have been put forward have been put forward by Deputy Fitzpatrick, Deputy Cowan and Deputy Davin. Unfortunately, I was not here to follow the entire of Deputy Vivion de Valera's speech, but he seemed to me to be at least making some effort to be helpful and to assist the Minister. I would appeal to the Deputies on the other side who intend participating in this debate to try to follow the lead of Deputy Vivion de Valera rather than allow themselves to be misled by Deputy Aiken.
On a point of personal explanation, would the Deputy who has just sat down say whether or not it is throwing abuse upon the dead to quote from an authoritative biography published with the approval of his relatives?
May I say that it depends entirely on the manner and the tone in which the remarks were made. I do not know whether Deputy Aiken has a perpetual sneer on his face, but he certainly had one on his face when he was talking this evening.
You cannot deny the truth of the statement, anyway.
It is clearly obvious from the speeches that have been made by those on the Government Benches that the only reason why rural areas are exempt from this tax is because it is impossible to collect it and not, as some people suggested, to meet the social conditions in the rural areas.
It could, of course.
The argument put forward by both Deputies O'Higgins's was that Fianna Fáil kept this tax on for 14 years and that Deputy Aiken was Minister for Finance for eight of those years. The fact that Deputy Aiken, after eight years' experience as Minister for Finance, found that it was a good thing to do away with the tax is an argument for the abolition of the tax. He must have had tremendous experience as to the difficulty in collecting it. I know, from a small bit of experience, that there is a temptation to deceive in relation to this tax.
If a body runs a dance for charitable or benevolent purposes and applies for exemption they must first of all lodge a deposit with the Revenue Commissioners. They will get a notice to hang up in the hall in which the dance will be held. There will be no visit by any inspector except that one may come to see that the notice is hung up. There will be no check on the takings but the people who run that dance for charitable or benevolent purposes will have to fill in a form giving particulars of their expenses and their receipts. If they are unable to prove that their expenses are less than 30 per cent. Of the takings they will not be granted exemption. All that involves a good deal of trouble on the part of those running the dance and on the part of the Revenue Commissioners. The applicants must give details of their expenses — band, advertisements, and so forth — in their statement and the accounts must be examined carefully As Deputy Fitzpatrick has said, if people who run these charitable dances —and you meet a lot of people who do not think it is any crime—think they will not be granted exemption the obvious and the simplest thing to do is to increase in the statement the amount of the receipts so as to show that their expenses were less than 30 per cent. of the receipts. I think that is, as Deputy Aiken pointed out, a temptation to deceive.
I have been requested by numerous organisations in the City of Cork to protest strongly against this tax. We have two principal dance halls in the City of Cork—one the property of the Cork Corporation and the other the property of a private individual. In the City Hall in Cork we have one of the finest ballrooms in the country. Every Sunday night of the year that hall is used by one or other of the different charitable organisations, but no organisation, as far as I know, will get the hall from the city manager for two Sunday nights because, after all, it is only fair that everyone should get his turn. Every hurling club and football club and coursing club—and political organisations as well—looks upon that hall as a source of revenue to enable them to balance their budgets for the year. They can sometimes make up to £50 at a Sunday night céilidhe. Religious bodies use the hall too. The Legion of Mary and so forth, run céilidhes there on Sunday nights. All these different people feel indignant about this tax and—I am not making any bones about it—they were indignant too when Fianna Fáil imposed it. The hall run by the commercial individual is let also, to organisations who run dances. By the way, the dances in the city hall generally last from 8 p.m. to 11 p.m. while the private individual lets his hall for later hours.
I was asked last night by a committee in charge of the Cork City regatta to bring this matter to the attention of the Minister. They look upon it as one of their strongest ways of getting funds to meet the expenses of the regatta, which are very heavy.
What do you charge for the City Hall?
Twenty pounds.
Twenty pounds multiplied by 52 weeks.
We must remember that it is a big hall and that its upkeep is expensive. We must remember too, that there must be caretakers who have to be paid overtime on Sunday nights.
Do you pay £1 stamp duty?
I could not tell you that.
Did the Cork Corporation not increase their charges when the tax was taken off?
The Deputy is quite mistaken. They increased their charges when everything went up on them, and not because the tax was done away with. The City Manager gave as a reason for increasing the price the fact that it was desirable that a better class of person should be encouraged to patronise the dances— respectable young people and not to have the ordinary knock abouts.
Class distinction.
It was class distinction in that we wanted respectable people to come instead of people from other districts who were not in a proper condition to go in. However, I do not see what that interruption has to do with the case. I am pointing out that those bodies—and I am sure Deputy P.D. Lehane knows some of them—feel that this tax would mean a terrible loss to them. I would appeal to the Minister to reconsider this matter. I do not think he will gain as much as he thinks he will. He certainly will lose a lot of favour— whether that would be to our advantage or not is another matter.
Mr. Byrne
I wish to emphasise a few of the points made by Deputy Fitzpatrick and to ask the Minister to give favourable consideration to some of the suggestions he has made. I, too, have been on committees which ran dances. It is a terrible worry to some of the young people on committees that they may lose on the dance. Naturally they hope to be able to make a success of it and thereby earn £20 or £25 for whatever charitable institution they are running it. The first question a dancer will ask is about the size of the hall and the number of people in the band. If the band is a small band and the hall is fairly large the dancer will not patronise the dance. Dancers want a band sufficiently good for the music to be heard from one end of the hall to the other. It has been suggested that some of the dance hall proprietors will start to curtail their expenses and that some of them have done so already.
There has been a lot of exaggeration in this House about the size of bands. I was rather amazed when one Deputy spoke about 20 men in a band. I do not know of any hall in Ireland that has a dance band of 20 members playing at any ordinary dance. The average-sized band in Dublin City in the biggest and best halls we have comprises 12 or 14 members. If that 12 or 14 is reduced by two or three it means that two or three young men or women will lose the fee which they get for attendance. I implore the Minister to have regard to that possibility. The proprietors of halls do not always run the band. The band is engaged. One of the members of the band does the organising, and the first thing he will consider is whether he should have a band of six or eight or ten. If you want to make a success of a dance and hope to get £25 out of it for any particular organisation, a band of less than eight or ten is really not worth while because the people will not go to the dance. The first thing a person has to ask himself is how much he will have to take in to clear expenses. Before the hall is opened a calculation is made, and an organiser will tell you that he must have an attendance of at least 200 to pay expenses. If they get an attendance of 220 they know that they will cover their expenses. If they can get an attendance of 320, the extra 100 will mean a profit. The expenses of the band, however, are always there. If they reduce the number in the band for the purpose of bringing down the expenses, the dance will not be a success. They are generally at their wits' end to know what to do. A good organiser or speculator will have a full band of ten. Dancers know which are the good bands. No matter what happens, I ask the Minister to see that the money earned by the individuals in these dance bands will not be reduced.
