The same is true of the Army. The rates of pay in the Army have gone up since this Government came into office. The pay of the Guards has gone up and the pay of the national teachers and of civil servants has been increased. Practically every section of the community, certainly every section which draw their pay or allowance from the State, have had increases of a substantial nature since the people got rid of the Fianna Fáil Government. In addition to that, taxation has been reduced by something like £6,000,000 a year. I am sure it is true, as Deputy de Valera said, that more money is being paid into the Exchequer from the existing taxes. Instead of being a point on which he can condemn the Government, I think that is a further indication of the fact which I have mentioned, that there is more money available, that people have more money, and that they have more goods on which to spend that money.
Deputy de Valera referred to a number of commodities. He referred at some length to the question of meat. I should like to remind Deputies that, when the present Minister for Industry and Commerce was fighting on behalf of the consumer against increases in the price of meat, he was being stabbed in the back every second week in this House by Fianna Fáil Deputies. I challenge them to deny that. The Fianna Fáil attitude was that the price of meat should be allowed to go up and that a greater profit should be allowed to the butchers. It may be that they are quite sincere in that, that they feel that the butchers are not making sufficient profit and should be allowed to make more. Whether they are sincere or not, it certainly is not fair for a Fianna Fáil Deputy to come into the House on this debate and criticise the Government in connection with meat, having regard to what undoubtedly has been the Fianna Fáil policy and attitude in respect of that commodity at any rate.
Let us remember also the outcry raised in this House by Fianna Fáil Deputies, particularly the Deputy from County Dublin, regarding the price of tomatoes. There, too, Fianna Fáil did its level best to try to get the Minister for Agriculture to allow the price of tomatoes to be increased. With regard to butter, which was dealt with at length also by Deputy de Valera, it is appropriate to recall that during the Fianna Fáil days the ration of butter was 2 ozs. per week. At present the ration is 8 ozs., a difference of 6 ozs. in the ration which each individual is entitled to get.
Deputy de Valera also dealt with the increase in bus fares as a matter reflecting on the real cost of living. I agree with him that it does.
But I also remember the fact that this question of bus fare increases was discussed at some length here and I remember the point of view put forward by the Minister for Industry and Commerce in these discussions. I think all of us recollect the appalling picture which he painted of the concern known as Córas Iompair Éireann, and the appalling condition in which it was left when Fianna Fáil went out of office. I do not think there was one voice raised in Fianna Fáil or any other section in the Dáil when the increase in bus fares was being discussed in years past, which, in face of what the Minister for Industry and Commerce said, was able to voice opposition to the increase in bus fares. None of us liked it but we all recognised at the time, and I still recognise, that it was necessary to increase the bus fares. It is all very well for Deputy de Valera or any other Deputy in the Opposition Benches to turn turtle at this stage for the sake of winning a political trick in debate here on a discussion on a Bill dealing primarily with the cost of living.
Remember that there are a great number of other discussions in the course of the year and in nearly all of those discussions we find Fianna Fáil Deputy after Fianna Fáil Deputy, standing up here and subsequently going out to the crossroads advocating increased expenditure by the Government. We find Deputy McCann saying that the Government are not building half enough schools and that millions more should be rolled out to pay for the new schools which he desires. We have Deputy de Valera and Deputy Traynor advocating a bigger Army to cost more; and, in addition to that bigger Army, it is to be better paid than it is to-day, and more and heavier equipment and armaments are to be rolled into this little country. We find nearly every Fianna Fáil Deputy with some pet subject on which he wishes to see more money spent.
