When speaking on this vote last week, I was endeavouring to substantiate certain main points of criticism of the handling of financial and economic policy by the Minister for Finance during the past year. Unfortunately, I was speaking in the absence of the Minister for Finance and it looks as if I will have to continue speaking in his absence to-day. I do not know whether the absence of the Minister is intended to be contemptuous of the Dáil or is due to some other cause. One would have thought that a Minister in that position would have regarded it as his duty so to arrange his affairs as to permit him to be present in the House when his administration was being subjected to examination here.
Committee on Finance. - Motion by Minister for Finance (Resumed).
The Minister for Finance has been in here for a considerable period and there is a Minister on the Front Bench to take note of what the Deputy is saying.
I am glad to know that the Minister for Justice will take a note of what is being said and that it will be conveyed to the Minister for Finance. The Minister for Finance is asking us to vote him on account of the Supply Services this year a sum of £29,375,000 and that is no trivial matter. One would have thought that the Minister would have deemed it desirable, if not courteous, to be present when members of the Dáil are making their observations on that proposal. However, the main points which I was trying to substantiate were these. The first is that the amount which the Government are taking in the present financial year in taxation has already reached what the Minister for Finance himself described as the danger point. He regarded it as undesirable that the amount collected for the payment of the cost of the public services should exceed 25 per cent. of the aggregate of personal incomes. He admitted that in 1950 5/4 out of every £ of private income went to pay the cost of public services. It makes no matter whether that amount was secured by increasing the rates of taxation or by an expansion of revenue from existing taxes. We know that, with the recovery of trade after the war, the revenue yielded by various taxes expanded substantially; so substantially as to permit a reduction in certain tax rates even though the total revenue derived by the Exchequer from all taxes was expanding.
It is probable that in the present year, with the enormous increase in the volume of imports, the various ad valorem import duties have brought into the Exchequer a yield of revenue in excess of that budgeted for last May, and certainly in excess of that secured from customs duties in earlier years. It is equally probable that the rise in public expenditure upon beer, whiskey, tobacco and cinemas has also expanded the revenue. It may be that there has been a sufficient expansion under these heads to permit of the Minister for Finance covering the increased cost of the supply services in this year without any increase in tax rates. The fact is, however, that the amount which the public as a whole is paying in taxation is rising year after year, rising beyond the point which the Minister for Finance conceded was the danger point; and there is no evidence that the Minister for Finance proposes to concern himself about it apart from uttering a few warning phrases here. He seems willing to make whatever concessions are necessary to his partners in the Coalition whenever concessions are necessary to maintain its solidarity even though they may mean that the cost of Government services will be further inflated. I said also that the rise in the cost of public services is outpacing the rise in the national income. When the Budget of 1947 was presented here the present Minister for Finance, then Deputy McGilligan, described it as placing an intolerable burden on the national economy.
Since then that burden has increased, not merely actually but relatively, and the undesirable economic consequences foretold by the present Minister for Finance in 1947 have obviously been intensified. I pointed out also that the level of Government borrowing is out of all relation to the volume of current savings, so that the Government has been forced to finance its capital programme by dubious methods, by methods which are directly inflationary and which have not merely caused the rise in prices, which during the past two months sent the Government running around in circles, but have also caused the enormous increase in imports which the trade and shipping statistics for 1950 have revealed. These excessive imports, causing a deficit in the balance of payments for last year of no less than £30,000,000, as compared with £10,000,000 in the previous year, are dissipating the country's external assets rapidly and, unless that position is checked and remedied, will ultimately force a serious reduction in our living standards. Those were the points I made and endeavoured to substantiate by reference to known facts and published statistics.
I accused the Minister for Finance of abandoning the financial principles which he enunciated when he took office. I accused him of doing so cynically, of doing so knowing full well what the probable consequences would be of the course he was following and I accused him of following that course solely for Party political considerations. If there was any sincerity whatever in the declarations made by the present Minister for Finance here in 1948, when he first announced to the Dáil the principles he intended to apply in the administration of his Department, he owes to the Dáil now an explanation of his failure to operate those principles and of the reasons which forced him to proceed in an entirely contrary direction. But I do not think he will give us the right explanation since the right explanation is that he has been pushed from the position he intended to take up by other sections of the Government Coalition and that he allowed himself to be pushed.
Who pushed you overboard on Friday night?
I was not overboard on Friday night.
But you were. I read it in the Press on Saturday morning.
I will deal with that. It is a case in point. Nobody objects to the Government deciding to increase old age pensions provided they believe the Government do so because they think it is the right thing to do and not because they want to bribe a few of their back benchers to go into the Division Lobby to vote for their social welfare proposals.
The back benchers are mute as mice They do not count.
You accepted it as it was.
The outstanding feature of what happened on Friday is the realisation we all have now that the Government's decision was not based on the merits of the scheme put forward on behalf of pensioners and others but upon the realisation that unless they made some concession to the disgruntled back benchers they might be defeated on the Social Welfare Bill. That is my accusation against the Minister for Finance; on every occasion when he had to decide between the principles of financial policy that he himself enunciated in the past and the maintenance of cordiality between the coalition sections he sacrificed his principles for the political advantage to himself of keeping the Coalition together.
The Social Welfare Bill has shaken you.
It has not shaken me. If it is intended to be a step preparatory to a general election, then take it from me that the people want an election on any ground and for any reason because they are aching to get an opportunity of putting an end to the mess created by the Coalition Government. They do not care what the Government are beaten on so long as they get an opportunity of putting them out of office and an opportunity of replacing them. If you do not believe me on that, try it.
They will not try it. They will take good care of that.
Let us get back to the Vote on Account.
Yes. We can deal with elections another time.
I was led into these irrelevancies because of interjections by Deputies on the Government Benches.
Quite.
I want to deal with this matter frankly and seriously.
That would be a change.
I said here on Thursday last that I had examined the details of the various Estimates and that I was not in a position to indicate any significant economies which on their merits I could recommend; I mean economies of a real kind, such as the elimination of services which are unnecessary or undesirable or of waste in the administration of Government Departments. There are a few Coalition follies scattered around the Book of Estimates that we could get rid of, but the saving involved would not be significant in relation to the total bill of £83,000,000.
Give us particulars.
The news agency. Will that do for a start?
The Big House in New York.
I agree also that many, if not all, of the genuine capital projects upon which the Government proposes to embark are desirable and that on the whole its investment programme is desirable apart from borrowing to meet budget deficits or to defray the cost of various recurring grants which create no Exchequer assets. These are devices born of political cowardice and cannot be justified on any financial ground. In so far as there is a bona fide investment programme put before the House there is not on the part of Deputies on this side of the House any desire to detract from that programme, any proposal to cut it down or eliminate any item from it. The point is, however, that we cannot go on forever inflating the cost of public services, adding new services to those already in existence and piling up the level of public debt unless we want the things the Government proposes to provide by that expenditure so badly that we are prepared to do without other things in order to get them. I think that is the issue the Government should put to the people. I think that is the issue the Government has failed to explain to the people. I think their failure to explain it is due to political motives, not because the Minister for Finance did not understand that that was the issue before the Dáil and the country but, understanding it, decided to conceal it.
In fact, the Minister for Finance, certainly other members of the Cabinet, and practically all the Deputies who sit behind them, are telling the people the opposite, not telling them that they have to choose between certain public services provided for in the Book of Estimates and certain capital services to be enunciated at the time of the Budget statement, and all the other things that they might have with the money that will otherwise be devoted to these public expenditures. The public are not being told that there is any choice. They are being told that they can have all these things at the same time, that they can have this expansion of the public services, that they can maintain a much higher level of current consumption, that they can maintain all this expanding import of luxury goods and, at the same time, have lower taxation. That is a lie. The Minister for Finance knows that it is a lie. Every Deputy who understands the elementary facts about our financial policy knows that it is a lie.
We cannot have expanding public services, an expanding level of consumption of luxury goods, expanding imports on the scale we had in 1950 and a lower taxation at the same time. We have deceived the people into believing that, by some financial trickery, they can get all these things at once. The fact is that everything we are now enjoying, every expansion of the public services, every part of the Government's investment programme, all the enormous influx of imported goods, will have to be paid for some time. We can avoid paying this year, but, eventually, they will have to be paid for, if not under the impetus of this Government, under the impetus of their successors.
We are paying now, it is true, by dissipating the external assets which were the reserves upon which we hoped to draw to expand our production capacity. We are paying now by wasting the accumulated reserves which prudent administration in the Department of Finance built up over a number of years. All these things are gone or are going. These financial reserves are being exhausted. These external assets are becoming exhausted. £225,000,000 was the estimate of the net value of our external assets at the beginning of last year. £30,000,000 of them went last year, and that means that our ability to maintain the same level of imports next year and the following year has been reduced, and that the time is in sight at which we will not be able to pay our way at all, when we will have to cut down drastically our imports and lower our standard of living. That will not take the form of a voluntary curtailment of luxury expenditure such as the Minister for Finance was pleading for. It will take the form of increased unemployment, higher taxation, leading to such depressed economic and social conditions that there will be a further exodus of population through emigration.
The public have to make a choice, when they get the opportunity, between the course which the Government are following and the course which they could follow. They will have to be given the opportunity of making that choice with all the facts put fairly before them. I can tell them that the Minister for Finance is not merely failing to put the facts before them but is deliberately misleading them as to the facts.
The level of Government spending through taxation is a matter of internal policy, a matter to be decided here in the Dáil. We will be discussing it with more point to our remarks when the Minister's taxation proposals for the year are announced to us in his Budget statement.
If we, as representatives of the public, or the Government, or the Deputies supporting the Government, can persuade people that it is better that they should have less to spend at their own discretion in order to increase the amount of Government spending, then nobody need have any complaint. Five shillings and fourpence out of every £1 of private income is now being spent by the Government, taken from the public through taxation or rates, and spent on the public services. If we want to increase expenditure on the public services, we have got to persuade people that, instead of giving 5/4 out of every £1, they should give 6/- or 6/6 or 7/-, persuade them that it is better for themselves that they should spend less at their own discretion and let the Government do their spending for them. But, that issue should be put fairly to the public. They should be told, not merely what their choice is, but the consequences of any particular choice.
The level of borrowing is a different matter. The Government has a special responsibility to safeguard the national resources entrusted to them. There is no doubt whatever that the public of this country want investment in housing, hospitals, electricity, telephones, afforestation, land improvement, in all the things which were on the list given by the Minister when announcing his capital budget last year. The public as a whole may not fully understand that investment means saving, that if there is to be a sound policy of investment in these matters, it must be made possible by expanding the volume of public savings. The aim of prudent financial policy is to keep the level of investment in line with the level of savings and that means putting aside, from the resources available to finance current consumption, some larger proportion to finance these future benefits.
Last year we had presented to us a Government investment programme totalling £34,000,000. As the statistics published only last week make abundantly clear, that investment programme was far and away beyond anything that the current level of savings would make possible and so we find that it was financed in the main, not out of current savings, but by recourse to short-term borrowing, mainly from the American Loan Counterpart Fund and also from the banks, methods of financing which the Minister for Finance himself deprecated as undesirable, which are obviously and clearly inflationary in their effect. As a result of the so-called capital investment programme of the Government, last year, £20,000,000 worth of purchasing power was distributed amongst our people over and above anything that emerged as a result of current production and the effect of that expansion of purchasing power in excess of the amount required to pay for normal supplies is to be seen, first of all, in the price rises which occurred in that period; and, secondly, in the enormous expansion in the inflow of luxury goods during the same period. Our imports in 1950 exceeded our imports in 1949 by no less than £30,000,000.