I wonder would it be possible not to impose any tax on the first 200 of the attendance at any dance. In that way organisers would at least be guaranteed their expenses. Some means could then be devised by which a reasonable tax would be paid on the remainder. That would satisfy organisers that they will not lose money. I assure the House that 50 per cent. of the dances in the City of Dublin are run for charity purposes and a profit of £20 per night is calculated on. They must have at least 200 people at an admission fee of 3/- or 3/6 before they can make one penny profit. I put it to the Minister that he ought to consider Deputy Fitzpatrick's point and devise some means by which no tax will have to be paid on the first 200 and after that impose a tax which will bring in the revenue required.
Major de Valera
Could the Minister indicate at this stage his attitude towards the proposal with regard to dances for charitable purposes?
I am dead against it. The proposal would not bring me in more than £25,000.
Could the Minister say how many registered dance halls there are in the country?
There are about 700 dance halls in the country, all told, and possibly 250 of these are in the areas which will be free.
Could the Minister say what is the licensed capacity of the 700?
No.
If you do not know, I do not see how you can arrive at the figure of £25,000. I thought it would be twice that.
I have considerable experience of clubs and charitable organisations of all kinds. I am very sorry that the Minister reimposed this tax, because Deputy Aiken was only a short time Minister for Finance when, in his wisdom, he decided to abolish the tax on local entertainments. We have very little in the line of entertainment in rural Ireland. Speaking as a representative of local clubs and charitable organisations, I feel that the Minister is striking them a very hard blow by the reimposition of the tax. There was an air of freedom after Deputy Aiken removed the tax.
And put 60 per cent. on the pictures.
I am dealing with clubs in rural Ireland now.
They do not come under the tax.
The Minister stated that the tax will only have to be paid in areas where there is a population of over 500. There is hardly any area in my constituency which will be exempt under that condition.
Is Butlin's holiday camp in your area?
As a matter of fact, it is not. I advise the Deputy to study his geography.
That is one of the charitable organisations with which he is associated.
As a matter of fact, Deputy Norton spoke very highly of that "charitable organisation" when he was down there some time ago.
We must not have a discussion on that matter.
I have been associated with charitable organisations for over 30 years. The charitable organisations will be very hard hit by this tax. Of course the Minister does not mind hitting these people hard and even under the belt. When dances are being held for charitable organisations money will have to be lodged with the Revenue Commissioners or a certain number of tickets purchased. If the dance is a failure, further representations have to be made to the commissioners. Then on the night of the dance an inspector is sent out. The committee running the dance are not running it for themselves, but for the benefit of people who are not in a position to help themselves. When they put a person on the door to collect the money, they will be afraid that he will fail to issue a ticket to some person entering the hall. I have had experience of people, through some oversight, failing to do something like that. The result is that the inspector questions people in the hall.
The Minister is anxious to persecute the people of rural Ireland and the clubs I am speaking of. Football clubs, tennis clubs, dramatic societies, welfare societies, Red Cross branches and the St. Vincent de Paul Society which organise functions of this kind will have this persecution reimposed on them which Deputy Aiken, in his wisdom, removed from them when he realised what he was doing. He gave an air of freedom to all the clubs in the country. That air of freedom is to be taken away from them again. There is also another section dealing with another rural sport—the increased charge for a gun licence.
All these things, as far as I can see, only reimpose persecution on the various clubs' committees that are running functions in this country. The Minister, in stating that certain areas where the population is only 500 will not have to pay tax, is trying to hoodwink the people. I am telling the Minister that in County Dublin I do not know of an area that will not come within that three mile limit. Everybody associated with any club has a great regard for the previous Minister for Finance for a very sensible act. I want to know what is prompting the present Minister to reimpose a tax that is going to persecute every club in the country.
At the moment I can definitely tell the Minister that dances are not paying. The dance-hall proprietors have made their own case in their own way. As members of clubs, we have to pay our fee for the hiring of halls, pay high expenses for a band, pay performing rights and so on. The result is that clubs to-day are working for a band and a hall and now, on top of that, the Minister says that you are not going to have any fun in rural Ireland except you pay through the nose for it.
Did you hear Deputy McGrath?
I have never said a word but the honourable Deputy Davin must burst in. I want to point out again to the Minister that charitable organisations will be in a very bad way. A number of welfare societies that I have been associated with and am associated with in County Dublin have existed on the promotion of dances. They have been well conducted and well run. Now they are going to be back in the position where, if their expenses are over 30 per cent. of their takings on the door, they are going to have to surrender the whole thing; not to speak of carnivals being run for parochial purposes, to help the building of schools, the reconditioning of churches and the building of parish halls. Every football club, debating society and so forth, that was responsible for brightening the life of rural Ireland is going to be persecuted. I look upon it as sheer persecution. If a person pays his fee into a dance hall he is persecuted by the inspector saying: "Can you show me your ticket?" Many a patron, a boy or girl, may possibly have dropped their ticket. Their name is taken and they are asked: "Why did you not get the ticket at the door?" We have been told many times in this House how anxious the Government are to brighten the lives of the people of rural Ireland and here is an example of it. When Deputy Aiken, as Minister for Finance, in his wisdom tried to give them an air of freedom and encourage them to brighten their lives in the country and——
The Deputy has said that several times.
Of course, the one thing about a good thing is that it cannot be said too often.
The Chair does not share that opinion in respect of this.
I know. Another point that Deputy McCann has made here and which I definitely support, is that the reimposition of this tax is going to cause unemployment. I have no doubt it will, judging by the statement made by Deputy Fitzpatrick. That is another point that the Minister should consider. If, as a result of the reimposition of this tax, dance musicians, people who are associated with the running of dance halls and employed by dance hall proprietors, are going to lose their employment and if the Minister is concerned about them he should seriously consider doing something to alleviate any further distress because we have enough unemployed already.
Parochial halls have cost a lot of money and have possibly been built by clubs. Perhaps the clubs have overdrawn at the bank in order to carry on. The same applies to individuals who have put up a dance hall and as Deputy McCann says, there has been a good deal of building of dance halls since the tax was taken off by Deputy Aiken as Minister for Finance. Now we are going to have the position again where that very much needed enjoyment in the urban towns and in rural Ireland is going to be killed. People are not going to build these halls because they will find after paying for everything that the clubs are not going to hire the halls. If the clubs are not going to hire the halls, there is going to be unemployment. The Minister will go down in history as the Minister for Finance, better known as the kill-joy Minister.
I realise, as everyone here does, that a tax is never a popular thing, no matter what it is or how necessary it is. We all understand that something must be done in order to run the country. We are all anxious to get everything as cheaply as we can; at the same time, I must say that I regret the Minister has found it necessary to think of this increase in taxation so far as dancing is concerned. I realise, as many others do, that it is the one thing which is a very popular and good pastime within reason, in the country. It is all very well to talk about what is happening in bigger places. In the country it is just the one thing that most people look forward to on Sunday nights, say. In my opinion, it would be a splendid thing if the Minister could find some other method to collect this required amount of money. I believe that there is consternation amongst the various proprietors of the various dance halls throughout the country. No doubt, these people have to live just as any other person in business. I had conversations with several of them during the week.
