Since dealing with this matter last night, I think that the information given to-day by the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Industry and Commerce in relation to the importation of sugar is rather enlightening. This time we are going to Cuba with £370,000 in our pockets to buy sugar for the Irish people whilst our own factories are half idle, the land is half idle and there exists a condition of affairs which should bring home forcibly; if not to every Deputy on the Government Benches, at least to the Labour Deputies and, in particular, to the Minister for External. Affairs who was looking for an export market, that we are now going abroad and paying anything from £14 to £20 a ton more to the Cuban for sugar that could be produced by our own people and which we should pay our own people to produce. Those are the facts.
Committee on Finance. - Vote on Account, 1951-52—Motion by the Minister for Finance (resumed).
We always imported sugar.
I want to see that condition of affairs brought to an end. What steps are the Government taking to bring it to an end and to provide here the food and other necessaries that can be produced off the land? Are we prepared to pay something like $19,000,000 for wheat? I am informed by the sugar company that the first cargo of Cuban sugar to be brought in will amount to 7,400 tons for which we will pay £47 19s. 0d. a ton. Will there ever be an end to it? Will we continue to borrow dollars in order to hand those dollars over to the foreigner and pay him one and a half as much again as we are prepared to pay our own people for the same commodity?
Before the Tánaiste was exalted to the seats of the mighty, he was a Labour man. Does he approve of our factories lying idle? Does he approve of land being allowed to go back to grass? Does he approve of unemployment in Córas Iompair Éireann for, mark you, 75 per cent. of the freightage of Córas Iompair Éireann comes from the sugar industry here? Will all that go? I want a definite reply from the Government on this matter. I think I am entitled to such a reply. I hoped that when I resumed to-day I would have some cheerful news for the agricultural community, indeed not only for the agricultural community but for all sections of our people which are anxiously awaiting news as to where their bread will come from in the next 12 months should an emergency arise.
Instead of that, we had the Minister getting up here and adopting an attitude that was, to say the least of it, a disgrace to this House. We had the Minister standing up here like a "lepping" lunatic, gesturing like a showman, vilifying everybody because he did not know the answer and he had no excuse for the situation as revealed by both E.C.A. chief here and by Deputies of all Parties who supported my appeal. Deputy O'Higgins, Deputy Sheehan and others should appreciate the necessity for paying the Irish farmer at least a greater proportion of the price that we are at present paying the foreigner: £31 15s. 0d. per ton for wheat to the foreigner, and £25 to the Irish farmer. The by-products of that wheat are available to the Irish farmer at £30 a ton if he takes them in six ton lots. That is the position.
I have a very definite objection to a Minister of State coming in here and treating the House to ten minutes of abuse and behaving in a manner more appropriate to a common corner-boy. It is our duty to put our case as we see it. It is our duty to protect the ordinary public. We have the economic results of the present policy. I am very sorry that the Minister for External Affairs has left the House because of his statement that he was looking for further industries and an export market. If he had remained I would have told him where he will find those industries and that export market. If the Minister for External Affairs has any influence, surely he can prevail upon the wild-looking man he is sitting beside to give the Irish farmer a price for wheat which will act as an insurance policy in order to secure bread for our people in case of emergency. I certainly would expect that much from the Minister for External Affairs, but I would not expect it from the Minister for Agriculture; I am quite frank about that.
In the past month we have had to take this matter of providing sugar for our people out of the hands of the Government. We have had to go directly to the sugar company and launch with it a campaign which should have been sponsored by the Government in order to secure sugar for our people in case of emergency. We have to secure that the Irish farmer will get a price commensurate with the price paid to the Formosans last year. I admit that I would have made a better bargain if I had this £47 19s. 0d. a ton that the Minister tells us to-day was paid to the Cuban for sugar. This is fundamentally a question of the employment of our own people on our own land to provide food for our nation. This is a question that is above politics. It is a matter of getting down to business and seeing that this is done.
I will pass now to milk. I would like some definite statement in relation to our economic position in so far as milk is concerned. We all know that the most uneconomic thing you can do with milk to-day is to produce butter from it. Anything else that you turn milk to will pay better. We are told all about the subsidy which is paid, not for the benefit of the farmer, but for the benefit of the consumer. If, on 1st January, 1950, we had told the Danish Minister for Agriculture that we would give him 10 per cent. commission for selling our butter abroad, we could afford to pay the Irish farmer at the creamery ? a gallon for milk. That Minister sold 281,000 cwt. of butter on the Continent at an average price of 438s. The Minister for Agriculture can get the figures in his Department.
What is the attitude of the Government towards that? The Minister goes over to England and meets some pals who tell him that they could not afford to pay him more than 271s. The Minister returns to this country and tells the farmers that they will have to reduce the price of milk by 2d. a gallon, that he wants to supply Britain with butter at 271s. a cwt., and that therefore he can pay the farmer only 1s. a gallon for milk. He carries on that game and he circularises all the creameries. I hope he was pleased with his answer.
The price of milk to-day is the price that was fixed by Deputy Patrick Smith when he was Minister for Agriculture, in 1947, although there has been a 33 ? per cent, increase in the cost of production. It is an absurd position that our Minister for Agriculture should go abroad buying butter for the Irish people, buying £19,000,000 worth of wheat for the Irish people, buying over £2,000,000 worth of sugar, as he did last year, for the Irish people, buying oats from the Argentine and bringing them to this country. It is time that that kind of lunacy should cease and that the man responsible for it should be taken to Grangegorman or somewhere else.
I do not wish to devote the whole of my speech to agricultural items. I have indicated that the cause of this expansion in the Vote on Account is the attitude of our Government towards the agricultural community in refusing to pay a price at which it would be economic to produce and in rushing off to the foreigner and paying double the price or 1½ times the price that they have refused to pay the Irish farmer.
I should like to deal with another aspect of this Vote on Account. I am sorry that the Minister for External Affairs has gone. The Minister for External Affairs had any amount of glib promises and any amount of anxiety for his dupes down the country, the poor fellows whom he told that the former Government were not going half fast enough and that if he had his way there would be an industry in every town and employment everywhere. For the past 24 or 25 years I happen to be representing the little seaport town of Cobh. In 1939 we succeeded in getting an industry there known as Irish Steel, Limited, an industry controlled by the Government. That industry is giving employment to about 380 men, decent employment at decent rates of wages, and everything else. Only £1,000,000 of the £4,000,000 that was visualised when the industry was started has yet been forthcoming. Unfortunately, the war started in 1939, in the very week that that industry opened. There is a blooming mill to be erected and a sheeting mill to be provided for the production of the corrugated iron that we are at present trying to beg, borrow or steal from abroad.
In November, 1947, the former Minister for Industry and Commerce was in Haulbowline and he promised the requisite amount of money for the starting of the blooming mill and the sheet mill and for the conversion of the furnaces there to oil-burners, which would mean that we would not have to pay the extortionate sums for coal that are at present being paid and which would mean also that that mill could be operated at a lower cost than any steel mill in Britain. The blue prints are still hanging on the wall, awaiting the order. I have asked about 15 questions here at various times as to when the sheet mill and the blooming mill will be started. I got various answers. I was told that the matter was referred to the Industrial Development Authority and the Industrial Development Authority—the new excuse for doing nothing—have been dodging this job for the past 12 months.
I put down a question for answer on 22nd February, 1951. I wanted to know what progress this go-ahead Government, with the steam-pressure of Clann na Poblachta and the full pressure of the Labour Party behind it, to see that Fine, Gael did not revert to their old bad habits, were able to make. I asked the Minister for Industry and Commerce.
"If he will state whether he has yet received any report from the Industrial Development Authority on the extension of the factory belonging to Irish Steel, Limited, Haulbowline, Cobh, to embrace a sheet mill for the production of steel sheets and a blooming mill which it is estimated would give employment to another 200 hands in the factory alone; and, if so, the nature of the report."