I think the public should be told more emphatically than the Minister for Finance attempted to do in his speech, introducing this Vote, that these abnormal imports of non-essential goods, while they may make life easier for some sections of our people now, are wasting our resources and making it harder for the community as a whole to pay in this year, next year and every succeeding year, for the necessary imports which we might desire to secure.
When the British Government decided last year that rearmament was necessary, British Ministers did not hesitate to come out and tell their countrymen that they could not have everything at once and that if rearmament was desirable in the interests of national security, in order to get it they had to forgo other things. They realised, being politicians like ourselves, that that was not likely to be a popular message to be carried to the voters in their constituencies. But they did not content themselves with words only; they set out to achieve the result that they thought desirable in the interests of their nation. They curtailed the production of non-essential goods and they curtailed public spending on a wide range of goods by means of a purchase tax.
Deputies who read the English papers will have learned that various public opinion polls carried out since the announcement of that policy by British Ministers showed that the popularity of the Labour Party amongst the British electorate was declining. As a result of these restrictive measures which they regarded as part and parcel of their rearmament programme, they were losing votes. I have no doubt it was the knowledge of that adverse political reaction to the tough but sound course taken by the British Government that deterred our less patriotic Ministers here from attempting to move along the same line. If our Government here had equal courage, if they were prepared to face our people in the same frank way and give them the elementary lessons in public finance and national economics which the British Ministers are doing, then we could discuss the problems confronting us now in a more realistic way.
We do not want to have to make war preparations here. We hope we will not have to do that. Nobody will regard the provision for the purchase of warlike stores in the Estimates as anything more than a gesture. Perhaps we may have to face up to the consequences of the deterioration of the international position as vigorously as the British are doing; but let us leave that aside; let us assume some magical change in the international situation will enable us to forget about all preparations for war or the emergency conditions that might follow from war elsewhere and assume we are going to have a period of international peace. Nevertheless, if we are to proceed with the programme of capital development that was outlined, even limiting that capital programme to the beneficial things which we desire, it is necessary to make it clear to our people that we cannot do it on an adequate scale unless we are prepared to do without other things at the same time.
There is, of course, a possible solution which would give us the benefit of increased public expenditure or increased investment financed by savings and at the same time avoid any serious lowering of our present standard of consumption, and that is by increasing our production. We will be able to discuss in more detail the failure of the Government adequately to stimulate increased production of industry or agriculture on the Estimates for those Departments. Up to the present the Government are riding along upon the automatic recovery in output, particularly in agriculture, which followed on the conclusion of the war, but doing little directly to stimulate it.
Some recovery in output after the war was inevitable. What expansion was possible is a matter upon which we can only speculate, but the erratic course followed by the Minister for Agriculture has clearly disheartened our agricultural producers, and the inactivity of the Department of Industry and Commerce is having the same effect on industry. If we are, however, to seek a solution of this economic difficulty of ours by expanding internal production, it obviously must mean increased spending upon productive equipment procurable abroad. It is the resources which were available to finance that spending, to finance the purchase of the productive equipment that might have made increased output possible, that are now being wasted. We may not want, as the Germans were told to want before the war, guns instead of butter, but we do want to see our limited capital resources used to buy power plants instead of motor cars, factory equipment instead of silks and satins, fertilisers instead of champagne and other foreign wines, agricultural machinery instead of cinema films.
I said in 1948 that in the circumstances of that year there was no need in this country for a policy of austerity. I was assuming then that the Minister for Finance, in outlining his policy in that year, meant what he said. I had not discovered that he was speaking then with his tongue in his cheek. I argued strongly that in the circumstances of 1948, having regard to the sound position of this country at the end of the war years and having regard to the general expectation of an improvement in economic conditions throughout the world, we did not have to embark upon a policy of restriction such as the Minister for Finance appeared then to be foreshadowing. Nor do I think yet that circumstances have arisen which would justify a policy to which the name austerity could reasonably be applied. But I think the time has come when we should consider the curtailment of foreign spending, particularly foreign spending upon non-essential goods, and maintaining that curtailment until we have ended the necessity for it either by an expansion of production or an expansion of exports.
I am not going to suggest that the Government is solely responsible for the deterioration in the general situation between 1948 and 1951. In large measure, the worsening of the relations between the great States is responsible for that situation, but in considerable degree the financial policy—the harebrained, spendthrift financial policy which the Government has followed during its three years in office—is also responsible. If these external assets of ours are to be conserved so as to be available to finance the goods we want to import and not wasted as they are now being wasted in paying for an enormous influx of non-essential goods, then we have got to consider not merely our long-term capital requirements but our immediate need to stockpile certain raw materials which are essential to the maintenance of industrial output and economic activity generally here.
It is true that one or two members of the Government have spoken about the need for stocking up essential materials. They have spoken apathetically and dispiritedly, and have given no evidence of enthusiasm for the idea much less any intention of doing anything to help it. It is true that if we were stockpiling industrial materials now it would mean more imports. It may be said that in urging more positive action towards stockpiling I am speaking in a manner contrary to what I have said already—I do not think I am. The current need for stockpiling only strengthens the case for regulating our foreign spending now so as to facilitate it. I do not think that the Government is really interested in this question of stockpiling at all. There is certainly no appreciation of industry's capital needs if it is to be achieved on any substantial scale. I do not know if any Ministers realise to what extent even the increase in the cost of raw materials last year has expanded industry's need of working capital even to maintain the previous level of stocks. The enormous increase in the prices of these materials has forced industries to exhaust capital reserves which might otherwise be available to finance expansion and has forced them to rely to an increasing extent on bank credit.
If, over and above the financing of higher prices of raw materials, there is to be an expansion of stocks of these materials, then the Government must take note of the problems, the financial problems that would be involved there. Up to the present, however, there has been no suggestion from any member of the Government that the capital needs of industry in that regard are appreciated. There has been no suggestion that the Government's investment programme might be delayed in any respect in order to facilitate stockpiling and no offer to industrialists to help them out of their difficulty in fulfilling the express wishes of the Government in that regard. Instead of getting any positive help or encouragement or evidence of appreciation of their difficulties, industrialists got instead this ridiculous Prices Freeze Order which threw all the commerce of this country into chaos for the past two months.
I do not know why the Government decided to embark upon that ill-considered course but I will tell you my theory. I think they were forced into this by the rushing tactics of the Minister for Social Welfare who knows nothing and cares less about the problems of business management and who is concerned only with the political implications to himself of the public reaction to a very foolish speech made here on the Supplies and Services Bill by the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Industry and Commerce. The adverse public reaction to that speech threw the Government into a panic. It may be that the panic was more pronounced in the mind of the Minister for Social Welfare than in that of the Minister for Industry and Commerce.
There are many who believe that when the Minister came and announced here the decision to apply a Prices Freeze Order, he was presenting his colleagues in the Government with a fait accompli: that they were put into the position that they either had to repudiate him or implement his idea.
An announcement was made in the first week of December that there was to be a Prices Freeze Order. Any Deputy who understands the variety and number of industrial transactions that take place every day will understand the problems created for the business community of this State by that announcement, when the announcement was not followed by action. Although the Minister came in here on 1st December to announce a prices freeze policy, there was no Prices Freeze Order. The Order effecting the prices freeze did not come for a month later. For the whole of the Christmas period, the busiest period of the year, the business community of this State were left in the position that a Minister had announced a prices freeze, but that nothing had been done about it. When the Order came in January of the present year, we found it was retrospective in effect, that it froze prices away back to the date of the original announcement. Any man who had even served his time in any business and who had any knowledge whatever about business management would have understood the impossibility of carrying on in any efficient way under a Prices Order retrospective in its effect. Do members of the Government not realise that the majority of the industrialists of this State are taking orders for deliveries six months, nine months and 12 months hence; that, all through the month of December, despite the Government's announcement and in the absence of any Government Order, industrialists were making contracts on the basis of the current costs of materials, and that on 2nd January all those orders were invalidated by the retrospective clause in the Prices Freeze Order. Is it any wonder that civil servants when questioned by business men told them to ignore the Order?
With your connivance.
What connivance was necessary for me? Why should anyone come to me and ask what the Government meant by their Order?
We know where you get your information.
Certainly, from members of the business community.
And others.
And others. The Deputy must be annoyed when I get information.
Nobody could silence you.
We are entitled to criticise the Government and we will not be bullied, browbeaten or threatened by Deputy Davin into silence.
And make dirty charges against the Minister in his absence.
I say the Minister for Social Welfare rushed the Government into this course. Why should he come here and announce Government policy on a matter which was the responsibility of the Minister for Industry and Commerce?
Was the Tánaiste not the most appropriate man to make it?
Was he? I have said already that that speech was deliberately framed by the Tánaiste in order to convey the idea that all the price problems afflicting the country were due solely to the desire of Irish manufacturers and traders to secure excessive profits, that he was undermining public confidence in the private enterprise system, that he was building up this propaganda, which is designed to create in the minds of the Irish people the idea that private enterprise is necessarily anti-social. I have said that and I have challenged contradiction of it.
What do you mean by Russian tactics?
Russian or rushing?
What do you mean by Russian tactics?
I say that he rushed the Government into following a course——
You used the other word, too.
The Deputy did not, I can assure the House.
He knows more about Russia than the Minister for Social Welfare.
R-u-s-h-i-n-g.
The word used was "rushing".
Sitting here listening, I may say that I thought it was "Russian" and a comment came at once which marked that that was the interpretation put on it.
I apologise for my inadequate articulation—"stampeding" will do.
It has not got the nasty meaning of the other, but it is quite as inaccurate.
It means exactly the same thing.
And it is quite as inaccurate.
There is the record: an announcement made at the beginning of December of the intention to freeze prices, with no Order drafted, no course of action decided upon and nothing following the announcement for a month; a month later, a Government Order appearing, released privately to one newspaper and then, through the Government Information Bureau, to all the others a couple of days later, that the price freeze was to be retrospective in its effect; and then some attempt to appreciate the chaos caused by these methods, leading, two months later, to an ambiguous advertisement slipped surreptitiously into the newspapers on Saturday last, saying that, as to 75 per cent. of the goods to which the price freeze applied, it has been withdrawn altogether. If there was one businessman in the Government, or if they had made any attempt before talking any steps to consult any organisation of business interests or any trade union organisation, they would have got at least enough information to have prevented the worst errors upon which they engaged. Only a Government of lawyers could have done what they have done and I will say this about lawyers, that, outside the law courts and matters concerning law, they are the most ignorant tribe of people, even though they will not admit it.
We had this announcement of a price freeze and subsequently the publication of the Order and then, following efforts to spur the Government into doing something more than wringing their hands about the price situation, we were told that a recruiting campaign was in progress for inspectors to enforce the Order and that 25 had been recruited and 25 more were to be recruited—until Saturday last when they were all sacked again, because it certainly will not need 50 inspectors to supervise the enforcement of the price freeze on the limited range of goods to which it now applies.
The poor pipsqueaks!
Where did you get that information?
What information?
About all the inspectors?
From the Minister's Parliamentary Secretary in reply to a parliamentary question.
You are doubling the number, of course.
He told me he had recruited 25 and was going to recruit 25 more for outdoor work. The number who were to work indoor was not stated.
You would know, anyway.
I do not; I have to rely upon the accuracy of the information given to me in the House. The Government have once again panicked unnecessarily. They panicked last December because of the public reaction to the speech of the Parliamentary Secretary and they are now panicking because of the representations being made to them by business interests as to the confusion they have caused in business circles. Again, I think they are panicking unnecessarily. The discontent was not with the idea of price control, but with the cumbersome nature of the machinery they set up to apply it. The administration of price control through a part-time committee of non-official persons could never have worked and never will work, but all that was necessary to remedy the blunder which created that type of machinery was to abolish that committee again and transfer responsibility for the supervision of price control back to the Department of Industry and Commerce, where it belongs.