As a matter of fact I do not find myself quite in agreement with the Minister on this particular matter. I am more in favour of the proposal that was made by Deputy Fitzpatrick that, instead of having a ticket tax the capacity of the dance halls should be taxed. If that were done a certain amount of money would be collected, perhaps not as much as by the ticket tax. It might, say, come within £20,000 of the required amount. Deputy Fitzpatrick, I understand, has gone into this matter very carefully. Several other proprietors of dance halls have come to me and have explained to me that that would be a far better method than the ticket tax, apart altogether from the fact that it would cause less worry to the proprietors and to the general public. The capacity of the halls could be easily ascertained and so it is urged that that would be an easy method of collecting the money required.
There is another point which is a serious one. The amount that it will cost to collect the ticket tax if the scheme which the Minister has in mind is gone on with. There has been so much said on that that there is no need for me to stress it further. There will be quite a lot of money spent on the inspectors. I, for one, do not like the idea of inspectors interrupting people when they have paid to engage in a legitimate pastime. I think that the Minister's scheme could be got over by the method suggested by Deputy Fitzpatrick. The Minister, I know, is very considerate. He does not want to stand between people enjoying themselves. On the contrary, since he became Minister he has given back quite a lot of things to the people. He was faced with a terrible outlook at that time. There was a tax on almost everything, yet he was able to give back many things to the people which were regarded as luxuries by the last Government. The Minister is anxious that people should have things at a reasonable price, but, having given back so much, it is easy to understand how it is that he must find some way to make up for the reductions he has made. In all sincerity I would ask him to consider some of the suggestions that have been made. Perhaps he might consider setting up a body in this House composed of people intermil ested in this particular tax to find other ways and means of collecting the same amount of money without putting into effect this ticket tax.
It has been said, too, that a lot of people will try to evade this tax. It is a bad thing to have that sort of idea abroad, even before the scheme is put into operation. I have been told that in the past that the payment of the tax was evaded. One may be surprised to hear many people say now that they did evade the payment of the tax when it was in force. For that reason I think it would be far better if, somehow, Deputy Fitzpatrick's suggestion could be considered. It would be a far better method of collecting almost the same amount of money. I ask the Minister to consider that point. I think it would be a far better and a wiser scheme for the collection of the same amount of money.
Major de Valera
Could the Minister enlighten us at this stage, arising out of Deputy Burke's remarks, as to the effect of this on dances for charitable purposes? It appears that all dances and entertainments are to be affected. I should like to know if I am right or wrong in that. Is there to be any loophole or any exemption for such things as dances for charitable purposes?
Whatever there was before.
Major de Valera
So that still stands?
That was part of the persecution before and it continues.
Major de Valera
I merely want to know what the factual position is. The Minister must find revenue. I, for one, think that if it were a question of finding revenue I would go for the non-essentials before going for the essentials. I would tax the non-essentials first. We said that before and I am prepared to say it again. We are prepared to concede that we would rather go for those in the category of non-essentials than for essentials. I still think that the arguments that have been made against this section——
On a point of order. I understood that the Deputy got up to ask a question. He is speaking now to the exclusion of Deputy Butler and others who want to speak. The Deputy spoke before.
Major de Valera
We are in Committee.
I know, but I think Deputy Butler was called on.
Major de Valera
I am not going to take up the time of the House except to say that the real question seems to have shifted. Is the incidence of the tax going to be changed, even when the tax has to come from this source? Some Deputies will still object to the tax coming from this source for other reasons. A number of Deputies have been arguing about the particular method of getting the tax from this source. The Minister has indicated that he is not prepared to accept proposals made by other Deputies here. I am just wondering, just as Deputy Mrs. Redmond has been wondering whether there is not another way of getting around it to get the £65,000, even from the same source, without the objections which have been already fully pleaded.
I quite realise that taxes must be imposed so that the services of the country may be carried on. I have not risen to criticise this particular tax in any hostile spirit at all I am sorry that it will hit parochial committees, charitable organisations and athletic associations of various kinds. There is good authority for saying that it will cause a great deal of unemployment. That is a very regrettable thing. I object to the tax on a number of grounds. One is that it will not make the country attractive. The imposition of this tax will make the country less attractive than it has been up to date.
Some Deputies on the other side of the House tried to give the impression that this tax would not hit the country, that it would not hit rural areas. I think it would be more true to say that it will hit very considerable expanses of the country outside the large towns and cities and anything that is possible to brighten up rural life should be done. There is nothing that so brightens the life for young people in country areas as dancing. I do not think any other form of recreation you could offer them would have the same attraction. From that point of view, I am sorry this tax is being reimposed.
There is this point also, that this tax may drive a large number of recognised dance halls out of existence. It will certainly discourage the erection of additional ones and young people will find this form of recreation for themselves and the result will be that they will probably go into small and stuffy private houses, sometimes in great numbers, and they will find themselves in rooms where the air is vitiated and very unhealthy. I think in that way we will not do much to help the anti-tuberculosis campaign. I think it would be a serious thing to drive the young people in the rural areas from recognised dancing places, possibly into holes and corners. In the recognised halls the parents know where the young people are and with whom they are associated. If they are scattered here and there in order to find this form of recreation which they cannot get in the normal way, it will not be a good thing for them. It is comparable to the closing of licensed premises where beer and spirits are sold and encouraging the spread of shebeens. There is something comparable between these two things.
The more serious objection in my mind is the discouragement to training in music, vocal and instrumental, that will result from the imposition of this tax. There is no doubt that training in music, vocal and instrumental, is nothing like as widespead or as good as it was when I was a boy.
And that was not yesterday.
That was not yesterday— that is true. I was reared in a country town and we had there a very fine choral union where we did the works of the very best composers, from the Elizabethan period down to the present time.
In a dance hall?
I am saying that the training in music, vocal and instrumental, has deteriorated very much from what it was 30 or 40 years ago and, with the imposition of this tax, if it reduces the number of musicians or the possibility of employment for them, it will tend to discourage people from training in music. I think that would be a very undesirable thing. In that small county town — this is my own experience—we had a very fine choral union and, in addition, we had a very good orchestra in which we, at least, attempted the works of the very best composers. I had the pleasure of being the pianist to that orchestra for a number of years. In the orchestra we had all classes of people, from the poorest upwards. I might mention, incidentally, that the oboe player was a clergyman, the rector of a neighbouring parish.
I am pointing out these things in order to show that a great deal can be done for the uplift, the amusement and the enjoyment of people in country places, given proper encouragement. I am not blaming the present Government in any way for the state of affairs that exists now and that has existed for a long time. The gramophone was very damaging, in the first instance, and then we had wireless later on.
Does the Deputy maintain that they are damaging to the dance halls?