I got the following reply:—
"Following a recommendation by the Industrial Development Authority, which was accepted by the Government, arrangements were made to procure the services of an expert to report on certain technical aspects of the steel industry. These arrangements, although at an advanced stage, are not yet completed."
I put a supplementary question asking had the expert yet gone to Haulbowline and I was told he had not. I do not know whether he is being brought from Korea or where he is to come from. The fact remains that the money that was guaranteed to this industry by the former Government, in order to give employment to Irishmen in their own land and to provide us with steel products which would be absolutely essential in case of an emergency, has not been forthcoming, and every kind of paltry, miserable excuse is put forward by this Government in order to save them from the necessity to spend that money. I waited for 12 months before I raised the matter in this House. I waited 12 months after this Government came in, to give them a full opportunity of getting over the honeymoon, a full opportunity to start doing a little bit of business. I thought that perhaps by that time they would be able to let us know how things were going.
After considerable difficulty we succeeded in inducing the last Government to reopen Rushbrooke Dockyard. It was reopened and employment was given up to February, 1948. During the past 12 months the men in Rushbrooke got four months' work out of the 12; during the other eight months they were either living on their fat or going on the dole. Why was that? We have a State controlled industry known as Irish Shipping Limited, and through the influence of this Government the ships that should be repaired in Rushbrooke under Irish Shipping, Limited, are transferred to Dublin to a private firm there. I do not know what the pull is. I have endeavoured to find out, and as soon as I do I will let the House know.
There must be a terrible pull when you have two State or semi-State industries, Irish Shipping, Limited, on the one hand, and Haulbowline Dockyard on the other, and the ships of the one which should naturally go into the other are sent to Dublin for repairs. The amount of shipping sent in that manner would have given employment in Rushbrooke for at least four months last year. One of the Irish vessels, known as the Rose, has been transferred to the Liffey Dockyard. If this Government intend to cater only for Dublin it would be better for them to say so.
I am interested in the skilled men who, unfortunately, if this condition of affairs continues, will have to go abroad to Britain or elsewhere for employment and when the next emergency comes we will not have anybody to handle the machines. These are the conditions in which we find ourselves to-day.
The Minister is looking for millions for a spendthrift Government, for a Government that collects £5,500,000 more off the man with the car and the man with the lorry and everybody else, than his predecessor collected, and he gives some £2,000,000 back to the local authority in order to get the roads that these people use and that they are paying for, put into repair. Surely, the people who pay £6,000,000 or £7,000,000 in taxation, who pay by way of the petrol tax or in motor taxation, are entitled to have some of that money spent in keeping the roads that they use in order? But, no, they have to pay again towards the maintenance of the roads; they have to pay for the roads again as ratepayers. They find the rates increasing by 5/- or 6/- in order to keep the roads in repair. The money is frittered away paying everybody double, paying every foreigner what he demands. They are simply frittering away the money and leaving the Irish people in the lurch.
I heard the Minister for Local Government replying to a question put by Deputy McGrath. Under an Act of the Oireachtas people who build houses are entitled to get from the local authority a maximum of £40 per annum for ten years. There is no minimum in this connection. The local authority shall pay up to £40 a year. In my area there is a bunch of gentlemen who built houses and they can charge anything from £3 to £5 a week for them, and these gentlemen come along to the rating authority with their hands out for the £40 per annum. The Minister exceeds his authority and sends an ultimatum to the local body, saying: "You shall pay Mary so-and-so £40 per house on ten houses that Mary built for £1,000 and lets for £3 10s. a week." Is there to be any stop to the burden that those people are going to put on us? Is there any limit to it?
These are the matters that I wish to deal with here. I honestly consider that the time has come to call a halt. The time has arrived when there must be a halt called to this crazy spending and attention directed to the non-provision of essentials by those people who do not care because they knew that the moment the people catch them out they are finished. These people dare not go to the country to-day. They know that, and therefore the policy is a short life and a merry one. They do not care what they do with the people they pretend to represent, the people who were foolish enough to vote for them and put them in the position of doing that. We find ourselves facing a period in which the most extravagant inducements have been held out to the people to spend the money. The people now find that the essential coal that had been bargained for with Britain is not now available. The Government had £5,000,000 worth of fuel in storage on the day they took over. They spent the £5,000,000 worth of fuel, and when it was expended they, during the past three years, did not make one single attempt to put in any stock of fuel. The Minister for Agriculture, I suppose, told them that mother England would supply it all. I suggest that those conditions have gone far enough. I hope that we will have an opportunity in the near future of discussing in detail some of the matters to which I referred generally to-day. I hope to have an opportunity, later on, of discussing these matters, but I am very nervous that I will not have that opportunity.
I am very much afraid that when the time for considering the Estimates arises the Minister will have gone to the country. I was somewhat amused at some of the daft things that have been done in this country for the last couple of years. I got a certain amount of amusement out of them. When I go down the country it grieves me when I meet a poor woman who was induced by the flamboyant Minister to invest her little savings in incubators and hoovers only to find herself to-day with a big flock of hungry hens around her looking for milo maize at £29 a ton. A large number of farmers down in my constituency had an idea that they would be a lot better off when they would have farmers representing them in the Government instead of Fianna Fáil. Did I ever imagine, during all my 24 years' experience, that I would see repeated in this House the Judas actions by so-called farmers' representatives who preceded the present team? Did I ever imagine that I would see, within the past five or six months, these gentlemen, who are supposed to be representing the farmers, voting against the farmers getting increases in the price of milk? It is remarkable the depths to which those gentlemen will sink in their wild endeavour to cling to office.
Divorce proceedings are in progress on all sides. Deputy Flanagan wants to become Minister for Lands. He says that the heavy weight of the present Minister for Lands is preventing any movement in the Land Commission Department. Deputy Cogan is, I think, qualifying rapidly to take over the post of the Minister for Agriculture.
I thought it was Deputy Brennan's seat in Wicklow he was after.
Nonsense, man. Deputy Cogan is there already. I can assure the Minister that if it came to a vote in the morning I would be very happy to give it to Deputy Cogan.
I was thinking so.
I guarantee further that the agricultural community of this country would pay the Minister for Agriculture to get out.
I am quite open to offer.
I can assure the Minister, from my knowledge of the farmers down the country, that they would, even at the present depressed time, be prepared to put their hands in their pockets and find £10,000 to get rid of the Minister.
Depressed times.
The Deputy might get back to the Vote on Account.
There is only one farmer in the House at the moment.
Since the Minister for Agriculture is present, I want to call his attention to the actual position of this nation as regards grain. I want to know from the Minister if he can give any guarantee that grain will be provided or that we can get grain from abroad at any price although no emergency may exist. The man who is responsible for saying how much grain this country is to get has told the Minister that he could grow and should grow more wheat in this country. He has told him also that he cannot understand the paying of millions abroad for milo maize and maize without milo at £29 a ton when he could produce barley here. He has pointed out those facts to the Minister for Agriculture. That Minister was kind enough to accuse me last night of breaking my word. I never broke my word to anybody. How many times has the Minister broken his word to the Irish farmer, the Irish poultry producer and the Irish milk producer in the three years that he has disgraced that position? Take eggs, oats, barley, wheat, milk—take the Minister's promises to each of these sections of our agricultural community and take the Minister's description of the travels of our crate of poultry leaving this country for the alternative market that he sneered at when Fianna Fáil were looking for it. Take also the Minister's reply to my question last week on eggs when he told us that every Ambassador, every representative of ours abroad all round the world was looking for the alternative market for the eggs in respect of which the Minister proudly assured the Irish people he had secured a five years' market from Great Britain. A five years' guarantee!