I think the Government were driven into these foolish methods of price regulation by the collapse of the Department of Industry and Commerce. I have no doubt whatever that a proper system of price regulation is necessary in present circumstances, and is always necessary in times of impending scarcity or violent price fluctuations, and that it can be secured through the Department of Industry and Commerce working upon the responsibility of its Minister; but, in order to make it effective, there has to be behind the officials who will be dealing with members of the public, the certainty of being able to secure clear, prompt and intelligible ministerial decisions, whenever they are required. It is the knowledge in the minds of the members of the Government that in present circumstances the Department cannot function promptly, efficiently and intelligently that forced them to look around for other methods of making effective the Tánaiste's announcement of the intention to apply a price freeze and led them into the folly of this part-time advisory committee.
I think the Government were wrong in applying the price freeze last December in the way they did it. I think they are equally wrong in abolishing it now. I have argued in favour of price control. I want a system of price control that has some relation to the circumstances under which business is carried on. I want that price control to be designed to eliminate every unnecessary cause adding to price, every attempt to duplicate profits in the process of distribution, but there must be some recognition that prices are based upon costs, the costs of materials, of fuel, of wages, and that if these costs go up, prices must go up also. For two months, manufacturers in this country have been put in the position of being compelled either to manufacture only for stock, awaiting a decision upon their application for a price revision, or to work upon stocks purchased previously and to forgo the opportunity of replacing these stocks when that opportunity presented itself to them.
Do you believe that?
Certainly. I know it has happened. I will name a dozen factories where one or other of these things has happened and some where the manufacturers even took the other course of cutting down upon production because they could not get a decision from this absurd Prices Advisory Committee.
You are concerned only with damage—that is all you want.
The objection which was voiced by members of the business community was not to the principle of price control in present circumstances; it was to the methods by which the Government attempted to apply it. It is no answer to that criticism to come now and take all articles of clothing, and all household utensils and decontrol them again. Were not these the precise things the rise in the price of which was causing all the public discontent? I am convinced that it is true that the Government knew enough about the working of industry, or could have got the information if they asked for it, to prevent them adopting that course if they were not driven into it by the knowledge that the Department of Industry and Commerce is not functioning.
Does the Deputy know anything about the blanket racket?
Deputy Davin ought to know something about order.
I do not know why the position in the Department of Industry and Commerce has not been rectified. The public interest is being sacrificed because the Taoiseach, either for personal reasons or because of the political risks involved is reluctant to make changes, or for some other reason I do not know of. I have said before and repeat here that it is not fair to the country at this critical time when industrial opportunities which may not recur for years are slipping out of our grasp, when the problems of industry are mounting in intensity, when we should be vigorously at work trying to build up reserves to carry on our industries if a major emergency should develop, when all these price problems require day to day attention, to leave that major department of government in a position in which it cannot function effectively.
That summarises my criticism of the Government in relation to the specific matters now under discussion. They have lacked courage. They are following the course they are taking, not because they do not realise that that course is bound to lead the country ultimately to disaster but because they understand that any other course would involve political risks. They are not prepared to take political risks, they are postponing every problem they can, they are pushing back every obligation that can be pushed back, they are piling on a burden of debt for the future, they are wasting the resources that should be available in the future to meet that burden. They are doing this solely with the aim of preserving whatever they can of their dwindling political popularity between this date and whatever date they can screw up their courage to the point of facing the Irish electorate.
Ní fheadar cén bhrí atá le baint as an méid adúirt an Teachta deireannach. Is é an gearán atá aige leis an Rialtas ná go bhfuil an rud ceart dá dhéanamh acu, ach ná fuil dóthain sceoin agus faitís dá chur acu ar an bpobal. Ba dheacair domsa, pé scéal é, aon bhrí eile a bhaint as caint an Teachta Seán Lemass. Cuireann sé i leith an Railtais méid an Bhille atá leagtha os comhair na Dála, ach nuair a cuireadh ceist air, ní raibh sé sásta, ní raibh sé ábalta, nó ní raibh sé ndon, aon mhór-laghdú sa mBille a mholadh; ach amháin go ndearna sé, mar is gnáthach leis, iarracht ar achmhasán a chaitheamh ar an nGníomhaireacht Nuachta.
Mar a tharlaíonn uaireanta i gcás an Teachta sin, bím saghas amhrasach agus ní féidir liom m'aigne a dhéanamh suas cé acu an bhfuil sé dáríre nó an bhfuil point á dhéanamh aige a fhéachfaidh go maith ar Scéala Éireann lá arna mhárach.
Ba mhaith liom, mar sin féin, a chur in iúl dó an díobháil a dheineann sé de ghnáth nuair a labhrann sé fé mar labhair sé inniu. Ní dóigh liom gurb é sin atá uaidh, ach bíodh fhios aige gurb é mo thuairim, agus tuairim a lán Teachtaí eile, gur díobháil an toradh a bhíonn ar a chuid cainte.
At the conclusion of his speech here to-day, Deputy Lemass continued the pursuit of the bogey, or the hare, which he initially started on the occasion of the dinner of the Federation of Irish Manufacturers. I was left in some doubt, as were other Deputies on these benches, as to the exact purport of the words he used. I accept without reservation his statement that when he referred to the Tánaiste's tactics, the adjective he used was "rushing." I was in a similar doubt, as Deputy Davin, in listening to him initially. Be that as it may, his suggestion that the Tánaiste and other people on this side of the House, were attempting to discredit private enterprise in any form, was an attempt by him to encroach on the preserves of Deputy MacEntee and start raising one of Deputy MacEntee's red hares or red herrings. He should leave that to Deputy MacEntee, as it is more in his province and we have come to expect it from Deputy MacEntee. Perhaps some of us were foolish enough to expect a little bit better from Deputy Lemass. On that occasion, Deputy Lemass shook a minatory finger at the members of the Federation and delivered a homily to them in grave and sepulchral tones, that if they did not show a more open and more vigorous resentment to the policy pursued by this Government he (Deputy Lemass) would be reluctantly compelled to leave them to their own devices.
He told them to get out of their tents.
Yes. He told them to get out of their tents. I do not think Deputy Lemass's efforts on that occasion were attended by any considerable degree of success. I do not imagine that his effort here this afternoon will be attended by any greater degree of success. However, it apparently suits Deputy Lemass's book to pursue that line, and he is the best judge of his own interest and the interest of his Party. I would suggest to him that, whether it is in the interest of his Party or not, it is certainly not in the interest of the Irish nation.
From these benches, in the short time I am in this House, I have never been slow—and I challenge contradiction on this—to give credit to the Party opposite for many of the good things they did. I gave them credit for many advances they made, and so did other Deputies on these benches. We still give them that credit. Why cannot they adopt a similar attitude and not approach every question purely from the point of view of seeing what possible destructive criticism can be made? That is not our job. It is not for that purpose that we were sent into this House. There are points of Government policy on which, perhaps, all of us do not find ourselves on the Government side of the House in agreement but though we disagree we do not immediately start out to impute low, mean or wrong motives. There are many points I am sure upon which the present Minister for Finance and myself would find ourselves in a very serious difference of opinion. Our views would diverge widely but I am not going on these benches to impute to him wrong motives any more than I am going to impute to the Deputies opposite wrong motives when they express points of view with which I cannot find myself in complete agreement. The whole burden and tenor, however, of the speech just made by Deputy Lemass was: "We do not quarrel with what you do but we quarrel with your motives for doing it." Is not that in effect the speech which Deputy Lemass has just made in this House?
No, quite the reverse.
For not one item save one very minor one could he criticise the Book of Estimates; not one major reduction could he suggest, but the tenor of his speech was: "I cannot quarrel with the expenditure. Your expenditure is all right but the motives whereby and whereunder it is made are wrong."
Mr. de Valera
A nice distinction.
I would ask Deputy Lemass and Deputy de Valera to reread in the Official Report what Deputy Lemass said and they will find that the construction I am putting on this speech is not an unreasonable one. If I am being unfair to him on that, I will be the first to withdraw it.
Mr. de Valera
We will expect an apology on Wednesday.
That was certainly the impression conveyed to me by Deputy Lemass and I am reinforced in that conviction by his failure to point to one major item in the Book of Estimates in respect of which he would suggest that a reduction should be made.
We did not promise a reduction in costs. It was the Minister for Finance who promised a reduction in costs.
The Minister for Finance can deal with that point. Speaking for the Deputies of the Clann na Poblachta Party, we never promised a reduction in taxation.
You only promised to reduce the cost of living.
Mr. de Valera
By a third.
Circumstances over which we had no control prevented our effort to do that.
It is a pity you did not realise that before.
We had not advance information any more than the Deputy had as to what was going to happen in Korea, or perhaps you may have had some information which we had not?
We all knew jolly well that you could not reduce by 20 per cent.
If we are dealing with the Vote on Account the normal, rational way surely if the Vote is to be opposed, is to say that it should be opposed because there are items in that Vote with which the Party opposite do not agree, items of expenditure which they think should be cut. I do not know—I am subject to your ruling on the matter, a Leas-Chinn Comhairle—but surely that is the issue when the Vote on Account comes before the Dáil, that and no other.
No. We could vote against it if we thought it was too small.
It is open to the Deputy to make that case but the case made by him was that he did not suggest it was too small and neither did he suggest that it was too large, but that the present Minister for Finance had no right to come in and ask the Dáil for that amount of money and he imputed to the Minister for Finance wrong motives for doing so.
I can explain my case in a sentence. The case I made was that we cannot have this level of Government expenditure or complete the programme outlined unless we are prepared to do without other things. The Government are trying to have everything at the same time and they cannot have it, and that is going to lead to a serious deterioration in our economic circumstances in the future.
The only change suggested was to tax the people into doing without.
To give effect to your appeal about cutting out luxuries.
Let us hear Deputy Lehane.
The Deputy, of course, may have advance information about the revenue returns.
They will look all right.
They will look all right?
Yes, with all the drinking, smoking and cinema-going that is going on and that you encourage.
I would return to the request I made to Deputy Lemass while he was speaking; I would ask him or any other member of his Party to tell the Dáil what items in this Book of Estimates should be cut. That is the net question.
No.
That is the question but Deputy Lemass does not want to answer it.
I did answer it. I did not want to cut expenditure except on a few fripperies and follies put in by the Coalition.
We now have it stated authoritatively by Deputy Lemass, on behalf of his Party, that he does not want to cut any of the items in this Book of Estimates—he puts in a minor qualification and I hope that he does not mind if I leave that aside. In other words, he thinks that the bill placed by the Minister for Finance before the Dáil is a proper bill.
No.
But, of course, his whole quarrel is with the Minister for Finance in the person of Deputy McGilligan who presents that Book of Estimates before the Dáil. I am forced, a Leas-Chinn Comhairle, to repeat what I had to say on either the Budget or the Vote on Account last year or the year before. The Fianna Fáil attack is always a three-pronged attack. I thought we had got rid of that but it is being used again to-day. The first prong is: "This is a Fine Gael Government. We were warned about this awful Deputy McGilligan, this awful Minister for Finance, with his complete mania for retrenchment, his axe that was going to lop off every item of expenditure and those who had any sort of progressive ideas, any desire to expend money on social services were due, as they say in the North, of Ireland, for a hell of a gunk."
That is what he says.
No; that is what you want to happen. You say: "You are all damned. You are in a Fine Gael Government which is going to economise in everything, that is going to lop 1/- off the old age pension and cut down on social services." I have not to answer for Fine Gael. I have no responsibility for them.
You have a lot of responsibility for them.