I do. I maintain that if this tax is imposed it will still further damage the cause of musical training. I am saying that already it has been damaged very much by the gramophone, the wireless and the tinned music that we have in the cinema. I think it is a very great pity that the training of young people in music should be discouraged, as it certainly is discouraged by the imposition of this tax. One Minister had a praiseworthy objective before him of keeping Government inspectors outside the gates. Here we have a Minister apparently determined to bring them back inside the doors of the halls in which people enjoy themselves dancing.
Another serious objection to this tax is that any legislation that, as it were, encourages circumvention of the existing law is bad. We have it on the authority of Deputy Fitzpatrick and other Deputies here to-night that people will go to extraordinary lengths to circumvent this law. For that reason I think the Minister should try to think of some other means of bringing in revenue. I do not altogether agree with Deputy Fitzpatrick's alternative of putting the tax on the proprietors of the dance halls. If you take small villages and towns, you will find that one of the most desirable things is to have a local hall.
If dance halls are liable to be heavily taxed there is very little likelihood of their being built at all. Where dancing is promoted under proper supervision it encourages the building of halls more than does anything else in small towns and villages where such halls are so very desirable. These halls can be used for other purposes apart from dancing. What are described here as dance halls are very often not strictly dance halls as such. They are used for various purposes. They are used for concerts and lectures and so on. They help to maintain interest, particularly in the rural areas. The suggestion offered by Deputy Fitzpatrick plays into the hands of the big man. That suggestion would tend to discourage the erection of small halls in country villages and towns. I consider a town with a population of 500 people very small. I trust that the Minister will accept the general wish of the House that, if possible, this tax should be remitted.
To my mind the proposal to reimpose this entertainment tax is very wrong particularly when one considers the rural areas and the lack of entertainment facilities and the paucity of attractions in these places. From the Minister's introductory speech it would appear as if he were actuated by a desire to assist rural entertainment and encourage facilities in rural districts. His proposal, however, will have the effect, in my opinion, of retarding such a development. Cinemas and dance halls are the major attractions available in the majority of country districts. They are really the only form of entertainment the people have. Any Government action which might impede their development must further unpopularise rural life. Any movement in that direction is ultimately bad policy and the Government should be very slow to adopt such a line of action. The present proposal will have an injurious effect on small towns. I take it the Minister had before him the experience of the previous Government when he eliminated areas three miles distant from a town with a population of over 500 people. A population of 500 does not really constitute a town. At most it is a village.
Since the introduction of this proposal a number of potential itinerant cinema producers have sought to book up all the towns and villages with a population of 500 or less. They have travelled as far as County Leitrim. These shows will have the effect of making the position of the permanently established cinemas in towns with a population of 1,000 untenable. That would be the maximum population of any town in my county. Under this proposal every person in such a town will be subject to an entertainment tax. I do not know what form of taxation could apply to these intinerant cinemas. They are already in existence. These people book halls within three miles of a large town and naturally the townspeople will travel three miles to see these shows. If that happens no business will be left for the permanently established cinemas in the town. It may have the effect, if it is imposed as a permanent tax, that some enterprising people will build reasonably substantial dance halls——
Is the Deputy dealing with Section 12 or with Section 13? He seems to be discussing Section 13.
This will have the effect of bringing into existence conditions the Minister never intended when he introduced it. I strongly urge upon him that he should consider the appeals made here. He must know that this is a highly unpopular proposal. I have no objection to dancing or any entertainment of that kind and I hold that entertainment generally should make a contribution to the State in the same way as do commodities like tobacco and whiskey. From the experience of the previous Government I am satisfied that this tax is not worth the candle. It will be injurious in so far as social life in rural areas is concerned. Conditions must be made attractive in the rural areas if we wish to keep our people there. I suggest the Minister should pay heed to the considered arguments advanced against the application of this tax in its present form.
The Minister has listened to a great deal of argument against this tax and he must now have reached the conclusion that it is difficult to impose a tax on anything that is popular. I suggest that that is one of the reasons why he and his colleagues succumbed to the temptation last year to reduce taxation on a number of popular commodities. We are all agreed that the Minister has a perfect right to come forward with proposals for the imposition of taxation in any direction his Government thinks fit. If it is absolutely necessary that this £65,000 should be obtained, and if there is no other means of obtaining it except on entertainments there can be no great objection to getting this money from entertainments in preference to imposing it on some of the necessaries of life. I am sure that all Deputies agree that if dances could be made completely free of restriction and free of taxation that would be very desirable. The major objection advanced against this tax on dances is the fact that there are so many problems to solve in the way of getting stamps and so on.
The Minister and his advisers are aware of the efforts to evade this tax. Everybody who has had anything to do with the organising of dances knows quite well of the efforts that were made all over the country, demoralising the whole community, to evade the tax and the fraud that was carried on against the laws of the country. Suggestions have now been made that the Minister might raise the money by means of licensing dance halls, by imposing stamp duties on licences or otherwise. That would cut out all the need for inspection, all the red tape, and it would give the Minister this £65,000. I believe he could raise more money by means of a licence duty than under this proposed arrangement. He told us that it would cost something about 2½ per cent. for administration. That is roughly, I suppose, about £2,000 out of £65,000.
How much?
£2,000. So the Minister told us.
I said 2 per cent. That was the estimate when it had to be collected all over the country.
You have no estimate of the revenue lost by illegalities and fraud on the revenue?
No.
You are going to get £65,000 by this tax. I make that out to be .00013 of your total revenue.
There has been enough talk about it.
The Minister can see how unpopular it is.
I do not see any unpopularity but I see a cheap attempt to get popularity.
We are not concerned about getting popularity. I was one of those who brought to the notice of the Minister and his Department, the fraud that was going on when the tax was in operation and the nuisance the collection of the tax was to all organisations in this country. I am sure the dance promoters in this country are well able to stand this £65,000. The people attending dances pay far more for motor cars and in the consumption of drink at these dances than £65,000. I do not think that £65,000 is going to break dancing organisations in this country but there is the nuisance that the collection means for organisations who organise dances for charitable purposes and indeed for every possible purpose. That is what they object to. They would willingly pay £3 or £5 on a straight licence duty to carry on the dance rather than be compelled to stamp the tickets and to make returns for the Revenue Commissioners. That is the nuisance objected to by organisers of dances. I would suggest to the Minister that he should reconsider this whole matter and see if he could get his revenue in some other way rather than by the system that was in operation and that was found to be such a nuisance over many years.
Amendment put and agreed to.
Question proposed: "That the section, as amended, stand part of the Bill."
I had hoped that I would get from the Minister the grounds on which he bases the estimate of £65,000 that he hopes to collect by means of this tax. Would it be correct to assume that the Minister is basing that estimate on the amount collected in 1946?
What amount is the Deputy speaking of?
I am referring to the estimate of £65,000 as the receipts from this tax. I take it that you are basing that on the amount collected in 1946.
