The burden of most of the speeches made in support of the Bill has been that the price control machinery was ineffective for its purpose. I pointed out last night that a good part of the Parliamentary Secretary's introductory remarks was directed to showing that the opposite was the case and that the position of difficulty which has arisen now is due to two main factors, namely, the deferred effect of devaluation and the Korean War. Deputies ought to cast their minds back to the criticism they offered of the same machinery implemented by the Fianna Fáil Administration when we had war on a much larger scale and much nearer to our shores than distant Korea. If a war in a place so remote as Korea can have had such immediate effects on our national economy the prospect for the country, if a much larger conflict should take place, is very bleak indeed.
A great deal of play has been made with the removal of certain taxation by the present Government when they came into office. It will be remembered that the former Administration decided to put certain extra taxes on non-essentials for the purpose of subsidising the essential foods of the people. When the stringency of supplies is such that they must be rationed and when such stringency is calculated to put up the prices of commodities, Fianna Fáil believed that the State has to come in and subsidise essentials out of the public purse for the benefit of the poorer sections. I pointed out that Fianna Fáil went a little further than that to ensure that the very poor sections were not alone given goods at a reasonable price, but were given free vouchers for some of the essential foods, such as bread, butter and milk, during the emergency. These aids to the very poor were removed by the Coalition Government and certain cash payments substituted for them. It is quite obvious that these cash payments are not now nearly adequate to meet the increased cost of the goods which they then got for nothing.
The point I am making with regard to the claim to the removal of certain taxation is that the taxation imposed on certain non-essential goods was replaced by increased prices for these very essential goods themselves and that these were brought about by what is commonly called through the country, the black market in flour, tea, sugar and butter. We think that the straightforward tax on beer, tobacco, cinema seats and other luxuries was a fairer and more honest way to find these subsidies than to ask the people themselves to pay higher prices on a second classification of these goods.
In my particular area the rationing of flour is strictly adhered to and this strict adherence to it has been brought in in recent times. If there is sufficient flour in the country to enable people to buy all they want at 7/- a stone, I think the first thing the Government should have done was to ensure that all sections of the people, particularly those who rely in the main on bread for their sustenance, were given an adequate ration at the subsidised price. That applies not alone to bread but to things like butter and sugar as well.
Subsidies were one of the principal means adopted by Fianna Fáil to ensure that prices would be within the capacity of people to pay, but while claims are now made that taxation has been reduced we find that the overall bill the people have to pay is £8,000,000 higher than it was in the year we went out of office when the Book of Estimates showed £70,000,000, which included subsidies of £12,750,000 for flour, £1,000,000 for fuel and practically £2,000,000 for the production of turf. We now find that, although the bill has gone up, the subsidies have come down. The comparable figures for last year and this year are between £9,000,000 and £11,000,000. That in itself, I think, is quite a sufficient commentary on any boasting talk that may be made about the removal of £6,000,000 on taxation. In that regard I might point out that when that taxation was removed we found that certain people did not return the benefit of that removal to the public and I might cite the matter of cinema seats in proof of it.
One would think, listening to the Tánaiste last night, that the people of this country were in a condition of starvation and rags during the war. After all, since they are free, people might dissipate their means on non-essentials if they so chose and the thing that struck every visitor to the country —even if it escaped ourselves—was that the people were well fed, well dressed and, above and beyond all, that there seemed to be an unending round of entertainments. It is a well-known fact that all sorts of sports and amusements, matters which involved the expenditure of money on non-essentials, were supported more during the war than at any time previously. We do know that certain sports fixtures had their biggest attendances during that period in spite of the fact that transport was restricted, and all that is visible evidence of the possession of means and counteracts the lugubrious statements made by the Tánaiste and other speakers here last week who made a comparison between the position under Fianna Fáil and that which exists now.
I do not know what the Tánaiste may think about his efforts and the efforts of his Government not alone to increase wages, but to find wages for people who have no work, but can the Tánaiste and the other speakers on the far side of the House deny the fact that emigration has proceeded at a heavier rate since the change of Government? I know that it can be cited that the applications for permits to go to employment in England have not increased, but I should like people who want to use that argument based on the official statistics of the Department of Social Welfare to look on the figures of emigration to the countries where you are not allowed to go in order to take up employment. I refer particularly to America. We all know that if young people want to get into America they must not make the plea that they are going there to get employment and must be able to show that they are going over to their friends. We all know that to put forward that reason for their going is a subterfuge which people in their difficulties must use in order to get to America. If you take the all-over emigration figures to all countries you find that it is now, unfortunately, much heavier than it was when Fianna Fáil distributed essential goods on one flat ration, divided employment over the whole country, developed our natural resources of fuel and created a prosperity in the poorer areas which they have not known before or since.
I do not think there is any necessity to follow all the arguments that have been adduced here to prove that Fianna Fáil was wrong and that the Coalition was right. I think that the showing of Fianna Fáil in conditions universally admitted to be the worst in the history of the world was so good that if that administration, that efficiency shown in the face of those almost insuperable difficulties, were available now in the easier position we have had for the last few years, I am quite satisfied that the country would be well able to stand up to the minor blast that has come from far away Korea and that the people would not now be asked to accept an "inevitable deterioration" in the position because Korea is engaged in hostilities.
The Tánaiste said last night that devaluation also was a cause of our difficulties. I want to say to him that it is the Coalition Government that devalued. He said that devaluation was made inevitable because Fianna Fáil had bound Irish money inextricably with the £ sterling. The present Minister for Finance and other Minister for Finance have often told us that the basing of the Irish £ on par value with sterling is a matter of volition for the Government here; that they can do as they choose in that matter and have it at par, above or below par or on a fluctuating basis, so the Tánaiste's argument that we tied the Irish £ to sterling in such a way as to render the avoidance of devaluation impossible does not hold water. The arguments pro and con may be such as to render devaluation avoidable in the opinion of the best financial brains, and the Tánaiste should not place the blame for that decision on his predecessors in office.
It seems to me that the first duty which devolves on the Government—a duty carried out to the very best of their ability by the previous Administration—is to reserve the goods and resources of this country for our own people. People down the country do not see why we should borrow dollars from the United States to buy maize to increase the export of eggs and bacon to another country and get money in return for these sales that we cannot use to buy more maize. People are not such fools that they do not see the foolishness of that transaction. If we do require to sell as much as possible to buy goods abroad it seems to me that had we kept our £ at a higher value than it now has, we could get as much money as we are getting for a smaller volume of exports and we would have that surplus in any event for the needs of our own people.
In spite of all the efforts of the various Coalition Parties to justify the stand which they have taken, I would point out that it would suit them better and would be better appreciated and understood by the people outside, if, in vindicating that stand, they did not adopt the whining tactics of continuously throwing the blame on their predecessors and of saying: "We inherited this, we inherited that and we inherited the other from our predecessors." Does not everybody know that the reason for putting them in office instead of Fianna Fáil was to bring about a disinheritance of these evils? If the machinery was not right, were they not put in to change or improve the things about which complaint was made? Inevitably in the world situation which now threatens to develop the Coalition will have to go back, if this country is to survive, to the tactics followed by Fianna Fáil. There will have to be a conservation of the national resources for the benefit of our own people. If that conservation does not take place, whether it is in respect to wheat, eggs, bacon or fuel, and if there is not a distribution of the available goods on a single ration basis, then the Government will come up against trouble here internally which will probably be much more serious in its political effects than any war in Korea or elsewhere.
