There is a reference to borrowing. The Minister is seeking power to borrow for the purposes of capital services and I think, in that connection, one is entitled to reply to a recent statement by the Taoiseach, pointing out that the Government are providing the enormous sum of £30,000,000, or some such figure, for capital expenditure during the present year, as against £5,000,000 during the last year Fianna Fáil were in office. I do not know whether the Taoiseach wishes the country to believe that the circumstances in 1950 are comparable to the circumstances in 1947 so far as the implementation of large scale expenditure programmes is concerned; but we remember that when the present Minister for Finance was confronted in that year with the proposals of the then Government, he expressed astonishment at the, as he termed it, fantastic nature and size of the expenditure, which he severely criticised. As as a matter of fact, I do not think that he even troubled to criticise it so much as rather to dismiss it—a mere question of £100,000,000 or £200,000,000. It was all the same to the Minister at that time; it simply meant that the Government had embarked on a thoroughly foolish or even a lunatic policy at the time, if we were to take the Minister's observations seriously.
I called attention, in the debate on the Financial Resolutions, to the Minister's references on that occasion to capital expenditure on such services as roads, telephones and so on. He saw no necessity for them, and I think the general gist of his remarks was fairly well summarised when he concluded by saying that, fortunately, the programme presented by the then Government was merely a programme, and would probably never be carried into effect. It seems to denote a belief in an extraordinarily short memory, not alone in the minds of the public, but in the minds of political persons, if it were to be assumed that we were going to let the occasion pass without calling attention to it when the Taoiseach boasts of the large scale capital expenditure at the present time compared to what was contemplated in 1947.
I need not worry the House by going into details of the position as it existed then, or the circumstances that operated to prevent the carrying out of a large scale programme with the speed and to the extent that the Government would have wished. Suffice it to call attention to one particular aspect, and that was the shortage of materials which everyone knows made it impossible to proceed with housing or road works or telephone development on the scale one would have wished.
I think the Taoiseach's remarks, which contained the gem that the country was overtaxed when this Government came into office, must have been rather in the nature of a smoke-screen to try to persuade people that there is some consistency about a Government, the chief members of which— and they are now mainly responsible for this capital investment policy—expressed an entirely different view and adopted a severely critical attitude a few years ago. The mere fact that conditions have changed, in the sense that supplies are more freely available and we are nearer to normal trading conditions, could not possibly explain the extraordinary change that has taken place; neither could the change in the views of the political economists who advise the Government. The fact is that the Minister has been driven from the philosophy and the policy he then advocated and he has been driven, we do not know why, but we can surmise, to accept and to try to put across the country a policy of which he was, perhaps, the most outspoken and severe critic in this House.
I do not want to go back over what has been said on the Financial Resolutions, but I think it is necessary, at least, to refer to them and to the fact that the grandiose schemes which were so severely condemned as being symtoms of megalomania and squandermania and all the other manias, have now become virtues and are to be exalted. Of course, those unusual changes of mind and attitude are perhaps to be explained by a better idea and a better realisation of political necessities. You have the same Government which, when it took office, announced its intention to enforce retrenchment over a very wide field and cut out expenditure unless it was absolutely essential—to embark on a courageous policy of cutting down the cost of Government—now presenting us with a bill for £87,000,000 in respect of Government services while, in the year when the Minister was so outspoken in his criticisms, the cost of corresponding services amounted to only £65,000,000.
Far from trying to justify his departure from the policy he announced regarding the careful scrutiny of expenditure and the necessity for justifying up to the hilt all projects of a capital nature, the Minister now seems to have thrown discretion to the winds. Instead of, as he told us, being ashamed that out of an expenditure of £70,000,000 he could only account for some £6,000,000—he hoped to be able to argue that he had made economies but £6,000,000 out of £70,000,000 he described as very little——