I would not say for 1946 but for the later years of the tax, with a deduction of course for the smaller area.
I should like to point out that 1946 and 1947 were boom years, and when it was not found a reasonable tax to collect in the boom years, now that the boom is over I do not see how the Minister can possibly hope to get anything like the amount that he is budgeting for. Speaking from practical knowledge, I can tell the Minister and the House that the boom in dancing at the end of the war and in the years immediately following the war, was caused by the number of American soldiers that came here on leave from Europe. Every American soldier who came here wanted to go to a dance hall to enjoy himself. They were followed in the summer time by visitors from England who came across here in search of enjoyment and good food. Dancing is more popular in England than it is in Ireland. The young people especially flocked to the ballrooms and dance halls of the city here. That is now all practically over. We have no American soldiers coming from Europe. Many people may be greatly pleased, but I would not say that anyone here is pleased that the English visitors, especially young people, have ceased to come to this country. They were welcome here, and while they felt that sometimes they were fairly well fleeced, they were allowed to enjoy themselves and they went away with pleasant recollections of the city here. That influx was responsible for the boom in dancing during the years on which the Minister has based his estimate.
I suggest to him, and I defy contradiction by his officials, that the attendance in the ballrooms in Dublin has fallen by two-thirds and that where he hopes to get £65,000, he will not get more than £22,000 because if the people are not attending dances they will not be paying taxes on the price of admission. It was with that knowledge that I considered it my duty to my constituents to advise the Minister and the Government as to the true facts of the situation when I spoke against this tax and when I endeavoured to submit an amendment. I feel now, in view of the statements made here, that the Minister might even still consider the suggestions I made in my amendment and to use them as a basis for the collection of this tax, so as not to interfere with people who go into the dance hall to enjoy themselves. The fact of being followed into the ballroom and of being interfered with perhaps in the middle of a dance is something they always resented and always will resent. I feel I am not letting myself down or that I can be accused of putting my personal interests before the interests of the community in general or of failing in my duty as a Deputy of this House when I suggest that it is not the people who go in that should be taxed but the people who own the ballroom. They pay a nominal fee for a licence at the present time and I think it would be a much better system for the Minister to adopt than the one in force at the present time. I think none of us objects to his getting the money, but we suggested to him how he would get it cheaper and easier and in a way which would not cause resentful sentiments outside. I would ask him even at this eleventh hour to reconsider the matter. He said that he would only get £25,000, but I thought it would go to between £40,000 and £50,000 or even higher. If the scale which I set up was not enough and the Minister adopted the manner in which I suggested the tax could be collected without any resentment, he is at liberty to take the figure I put before him and increase it by a third or a half or double it. He can do that without interfering with the people who have the right to enjoy themselves and I respectfully submit that even now he should consider it.
As a supporter of the Government, if there is a division, I am not going to vote against the Government. My amendment is there and I could oppose the Government and vote for it but on the other hand I am not going to vote against the Government for the purpose of advertising myself. But as every second speaker who has spoken on this controversial matter against the system by which this tax is collected was a Government supporter, if a free vote were taken that system would be turned down. I put that before the Minister and appeal to him to consider it.
I hope you will not mind, Sir, if I refer to a few facts to which I should have referred before. It was pointed out to me the number of clubs that would be affected. Hurling clubs, football clubs, tennis clubs, beagling clubs, hunting clubs, political clubs, benefits for printers' organisations, etc., and agricultural societies and farmers' societies would be very gravely hit by this tax and, in fact, quite a number of them my correspondent anticipates, will cancel their bookings and some have already cancelled them. That is not imagination, because one association gave figures showing that by the time they paid the tax it just would not be worth their while to run the dance. These are concrete facts, and I am glad that Deputy Mrs. Redmond supported that claim. She must have received the same letters as I did.
Probably from the same place.
The City and County of Waterford has two or three big centres of population available to the surrounding rural dwellers.
Most of that correspondence is in answer to a whip round of the proprietors of dance halls. Do not the letters show that that is so?
I do not think so.
Have you seen the letters?
Only the letters I got myself. It is pointed out that in the case of the short dances on Sunday night where the patrons pay 2/- and they are all working boys and girls who seek recreation and good music and are willing to create their own amusement—the price would now be raised. I do not know what the new price would be.
That is the trouble; all those letters were written before this amendment.
Céili dances will be affected. I could understand the Minister having regard to certain social benefits which he would like to see accruing and if he excepted céilis and dances where no drinks were sold, but he is not making an attempt to do anything like that. He is slapping on an inconsiderate tax which will mean the closing down of halls so that the result will be that he will not get the tax he anticipates. It is a pathetic commentary on the promises of the Government that there would be freedom for the various sections in the Government and that they would not be asked to vote against their settled definite opinions and convictions. We have an example where rigidity of discipline is even greater than it was in my experience as Chief Whip of a Party in which the discipline was pretty severe.
I would like to say a few words on the section as amended by the Minister. It struck me very forcibly that not since the days of the Charge of the Light Brigade at Balaclava have I seen so many Deputies eager to speak on such a trivial detail in a budget of £70,000,000.
£73,000,000.
To be candid and honest about the whole thing, I would much prefer if the Minister did not impose this tax, but while saying that, I do not subscribe to the gloomy forebodings that a terrible catastrophe is going to happen to this country as a result of this tax. I have experience of halls built by my associates out of their own little savings. They run dances now and then and are going to be affected. But the only thing I hope is that when the tax is in operation there will be no such thing as the evasion which was practised at the time it was in operation before and of which I could give examples if I wished to cause a little trouble in the House but I am not going to do that now. Do not the Deputies know very well, and Deputy Aiken when he was Minister for Finance stressed the point, that when the tax was in operation the price of admission was fixed in view of the tax and when the tax was taken off the price of admission was not reduced pro rata? Is not that a fact? Yet no one Deputy on the far side adverted to that very pertinent fact which is the foundation of the whole argument as far as the imposition of this tax is concerned. We were very glad at home when the tax was taken off but when it was in operation we paid the tax and when it is in operation now we will pay the tax and we will not increase the prices but will do with less. There again, is it not a well known fact that young people get into a motor car and go to a dance 50 miles away? Yet we are told that, if they have to pay 3d. and 4d. more, the county is doomed. We have had it advocated here that it will do away even with our culture and drive out the love of music from our people. We used to be very renowned for that, but surely no one on the opposite side will attempt to argue that there is music in dance bands. The more canned music they get in a dance band, the more they like it nowadays.
The Deputy is on very dangerous ground now.