Deputy Lemass, when he was talking at Synge Street last August or September, even held out that the Fianna Fáil social security scheme would have been bigger, better and more costly than that envisaged by the present Government in the White Paper. We hear, too, that Fianna Fáil Deputies—I think Deputy Briscoe is one of them—who, since the change of Government, have adopted the viewpoint that a great deal of the rates levied by local authorities are levied in respect of matters which could more properly be borne by the Central Government. I wonder do the Deputies opposite appreciate that, when they talk of spending millions and millions more money, all of which is to come out of taxation, because they have gone on record in a very definite way as being opposed to governing, as they say, on borrowed money, putting this country into pawn and so on, and have made it quite clear that all these millions of pounds which are to be spent on Fianna Fáil schemes are to come out of direct taxation—I do not think any of them will be able to contradict that —I wonder do they appreciate that if the Fianna Fáil policy were adopted a very great increase must take place in the cost of living and taxation must soar to something in the neighbourhood of £10,000,000 or probably very much more than that. Taxation must increase and, in addition to that, let us assume these sections of the community that I have mentioned are relegated back to the Fianna Fáil way of things, that the Army go back to the Fianna Fáil rates of pay, that the Garda go back to the Fianna Fáil rates of pay, that the old age pensioner goes back to the Fianna Fáil rate of allowance and the civil servants and the teachers go back to the Fianna Fáil rate of pay, visualise then the situation under a Fianna Fáil policy.
I am assuming, I may be too charitable, but I am assuming that they are quite sincere and honest about all this and that they want to increase taxation on the one hand and to get back to the Fianna Fáil rock in relation to pay on the other hand. Then we would, indeed, be in a mess, and the cost of living would be such that no one would be able to bear up under it. I think it is quite unfair to make the criticism of the Parliamentary Secretary which was made by Deputy de Valera and by Deputy Lemass that he is claiming that the cost of living has not gone up. He has not done that. He has claimed that up to August of this year there was no substantial alteration in the cost-of-living index figure and I do not think that any Deputy opposite will challenge that. I certainly will not try to make out the case that the cost of living has not increased. It has increased. In so far as the cost of commodities, at any rate, is concerned, prices have risen in respect of a number of commodities. But I do make the claim, and I make it in all sincerity, that by virtue of the policy and the action of this Government people are in a far better position to-day to withstand price increases than ever they were under Fianna Fáil and that, despite increases in prices, I have no doubt that many sections of the people, if not most of them, are better off than they were under the Fianna Fáil Government, even in the days immediately before or six to eight months before the General Election of 1948, and certainly substantially better off than they were during the days of the Wages Standstill Order.
With regard to Section 3 of the Bill, I cannot see why Deputies opposite are so vigorous in their opposition to the setting up of an advisory body, or committee, to inquire publicly into price increases. I know that so far back as January, 1947, when this question of rising prices was discussed, I think it was on a motion of the Labour Party, that Deputy Lemass, who was then Minister for Industry and Commerce, even then opposed any alteration in the Fianna Fáil system of price control. He now says that the idea of this advisory committee to inquire in public into increased prices is a hastily devised one, that it is some kind of innovation which the Government have thought up in order to satisfy or buy-off Labour Party criticism. I just want to place on record the fact that in the discussion on the control of price motion which took place in this House on the 23rd January, 1947, the Leader of the Fine Gael Party, General Mulcahy, discussing the question of prices, advocated that the Government should do precisely what the Government are proposing to do now.
My only regret is that this step was not taken six or eight months ago. I have no criticism whatever to offer in respect of the period before that, but I think that public confidence and the public mind in relation to prices generally would have been eased if some months back the Government had adopted the idea of allowing these matters to be inquired into in public. As I say, that was advocated by Deputy General Mulcahy as far back as the 23rd January, 1947. I agree with the Parliamentary Secretary that it is important that the personnel of the committte when it is established should be such as will inspire public confidence. I think also that the mere fact of allowing this examination to take place in public will have very beneficial results. I agree with remarks made the other night by Deputy Larkin regarding the system of price control as it was operated by Fianna Fáil and as it was continued in operation up to the present. Even when people were not being adversely affected by increased prices, they knew nothing whatever about the method of examination which ultimately enabled this commodity or that commodity to go up in price. Deputy MacEntee when he was writing in the Sunday Press about a year ago explained that a number of commodities go up in price because of circumstances over which no one in this country has any control.