Did the Deputy not say all that yesterday?
And to-day.
And if the Government is still in existence this day week, I will probably tell you again, but I have doubts and hopes.
Whatever about the future, repetition is not allowable.
I do not wish to go further into it and I would not have repeated myself but for the anxiety that exists throughout the country on these matters. There is grave anxiety amongst the agricultural community with regard to grain for feeding. There is grave anxiety amongst the people at large as to where they are to get their loaf of bread.
Do they know about the storage of wheat?
I wonder did the Deputy give any assistance in boycotting the Dutch tomatoes the other day, in view of his anxiety to help the Minister, who succeeded in wiping out this little industry. However, we shall probably have another opportunity of going into these matters and I want to allow others an opportunity of stepping in now.
Deputy Corry expresses interest in the probably date of the general election. I should like to inform him—September, 1952, or January, 1953—then, and no sooner, save in one event: if you succeed in defeating the Social Security Bill, and you have not got the chance of a snowball in hell, you will have a general election the following morning. Now Deputy Corry knows and the knowledge drives him from the House life a leaf in autumn. The Fianna Fáil theme in this debate is that everybody is spending too much money, that improvidence is the order of the day, and I want to direct the attention of farmer Deputies to this, that, under the leadership of Deputy Lemass, the Fianna Fáil case is: "The farmers are driving up the cost of living and you have got to smash their prices down."
You made a good attempt.
Some of their jackals are prepared to sell out by trotting after that caravan. I want to expose that dirty fraud. It has become the fashion in this country, when you do not like the truth, to take a holiday from reason and just to yell, and, when the futility of your falsehood is revealed and a rational man might be expected to withdraw and express regret, the modern practice is to put your back to the wall and yell a little louder. Last December, Fianna Fáil determined that it was a good racket to run in this country that the cost of living was going up. A more disreputable and dishonest racket was never run in this country and I have never seen more persons who I believed to be rational individuals carried away by it in my 30 years' experience of political life. I commend their attention to a pamphlet published by the Cork University Press, entitled "The Official Cost-of-Living Index Number and its Critics", by Doctor R.C. Geary, price ?. If they look at table No. 2, on page 25, after they have read the letterpress, they will find comparisons made between mid-August, 1947, mid-August, 1950, and mid-November, 1950 —three figures. The price of shoulder beef in 1947 was 1/9 at mid-August, 1950, ?; and at mid-November, 1950, 1/7½.
What is it now?
1/7½. The figures for corned brisket are 1/6½, 1/4¾ and 1/4¾; for neck 1/6, 1/5¼ and 1/5¼; for mutton 2/7½, 2/5¾ and 2/5¾; for neck 1/9¼, 1/8½ and 1/8¼; for fresh herring 9d. per lb., 9d. per lb. and 9d. per lb.; for eggs 3/8, 3/3½ and 3/9; for creamery butter 2/8, 2/8 and 2/8; for cheese 2/1, 2/1¾ and 2/1¾; for margarine 1/6, 1/6 and 1/6; for lard 1/2, 1/2 and 1/2; for bread 6¾d., 6¼d. and 6¼d.; for flour 3/10¼, 2/10¼ and 2/10¼; for potatoes 2/5¼, 2/3¼ and 1/10½; for tea 4/9¾, 2/8 and 2/8; and for sugar 6d., 4d. and 4d. These figures being ascertainable by any person capable of reading, nevertheless the clamant of propagandists who want to stage a general assault on the price level of agricultural produce have managed to sell to our people the proposition that, in respect of essential foodstuffs, prices have gone sky high, and that people cannot live on the incomes they have at present. If they look at a corresponding publication which was presented to the House yesterday, dealing with the national income, they will find that every family in Ireland is spending—if you reduce all to 1938 prices—substantially more, at 1938 prices, in 1950, than they ever spent in 1938. The people, my people, whom I am told are being ground into the dirt by the cost of living, are manifestly demonstrated as enjoying a higher standard of living than was ever enjoyed in the whole history of Ireland before, thanks be to God—and it is the work of this Government that made it possible for the agricultural worker, the worker for wages, the small farmer, the people we used to speak of as the poor, to have a standard of living that they have never had before and that people always said this country could never afford. We said this country could afford it and we have made it afford it and we glory in the fact that they have so high a standard of living and, with the help of God, it will be higher still.
It is suicidal, however, as we make an ordered progress towards those objectives, for the people on the far side of the House maddened by political disappointments to try to destroy a carefully designed and marshalled line of progress, planned to abolish poverty —perhaps to abolish riches, too, but to see that all our people in their own country had a chance to live and that the vast discrepancy between the immense wealth of one and the poverty of another would be banished from our community. Who will deny at this time that throughout rural Ireland there is no unemployment? When were we able to say that before? Who will deny that in the memory of any man living in this House the farmers are better off to-day than they ever were before? Is there anyone to deny it? None, because it is true. Who will deny this query? Look round the world —Europe, Asia, Africa, Australia and the continent of America, is there a better country anywhere at the present time for ordinary people to live in than Ireland? If there is, I do not know of it, and I know a good many countries. It is surprising the number of people from Belgium, Holland, France, America, and Great Britain who appear to share that opinion and who are anxious to be given the opportunity of moving in, sometimes in embarrassing numbers, to take up their residence in a country which the principal political Opposition in this House says is destitute, bankrupt, ruined and a purgatory for anyone to live in.
What shall we say of a political Party who took this country over and in 15 years handed it back to their successors at the lowest level of destitution to which this country had ever sunk. The income of farmers had never been lower; the income of agricultural wages was a by-word; emigration was sweeping the people out of the land; the population stood at the lowest figure ever recorded—when we took office. I challenge contradiction now that the farmers are better off to-day than they have ever been before; I challenge contradiction that there is less unemployment in Ireland than there has ever been before; and for the first time in this century the population of these Twenty-Six Counties has gone over 3,000,000 and is still rising. Does anyone challenge those facts? That is the record, and the only fair test of policy is the result, the only argument valid in debate is fact. That is all I propose to deal with—fact.
Here is the net issue. Is it desirable to develop our own country or is it not? With the surplus wealth created here, we can do one of two things—we can invest it in British Consolidated Stock at 2½ per cent. so that the British can use it to develop their country and their colonies. or we can invest it in our own country so that we may develop our own country, to employ our own people, to increase our own national income to meet the cost of the steadily rising standard of living which we have created for our own people in their own homes.
If Fianna Fáil's line is: "You are spending too much in developing in this country," we will join that issue with them. That is all right, that is a clear-cut issue. We say we are not, and we intend to go on, and if it is Fianna Fáil policy to say that we are spending too much on the development of this country and ought to cut it down, that is an issue we will go to the country on with them gladly, and let the people settle it. This is certain. The people put us in to do a job and we are going to do it and if they put us back in 1952 or 1953 we will go on doing it. We put our hands to it with our eyes wide open and with certain knowledge of whither we meant to go and we have made more progress along the road which we said we were going to travel in three years than Fianna Fáil made in the opposite direction in 15. Let us face this fact, that we could not have undertaken this programme, nor would it be physically possible to maintain it if we did not understand what we were doing and if we were not competent to take the measures necessary to avert the dangers attendant on a great policy of expansion.