I happen to know a wee bit of music and have a good ear, and I know good music when I hear it. As regards this question of destroying the joy and pleasure, as suggested by Deputy Burke, in the rural population, I do not think his statement is correct at all. The vast majority of the rural people will have that three-mile limit, which will mean that they will not have to pay any tax on the hall which they use for recreation, dancing, cinema or otherwise. I believe that exemption is a very good one. I make these remarks, although personally I would prefer that the Minister did not reimpose the tax. At the same time, I do not subscribe to the views put forward by many Deputies on all sides of the House that, if this tax is imposed, the sky will fall and something awful will happen. Some Deputies seem to think that dancing is the be-all and end-all of the prosperity of this country. That is a view to which I do not subscribe. So far as the physical and cultural welfare of the people is concerned, it would be bad that they should have that opinion. I believe that the sensible Deputies—and I refer particularly to the Leader of the Opposition, Deputy de Valera—will find it very difficult to go in and vote against the Minister's imposition of this tax.
Will the Minister deal with céilidhe dancing? I am not a follower of these modern dances or jazz music and never found interest in them. My interest is in céilidhe dancing and whether it will be exempt.
Céilidhe dancing is dancing and is not exempt. Deputy Little, on his second intervention, spoke of the correspondence he had from his own area. I received, I think, the same correspondence. The letters, in the main, were protests against the increase in the tax not the reimposition. One letter sent to me personally said that:—
"Press reports following the Budget speech lead me to believe that the Budget tax was merely a reimposition of the old tax."
That note runs through all the letters —100 per cent. increase on the tax in 1946. It is clear from these letters that the proprietor of one of the halls naturally set about canvassing all his patrons and wrote to them urging them to write to him protesting against the tax, so that he could pass on the letters to Deputy Little. That is quite clear. One says:—
"I am in receipt of your letter and am amazed to learn that the tax would be 100 per cent. above the tax applied some years ago."
That was the protest I got, in the main. That was also the greater part of the burthen or song of complaints which two or three deputations I took on this matter had. I understood I had met by far the greater amount of the complaint about this tax by the reduction I brought in, at a cost of £45,000 to the revenue.
However, in the background of all this tax, there is one mistaken point of view which I do not suppose I will succeed in having removed—that this is a costly tax to collect. That is not so. There is no good in people working into a frenzy of calculation, in an amateurish way like Deputy de Valera, as to what might happen. The people on whom the State relies for the estimate of revenue to be got from all the various methods must be regarded as having some talent in estimation, in knowing what taxes would be fruitful and what the yield is likely to be and in associating, at least by way of estimate, the cost against that. Their view as expressed to me was that, in the days in which this tax had to be collected in a difficult way over remote rural areas, the cost of collection was 2 per cent. of what we got. I do not suppose that, if I say that a dozen times, I will get any credence from the Deputies opposite. They have taken a certain view, and will try to make the same calculations as Deputy de Valera indulged in, to prove that it must be costing more. There is the situation presented to me by people of experience, as against this amateurish action.
How does that compare with the collection for other taxes?
I do not know. If there is any good the Deputy thinks may be got from the information, I will get it for him. That was the estimate which he would have been given yesterday, if he requested it, on the question he put to the Parliamentary Secretary, but as the answer was circulated with the Official Report there was no chance of having any supplementary question. I know that every Deputy says that Deputy Aiken, when he took the tax off, said it took £80,000 to collect £85,000. He never said anything of the sort. He was not advised to say anything like that and, even on his own, he never said anything remotely like that. But that error persists and everybody talking on this uses that mistaken information, that this is a costly thing. I know that is the background of the Deputy's amendment.
He suggests, as an amendment, putting the tax on licences, calculating on so much money being received. Deputy Fitzpatrick, I think, was not attempting to collect in his tax the whole thing, but some portion of the tax and he was trying to give me the sum which he said represented the sum, less the expense, he thought, of collecting it. Deputies who have been talking about following me into the Division Lobby tramped resolutely through the Lobbies for 14 years to keep this tax on. All this imagination that was displayed in the Dáil to-night, that apparently was breaking their hearts, did not break out into speech for 14 years in the Deputies opposite. Apparently this tax was always a killjoy, always likely to cause unemployment, to lead to disposals of dance halls and prevention of others being built. According to Deputy Butler, it is even a help towards tuberculosis in the country. That is the way the tax is characterised. Deputy Butler gave me an impression of himself 40 years ago, if he was asked out to a social evening, bringing his violin — and he is lamenting that the dance hall tax has killed that sort of stuff. That was the position for 14 years. Deputies opposite walked the gangways every time.
Did they vote on that matter?
Any time they were called on.
I do not think there was any vote on the matter.
These Deputies did not object.
Will the Minister agree to Deputy Fitzpatrick's suggestion of a free vote?
Worst of all, it was apparently recognised for many years —I am not now referring to Deputy McCann's own particular and special piece of nonsense but to the general nonsense talked—that evasion was being practised all over the country.
You did not think it worth while to read the letter from the Irish Federation of Musicians.
Evasion was being practised all over the country and Deputies were cognisant of that, but they are afraid now of the demoralisathey are afraid now of the demoralisation that will be caused in the country through the evasion of this tax. While that evasion was being practised, they were either dumb about it or followed blindly the man who brought about that situation.
Why do you not deal with the present?
The Minister is entitled to speak without interruption.
He is not entitled to insult people.
The Minister is not insulting anybody.
Some Deputies spoke of this as the real brightener of country life, and, for 14 years, the Deputies opposite dimmed the brightness of country life. I am the only person who has tried to remove these and other taxes from the rural areas. When the dancing tax was in operation, it was in operation in the rural areas, and, when entertainment tax of another type was in operation, it was in operation in the rural areas.
And it will be still in operation in my constituency.
The Deputy is one of the people who complained about the rural areas of County Dublin. The rural areas of County Dublin have no bright rural life, but he did not do much to assist them to get any brightness in their drab lives for 14 years.
I did, and I worked hard, too.
When it came to a question of taxing these people who were not able to go to picture-houses or dance halls in their tobacco and their beer, the Deputy taxed them, no matter what discomfort it was going to bring in those areas. Through the years, a big sum of money was collected. If there was evasion — and I am told there was, all over the place— the tax was apparently worth it. It crossed the £100,000 mark in 1943; it was £132,000 and a bit in 1944-45; and was just short of the £150,000 mark in 1945-46. If the promise of the first four months had been borne out, it would have gone fairly close to £250,000 in 1946-47. That was a good deal to extract from the bright countryside. I am looking for only £65,000, but I am looking for that sum in new circumstances.
What about the bright lounge bars you are creating, one after the other?
In connection with an entertainment tax last year, Deputy McCann told a story, which I later characterised as a complete falsehood, about a Ringsend picture house.
I never mentioned it.
The Deputy was one of the men who did and I challenged him and Deputy MacEntee later. We awaited a denial and got none, because in the meantime I had made contact with the proprietor. That is why I discount——
I did not mention Ringsend. I had no knowledge of it.
The Ringsend-Sandymount direction.
I was briefed by the people affected last year.
The Deputy pretended to be. I was in touch with the man spoken of and the Deputy was not briefed by him.
I did not mention Ringsend.
The Deputy made a false statement in this House.
I made no such false statement.