Now I will deal with the second prong of the fork. The second prong of the fork is the one most in evidence to-day because the retrenchment prong is getting a little bit rusty. It got shockingly rusty on Friday morning last, terribly rusty. The second prong is: "We will forget that you are all as meek as mice and that Fine Gael has swallowed the lot of you." The second prong: "These awful people in Labour and Clann na Poblachta are pushing the poor unfortunate Fine Gael Minister for Finance into appalling, outrageous, extravagant expenditure." Apparently that prong of the fork is getting a bit rusty too, because we find from Deputy Lemass that the expenditure is not as outrageous, as extravagant or as awful as you would think because he cannot quarrel with any of those items of expenditure, so the safest prong for Deputy Lemass to rely on is the one upon which he was forced to rely before, and it is: "There is not an awful lot to be said about these people but they are only following Fianna Fáil policy." There are the three prongs, and I would ask Deputy Lemass and the Deputies opposite which prong they are going to rely on.
It would be impossible.
I know it is impossible.
Because you are shifting every day.
I agree that the Deputies opposite shift every day.
No.
I do not blame them for shifting after what was said about lawyers by Deputy Lemass.
What did you do on Friday night after you woke up?
Deputy Lemass was very fond of charging the present Minister for Finance and certain elements in the Government with a mania for retrenchment. I think it was in June or in July, 1947, that Deputy Lemass made his famous "austerity" speech. Of course, the following year he made a speech that cancelled that out—he was in opposition then—when he said that there was no necessity for austerity. In July, 1947, he was Minister for Industry and Commerce in the Fianna Fáil Government. All that he had to offer the people at that time was austerity and more austerity.
You had better quote that.
The exact date and place.
Mr. de Valera
And the speech.
It was in the month of June or July, 1947.
I will have a side bet with you that you cannot.
I will take the Deputy up on that. I will refer him to it later on in the evening.
This is no place for bets.
But the Deputy in opposition and the Minister on the Front Bench are two different characters altogether. In 1948, as plain Deputy Lemass, he told us that there was no necessity for austerity. It is a terrible pity that there cannot be a more objective approach to matters coming before the Dáil, such as this Vote on Account. Much has been said by Deputies opposite with which I find myself in agreement. I do not yield one inch to any Deputy on the far side of the House in my desire to see self-sufficiency in this country. I think that to import wheat at the moment is wrong. I agree with any strictures there may be in that respect but——
Mr. de Valera
Do not change it.
Without any assistance from Deputy de Valera, let me say that there were reasons and good reasons for many of the imports that had to be permitted. There was great criticism of the Minister for Agriculture in respect of the importation of butter from Denmark and New Zealand but the reason for the necessity to do so is to the Minister's credit, namely, that more butter is now available to and is consumed by the ordinary people of this country, in the ratio of seven to four as between 1951 and 1938.
Will you tell us why £1,000,000 worth of raisins were imported?
If the Deputies opposite would make reasoned and dispassionate cases they would find a lot of agreement on this matter but when they descend into the realms of attack and criticism for the sake of attack and criticism they ruin any case they may have.
Deputy Lemass said that the amount of taxation which this Book of Estimates would contain showed that we would have passed beyond the safety limit of 25 per cent. That may be so. I welcome any redistribution of the national income which assures to the less privileged sections of the community a fairer cut out of that national income.
That is not what is at issue.
That is the financial policy of the Government to-day.
That is not in the Book of Estimates. The social welfare scheme is not in the Book of Estimates.
I am not referring to it but to schemes of capital investment, the mother and child scheme and many other schemes which make for a wider distribution of the national income.
None of them is in the Book of Estimates.
The Deputy should read the Book of Estimates. I assumed that when the Deputy was making his long and eloquent speech he was at least familiar with the Book of Estimates.
I am. That is the trouble. There is nothing about the mother and child scheme or the social welfare scheme in it.
Deputy Lehane should be allowed to make his speech without interruption.
I do not know whether Deputy Lemass is serious when he says these schemes are not in the Book of Estimates. I suggest he should read the Book of Estimates. Deputy Lemass says that the cost of public services is outpacing the national income. I should hesitate to cross swords on that issue with a Deputy of his administrative experience and experience in this House. I return again to the only criterion that an ordinary and rather simple and rather naïve Deputy such as myself can apply, namely, where is the item that you can reduce or cut out?
There was criticism in this debate of the Minister for Agriculture because we were paying £31 per ton for imported wheat as against £25 to the Irish producer. There is a good deal of substance in that criticism, but not when it comes from Deputies who supported a Minister for Supplies who paid £50 a ton for wheat——
No.
——and at a time when there was no reasonable likelihood of a scarcity.
At a time when no other country in the world would get it and when the only alternative was to reduce the bread ration.
That was done on the 17th February, 1948—just 12 hours before another Government took over. Criticism of the price being paid for imported wheat would probably come well from any Deputy sitting on this side of the House but it does not come very well from Deputies who are now sitting on the Opposition side of the House. We may look simple but we cannot help remembering facts. We are able to read. Of necessity, a considerable amount of time in this debate has been devoted to the increased cost of living. I do not know whether Deputies on the opposite benches will come out plainly and bluntly and say that substantially the Government is responsible for the increase in prices. Of course, they realise quite well that the Government are not responsible for it. They know quite well that circumstances and events over which the Government had no control, such as the Korean incident, are responsible for the big jump. They know that this Government succeeded for more than two years in holding the cost-of-living index figure without any rise. I am not trying to make a debating point of that fact. I believe that the Deputies on the Opposition side of the House would do their case far more good if they frankly admitted that the rise in the cost of living is not the fault of the Government and that it is not anything which the Government could control. However, instead of that frank admission, there is a half-hearted——
Was that not true in 1947?
To a certain extent it was true.
Did you say so then?
No, and to that extent, let me be frank, a percentage of our criticisms—made, perhaps, immaturely—were unjustified. However, the preponderating percentage of criticisms were not alone fully justified but, had we known then as much as we know now, they would, perhaps, have been more trenchant.
Great play was made by Deputy Lemass of the possibility of our external assets being seriously reduced. I think he referred to the possibility of our external assets being completely exhausted. There would be a great deal more weight and point in that argument if Deputies had not to remember that in 24 hours, in September, 1949, our external assets were reduced in value by £100,000,000—in 24 hours.
Another line which was pursued, and pursued at considerable length, by Deputy Lemass, was that the public had to be told that this increased taxation has to be met from somewhere. They had to be told the consequences of this increased spending. I may be obtuse but I could not get the Deputy's point that of course the public will have to be told. Of course they will, of necessity, know when the bill is presented to them. The Deputy, to my mind, is overlooking completely the fact that, due to the prosperous condition in which the country finds itself at the moment, national income is greater and revenue is expanding. Deputy Briscoe was apparently of opinion that revenue was contracting when he spoke last Thursday, while Deputy Lemass made great play with the point that there was some dark secret being kept from the public, that they were not being told that the money for this additional expenditure would have to come from somewhere. That is underlining the obvious and stating a truism.
They were told the reverse.
There is nobody in a better position to underline that to them than the Deputy. He, at least, controls a political Party newspaper, but I can see no conceivable point in making a missile out of that. Of course we know the public will have to be told. The public are aware of it already. What the public want to know is, are they going to get value for the money that is taken from them in taxation? I believe that if it is put to them, the public are prepared to pay more in taxation in order that old age pensioners, expectant mothers and little children may get increased allowances and proper health services. I believe the public are prepared to pay more in order to see that the social services generally are increased. I believe that if that question is put to the public, the public will give an unequivocal "yes", because the Irish people are generous and have never cavilled at paying the taxation necessary to finance any schemes calculated to improve the lot of the under-privileged and the weaker sections of the community. The keystone of the Government's policy is to give priority to the under-privileged, to the needy and the old people, and so long as that is the keystone of their policy this Government is on the right lines.
I agree completely with Deputy Lemass that there is a good deal of spending which could very properly be restricted. I believe money is being expended probably on betting, to a certain extent on drink, and certainly on things like imported newspapers. There is a lot of spending of that kind that could, with reason, be restricted, but to suggest that the Irish people have gone all-out on a spending spree, with no hope or thought for the future is, to my mind, a slander on our people. I do not believe that is so.
Deputy Lemass referred again to stock-piling. I know that wise stock-piling has been advocated by this Party for the last 12 or 18 months. We have advocated it both inside and outside this House.
Advocated what?
Wise stock-piling.
Stock-piling by whom?
By the Government and by private business interests. I would be quite prepared to give facilities, and to urge on the Government that facilities should be given, to manufactures to carry out wise stock-piling, provided always that stock-piling was not going to be operated as a means of fleecing the ordinary taxpayers.
You did not stock-pile much coal.
I suppose, when I use that phrase, I am leaving myself open to an attack such as the attack made on the Tánaiste. Deputy Lemass seeks to exaggerate the points of difference of view between Deputies opposite and Deputies on this side of the House. In actual fact, the difference in the point of view is slight, if it is real at all, and I do not think there is any good purpose served nationally by trying to suggest that there is a wide gulf or chasm separating Deputies on that side from Deputies on this side of the House. I do not think that gloomy jeremiads about the future are of any assistance to this country. A wise appreciation of the problems that confront us, in common with other nations of the world, is a desirable thing. I do not think that an atmosphere of unadulterated gloom is good for an individual or good for a nation. A lot of Deputy Lemass's prophecies lately have come unstuck. His principal prophecy, one that received the widest currency, was that this Government was going to go out of office in the middle of March.
I never said that and I never believed it. I always said that they would hold on to the bitter end.
It does not seem to be relevant to this debate in any event.
I beg the pardon of the House if I have strayed from the paths of order. The only connection in which I desire to mention that is that Deputy Lemass's prophecies are not always as worthy of credence as he would lead us to believe.
There is a proverb about a prophet in his own country.
We were told that the Social Welfare Bill would never get a Second Reading in this House. It has not got it yet but I am prepared to have a side bet with Deputy Lemass that it will.
If necessary, of course, the Minister will cough up another million.
Again we are back to the three-pronged fork. Deputy Aiken and Deputy Lemass and many other Deputies on the opposite side told us that Labour Deputies and Clann na Poblachta Deputies have become as meek as mice and that they would do everything that the Fine Gael members wanted them to do. Now, apparently, the position is reversed.
Apparently so.
Which way do you want to have it? You cannot have it both ways?
The fact is that the people are giddy with all the changes.
I do not know who swallowed whom. The truth of the matter is that nobody swallowed anybody, that we were all working together in the Coalition Government. Instead of collapsing after three months, six months or 18 months, as we were told the Government would, the members of this Government are working loyally and courageously together and are still in the position to go on working after three years.
You stuck together anyway. We are all agreed on that.
We were told that the Government lacked courage. I do not think it is the hallmark of a Government that lacked courage to embark upon a policy of capital expenditure such as that upon which this Government has embarked. We were told that the Government had no vision. I have always given Deputy Lemass credit for a considerable amount of vision, but I think he has been out-rivalled in the vision which members of the present Government have shown in many of the projects which they have undertaken. We were told that there would be a dead hand on every progressive scheme. Now because there is no dead hand, because there is progress and capital investment, because there is a desire to engage in progressive schemes of useful public works, we are criticised, and we are told that it is squandermania.
It was you who said that. It was you who referred to the dead hand of the Department of Finance.
There has been a certain amount of it, but if the Deputy would only have patience he would be surprised at the amount of good we could do on these benches.
You have him on a string already.
The objection now is that it is not dead enough.
I could not enlighten the Minister on that inasmuch as I am finding it hard to understand it myself.
He has you on a string already.
How can he have us on a string when he has swallowed us?
A gastronomical feat.
Will Deputies keep to the Vote on Account?