The ordinary person paying an increased price does not appreciate that or, at any rate, he never bothers thinking about it and the whole Fianna Fáil plan of campaign in relation to this Bill is to try to conceal from the people that there are commodities which have increased in price, and which may increase in price in future, over which the Government, whether it be an inter-Party Government or a Fianna Fáil Government, have no control whatever. At least, I believe it will have certain beneficial results if the people who are affected directly by these increased prices understand why an increase has to be made or permitted. If, on the other hand, there is anything in the nature of excessive profiteering, there is no place like the open to show that up and the mere threat of holding these inquiries in public will, I think, act as a very great deterrent to those who would seek to make excessive profits in business or industry.
I want, and I am doing this quite sincerely, to congratulate the Parliamentary Secretary and the Minister for the excellent manner in which they have tackled this general question of the cost of living over a period of nearly three years, at a time when the only policy which Fianna Fáil could offer to the people was to increase the taxes on beer, tobacco and entertainments.
Despite the fact that this Government, before they were a month in office, remitted these taxes, they did hold, until August of this year—and there is no doubt about it, at any rate working on the cost-of-living basis— the cost-of-living figure steady from the time they took over. They did that without having recourse to the Fianna Fáil Supplementary Budget tactics of imposing increased taxes on beer, tobacco and entertainments. They did that despite the fact that they were able to reduce income-tax and give the various wage increases to which I have referred. I think that that was no mean achievement. I think the Minister, the Parliamentary Secretary and the Government generally are entitled to be congratulated on the work which they did in that respect.
It is perfeetly fair political tactics for Fianna Fáil Deputies to criticise the Government because of any increases that have taken place, but if Fianna Fáil Deputies would care to read everything Deputy Lemass had to say on the subject in January, 1947, both in the Seanad and in the Dáil, they will find an answer to a great deal of the criticism which they made here last week and which they are making here to-day. I do not propose referring to any long quotations on the subject, but Deputy Lemass commenced his speech in the Dáil on the 23rd January, 1947, by pointing out that the problem of price control was not a simple problem or was not a problem that could be solved overnight. I would recommend to Deputy Lemass and other Deputies that they might accept that as true to-day, just as it was true in 1947, and to approach this discussion with the object of endeavouring to assist the Government to contain the rising prices, rather than merely use the debate for the purpose of scoring political hits at their opponents. If political hits are to be scored, they can be scored just as easily one way as the other, but I think many Deputies on this side, and the Parliamentary Secretary when he is concluding, will be in a position to give just as much as has been taken from the opposite benches.
As I say I am not going to try to make the case that there have not been price increases. There have been price increases but the people of the country generally have been put in a much better position to withstand these price increases than they were in the Fianna Fáil days. Finally, I should like to say also that the Government and the Minister are to be congratulated on the fact that despite the increases in price which have taken place, there is no doubt whatever that, in relation to many other countries in Europe, this country has been placed in the last few years in a much more favourable position. Production, industrial and agricultural, has increased enormously. The national income has increased. Workers' earnings have increased. The cost of living here is considerably lower than it is in most other European countries and I think a very great deal lower than it is even in Great Britain. I have not got the actual figures before me at the moment.
That situation has been arrived at because you had a Government in office which, instead of displaying the weaknesses of coalitions, about which Deputy de Valera appeared to know so much, was broadly representative and represented all sections of the people. If the Fianna Fáil Government had continued in office I think the situation for most people here would be deplorable to-day. The fact that this Government has done so well, without increasing taxation, is really what is annoying Fianna Fáil speakers.
Fianna Fáil Deputies, as I have pointed out, have sought very much more Government spending. They want more money spent on this, that and the other and they want it all to come out of taxes. This Government have adopted a different attitude. In my opinion, at any rate, they have been very sane and reasonable in their approach to the question of production and the question of Government spending generally.
I would conclude by saying that, whatever may be the Fianna Fáil attitude during the course of this debate to the proposal to establish a committee to inquire in public into the question of price increases, I would at least make this appeal to them, assuming this Bill goes through and that such a committee is established, that they should direct their efforts and energy towards inspiring public confidence in the committee rather than do the work of the saboteur when the committee is established.