The Deputy did. I am getting this sum of £65,000——
Is the Minister entitled to say that I made a false statement?
The statement is perfectly Parliamentary.
If the Minister says that, I say that he is a damned liar.
There is a difference between a false statement and a damned lie. A Deputy can make a false statement quite sincerely without knowing that it is false. Deputy McCann will withdraw that expression he has used towards the Minister.
I withdraw it.
Is the Minister entitled to persist in his statement when the Deputy has denied making the statement? The Deputy has denied it at least four times, and the Minister persists in repeating it.
The situation, as I see it, is entirely different under which I am looking for this amount of £65,000. Last year, as a result of the remission of the taxation given and by reason of people having more money to spend on themselves, certain of the taxes which were retained showed an increase in revenue yield beyond any expectation. They were mainly what I would call types of entertainment tax, though I do not mean the types which come strictly under the heading of entertainments tax. It was picture-houses last year, and the revenue derived from racing and betting and the yield from taxes on whiskey and tobacco — all these, taking them all together, went far beyond the estimates made. All the taxes which go to indicate that people had money to spend on themselves and on their amusements—and were spending it that way—yielded very well. I cannot understand why dancing is to be segregated and how people can come to the conclusion that all other forms of entertainment on which money is being spent, and spent partly for the good of the State, are going to continue to yield revenue, but that dancing is going to fall off. That is why I discount to a great extent all these lamentations about loss of employment. If there was to be loss of employment, it should have been seen over a 14 years' test, but Deputies opposite ran the tax for all that period, and if there was any evidence to be derived from the past, Deputies could have brought that evidence here and could have said: "Look at the results of this tax over 14 years. Look at the unemployment caused and look at all the dance halls lying derelict"; but not one particle of evidence of that sort can be brought forward.
When Deputy Aiken withdrew the tax some years ago, he did not do it on the ground that it was defeating itself, or on the ground that it was causing unemployment, or on the ground that it was hurting the rural areas, because the rural areas were not particularly in his viewpoint at the time. His attitude was: "We have recognised the truth of part of this statement that it is a dangerous tax to collect." That had application to the remote areas of the country and it was difficult—the word was used in the same context—from the angle of inspection. We are cutting out the dangerous and difficult areas, and, even then, in the easier areas, I will still abide by the estimate of 2 per cent. expense ratio in relation to the revenue to be derived. It cannot be called a costly tax.
Deputy Burke has put himself on record as saying that dancing is on the wane and, in fact, he says that dances now, before the tax is put on, are not paying. I am glad to have that recorded, and, when we come to have an inquest on this tax next year, we will see whether the situation is as bad as the Deputy believes.
It was Deputy Fitzpatrick said that.
I am speaking of Deputy Burke. He says that dances are not paying.
Deputy Fitzpatrick said that.
He did not. He said that there were not as many dances as there were in what he called the peak years. Members of the House have spoken about this tax for the best part of three and a half hours—I want only ten or 15 minutes.
It is all to pay for cheap wine.
That was one of the suggestions made, I think, by Deputy Butler, but I did not think that Deputy McGrath associated himself with that particular piece of folly. Last year we got more revenue by reducing the tax on wine, and it seems to me the height of folly to increase a tax when the increase will result in a lesser yield.
Encourage the drinking of wine—that is what you did.
I hope that there will be more wine drunk because there will be a greater yield, but the greater yield comes from the reduction in tax. I cannot get any more money out of an increase in the tax on wine.
There is the other side that ought to be considered in the context of this tax. People who go to dances do not merely dance. There is a good deal of smoking that goes on at dances and there is some drink actually consumed at dances. Both tobacco and drink are cheaper since February, 1948. There is about £6,000,000 that was being extracted from the people of the country in connection with these two taxes and that £6,000,000 is in the hands of those people to spend. I am asking here for £65,000. It is about £1,300,000 shillings. Deputies may come to their own conclusion. What proportion of the community dances? Do £500,000 of the £3,000,000 population dance?
You will make them dance now all right.
And what dances do they attend? What can I get off them? If I get 2/3 from £500,000 people divided out of whatever number of dances they go to, the tax is saved. Mind you, this is in circumstances in which people are not made to dance the tune that Deputy O'Rourke's Leader made them dance for 14 whole years.
They got tired then.
This is Section 12 of the Finance Bill of this year. In the first seven sections I have lost £886,000 by way of remitted tax in this year— £1,220,000 for a full year. In Section 12 I am asking for £65,000 in return. Surely it is a fair bargain the people are getting when I remit £886,000 in seven sections of the piece of legislation and ask for £65,000 back. I suggest it is a good tax and that I will get the money and will get it at less cost than is imagined.
Would the Minister consider on Report Stage making exemption in the case of ceilidhes?
No. I do not see any reason.
Or dances where drink is not sold?
Why should I do that? Was it ever done? Did the Deputy do it in his time?
I would like to know from the Minister if ceilidhe dancing carried on for educational purposes will be exempt? We have had, I am sorry to say, several instances of the present Government hitting Gaelic in various ways.
Hitting what?
Hitting Gaelic—Irish.
Whatever the situation was in regard to Gaelic, it is not being interfered with.
Whatever it was.
You mean the exemptions hitherto in force—
Will be granted.
They are still maintained?
They are still maintained. Of course, they are.
The Minister says he has given back something to the people and that he is now asking only for £65,000 in this particular section. Actually, that £65,000 is portion of a bill which amounts to £24 7s. 0d. per head on the people. They have to pay that to the Minister for Central Fund and Supplies Services in one form or another, entirely apart from any capital that is raised for capital purposes, Electricity Supply Board and so on. He is taking £24 7s. 0d. per head off whatever he is giving back and that stands as against the £21 14s. 0d. per head that Fianna Fáil took off them. The £21 14s. 0d. has gone up to £24 7s. 0d. per head. The Minister can calculate that whatever way he likes, in the number of smokes or the number of dances.
The Minister did not deal at all in his reply to this long debate with the real, serious aspect of this tax on dancing. He made no effort at all to deal with the appalling case that was made by Deputy Fitzpatrick here as to the evasion that was going on to Deputy Fitzpatrick's knowledge, and he is in a position to know.
You would know more.
How?
When you were Minister.
I am not a dance hall proprietor.
You know all about it. You were eight years there.
I was not eight years in Finance. I was two and a half years, and I abolished the tax because I got some little inkling of the facts that were announced here in this House by Deputy Fitzpatrick to-night. It is no secret. I mean, Deputy Fitzpatrick did not make any secret of it and he himself is a dance hall proprietor. I want to know what good is it to this community to have that sort of game going on for the sake of collecting £65,000? There are other taxes in connection with which you cannot have this evasion—and we will not put it any stronger than that.