I suppose it is too late for them to do it this year, but I suggest to the Party opposite that they should do it next year, and that is that when the Vote on Account comes before us they should refrain from imputing unworthy motives for everything that is done: that, instead of doing that, they should examine the Vote on Account, or any other question which comes before the Dáil, objectively, and make objective criticisms. If they do make objective criticisms that have any reality in them, they will find no one quicker to support them and to criticise with them than the Deputies on these benches, because there are not any yes-men over here. Stop, for God's sake, from imputing the worst possible motives for everything that is done on this side, and try to give a little bit of credit for patriotism and nationality to those outside the ranks of the Fianna Fáil Party.
Tar éis a bheith ag éisteacht leis an dTeachta atá tar éis labhartha táim in eadóchas go dtiocfaidh aon athrú ar an Rialtais so maidir le caiteachas. Táid siad imithe thar fóir agus is ag dul in olcas atá siad in aghaidh an lae. Ní hamháin go bhfuil an Bille atá os ár gcóir anois ró-mhór do mhuintir na tíre seo ach go bhfuil níos mó airgid fachta ar iasacht acu um an dtaca so ná mar a fuair an Rialtas a bhí ann rompu ar feadh 16 bliana agus tá beartaithe acu, do réir deallramh, a thuille iasachtaí d'fháil. Go bhfóiridh Dia ar na daoine sa tír seo a mbeidh orthú an t-airgead san go léir d'íoc thar n-ais le hús.
After listening to the puritanical speech that we have had from Deputy Lehane, we will have to consider our position afresh. Deputy Lehane tries to make out that the amount of money which is being spent this year does not count, that it should not count, provided the people will get value for it; but the question is, are the people getting value for this money or have they been getting value for the money that has been voted by this House since the Coalition Government came into office? I hold that they have not. We are presented this year with a colossal bill of £83,000,000. When you add to that central fund expenditure which, I dare say, will be in the region of £10,000,000, the total amount will be £93,000,000. It was hardly worth their while not making it £100,000,000. I suppose that by the time we have dealt with the Supplementary Estimates it will be over £100,000,000.
I think the Irish Press had it £120,000,000.
I would not be surprised, because no one can calculate what the amount is going to be as regards expenditure so far as this Government is concerned.
What items would the Deputy cut?
That is an old one. It is not the business of this side of the House to cut any item. It is the business of the Government to trim their sails in accordance with the capacity of the people to pay. I will refer the Deputy to what the Minister for Finance said when he came into this House in 1948 with the printed Book of Estimates in his hand. He said: "I am not responsible for this amount," and, in order to emphasise it the more, he caused a slip of paper to be inserted in the Book of Estimates to show that he was discarding responsibility for those Estimates. What was the bill then? It was for £65,000,000. and to-day we have a bill for £83,000,000, a difference of £18,000,000. Now, where is the economy and the retrenchment that we heard from the Minister for Finance on that occasion?
That was only a bogey man of Deputy Lemass's.
It was not. It was an expression that was made use of by the Minister for Finance himself, and, in order to give effect to that expression, he immediately set up an interdepartmental committee to examine in what Departments economy could be effected. What became of that committee that was set up for the purpose of effecting economies in public Departments? As Deputy Lehane has asked us to name a Department in which economies could be effected, I would like to know why there is an increase this year of £17,450 for the Department of External Affairs.
You do not want any work done about Partition.
I was expecting that stock reply about Partition. The question is, what are those people doing about Partition, and what have they done to solve Partition? Everything that they have done up to now has been a step in the direction of placing obstacles in the way of solving Partition. There is an increase in the Vote for that Department, and they mention Partition as the justification for the increase in the Department of External Affairs. I think the less the Deputy says about Partition, the better for himself and for his Party.
The Deputy will be vocal on it for a very long time.
That is all that the Deputy will be, vocal on it. The Deputy and his Party will talk about it. They will carry out stunts, here and elsewhere, in connection with the problem of Partition, but at the same time they will do nothing about it. They have done nothing about it.
What about the effort that is being made to sabotage the Irish News Agency?
I am pointing out a Department of State where, certainly, economy can be effected, the Department of External Affairs. I cannot see what justification there is for an increase of £17,450 for that Department. As I was saying, the expenditure here has gone out of bounds. It would not be too bad if we could see the end of it at any time, but it is mounting up from year to year. I hold that the people are getting no return for that expenditure and, worse again, that a great deal of the money that is being spent on the public services and in many ways is being borrowed. Look at the amount of money which has been borrowed since this Government came into office. I wonder is this excessive borrowing good business for the country? I hold that it is not. We have been told that this money is being utilised to install capital equipment here. Where is the capital equipment? What capital equipment has been bought outside in order to develop the resources of the country? Nothing worth while that I can see.
Did you hear Deputy Lemass?
I do not want to hear anybody. I am going to make my own speech. If the Deputy does not want to listen, he can get out of the way. The Deputy will have to behave himself. Another ugly feature of the present position is our inability to make ends meet. Reference has already been made to the deficit in the balance of payments. The Taoiseach a very short time ago made a speech to the Cork Chamber of Commerce and pointed out to them that the deficit in the balance of payments in 1949 was £10,000,000, but that the deficit in the balance of payments for 1950 was £30,000,000, an increase of £20,000,000.
He proceeded to explain to his audience that that was not a bad thing for the country. If that is the case and if the deficit in the balance of payments is to continue increasing at that rate, increasing by 300 per cent. from one year to another, I wonder where we will find ourselves in a couple of years' time if the country has the misfortune of having that Government in office still. But the Minister for Finance, in putting this Vote on Account before the House, was not entirely so complacent as the Taoiseach. He gave warning to the House and to the people that it was not a happy position, that we were reaching the point when we would have to consider the position very carefully; in other words, that we were reaching the danger point. But what is the Minister for Finance going to do about it? If he realises, as he apparently does, that the danger point has been reached, will he come along and tell us that that position is going to be rectified in the future or, when he is being pushed by certain elements over there, will he again go away from that and pretend that everything is all right?
I was listening to the Minister for Agriculture last week speaking in the Dáil about many things. He spoke about moving mountains in Connemara and throwing rocks into the sea. But there is one thing he did not speak about and that is the price which the dairy farmers are getting for the milk which they deliver to the creameries. It would be much more to the point if he would make some statement about that, because I can tell him and the Government that there is any amount of dissatisfaction down the country at the attitude of the Minister and the Government towards that question. The dairy farmers tried to send a deputation to the Minister for Agriculture to discuss the price of milk and the Minister refused to meet the deputation. Why did he refuse to meet them? Are not the dairy farmers as much entitled to send a deputation to Dublin as any other section of the community? The Federation of Irish Industries sent a deputation and they were received. Every other section of the community can send a deputation to Ministers. It is strange that the deputation which the dairy farmers appointed to meet the Minister for Agriculture would not be received. I suppose there would be a certain amount of embarrassment in it for the Minister because, as Deputies will remember, he made an attempt last year, I would say a rather insidious attempt, to reduce the price of milk by holding out an offer of some nebulous five-year plan to these farmers. How is it that he gave the people no details of this plan?
Furthermore, could anybody guarantee, looking into the future, that the conditions which obtain to-day would obtain in five years' time? No. Certainly the Minister for Agriculture could not, and well he knew it. He thought that by dangling this carrot before the dairy farmers he was going to get them to accept a reduction in the price of milk. But the dairy farmers, being wiser than he thought they were, refused to negotiate on that nebulous basis.
What is the average price of milk paid this year?
The funny thing about this is that when the Minister for Agriculture took office when the Coalition Government came in he said: "We are going to be the servants of the people. I will not assume the rôle of dictator. I am going to be the servant of the people. The Irish people are paying me. I will be their servant and anybody who wants to see me or to discuss any problem with me can come along to the Department of Agriculture and there will be a cead mile fáilte before him." Here we had this deputation which tried to meet the Minister for Agriculture being refused an audience. Why? Are they not entitled to put forward a claim for an increase in the price of milk to the creameries? Remember that the price they are now getting, ½ for one part of the year and ¼ for the rest of the year, is the price fixed by the Fianna Fáil Government before leaving office. Nobody can deny that there has been an increase in the farmers' costs since then. The price of fertilisers has gone up. The price of feeding stuffs has gone up; local rates have gone up and the cost of agricultural labour has gone up.
And you voted for it.
Deputy Keane should restrain himself and allow Deputy Kissane to speak.
That being so, are these people not entitled to an audience from the Minister for Agriculture to discuss this matter? Well and good, if the Minister for Agriculture has a case to make against them, let him make it.
On a point of information——
There is no point of information. Deputy Keane will resume his seat. Unless the speaker gives way, no Deputy may interrupt Deputy Kissane on the Vote on Account.
I have listened to the Minister for Agriculture and to other Government supporters trying to impress upon the farmers that the prevailing prices for cattle are due to the Coalition Government. They have been touring the country sedulously trying to persuade the farmers that the prices they are getting, especially for their cattle, are due to this Government. That is not so. On the contrary, were it not for the action of the present Government, the farmers would now be enjoying a better price for their cattle. As the House knows, as a result of the 1948 agreement, our farmers are now compelled to confine the export of their cattle to the Continent to 10 per cent.
And the consumers have to pay more for their meat.
The rest of our cattle under that agreement must go to John Bull. If there was a free market and if no such conditions had been imposed on the sale of our cattle abroad, our farmers would be enjoying a better price for their cattle.
And the consumer has to pay more.
Apropos of that, there was a question to-day by Deputy C. Lehane asking the Government if they would get the British Government to release them from that condition in view of the fact that the British Government has not fulfilled its obligations with relation to the supplying of coal here. What is that but an admission that this condition militates against the farmers? Why then do Deputies on the Government benches go around the country trying to fool the people into believing that they are responsible for the prices the farmers are getting to-day? But they are not succeeding in that course because the farmers clearly understand the situation. I have referred to the price of milk. It was a good job for the dairy farmers that the price of milk was fixed before Fianna Fáil went out of office.
10d. a gallon.
Had it not been fixed at that level then it would not have been fixed at that level since. There is no greater proof of that than the attempt made by the Minister for Agriculture to reduce the price to 1/- per gallon last year. But the farmers were not having any.
10d. a gallon.
Am I or am I not entitled to speak here?
Deputy Kissane is entitled to make his speech without interruption.
I do not mind an intelligent interruption from anybody.
He is inviting answers.
Irrespective of whether or not a Deputy's statement irritates another Deputy the other Deputy has no right to interrupt except on a matter relating to order. I feel constrained to warn certain Deputies that the Chair will have to take serious notice of interruptions.
We have been told by Deputy C. Lehane that the Government is not responsible for the high cost of living. That appears to me to be a change in position. Before Christmas last the tactics of the Government were different. They tried then to persuade the House and the people that there had been no increase in the cost of living. No doubt they thought they would get away with that. Members of the Fianna Fáil Party had been pointing out to them over long and weary months that the cost of living was increasing every day and that even the ingenious device of having two prices for certain commodities was not enough to close our eyes to the realities of the situation. The Government and its supporters took no notice of us: we were wasting our sweetness on the desert air. It was not until the public began to agitate that the Government took any notice. The housewives were feeling the pinch and they were in a much better position to feel it than Deputies were. It was not until a wave of indignation arose in the country that the Government were compelled to admit that there was a rise in the cost of living. Yet, to-day Deputy C. Lehane adopts a new position: now he says that the Government is not responsible for the high cost of living.
Let the people take note of the fact that members of the Government are now discarding all responsibility for the high cost of living; and the implication is that they will do nothing about it. It is an extraordinary thing, if that is the position, seeing that quite recently they went through the farce of setting up a so-called prices control authority. It was pointed out at the time that that was just another of the many stunts that the Coalition Government were having recourse to since they got into office. The fact of their having to release no fewer than 61 articles from the price freezing Order within the past few days is clear evidence that it was nothing but a farce
Of course, we would all like to see every genuine attempt being made to keep down the cost of living. It is our duty as representative to give encouragement to those people who genuinely seek to effect that desirable end but, when we see stunts of this kind being carried out, it is a different matter.