Deputy Aiken launched out on his fog-bound course yesterday to deal with the finances of the country and I must say that when old Vesuvius sounded off it was edifying if not clarifying. I remember last year reminding him that in every country town in Ireland two familiar figures are to be seen. One is the young fellow who has learned his business and has at last attained to his ambition of having a place of his own. His shop window is bright and cheerful and he is in his shirt sleeves about his business early in the morning to meet his customers with cheerful face, with competent exterior and with optimistic mien. Not far down the street you will always see the respectable gentleman in the black suit that is turning slightly green and the melancholy walrus moustache which deplores the perturbation caused by the arrival of the impudent brat who has set up his shop five doors up and has presumed to take his customers away from him. As the blue-bottles gather in his window and the cobwebs shroud his premises, clapping a black bowler turning green upon his head, he moves with gradually increasing frequency to the adjoining public house there to drown his sorrows as his business dwindles. Whenever Deputy Aiken starts talking of the development of the country, I always think of my old friend in the green-black Sunday suit and the shiny bowler going to drown his sorrows at the neighbouring public house. The decline is so inevitable that he does not bother to open his shop except on market days and then he only opens a couple of shutters and at last comes the market day when he does not bother to take them down at all. After a time the old fellow does not bother to take off his carpet slippers, his boots have become broken and he does not get a new pair. Then he dies and is buried and 18 months later somebody says, "Is poor Pat so and so dead? That is right, I did not see him about for a long time." The man who was once the centre of his community has gone down until eventually he is a man of such insignificance that nobody notices he is gone. I can say that about Deputy Aiken. He is afraid of his life that the revolutionaries who are abroad now will upset the whole applecart, "It is ‘deshthroyed'; it is ‘schandalous' to be upsetting it and to be thinking of these changes" he feels when, in fact, the safety of the dead blue-bottle, the weaving spider, the carpet slipper and the broken boot is so much more comfortable for one who no longer has any desire to live.
You cannot spend capital on the scale we are spending it on the development of our country without employing men and you cannot have full employment and a rise in the standard of living without coming slap up against the fact that if your own people consume more and want to buy more you export less and import more. Ireland is a country where if you produce 1,000,000 cwt. of butter and our own people want to eat it, it is no use telling them to ship two-thirds of it abroad and ration themselves because they will not do it. They will do it in Denmark; the Danes are content with 2½ ounces of butter whereas our people eat 13½ ounces of butter per head per week. That is the present ratio. But if the Danes do with 2½ ounces of butter they sell their butter abroad and that butter pays for coal and other commodities they want to bring in. You might imagine that if our people were bent on consuming all of our own produce they would place upon themselves the self-denying ordnance of forgoing imports, so that those goods which they have consumed at home might be paid for. But that is not their way. Our people expect to consume all their own production and consume all they can pay for from abroad as well. Let us face it: that cannot be done unless we are prepared to face the fact that as the standard of living of our people rises we as a people have got to learn the lesson that you cannot have your cake and eat it. While you do not want the whole machine to burst, there is no need to resort to the antediluvian devices that used to be the golden way of repair though they might create unemployment and crush down the standard of living. Those methods are as out of date as they were ultimately fantastically ineffective, but you must get your people to the point where instead of spending all the money that comes into their hands now they will put some of it by. You must get them to acquire the habit of saving. You must get them to realise in a much shorter time than most people require to learn this lesson that when your standard of living rises it is natural to save. You must get them to realise that there has been a most dramatic change in the standard of living enjoyed by our people and that whereas in most countries the community is broadly divided into the well-to-do who save and the low wage earner who never saves, we have wrought the extraordinary achievement in Ireland that the whole of our community is moving into the category for which it should be normal to save. Unless they learn the technique and habit of saving, their very failure could bring disaster on all of us.
It simply means getting the habit of running savings circles or buying Post Office deposit books—you do not have to buy them but simply get them—and realising that saving in itself can be a public service. I am glad to think that the Minister for Finance will shortly put to the test the public spirit of such organisations as Macra na Feirme, Muintir na Tíre, the Irish Countrywomen's Association, the trade unions and any other bodies concerned with the organisation of our people and tell them that they have as grave and urgent a duty at this time to help our people to learn the craft of saving as they have to do any other work which hitherto they have regarded as appropriate to their calling.
If we can get drawn off the current pool of spendable money a fair margin to be put by for our children and our children's children by prudent parents, then the growing wealth of our people can continue to be a blessing, but so surely as we fail to face that, it could become a devastating catastrophe. But that is not all we have to do. That is not all we mean to do. As the Minister for Finance pointed out, it is not enough to say to the individual that the Minister for Finance and the Government to which he belongs has got to and means to balance the budget. In that context this Government has wrought something which has continually appeared to me to be in the nature of a miracle. When we came into office, within three months, the Minister for Finance removed taxes on beer, cinemas and cigarettes, which yielded then a revenue of £7,000,000 a year, and which, were they now in operation, would yield a much larger revenue—and the following year he took 6d off the income-tax. Yet so successful has the policy of this Government been that the expanding revenue from the reduced taxes has provided the means to furnish increases to old age pensioners, widows, orphans and the blind, and also an increase in the salary of every public servant of the State. All that has been done without the imposition of a farthing of the taxes which were taken off when this Government came into office. That is a breath-taking achievement. If I am right, if all that splendid triumph is to be preserved, now is the time that we must resolve that within existing levels of taxation existing services must hereafter be financed, and that if there be any additions to the public services now provided that addition must carry with it its corresponding tax, and those who do not like the tax must forbear the new provision and those who want the new provision must advocate the tag.
Lastly, if progress is to be maintained, production must expand. We have to produce in this country not only all that our own people want but a sufficiency thereof to pay for our imports of coal, oil, tea and the hundred other things without which the standard of living to which our people have grown accustomed cannot be maintained. But we are doing that. Our butter production has increased phenomenally. I believe there are more cattle in Ireland than there were ever before in recorded time and each one of them is worth more to-day than they were ever known to be worth before. We have, by the intensification of veterinary services, saved in the last two years over 80,000 calves which must otherwise have died. As a result of the intensive inoculation of our cattle against contagious abortion, thousands of cows that would give no milk this year and produce no calf this year will produce their calf and fulfil their full lactation. We propose to build up the pig population to higher numbers than those ever reached before and to feed those pigs on barley, potatoes, fodder-beet and skimmed milk, which does not involve the importation of a £s worth though I am as much in favour than ever I was of the policy of feeding all that the land of this country can produce to live stock and, when all that has been fed, importing as much more and doubling the quantity of live stock and feeding that too. There are some addle-pated imbeciles in this country who can see the wisdom of bringing in cotton to weave it in Athlone and sell it for three prices to our neighbours in Ireland, but who consider it iniquity to bring in maize which grew in the same field as the cotton and use it for conversion into pigs and bacon on a farm in rural Ireland. If it is no crime to go to the north side of a field and pull the cotton and process it in Athlone, why is it high treason to take maize from the south corner of the same field and bring it to a house a mile outside Athlone and process it into bacon? The philosopher is silent.
If you could sell it.
If you could sell it. God knows you can sell bacon a damn sight easier at the present time——
For half nothing.
——than Terry towels, particularly when they are sold for 1/- and are no bigger than ones that are sold for 6d. and that are coming from elsewhere. We can sell all the bacon that this country is producing. We want no tariff. We want no quota. We can sell it in competition with any country in the world, and beat their competition and make a profit on it. If we did not do that we could not pay the salaries we at present pay to all the unproductive elements in our society who do not seem to worry about anything else in the world except getting their salaries raised. It is out of the pigs, eggs, fowl, milk and out of the land that every wage-earner in the country gets paid. If we ever come to a time when you cannot sell pigs at a profit, or fowl or cattle at a profit let the trade unionists, the national teachers, the professional men, the lawyers and the doctors run for cover because they will lose a large percentage of their remuneration because there will be no funds wherefrom to pay them. I advise the professional men, and the national teachers especially, to get to their prayers and pray hard that there will be a profitable market for pigs, bacon, turkeys, fowl, eggs, butter, milk, cream and all the other things which we produce on the land for sale abroad because, if there is not, God help the teachers and the professional men.