I had hoped that the Minister would remit the tax when he heard Deputy Fitzpatrick and a number of other people say here in this House what I have heard myself—I could not speak from my own personal knowledge—that charitable organisations, having to keep their expenses within 50 per cent. of the total takings, are tempted and, according to some of the Deputies here who have spoken to-night, fall for the temptation of keeping their expenses very much lower than they actually are. Surely, a number of people in this country, whether they are in a political club or a football club or the Gaelic League or some other organisation that is doing something to give the people in the various localities a little bit of amusement and at the same time make a bit of profit for local organisations, are entitled to carry on without all these pip-squeak inspectors. That is not my phrase. It is the Minister for Finance's phrase and the Minister for Industry and Commerce's phrase. Are we going to have, unnecessarily, not only the pip-squeak inspectors into farmers' land and so on, but into the dance halls and into the dances and ceilidhes run for charitable organisations or for the local football club? Surely we are not that badly stuck. There was experience of this thing in the past and, even though we had postwar experience to meet and sudden emergencies, the cost of food and so on, even in view of that, the Fianna Fáil Government took the decision that they would abolish this particular tax and I believe still we were right in doing it and I believe the Minister is very wrong, from a social point of view, in reimposing it. There is not much in it. According to Deputy Fitzpatrick and others, he will not even collect half of what he should collect.
It is a very bad thing for the country that tax evasion on that scale should take place. I want the Minister to remember that after to-night's performance in this House the people of the county are not going to have to rely on my word as to whether a tax is a bad tax, leaving itself open to evasion and all sorts of flaws. They have the evidence of members of this Dáil, who spoke from personal knowledge, that it did lead to evasion and to fraud. I do not know how the Minister, or anybody, could calculate, to the fine point of 2 per cent., what this tax is going to cost to collect. I am sure that the Minister's official advisers did their best in making a rough shot at what they think it will cost. I do not know whether, in that particular item of cost, they took into consideration the travelling expenses, attendance at court and all the other incidental expenses that attach to the collection of this tax. I am certain that whether it is an easy and a cheap tax to collect from the official point of view of merely pounds, shillings and pence, it is a very dear tax to collect from a social point of view. I think, myself, that we should leave some part of the local pleasures alone, without having inspectors going in upon them, and that people should be able to come together and have a céilidhe or a dance and make a few pounds for the organisation in which they are interested without being subject to all this inspection. The matter of inspection has one other aspect. I do not know whether the Minister adverted to it or whether his officials brought it to his attention—as, indeed, they brought it to mine—that this particular type of collection makes the Revenue Commissioners' officials unpopular in the district.
If we are going to have the goodwill of the people behind the Government— behind all Governments, because no matter what Government is in power it has to collect a lot of money—in regard to the collection of revenue for the State we should do our utmost not to impose on the Revenue Commissioners' officials more unpopular jobs than we can avoid. Their job is unpopular no matter how we do it, but why on earth give them a job for a petty sum like this which is going to antagonise a very much bigger section of our people than would come into contact with them in the ordinary way? I feel that the Minister was very ill-advised. I could almost name the member in the present Cabinet who suggested this tax at the Cabinet table when the Minister wanted £100,000 to round off. All anybody has to do is to go back and read——
It does not matter what Minister made the suggestion.
I am not mentioning his name at all. The Minister quoted statements I made when this tax was being abolished. All I suggested was that the Deputies should examine that debate and they will see who made the suggestion. I think it is a crazy suggestion. It is very bad socially and, from the point of view of the people of the country, the Minister should, even at this late hour, change his mind.
It is very evident that the Minister is not going to give way on this point because he prefers to have the inspector following all the people associated with sports clubs and charitable organisations around the country, spying on them here and there. Will the Minister consider giving a total exemption even to charitable societies? I have spoken on this before, and I am not going to delay the House any longer.
Was it ever done?
It was, when Deputy Aiken was Minister for Finance.
When?
I would ask that total exemption be given to the charitable societies that you want to spike——
Was a total exemption for charitable societies given, as such? Never.
It was given by Deputy Aiken as Minister for Finance —to charitable societies, clubs, and so forth.
I should hate to think of the evasion that would be practised by people representing their activities as charitable. The demoralisation would be terrible.
The Minister has a way of finding out. That is not our business.
By the spies?
By the spies — to look after the clubs all over the country. They can go into every dance hall now. The people cannot enjoy themselves without being interfered with. I should like the Minister to answer me on that point.
I have answered it.
Question—"That Section 12, as amended, stand part of the Bill"—put.
The Committee divided: Tá, 65; Níl, 50.
Tá
- Beirne, John.
- Belton, John.
- Browne, Noel C.
- Browne, Patrick.
- Byrne, Alfred.
- Coburn, James.
- Collins, Seán.
- Commons, Bernard.
- Corish, Brendan.
- Cosgrave, Liam.
- Costello, John A.
- Cowan, Peadar.
- Crotty, Patrick J.
- Davin, William.
- Dockrell, Maurice E.
- Donnellan, Michael.
- Doyle, Peadar S.
- Dunne, Seán.
- Esmonde, Sir John L.
- Everett, James.
- Fagan, Charles.
- Finucane, Patrick.
- Flynn, John.
- Giles, Patrick.
- Halliden, Patrick J.
- Hickey, James.
- Hogan, Patrick.
- Hughes, Joseph.
- 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.
- Mongan, Joseph W.
- Mulcahy, Richard.
- Murphy, William J.
- Norton, William.
- O'Gorman, Patrick J.
- O'Higgins, Michael J.
- O'Higgins, Thomas F.
- O'Higgins, Thomas F. (Jun.).
- O'Leary, John.
- O'Sullivan, Martin.
- Palmer, Patrick W.
- Pattison, James P.
- Redmond, Bridget M.
- Reidy, James.
- Reynolds, Mary.
- Roddy, Joseph.
- Rooney, Eamonn.
- Sheehan, Michael.
- Sheldon, William A.W.
- Spring, Daniel.
- Sweetman, Gerard.
- Timoney, John J.
- Tully, John.
Níl
- Aiken, Frank.
- Allen, Denis.
- Bartley, Gerald.
- Beegan, Patrick.
- Blaney, Neal T.
- Boland, Gerald.
- Bourke, Dan.
- Brady, Brian.
- Brady, Seán.
- Breathnach, Cormac.
- Breen, Daniel.
- Brennan, Thomas.
- De Valera, Vivion.
- Flynn, Stephen.
- Harris, Thomas.
- Hilliard, Michael.
- Kilroy, James.
- Kissane, Eamon.
- Lahiffe, Robert.
- Lemass, Seán F.
- Little, Patrick J.
- Lynch, John.
- McCann, John.
- McGrath, Patrick.
- O Briain, Donnchadh.
- 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, Eamon.
- O'Grady, Seán.
- O'Reilly, Matthew.
- Ormonde, John.
- O'Rourke, Daniel.
- 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 Kyne; Níl: Deputies Kissane and Ó Briain.
Question declared carried.
Progress reported. Committee to sit again to-morrow.
The Dáil adjourned at 12 p.m. until 3 p.m. on Thursday, the 23rd June, 1949.