Deputy Lehane also mentioned that he was in agreement with us as regards growing our own produce at home—I hope I am not misquoting him when I say that—thereby obviating the necessity to import those commodities from the far ends of the earth. Deputy Lehane is in a totally different position from us as regards the matter. All that we on this side of the House can do is to appeal to the Government to realise the common sense of that policy and to try to get as much wheat, beet, barley, and so on, as is possible, produced at home. All we can do is to point out the common sense of that policy and to leave it to the judgment and direction of the Government to carry it out. Deputy Lehane, as I have said, is in a different position. He and his people can see that that policy is carried out, if he is sincere about it. I will not impute an insincere motive to him, but let him give proof of his sincerity by making the Government realise the position.
Dr. Paul Miller is the spokesman of the American Government in this country and it is his business to see that American interests in this country are well looked after. It is an extraordinary thing that the position has now come about that he must give advice to the Government here as to what they should do in regard to growing as much of our own food as possible. I remember that towards the end of last year Dr. Paul Miller spoke at Glengarriff on the advisability of the farmers of this country producing as much of their own feeding barley as possible, thus obviating the necessity to spend valuable dollars on importing maize from the ends of the earth. I put down a question asking the Minister for Agriculture whether he had read a report of the statement and, between the time the question was tabled and the answer was given in the House, the Minister went down to Kilkenny and told the farmers there that they should grow more barley and, for the first time, he mentioned a price. Quite recently, the E.C.A. administrator in this country referred to the question of wheat and advised the farmers of this country to grow as much wheat as possible.
Does the Deputy object to Americans speaking in this country?
No. I welcome it but it appears that the members of the Government do not welcome it.
Mr. de Valera
That is a change of tune.
Is that so?
That is so. The reason I am mentioning the administrator's name at all is that I want to bring home to the members of the Government their responsibility; that it is not the E.C.A. administrator from America that should have to mention those things, but the Minister for Agriculture, who is paid by the people of this country for that purpose.
Does the Deputy not read the newspapers?
Have sense. I read a lot more than you and I have read a lot more than you.
There has been a price for barley for a very long time.
Does the Deputy deny that the E.C.A. administrator in this country made this statement?
Does the Deputy object to Americans speaking in this country?
I said I did not object to anybody speaking in this country whose motives are genuine and, of course, his motives are genuine and his words of advice are welcome.
Does the Deputy suggest that his motives are not genuine?
Ba cheart don Aire leigint don Teachta labhairt.
I say his motives are quite genuine and that such an able administrator and such a man, who tenders such valuable advice to the Irish people, is always welcome in this country. I am just pointing out that it is an extraordinary thing that it is left to people like him to give advice and encouragement to the Irish people when that advice and encouragement should be given by spokesmen of the Government.
Ní dóigh liom go bhfuil a thuille le rá agam anoís. Tá an-chuid ráite cheana ag na Teachtaí a labhair romham. Beidh caoi againn arís díospóireacht a bheith againn ar na cúrsaí seo agus, mar fhocal scoir, ba mhaith liom a chur in-iúl go bhfuilim-se i gcoinnibh an bhille mhóir seo i gcóir na bliana dar críoch, 1952, go bhfuil sé ro-mhór ar fad do mhuintir na tíre seo, agus nach bhfuil an t-iomlán le feiscint againn fós, mar nach bhfuil aon rud curtha síos i gcóir an Bhille mhóir sin, a bhaineann leis an Roinn Leasa Shóisialaigh, atá fá bhráid na Dála fé lathair, ná i gcoir rudaí eile mar é, agus rud eile, go bhfuilim go mór i gcoinnibh an iasacht mhor airgid seo do lorg. Ní maith an tseift é sin in aon chor maidir le gnath-chaiteachas na tíre. Aoinne a dheineas machnamh ar an scéal, chífidh sé, má leantar leis seo, go mbeidh thiar ar chúrsaí na tíre seo i gceann tamaill, má leantar de'n chaiteachas mór so gan ach an chaolchuid againn dá bharr.
I have listened to or have read the speeches delivered in this House on Friday and to-day by Deputies Dr. Ryan, Briscoe and Lemass. I candidly confess that never have I heard or listened to more destructive or more contradictory statements. The Deputies concerned complained about increased expenditure which increase, as they know, is due to the inauguration of schemes for national development or for increases in the social services. Deputy Dr. Ryan, in the House last Friday, complained about the cost of the scheme, which he said was not comprehensive enough. How he can reconcile the two things, I do not know. After he finished that very eloquent address and tried to reconcile these two conflicting statements, he proceeded with Deputy Little and others apparently to Lower Mount Street and reviewed the position, as he had heard it in the House during the speech of the Minister for Social Welfare, and then he announced on Saturday morning that the scheme of social security—this is what he asserted—will cost £4,000,000 —I am not sure whether that is correct —and they were standing over a scheme which would cost £4,600,000.
Are we now discussing social security or the Vote on Account?
We are not discussing legislation. The Deputy was discussing legislation. He must not do so on the Vote on Account.
I was merely trying to point out the conflicting nature of the statements made by leading members of the Fianna Fáil Party, although they are supposed to have a united Party policy. The increased expenditure disclosed in the Book of Estimates and in the Vote on Account is due solely to expenditure on schemes of national development and to the increases provided for various social services. Deputy Lemass admitted to-day, in cross-examination by Deputy Con Lehane and others, that he could not put his finger on any item worthy of mention that should be omitted. He made the further statement, which apparently indicates that he did not read the Estimates, that there was no money provided for the mother and child welfare scheme.
Are we still dealing with social security?
It would seem that Deputy Little is as ignorant on these matters as Deputy Lemass. On page 403 of the Book of Estimates for the coming financial year it will be seen that a sum not less than £661,000 is provided for the mother and child welfare scheme. I suggest Deputy Little should advise Deputy Lemass that he should not come to the House again and proclaim such ignorance of the contents of the Book of Estimates.
Deputy Lemass said a terrible lot— it does not worry me—about the conflicting policies of the groups associated with the inter-Party Government. I thought that by now he and his colleagues would be tired trying to divide the groups that make up the inter-Party Government. Of course, that attitude on their part is ridiculous. The inter-Party Government have celebrated their third anniversary. Speaking for some of the persons responsible for its birth and continuance in office, I believe I could easily prove to the satisfaction of people both inside and outside this House that this is the best Government that has been in office during the 29 or 30 years that I have been in this House. From the workers' point of view it is a better Government than any single Party Government that has been in office here, and I include in that the Cumann na nGaedheal Government, and the Fianna Fáil Government that was here for a period of 16 years.
This Government, as Deputy Lemass and his colleagues know, was born and was baptised following an agreement to put into operation a ten-point programme. Five years is the legal life of any Government, provided they decide to remain in office. Inside a period of three years the present Government have put into operation nine of the ten points, and they have faced and solved many major problems that were unforeseen when they came into existence as a Government in February, 1948.
Deputy Dr. Ryan opposed the raising of further moneys for social services when he was speaking here on Friday last. I would remind Deputy Ryan that on 22nd October, 1947, when members of this group and of the Fine Gael group, who were then in opposition, brought forward a very mild motion for the modification of the means test in so far as it applied to old age and blind pensioners and to widows and orphans, he and his colleagues opposed it. He admitted at that time that the cost would be about £500,000 and could not exceed £750,000. On the eve of a general election, three months before it, he said that the country could not stand the cost and the Fianna Fáil Party would not accept that particular motion.
I want to remind Deputy Little and Deputy Ryan that since the inter-Party Government came into office it has increased old age pensions—and a further increase is now being given through the Social Welfare Bill—by not less that 5/- per week and modified the means test. In the coming financial year the aged, the blind, the infirm, and the widows and orphans will be getting £3,750,000 more than they were receiving in February, 1948.
On a point of order. Are we on this Vote on Account entitled to discuss social welfare?
Deputies must not discuss legislation, pending or existing.
Are we not confined now to economic issues?
I am not discussing the Social Welfare Bill; I am merely following the pattern laid down by Deputy Lemass.
He did not refer to these things at all.
If you do not want to hear them, you need not listen.
The point is that if the Deputy refers to them we should be allowed to answer him.
I am sure Deputy Little will not attempt to refute my figures. I am not exaggerating. On 15th October, 1947, the then Taoiseach, Deputy de Valera, warned the workers and the trade union leaders that unless they agreed not to put forward any further demands for increased rates of wages, the Government of the day would reimpose the Wages Standstill Order. Since this Government came into existence the wages of road workers have been increased, in many cases, by as much as 70 per cent. over the February, 1948, figure. The men working on relief schemes for various local authorities used to have 6/-, 7/-, 8/- or 9/- a week less than the road workers, but recently they were brought up to the same level as the road workers. The forestry workers, who were denied the same right under Fianna Fáil, are to-day getting the same rates in every county as their colleagues who are working on the roads for the various county councils.
A large number—I cannot give you the exact figures—of men who were employed through the generous grants given under the Local Authorities (Works) Act, an Act which was opposed on eight different Divisions in this House by Fianna Fáil, are also getting the increased rate of wages. These are only a few of the things that have been given to the workers and wage-earners in this country since the Government came into office three years ago. We know and Deputy Little knows it better than I do that if Fianna Fáil had come back to office the workers would not get one penny of the increased rates of wages which they have received from the Government.
Nonsense.
Of course, they would not. If the Wages Standstill Order had been reimposed the workers could not get a penny increase in the rates of wages. The inflationary bogey that was blinding Fianna Fáil in October, 1947, is no nearer to us to-day than it was at that particular time.
Is it not?
I want to impress upon the Minister for Finance the necessity —I am not referring to the amounts made available as these are very generous—for reviewing the conditions under which huge sums of money are being made available from year to year for the housing drive. There is considerable agitation in many towns in my constituency arising out of the alleged excessive rents being charged to the occupants of houses being built under the present Housing Acts. I pointed out to the people in the area concerned that if the local authorities accept tenders for the building of houses by local authorities at extremely high prices the cost must be found either from the taxpayers, the ratepayers or the tenants. It must, at any rate, be found by all three. I also pointed out that the Department of Local Government and the Minister for Finance should keep a careful check on the cost of these tenders before they are finally ratified. In pre-1939 days, the average rent paid by the occupier of a house built by a local authority was in or about one-eighth or one-ninth of the family wage or weekly income. I know of cases in towns in my constituency where undoubtedly first-class houses have been built at what I regard as excessive prices, houses that could have been built much cheaper under the direct labour system. The cost of houses built in three or four towns in my constituency will mean that the occupants—and this is going to happen in a town in my constituency—will have to pay one-fourth, and in the case of a very small number of houses, as much as one-third of the weekly income or the wage of the head of the family for rent. I would like the Minister for Finance and the Minister for Local Government to look into this matter and to ensure that in future, whenever the Minister for Local Government decides to sanction tenders for the building of houses by local authorities, the tenders will not be unreasonably high and that in many cases the huge subsidies that were intended to be given to keep the rents of such houses down to a reasonable figure will not be used for the purpose of subsidising profits for building contractors.
I want also to bring under the notice of the Minister for Finance, in particular, since he is the Minister who decides the amount to be allocated from the road fund for the maintenance and improvement of roads——
The Deputy is now going into the Estimates.
I am dealing solely with policy. I have endeavoured on previous occasions to raise these questions.
I am fully aware of that. The Deputy was never told he could not raise ministerial policy on the Estimates.