They will have to look for a better salesman.
You would be a poor substitute.
There is not the slightest danger of the experiment being made. But that is not all. We have to expand not only industries which are carried on on the farms of our people—we have to increase the industrial processing of materials in the popularly accepted sense of the word. I think it is of great importance that it should be decentralised and the industry brought to the people rather than the people gathered into a vast caravanserai to serve grouped industry.
In pursuit of that policy, we have the factory conducted by the firm of Miloko, outside Carrick-on-Suir, which will manufacture more chocolate crumbs from milk produced in that area than was ever produced in Ireland before. There is the meat-meal factory in Cahir which will process suitable materials to be utilised in the feeding of our live stock. There is an immense limestone industry springing up all round the country which, consequent on the announcement which I made in the House earlier to-day, will produce all the lime necessary to restore fertility to our soil. There is an arterial drainage programme proceeding on a scale never before contemplated in this country. There is also the land project which, in its own way, is an industry. To date, the land project can boast of having 109,361 acres reclaimed or in process of reclamation. May I ask Deputies to pause for a moment to ask themselves what is the capital value of 109,361 acres of arable land?
We do not know nor does the Minister either.
The Deputy is probably praying very fervently that whatever it at present is, it will long continue to be. What would he do if it did not? That is not all. There are parts of this country about which it is probably true to say, in the words of an old friend of mine, that the best service you could do them, if you look at things from a coldly economic point of view, would be to knock down the cliffs and let in the Atlantic to cover these wild parts of the west coast of the country. But the people would not let you. It does not matter how poor the country is; it does not matter how hard it is the people want to live there and stay there no matter what you say.
Now there are two courses open. One is to say that if they want to stay there, let them stew in their own juice. The other is to adopt the policy which has been adopted by this Government and to say that if you are going to let them stay there, the Government have a duty, not to turn them into beggars, not to have them turned into dependents on charity, but to do all that human effort can, to create circumstances in those areas which will secure for the people who live there a fair reward for hard work honestly done. To that end, this Government proposes to carry out the reclamation of every acre in Connemara, from Galway to Oughterard on to Maam and Clifden and back round the coast through Barna into Galway again; on every acre of land where men work, to do reclamation, to generate electricity from the resources there available and supply it to the houses and the people who live there; where necessary to cut turf and use it, to plant forests on the reclaimed land or to divide it amongst those whose present accommodation is insufficient, to organise the fishing industry at Cashla so as to provide those who at the present time are competent to use them, with boats of their own, to provide means for the rest to reacquire the skill of fishing in their own waters from their own homes. We shall open two mines in the next few months in Connemara, the minerals of which will supply the seriously wanted requirements of this country and highly valued exports to any country in the world of lead, zinc and molybdenum. I hope that the present system of grinding sea rods and shipping them to Scotland will be brought to an end and that suitable factories can be erected in Connemara to carry out the intermediate stages in producing mannitol and plastics.
We have already completed the veterinary survey of live stock in the area and carried out the necessary dosage to eliminate cattle disease and we are now returning to estimate the consequences of our work. We are introducing the Kerry breed of cattle into the area and are providing loans to improve the quality and the quantity of sheep. There will be made available under the project to anyone who wants to use them, lime or phosphate in the quantity necessary to make the land as fertile as nature will permit. There are available to everybody in the area grants to bring water to their houses, and light, where that is available, to build new piggeries, new fowl houses and new cow byres. There will be made available at suitable centres in every part of that area at regular intervals, certain markets for the produce of such activities as I have named, with the guarantee that when that produce is brought to the market, there will be somebody there to buy it. There will be within the reach of everyone in Connemara means to earn his living. So far as I am concerned, I am convinced that the majority of those who live there will be glad and proud to avail of these means. For the remainder who are too lazy, and who do not want to avail of the means of living, it is a matter of supreme indifference to me what their ultimate fate may be. It is not a bad supreme indifference to me what their ultimate fate may be. It is not a bad programme, to raise the standard of living of our people, to develop the habit of thrift and saving, for the benefit of the individuals engaged in it and for the protection of the community from the inflationary consequences of prosperity uncontrolled, to store up fertility in the land, to encourage rural industry, to build up the parish as the natural unit of rural society and see as a result. a population of 3,000,000 for the first time in the twentieth century in this part of Ireland, and it is still rising.
It is not a bad record for three years. It is a record on which I would go to the country to-morrow, next week, next year or at any time. We are going in October or September, 1952, or January, 1953. Publicise that story and contradict any part of it you dare. The more it is told, and the more it is canvassed in the country, the happier we will be to take the verdict of the people upon it. Get this clear and certain: the road you have seen us travel is the road on which we are going to go all the way to the end. The results to date, dramatic as they have been, are nothing to what we can achieve in the next two years. It has meant an abundance of hard work of a nature which Deputies on the opposite side would never understand; but it has been worth it if we can say, as I think we can say now, that there never was less unemployment, that there was never less poverty amongst the people in our towns and that the farmers on the land were never better off. Finally —and I think this is perhaps one of the most exciting features of it all— scan the whole world, America included, and ask yourself if any rational man, knowing Ireland, would choose to make his life elsewhere?
After the Lenten repast to which we were treated yesterday by the Minister for Finance who placed a very austere collation before the country, the great gargantuan repast which the Minister for Agriculture now threatens to compel us to swallow is likely to have very serious repercussions on our internal arrangements. It really requires a stretch of the imagination to believe that the same buoyant, optimistic and overflowing Minister we have just heard, is really carrying out the same policy as the Minister for Finance who indulged in so many financial maxims yesterday and held up so many warning signals, signposts and so on, to warn us where exactly we are going. According to the Minister for Agriculture, we need have no care as to where we are going. The road is in front of us. "The Road to the Isles," I suppose, would be an appropriate ballad for us to sing, with the hills of Connemara and the Twelve Pins in the blue distance, and we are off with the Minister for Agriculture. Is it not rather unfortunate that this lyrical romanticism, which characterises the Minister's outburst, cannot be confined to the field where it might be specially appropriate, that is in agriculture—in the bucolic field which has been the choice of poets and romancers of all ages. But, why try to extend it into the cost of living for example?
What would the Minister for Agriculture do if he had not the year 1947? The whole world and the whole era of the great prosperity which we are to see began in 1947. Last July, when the Labour Court were examining an application for an increase in wages from the turf workers at Clonsast, they gave it as their opinion that there had been an increase in the cost of living between 1947, when the representatives of these workers were previously before them, and July, 1950. That was before devaluation. According to the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Industry and Commerce, when trying to defend the official contention that there had been no increase in the cost of living, he was driven by the howls of execration, as I might almost describe them, which arose even from his own benches and from his own supporters at his temerity in making such a pronouncement, to try and cover up the position by telling us that since Korea—of course, since Korea— the situation had changed.
The Minister for Finance, as far as I recollect, made no reference whatever in his statement yesterday to the effect of devaluation upon the economy of the State, upon the cost of living or upon our balance of trade. If the Minister were in the position in which I am now and I were in his position, for example, I do not think he would be quite as silent as he is, but he is now in the position that he has responsibility upon his shoulders, and it is for the House and the country to determine whether he is carrying out that responsibility adequately.
Last January, the Minister for Industry and Commerce, when he recovered from his illness—I am glad that he has recovered and I hope that he will be back in his old place—and, when speaking to the Society of Advertising Agents—they had some function or other—did he deny, or could he deny in face of the legislation that has been passing through this House, in face of the feeling of public opinion and in face of the situation with which housewives in this city and elsewhere have to contend at the present time, that there had been no increase in the cost of living? The most that he could say was that:
"the increases were smaller, and that living costs here had risen, perhaps not as high as elsewhere".
That was since last autumn.