I am raising the matter for the collective wisdom of the Cabinet. I know that the Minister for Local Government is not solely responsible for the allocation of moneys from the Road Fund for the maintenance and improvement of roads in this country. I am asking for a re-classification of the roads of the country at as early a date as possible. The whole position has changed in a revolutionary way. We have the roads leading into big bogs like Clonsast, Boora and Allenwood——
Is not that a matter for discussion when the Estimate for Local Government is introduced? I am quite sure we will hear the Deputy on that occasion.
I am quite sure, Sir, from experience, that this is a matter for the Minister for Finance and that in so far as the question of allocating moneys from the Road Fund for the improvement of roads is concerned the Minister is only an office boy used for the purpose of conveying the decision of the Minister for Finance. I am asking that there should be a survey or a re-classification of the roads so as to provide re-classification of county roads leading into bogs like Clonsast, Boora and Allenwood.
That is not a matter on this Vote.
Will you allow me to raise this matter on the Estimates for the Department of Finance?
I will give no decisions in advance.
I do not want to be turned down on both occasions.
The Deputy will raise the matter on the Vote for Local Government.
If I am allowed to raise it on the vote for Local Government I will be told by the Minister that he is merely the agent for the Minister for Finance.
Deputy Lemass this evening asserted that the amount provided in the Book of Estimates and other amounts which he anticipated would follow by way of Supplementary Estimates, had brought us to the danger point of expenditure. I do not know how he can reconcile his statement in regard to the figures contained in the Book of Estimates having regard to the fact that he must have been one of the leading lights in the Fianna Fáil Party who decided on Friday night, some time after the Dáil adjourned, that £4,600,000 additional would have to be added to the figures now before us.
The action of the Government has already been criticised in reference to the freezing Order which was imposed and then taken off. It reminds me of a phrase which applies not merely to the freezing Order but also to the whole mental attitude of the Government, a refrain that occurred in a ballad that was sung long ago about an attack on Government: "The ice is breaking up on every side."
And on the Fianna Fáil side especially.
We have the extraordinary mental incoherence shown in the conduct of the whole matter of supplies and services. First, a Supplies and Services Bill was brought in and the Parliamentary Secretary, in the regrettable absence of the Minister, made a statement in reference to the increased cost of living which caused an extraordinary reaction amongst the people. Several speeches were made from this side during that debate which also produced an effect upon the Government. Deputy Larkin came to their assistance by suggesting that an advisory body be set up and a freezing Order brought into operation. Subsequently, it was announced that a freezing Order would be brought into operation, but, as Deputy Lemass pointed out, it was not brought into operation for a month or so, and then it was made retroactive to 2nd December.
The result of that freezing Order was undoubtedly to create dismay and confusion amongst both industrialists and merchants, and the Minister, in coming back here again—I am glad to see him back in the House—must be coming back to a rather alarming situation. I have interviewed certain members of the Distributive Workers' Union and also people connected with the motor trade and the position created by this Order was that almost every commodity, all metals, ferrous and non-ferrous, and all textiles, was involved in this problem of how to sell on the basis of raw materials which were going to cost more than the price ruling on 2nd December. The result was that the Government had to unfreeze all these prices and, in the meantime, industrialists and merchants had lost that period of purchase on a rising market at a time when they should have been able to purchase. Those men with ability and imagination who know when to buy—and the prosperity of a business depends so much on the judgment of the men who buy—were completely nonplussed and paralysed. If they did buy, they bought with the greatest possible risk, because they had not the least idea what the Government intended to do.
A tribunal was set up of people who knew extremely little about the subject and the problem was taken to some extent out of the hands of those people in the Department who were familiar with the accountancy of the industries and who had followed with great care the whole problem and the work involved in it, with the result that considerable delay again was involved, because this new tribunal took some time to get into operation, and, when it did get into operation, the process of their forming an opinion and giving a decision was so slow as to make it impossible to get through the enormous number of commodities that required to be dealt with. The result was that we had a first-class mess. The indignation against the Government was so great that it even spread to the Opposition because the people in the country were angry with the Opposition because they could not throw the Government out. I think, however, that Deputies will appreciate the refrain of that song from the point of view of the Government that "the ice is breaking up on every side".
There is a word which has come into vogue, quite a new word, a word which tickles my fancy because it is something which I have been watching for a long time—"stockpiling". I used to look at the prices of commodities in reference to the price of gold, dollars and so on, and I realised that a country could not have really economic independence unless it paid tremendous attention to reserve stocks of commodities, because, until it does, it is at the mercy of international influences and until it sets up a complete system of either buying in advance or laying in stores of certain commodities, it is impossible for it to establish a real economic independence. This is especially true in the case of a small country. The Government have not adopted that policy and not merely have they not paid any attention to it, but, out of political prejudice as much as anything else, they have dissipated whatever stores we had accumulated. I know one store of turf which was laid in which was sold by the people in authority for about £700 and sold again by the people who bought it for £3,000. We were attacked for having dumps of turf, timber and coal and we were told that we had been extravagant and had bought materials we should not have bought. These have all been dissipated and a policy which is the reverse of looking and acting ahead has been adopted by the Government who are now in a position of extreme weakness from the point of view of such reserves.
I am sorry Deputy Davin has left the House. He introduced the Department of Social Welfare and the mother and child scheme into this debate by the hair of the head, in order to contradict a statement made by Deputy Lemass. Deputy Lemass pointed out that no provision had been made in the Estimates for financing the social welfare measure, and Deputy Davin did not seem to be aware that the mother and child welfare scheme belongs to the health service and has nothing to do with the other. I do not propose to follow the Deputy in his argument because this is not the time to do so, and there will be plenty of time to do it when we return to the discussion of the Social Security Bill. I did not intend to intervene so early. and I really have only dealt with matters which occurred to me as they arose.
Like Deputy Little, I did not intend to intervene, and, as a matter of fact, I could not help noticing, when Deputy Davin concluded his speech, that it was only with extreme reluctance that Deputy Little got to his feet, and he did so then only because he was afraid the debate was going to collapse. The Deputy got to his feet to bring us back to a debate here some months ago on the cost of living, and a statement alleged to be made by the Parliamentary Secretary of the Department of Industry and Commerce. Then he went on to the broken ice. Apparently I had the misfortune to miss a contribution from Deputy Lemass this afternoon. I am sorry, but maybe I will have an opportunity again. Perhaps somebody from the Fianna Fáil Benches will tell us where exactly they stand in relation to the cost of living and the control of the cost of living. They created in this country and in this House a racket on the cost of living about last October. They alleged that prices were soaring, and they inferred that people engaged in business and in distribution were being allowed to fleece the community. Those were the allegations which they made. They said the Government was making no effort whatever to control the cost of living. They called on the Government to take effective steps to deal with it. They asserted that the Government were refusing to face up to their responsibilities.
The Government introduced a measure to deal with prices and to steady the cost of living. Immediately they did, they were denounced by Fianna Fáil and by the Irish Press for attempting to freeze prices and some of the Deputies—including Deputy Childers, who figures very prominently in it, obviously very well briefed from a particular side—spend throughout the country denouncing the Government for attempting to control prices in any way. Again, when the Government seeks to amend the comprehensive price-freezing Order which was made, the Government are denounced by Fianna Fáil. Everything and anything is bad news where Fianna Fáil is concerned.
We were treated to quite a number of speeches inside and outside this House on the cost of living, by Deputies who knew quite well that the increase was less than, probably, in any other country in the world. We were treated to these speeches by a Party under whose leadership, in the last year in which they were in office, between 1946 and 1947, the cost of living increased by no fewer than 31 points, within 12 months.
10 per cent.
Thirty-one points— infinitely more than it has increased in the last three years. What was the Fianna Fáil remedy for that? They changed the cost-of-living index to give us a new index. That was the remedy. Let us not forget this, that the people who now talk about the deplorable situation in which the wage earners and salary earners find themselves are the very people who, all during the war period, pegged wages and salaries and took no steps whatever effectively to peg prices.
Fianna Fáil are great believers in the fact that the public have short memories and they try to cash in on that all the time and every time. Deputy Little talked about the Government not merely not stockpiling but dissipating the stocks which were there. There are infinitely more goods in this country now than there were in 1939 and there could be far greater quantities of goods here if, during their 16 years, Fianna Fáil had taken any steps whatever to provide stores wherein those goods could be stored when imported. In so far as essential commodities are concerned, the stores for which goods are available are filled to bursting point and we could have infinitely more of those goods if Fianna Fáil had provided the storage during those 16 years. We have provided, in the short time at our disposal, considerable additional storage and that storage is being utilised.
Deputy Little talks about the dissipation of the stocks which they left us and he refers in particular to dissipation of the stock of turf. Has the Deputy any conception of how long turf lasts? It is only within the last week or ten days that I read of a statement made by one of his colleagues sitting behind him who, as a member of a local authority, was laughing at people who suggested that turf would last even three years out in the open. Has the Deputy any idea of how long timber lasts when it is stacked in the open? Has he any idea of the deterioration, the shrinkage in timber? It is greater even than that of turf. What other stocks have been dissipated?
The Deputy knows quite well, when he talks about the price at which the turf was sold, that it was offered at various prices. People would not take it away out of the Park and, finally, sooner than see it washed down the main road of the Park into the streets of Dublin, the Government offered it at £1 a ton. Even then, it took a very considerable time to get it cleared at £1 a ton but it was good business to dispose of it at that price rather than have it washed down the main road of the Phoenix Park.
We hear many sneers from the Deputies on the opposite side, and particularly from Deputy Lemass, about what we are paying for commodities which we are bringing across the Atlantic. I should have thought that Deputy Lemass would be one of the last who would wish to reopen that. I would like to talk some time to Deputy Lemass again about some of the commodities he brought across the Atlantic, from the Argentine, from America and Canada and what they cost.
And South Africa.
We will leave South Africa over for the moment. Is Fianna Fáil ever going to make a concreate suggestion? Is everything that emanates from the Government to be denounced by Fianna Fáil, whether it is good or bad? Is the only assistance we are to get in this critical period we are told about, denunciation, misrepresentation and suppression, in the Party organs of the Opposition? We find distortion of vital facts in those organs, complete distortion.
If prices are higher to-day than they were 12 months ago, the workers, whether they be salaried earners or wage earners, are in an infinitely better position to buy the goods than they were at any period under Fianna Fáil. There is no worker or trade union leader who will dispute that statement. When people talk about the cost of living and try to compare it now with the Fianna Fáil period, let us remember this, that people are spending more to-day and buying more, and they are able to buy more because there are infinitely more goods in the country available to them. Of course, it costs more to buy butter to-day than it cost when Fianna Fáil were in power, because then you could buy only two ounces whereas now you get eight. It costs more to buy tea to-day, even at the subsidised price, than it did when Fianna Fáil were in office because you can buy more of it now. It is costing the people more to pay for bacon to-day because they are buying infinitely more bacon than they could buy under Fianna Fáil, and so on down the line. If our people were to-day restricted to the two ounces, the half-ounce or the half-pound of sugar, if they were forced to go under the counter, then their outlay would naturally be less than it is to-day, but the people are living better, are better fed and are getting more food.
Is the Minister not forgetting the war?
Which war?
That is the old standby. May I suggest to Deputy Little that if the actual war has been over for some years the effects of it are not?