In the document with which the Minister for Agriculture opened his speech to-day, it stopped practically at last autumn—last November—and he only took out three figures to suit himself. Surely, if we are going to be honest with the public we have to have regard to the trends. This document was circulated yesterday. If the statisticians who compiled it were in a position to give us the full facts in an objective way for the whole of 1950, then, of course, we could discuss this matter on the basis where we could all accept certain principles and certain figures; but it is the height of folly for the Minister for Agriculture to come in here with a document from University College, Cork, dealing with the cost of living up to November, 1950, and to quote three figures—one in 1947, and two in 1950—and try to bluff the House and the country into accepting them. If that is the Minister's sense of responsibility in this matter, if that is the standard by which we are to judge him in regard to all his other statements, then I think it would be very easy for us to come to our own conclusions about it. He is really a wonder worker. G.K. Chesterton wrote a number of books about the innocence of Father Brown and the wisdom of Father Brown and so on. If he were still alive, he would have found scope for his imagination and his genius in the miraculous transformation of the Minister for Agriculture. Hearing the Minister talking about capital investment one has to rub one's eyes to inquire whether really we were dreaming. Can this be the same figure, this the same personality, this the same eloquent orator who for years on this side of the House denounced the best scheme and asked: "Why grow beet in this country when we can import it more cheaply?" The whole criterion in his approach to that question was— let us purchase our sugar in the cheapest market. That was the extent of his interest in the development of a crop which has been one of the mainstays of the farming community for the past generation in a large part of this State.
We are not likely to forget his attitude towards wheat, towards turf and towards Rineanna. He told us that the rabbits would be playing over Rineanna. It is surely a miraculous transformation that on every single one of these headings the Minister for Agriculture has altered his position. I do not know whether that is a tribute to the persuasive powers of the more nationally-minded and more common-sense colleagues in the Government and in the Parties that support it, or whether the Minister feels that, even if he were to attain a great measure of the success which he has claimed, even if we were to believe the testimonials he has been giving himself here all the evening, even if we were to take these at the value he placed upon them, he would never succeed in making himself popular among the farmers of this country.
A good deal of the debate has been taken up with references to agricultural policy and it is quite sufficient for anybody who represents a mainly agricultural constituency, as I do, to meet the farming community to know what they feel about the present price of eggs. There is not the slightest doubt but that eggs are going to disappear off the market unless something can be done to increase the price which the farmer gets. The Minister for Agriculture must think we are very innocent men indeed if we are not able to explain to the public that we dislike very much the increased costs that people have to pay for the necessaries of life which they are unable to meet. He must think we are very innocent if we are not able to reconcile that with the point of view that the producer, wherever he may be, should get an honest and fair return for his produce. Everybody knows that the farming community are not to blame for the high prices which the people have to pay in the retail shops. Neither can we blame the shopkeepers. We can blame the system of collection and distribution which adds so much to the primary cost, so that the retail price is very much greater and the margin is difficult to conceive on any reasonable basis. How we are to get over that situation would take a long time to deal with.
More than 16 years.
More than 16 years.
What about the £10,000,000 that you were to take off?
Perhaps the Deputy will speak later on.
I will.
I hope so. I mean speak, not cry.
Deputy de Valera pointed out, in the course of the debate on the Vote on Account last year, that when the Banking Commission Report was published and when the Government of the day was criticised for repatriating external assets, for their policy in subsidising housing on a generous scale, and for doing other things which they considered necessary in the general interests of the country and which most people would regard as progressive, they received some support from the Fine Gael spokesmen in this House who are now the keystone of the Government. Since then the financial advisers, the members of the Banking Commission who denounced the Government at that time, because denounced is not too severe a term to apply to their pronouncements, have changed their role and have come forward with a policy of investment. The very same policy of investment through Government boards and State machinery which they condemned in all the moods and tenses they are now advocating strenuously and we gather from the Minister for Finance that their advice has had something to do with this policy of investment which the Government have put before the country.
Whose advice?
The advice of those experts to whom you referred.
I never said anything about them.
The Minister in his Budget Statement last year referred to the fact that certain economists agreed with this policy and I presume that he took counsel with them. If I am wrong in that, I withdraw the suggestion.
You are referring to the people who were on the Banking Commission. I do not think I referred to them, except one person.
One person, let us say.
I only quoted one.
Notice taken that 20 Deputies were not present; House counted and 20 Deputies being present,
According to the Minister for Agriculture the farmers are better off to-day than they ever were. They would feel more secure if the Minister could obtain for them some guarantee that the prices they will receive for their produce will cover the increasing costs they have to bear, if possible over a period of years, and leave them with a profit. One would imagine that the farmers' position was entirely hopeless until the present Minister for Agriculture took office.
According to Table I in the Tables of National Income and Expenditure covering the years 1938-44 to 1950 the income from agriculture, forestry and fishing amounted in the way of profit to £79.5 million in 1945, £76.3 million in 1946, £78.9 million in 1947, £79.7 million in 1948 and £83.3 million in 1949. It is true that there was an increase in 1949 and in 1950. In this House and in relation to our national policy we are concerned with the future and, if for a number of years the farming community has done fairly well, nobody is likely to grudge them their good fortune since that is really the result of their own hard work and is due to circumstances over which the Minister for Agriculture, no matter how he may try to pretend otherwise, has really not very much control.
If we read in the newspapers that for months past the British Government has failed to reach agreement with the Argentine, if we read that the Danes are so dissatisfied with the prices they are getting that they have sent two of the leading members of their Cabinet to London to discuss the matter with the British Government, in the first place we are not likely to agree that the prices we are getting are anything wonderful from the international point of view, and, in the second place, it is likely to strike us very forcibly that this question of the world's food supply is really the kernel of the situation.
According to a recent interview given by President Péron, the Argentine has arrived at the stage when they do not care a great deal about the disposal of any surplus which, he says, now only amounts to 20 per cent. That surplus can be canned and sent to Korea. Owing to the increase in the world's population and the fact that these hitherto pioneer producing countries with their increasing populations are likely to have smaller surpluses in the future, the tide of trade to that extent has turned in our favour; Irish agriculture has at least a better opportunity, an opportunity which I hope will continue, since the war than it had in our time. However, in this particular repast which has been prepared for us by the Minister for Finance, we have to digest first of all the expenditure and we have to remember that the Book of Estimates shows an increase over the current year's figures of nearly £4,400,000 and over the year 1947—if the Minister for Agriculture considers is a good datum line as being the last year in which we were in office, I suppose it is not too heretical for me to take it also as a basis of comparison—the increase amounts to £24,118,000, an increase of more than 40 per cent. In fact, expenditure is increasing by leaps and bounds. During the Government's first year in office it went up by £5.78 million; in the second year it went up by a further £8.6 million, while the Estimates for the present year show a still further increase over 1949-50 of £5.35 million. There are some Supplementary Estimates to be added to this year's bill for £83,000,000 and in addition, as has been pointed out, there is a further additional £9,000,000, for Central Fund services. Therefore, the total figure of expenditure from central Government sources, leaving out capital issues proper, comes to £92,000,000, or over 25 per cent. of our national income; or, if you would like to have it this way, it comes to about £32 per head of the population, which, last year the Minister, if I remember aright, described as being rather on the high side. He indicated that he was not completely satisfied with it and if he is doing his duty loyally by the taxpayers and the people I do not see how he can be satisfied with it. If we add to these £92,000,000 the cost of local authority expenditure, say another £30,000,000, and insurance contributions—one valuable piece of information that we get from the new White Paper on national income and expenditure is that in future insurance contributions are to go into the category of direct taxation —we need have no hesitation in adding to the £92,000,000, and the £30,000,000 another sum of, say, £4,000,000 for insurance contributions. Apart from capital issues proper, that will bring the entire bill to about £126,000,000, which I calculate to be 35 per cent. of the national income, or £43 per head of the population. If you were to take it on the basis of the working population, it would probably be nearly £100 per head. In that connection we have to remember that the value of the net agricultural output per male engaged was only £229 in 1949. Even if the figure increased to £250 in 1950, it will be seen that the charges for national and local expenditure and insurance contributions account for a very great proportion of the income from agriculture.
The Minister for Finance referred to certain trends of an unsatisfactory nature. He did not refer in sufficiently emphatic terms to the balance of trade position. He referred to the increased personal expenditure which, he said, was not being covered by savings or earnings—I think that was the phrase used—but he could have referred at greater length to the dangerous situation we will be in if we find that drastic changes will have to be made rapidly in our economic arrangements.
Last year we imported nearly £160,000,000 worth of goods and we exported £70,000,000 worth. At the same time as we were failing to meet our commitments in that respect, even to the extent of £1 in £2, we were dissipating the external assets about which the Banking Commission were so eloquent in pre-war days. If they were brought together again, I am sure that they would not at all agree with the Minister for External Affairs who holds himself out as a spokesman with some influence in the Government. We need not go into the exact question as to whether he is expounding the Government financial policy or Clann na Poblachta financial policy or just some stunt of his own but, at any rate, he wants to get rid of these assets.
The Minister for Finance, yesterday, referred to the fact that some years ago it was calculated that these assets amounted to £400,000,000. Against that had to be set £175,000,000 assets held here by foreigners—I think the Minister gave the figure yesterday— which reduced the figure for our external assets to £225,000,000. That was in 1945. That is not a very great figure. If we proceed to liquidate those assets at the rate of £30,000,000 a year, in spite of our strong position as a creditor nation and the excellent state of our national credit, to which the Minister for Finance has called attention, we might find ourselves in the position of the New Zealanders who, before the war, had a primary producing country, but who got into serious difficulties and, having expended all their external assets, had to come to London, cap in hand, asking ad misericordiam, for the best terms they could get. Perhaps that is a very far fetched idea but it is one that comes to mind when one sees the Minister for External Affairs campaigning the country about the repatriation of our assets, when one realises that if the present trend were to continue those assets would disappear in a fairly short period of years and when one realises that we are piling up a debt, not perhaps very significant, but still a debt, to the United States of America and putting ourselves in the position that, through American credit, we have to get certain articles which, if we were told we would have to do without, would place us in a very uncomfortable position, to say the least of it.
We have to consider these matters. The Minister has merely expressed the usual regret, the usual pious aspirations one hears from Ministers for Finance. If their advisers were not industrious in keeping these matters before their eyes, they might omit all reference to them.
Let us take the matter of the investment policy which we hear so much about. In 1945 we spent £226,000,000 on consumer goods and services. We are now spending £342,000,000. That is an increase of 50 per cent. Tables 3 and 4 deal with capital formation. I presume that that represents capital formation within Government schemes, to a very large extent. Unfortunately there are no figures showing the extent of private capital issues or private capital investment. Without wishing to throw too heavy a burden on the excellent investigators who have prepared this splendid document, I would suggest that, just as personal expenditure can be divided into necessary and unnecessary expenditure, the figures for capital investment could be divided into investment in Government-directed schemes and investment in schemes for which private enterprise is responsible. In that way we would get a better picture. I venture to say, on the figures given here, that such segregation would not make the situation appear more favourable. Last year we expended £30,000,000 on imports and in preceding years we expended £60,000,000. That is a total of £90,000,000 up to the present out of the £225,000,000 that I have referred to. Of the total net national income, the figures for capital formation come to about 19 per cent. in 1947, 14 per cent. in 1948, 13.7 per cent. in 1949, and 12 per cent. in 1950. That 12 per cent., apart from the fact that it is a smaller percentage than in the preceding years, has to be considered from this aspect, that during 1950 we had devaluation. We are paying far more for our imports of producer goods, and, therefore, the 12 per cent. of our national income that we spend on capital formation represents probably a substantially smaller volume of these goods.
On the other hand, we have savings. The Minister for Agriculture has referred to savings. It seems incongruous that we should be liquidating our resources on the one hand without assuring ourselves that the realisation of our resources, in the shape of external assets, is going to come here in the form of capital goods—if possible, goods that will in themselves add, when put into production, to the future wealth of the country. It seems extraordinary that we should be asking for savings if we are not able to assure ourselves that as far as possible that process in which the Government can exercise a great deal of control—as the assets which are now being realised, the securities, come largely from Government funds—will not be pursued unless they are satisfied that the capital structure of the country and our productive powers are going to benefit.
This is not a Fortunatus purse that we are dealing with, as the Minister for Agriculture might lead the uninformed to believe, Marshall Aid, external assets, liquidation and all the rest of it notwithstanding. All Government borrowing put on one side, in the long run the taxpayer has to pay the piper. If he does not pay it by meeting all the expenditure from current revenue, he will later on have to meet it from very substantial charges which he will have to bear in the shape of interest and sinking fund.
The Minister for External Affairs attacked the banking institutions of this country. He has done so on more than one occasion. He claimed that his reason for criticising them so severely was that they failed to give credit in 1948. If they failed to give credit in 1948, perhaps they had some reason on their side. I am not in a position to enter into the merits of the case; I simply want to say that at the end of 1947, when we introduced the emergency Budget, not alone were we threatened with inflation, but the United States of America were also faced with it. Their President announced his fears in that respect, that there would be such a wave of inflation as would destroy the hope of prosperity He made that statement towards the end of 1947.
Whether the position had changed so completely in 1948, or whether the general situation of the banks permitted them to adopt a more generous policy, I cannot say. I know hardships were suffered, but I think on balance there was an inflationary situation there. Some of the inflationary taxes that we put on, the Minister has up to the present refused to remove. Whether that is a recognition of the fact that the inflationary situation is still there, it is for him to say, but it is quite clear from his statement yesterday that this inflation bogey has not been laid. He cannot deny that with the amount of labour in the country limited, particularly skilled labour, it means that not alone in relation to housing, but in rural areas generally, even if you have a certain supply of labour, you will not be able to get the necessary labour for all the different schemes if you are trying to do road work, land drainage, land rehabilitation, turf development, local authorities' works schemes and so on.
What is forgotten in this pontificating about finances is that you can provide colossal sums for investment, but unless you have the organisation there a great deal of waste, to put it mildly, is likely to occur. Moreover, not enough is being done to provide trained personnel. There is a shortage of skilled labour, a shortage of supervisory grades. There is probably a shortage of scientific workers in our industries and in our agriculture. When the Minister says—I do not agree with him—that the increases in the Book of Estimates are due to education increases very substantially, I would like to say that I hope due cognisance will be given to the importance of training skilled workers and skilled executives.
A prominent Dublin citizen who has given a great deal of attention to and studied closely this matter of our economic and financial position, made a statement recently to the effect that we would do well if we devoted more attention to our education. I think so far as our primary and secondary schools are concerned they are doing excellent work, but I feel that so far as our apprenticeship schemes and our vocational schools and our technical institutes are concerned, we ought to do a great deal more. If we do, then the capital investment policy which the Government have in mind will proceed in the hands of Irishmen who will know they are working for their own country and who will be able to place their talents and their industry at Ireland's disposal. Moreover, they will have knowledge of the local circumstances and it will be an economy as well as rendering greater efficiency to the community in the long run.
In introducing the Vote on Account yesterday, the Minister for Finance made a speech which, in my opinion, deserved more careful attention than it received in the course of this debate. I think that his introduction to this colossal estimate of national expenditure stressed very strongly the fact that this country is facing a very dangerous economic and financial situation. Anybody listening to either Deputy O'Higgins yesterday or the Minister for Agriculture to-day would have been inclined to think that no such announcement was made by the Minister for Finance. The Minister for Finance very properly drew attention to the fact that this country is liquidating too repidly her external assets without creating internal reproductive assets. He emphasised that the balance of trade has turned sharply against us in the past year and that the nett result is we must either consume our external assets or continue to sink into debt to the U.S.A. in respect of dollars.
Our national debt has grown rapidly during the past three years and our dollar debt to the U.S.A. has increased with even greater rapidity. At the same time, we have very drastically reduced our sterling assets. What have we to show in exchange for this rapid eating into our resources? What vast schemes of development have we undertaken during the past three or four years which would offset the rising burden of national debt and the reduction in our assets abroad? I fail to see anything of sufficient magnitude to justify this deterioration in our economic and financial position. At the same time, I fail to see any real justification for the steady and rapid rise in national expenditure each year. If we look back over the Estimates, we will find that there is a steady upward trend in national expenditure. It is £5,000,000 more this year than last year. I think it was £7,000,000 or £8,000,000 more the year before and so on. Each year, the burden of expenditure continues to increase and the ordinary taxpayer is entitled to ask when will the limit be reached or will it ever be reached. Is there any ceiling beyond which the State will not go in wasting and squandering the people's money?
I think that all those facts were stressed in the introduction of the Vote of Account by the Minister for Finance. I think they do not and have not received sufficient attention from the House. The Minister for Agriculture has a tendency to talk about dirty rackets whenever he is challenged to justify any action of his, such as in the case of the cruelty to horses and matters of that kind. I think the dirtiest racket in this country is the political racket—the attempt on both sides of the House to make political capital out of everything that happens whether it be a fortunate circumstance to the country or a disastrous one. If there is a fortunate circumstance, such as exceptionally good weather for an agricultural country, that is treated by the Government as something which is directly attributable to the wisdom, knowledge and foresight of the Government. If there is a disastrous circumstance, there is a tendency on the part of the Opposition to put the blame for that on the Government. Deputies of this House, irrespective of what Party to which they belong, ought to begin to assume some sense of responsibility.
This downward trend in our national resources, this upward trend in our public expenditure and the upward trend in the expenditure on non-essentials by our people, must be curtailed. While we imported £160,000,000 worth of goods last year we only exported about £70,000,000 or £80,000,000 worth. When we look at the details of those vast imports, we are inclined to ask could we not have eliminated or reduced some of them. Was it absolutely necessary for an agricultural country to spend over £2,000,000 last year on the importation of sugar? Would not the exercise of a little more foresight, together with an earnest effort to promote home production, have eliminated that unnecessary import?
I was severely criticised by the Minister for Industry and Commerce last year when I referred to some of our imported sugar as having the appearance of being swept off a dirty road. I say that a very large portion of the imports, particularly agricultural imports and imports of an agricultural origin, were immensely inferior to our own native production. The imported sugar could not compare in any way with the sugar produced in our country. Nevertheless, we spent over £2,000,000 to supplement our home production.
Apart from what we could produce here, I have a strong feeling that we are importing too large a volume of luxury and semi-luxury products from other countries. Those products imported into this country and consumed will not strengthen our national economy in the difficult years that lie ahead. They will add nothing to our resources. It would seem that the policy of the Government at the moment is to eat, drink and be merry.
The Government is not importing those luxury goods.
The Government must take a very large responsibility in the conduct of the import and export trade. A Government can stimulate exports and a Government can restrict imports in certain directions.
You want physical control of imports.
The Minister knows perfectly well that there are quite a number of ways in which imports can be discouraged.
Will the Deputy tell me any way of discouraging them which is not being used?
I do not intend to start teaching the Minister his business as Minister. I am drawing attention to the fact that this little country is spending far too much on imported luxuries and I think that is a dangerous trend in the grave situation facing us. We should be aiming at importing raw materials and machinery and equipment for the development of our native industries on the largest possible scale and not flittering way all our resources, all our external assets, upon imported luxuries.
Is that being done?
It is not being done on anything like the scale necessary, if this country is to survive. The Minister can go down the list of goods being imported and he will see for himself how few of them will contribute in any way to increasing internal production and how few of them constitute machinery and equipment or raw material for the development of essential industries.
It is significant in this connection that one of the most drastic—perhaps the only drastic—economy that has has been effected in the Estimate for the coming year has been effected at the expense of agriculture. For the past three years, the joke, if you like to call it a joke, though it is a sorry joke, has been sold to the public that the farmer was getting £40,000,000 for land rehabilitation. This sum was supposed to come to the farmer in the course of ten years. Yet we find that for the first year in which the scheme was in operation less than £1,000,000 were voted; for the second year, £3,000,000—but we do not know how much was spent—and for the present year less than £2,500,000 is being provided. Somebody has to refute the contention of the Minister for Agriculture that £40,000,000 are to be spent in ten years on land rehabilitation. At the present rate of £2,500,000, £25,000,000 would be the limit expended in ten years. It is interesting to ask why this drastic reduction was decided upon. One could understand the spending of only £1,000,000 in the first year because there was development work to be undertaken and the scheme had to be built up and one could even understand our being £1,000,000 short of the target of £4,000,000 per year in the second year, but it is very difficult to find any explanation for the reduction this year of £1,500,000.
What reduction is the Deputy talking about?
The amount voted for land rehabilitation. The sum, I understand, is £2,500,000.
That is a reduction of £1,500,000 on what?
It is a sum of £1,500,000 less than the target which the Minister for Agriculture publicised as the amount he intended to spend each year on land rehabilitation. A sum of £4,000,000 a year was the amount drummed into the minds of the people.
Would the Deputy take it from me as a solemn promise that, if he can work it up to £4,000,000, he will get it?
Then it must be the Department of Agriculture who are falling down on the job.
I am sorry I gave you any guarantee if that is the wrong conclusion you draw.
A number of questions were asked here with regard to the amount of progress made in land rehabilitation in the past 12 months. The Minister has evaded these questions by stating that he intends to publish at a later date a prepared statement showing the progress over a certain period. I should like to say as a Deputy that the House is establishing a very dangerous precedent if a Minister is to be allowed to evade a parliamentary question by declaring that, after a time, a statement will be issued in regard to the particular matter. It is very doubtful if the specific information asked for in the various questions will be given in the statement he intends to issue.
Would the Deputy quote the Minister correctly?
Let the Deputy make his speech.
The Deputy is apparently interested in his godchild.
I want to hear the Deputy who is in possession. He did not purport to quote.
Could you stop the lamentations from the other side?
I am satisfied to wait and see. Deputy Sweetman lost the battle of Baltinglass and he is feeling very sore since. That is why he comes in here to interrupt me.
Not a bit; he won it. The Deputy is the man who lost it and the next election will show him that.
It cannot come too soon.
It is a pity that Deputy Sweetman is such a bad loser. Why can he not take it the same as anybody else? We all get hard knocks from time to time and we take them. I want to continue on the line which I have been endeavouring to develop, that is, that we are not doing all we can do to develop this country during what may be only a short period left to us to undertake the work. It is possible that world conditions may be such that it will be very hard to undertake any type of development work. In the event of war, there is very little a nation can do except barely manage to survive. There may be one year, maybe two years—there may perhaps be more—left in which to build up and strengthen our economy and it is rather strange that in one line of development which was very strongly boosted there has been a falling off rather than an expansion.
I asked a question the other day with regard to the fuel situation. In a nation such as ours, with limited resources, fule is an all-important consideration. We have not got vast resources of native coal and cannot get, without great difficulty, our requirements in turf and other substitutes which are available. I asked the Minister for Industry and Commerce what reserves were in this country in 1948 and what reserves are here to-day.