Let me deal with another matter. It has been dealt with before, but I want to deal with it again because Fianna Fáil goes on repeating it here and outside. We hear a lot of blather about butter, sugar and bread off the ration and we are told that we are inflicting a tremendous hardship on the people because they have to pay 3/6 for any butter which they require over the ration. I remember—and so do Deputies Little and Childers, who know it as well as I do—when people had to go looking for butter off the ration and pay 5/-, 6/- or 7/- a pound for it. The Deputies know that. Up to the time we made butter freely available they were buying it in the black market and yet we are told that we are inflicting a great hardship on the people when over and above the ration which was increased by 33? per cent. at the subsidised price tea is made available to them at 6/- or 6/6 a pound. Deputy Childers, Deputy Little and Deputy Alfie Byrne know that the poor people in this city paid 1/- or 2/- an ounce for tea during the Fianna Fáil régime. Deputy Little knows that that is quite true, and if he does not he does not know what is going on in Dublin.
The Minister should be historically fair when he is describing facts.
What percentage of the Fine Gael traders were selling tea at that price during the war?
That is an interruption worthy of Deputy Childers. It is in keeping with—but I will leave it at that. Deputy Childers knows that his own constituents paid 20/-, 25/- and up to 30/- in the black market for tea which they can buy to-day for 6/6. His own constituents paid 2/6 a lb. for butter over and above a considerably smaller ration than that made available at a subsidised price to-day. In spite of that those are the gentlemen who tell us that we have increased the cost of living of the people by smashing the black market and by making available tea, sugar and butter in addition to increased rations which they can get over and above what they got from Fianna Fáil at anything from one-eighth to half what they were paying in the Fianna Fáil black market, and because in so far as people do buy those foodstuffs over and above the ration they are paying the economic price for them, or if you like something in excess of the economic price, while whatever is gained is brought in to relieve the subsidy and goes, not into the pockets of the black marketeers, but back into the pockets of the taxpayers.
I wonder would Deputy Childers out of the depths of his wisdom and research tell us what is being paid in European countries for butter, tea, sugar and meat. Will the Deputy tell us what increases the cost-of-living indices in the various European countries show as compared with the cost-of-living index here, or will the Deputy say that the cost-of-living index which was invented by his own Government is inferior in its make up to the cost-of-living index of any other country? Has the Deputy any conception of what is happening outside or is the Deputy just merely deliberately misleading the people of the country? I have too much respect for the intelligence of some of the members of the Opposition not to be quite satisfied that they are conversant with what is happening in other countries, and that therefore they are deliberately misleading the people in their speeches in this House and in their newspapers. When we talk about increases will the Deputy look at Britain and compare the increases there and here? Will the Deputies on the far side of the House look at the increases in the cost of living and in essential items in America even within the past 12 months?
I assert here that the cost of living has increased less in this country than in any other country I know of for which figures are kept. I assert here that the people in this country are enjoying to-day a higher standard of life than ever before in our history. There is no question whatever about that, and those of us who are fairly close to the people, particularly to the working people, and have close family contacts with ordinary workers know that to be quite true. In spite of that we hear all this talk about the bill which the Minister for Finance is presenting for the next 12 months. I would like the farmers to ask themselves what their position would be to-day in relation to prices, to their income from the sale of their produce or to the amount which they have to meet in both national and local taxation if Fianna Fáil had not been put out of office three years ago. Is there anybody on the Fianna Fáil Benches who would seriously suggest that events have not taken place in the world in the last three years, particularly the last 12 months, to force this or any other Government that might be here to present the House with a bigger bill? Is there any working man in the country, is there any trade union leader, who is not perfectly satisfied that the workers of all grades have fared infinitely better during the last three years than in any similar period in the history of this country?
I talked about distortion. There is distortion. We have Irish Press headlines every morning creating the impression that the country is split from one end to the other with strikes and industrial strife and that there is almost a war between the workers and the employers. I must say that it is not confined to the Irish Press. The Irish Times takes a hand to try and help on the stability of the country! There have been strikes in this country and I should say quite frankly that some of them were entirely unnecessary and unjustified. But do not try to create the impression that this is a strike-ridden country—because it is not. Again, on that, there have been fewer disturbances and infinitely fewer strikes in this country than in most other countries in the world and there has been, with the exception of some strikes which in my opinion should never have happened, generally, over the whole field of employment in this country, a greater period of stability and peace and understanding between employees and employers than perhaps at any other period.
The Minister for Finance is looking for money. Does anybody seriously suggest that this country is not getting infinitely better value for the money now being spent than at any period during which Fianna Fáil was in office? Does anybody seriously suggest that the money which is being raised by way of taxation is not being spent on the greatest programme of construction ever conceived in this country? Is it not quite true that the whole face of this country is being changed for the better? Is it not quite true that there are in operation at the moment schemes calculated to undo the great harm which was done to the land of this country by many decades of neglect and because, prior to the establishment of this State, nobody was very concerned to see that the farmer was ever going to be put into a position to feed his land to preserve its fertility? Are there not great schemes in operation in this country to-day that are actually reclaiming hundreds of thousands of acres of land that have lain useless for many years? I do not believe there is another country in the world—and that is a big saying to-day—that, in proportion to its size, its population and its resources, is providing good housing for its people as rapidly as we are in this country. Deputies know that. I have given credit to my predecessor in office and to other members of the Fianna Fáil Government for initiating certain schemes which have brought benefit to this country. I have given expression to that, publicly. Then we get the cheap jibes that the Government are, of course, only falling back on the Fianna Fáil plans which they discarded. In every paper I take up, particularly the Irish Press, in the report of every little tuppence-halfpenny cumann they have left down the country—every provincial paper which has Fianna Fáil nailed to the mast— we get “turf, turf, turf: the abandonment of the hand-won turf scheme.” I thought I had blown that yarn completely sky high on my Estimate last year. Deputy Little is not convinced yet.
I am afraid not.
Deputy Little might some time, when he has an hour to spare, read the speech on fuel which his colleague, Deputy Lemass, made on the 18th February, 1948, just after he changed over from this side of the House to the opposite side of the House. Deputy Lemass sets the headline for the other Fianna Fáil speakers. At the end of 1947, Deputy Lemass and the Fianna Fáil Government made up their minds that the hand-won turf scheme could not go on because he had brought 500,000 tons of coal from America and from Africa. Ministers of the Fianna Fáil Government had gone to Britain and had negotiated with the British Government for an annual delivery of not less than 1,500,000 tons of coal. According to Deputy Lemass himself, they had at least a ten years' supply of firewood, at the then rate of consumption, in the Park. They had a four years' supply of turf in the dumps, if it lasted for that length of time, at the then rate of consumption. They had 500,000 tons of coal, plus 1,500,000 tons from Britain, and so forth. In spite of that, we are asked to believe that Deputy Lemass was going to go on with the hand-won turf scheme. May I again remind Deputy Little that on the 12th February, 1948, Deputy Lemass, who was then Minister for Industry and Commerce, took a decision stopping the hand-won turf scheme in the camps of Kildare and Laoghis. Why did he do that? He did so because he had been informed by his advisers that there was no further room for turf in any of the dumps in Ireland and that if he proceeded to produce hand-won turf in 1948 it would have to be stacked along the sides of the public roads in this country—and one did not need to be an expert to know what would happen to it. On the same day—the 12th February, 1948—six days before he ceased to be a Minister, Deputy Lemass was asked for a decision as to whether what was known as the county council hand-won turf scheme should continue. If the Fianna Fáil Government were full-bloodedly in favour of hand-won turf and its production, and had made up their minds that they were going to continue it, why, on the 12th February, 1948, did Deputy Lemass defer a decision? Why did he refuse to take a decision? Why, if it was Government policy, did he not say to his advisers: "Go on with the hand-won turf scheme"? He gave an order stopping completely one section of the hand-won turf production scheme and he deferred a decision—I suppose until after the 18th February—as to what should be done with the rest of it. Fianna Fáil Deputies know quite well that what made it almost impossible to get people to buy turf were the experiences of people in towns and cities, and particularly in the City of Dublin, during the war period and for some time after the war. What is really wrong with Deputies opposite is that they are amazed at the success that has attended the efforts of this Government. There is no man in this country, whether a supporter of Fianna Fáil or an opponent of Fianna Fáil, who does not realise that he has enjoyed in the past three years a greater prosperity than ever before.
I have listened to Deputy Corry— for my sins I have to listen to him occasionally—denouncing the Minister for Agriculture and the Government, denouncing the whole policy in relation to agriculture and the land. I am as sure as I am standing here that Deputy Corry has put more profits into his pocket out of his land in the last three years than he did in the previous 16. There is not a shadow of doubt about it and if the Deputy would only tell the truth he would admit that. There are some of us—most of us I would say—who, while we may not be as close to the ground as Deputy Corry, are not a mile removed from the farmers and the farm labourers of the country. We know what is happening on the land and at the fairs and markets in the country and we know the prices that are paid for produce. I know not merely the wages that are being paid—I am not talking now about agricultural wages; I am talking about the wages in towns and cities, particularly in industries—and the increase in wages but, what is much more important so far as the housewife is concerned, the increase in the family income. I know, and Deputies on all sides of the House, know that there are households in the country, and particularly in the cities, where the income is three times as great as it was three years ago because not merely is the head of the house employed but, what is a matter of very great importance, he is fully employed every day of the week and every week of the year and the sons and daughters of the house are also employed.
Deputies on all sides know, although Fianna Fáil Deputies try to prove otherwise, that there are fewer unemployed people now than at any time since the State was founded. There are infinitely more people in employment, and in better employment, than at any time during the last 30 years. We are told by certain Fianna Fáil speakers, and through their Party organ that people are hard pressed, that they are unable to make ends meet, that the cost of everything is so high that it is almost impossible for them to buy food, fuel and clothing. There are probably exceptions but I find it hard to believe that, as I stated recently at a function I was addressing outside this House, when I look at the figures showing the enormous amounts that are being spent upon non-essentials in this country.
Deputies, I think, ought to admit facts. Fianna Fáil Deputies are not going to convince the people that they are eating less than they ate in Fianna Fáil days. Fianna Fáil Deputies, with all their speeches and Party organs, are not going to convince the people that they are worse clothed or shod now than they were in Fianna Fáil days. Fianna Fáil speakers or writers are not going to convince the workers of the country that they are not getting better wages or that they have not got substantial advances in wages and salaries for the last three years. Fianna Fáil Deputies or writers are not going to convince the people, who have been working on the land of the country, that they are not to-day getting a better reward for their labours than they got, not merely during the 16 years while Fianna Fáil were in office, but during the prior period.
I do not know why some people take a particular delight in running down their own country, why they take a particular delight in trying to create the impression both at home and abroad that we are still a distressful country. There have been great changes in the last 25 or 30 years for the better. Our people are infinitely better housed. Last year no fewer than 12,000 houses were completed. I venture to assert from my knowledge of the country, and of the conditions under which workers live, that it would be true to say that there were very close on 12,000 families who got into sanitary, decent, clean homes last year for the first time in their lives. There is no Irish person who has been living and working abroad for some years, who has not been extremely pleased and gratified on returning to this country in recent times, to see the changes for the better. I doubt if there is any other country to-day where the people are living as well as the people of this country. I doubt if there is any country where the manner of living of the people can compare with that of our people. There are very few, if any, countries in the world where you have the same degree of peace, unity and harmony that we enjoy in this country. Sometimes one wonders whether the people are entirely oblivious to the blessings that have been showered upon them. I know that I can be misrepresented, that I can be told that there are still people who are in poor circumstances. I know I shall be told that there are still people who are practically destitute. That may be so, and I suppose, human nature being what it is, it will always be so, to some extent, but I do say that there are fewer of our people in either straitened circumstances, in destitution or squalor than at any period in our history, and that is something of which we should be proud.
I must say I feel delighted with some of the observations of the Minister for Industry and Commerce from a purely narrow political standpoint. If the Government want to do anything more to reduce the support accorded to them in the country, they have only to go on repeating their satisfaction with the present cost of living and with the general economic picture as a whole. We have had the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Industry and Commerce, we have had the Minister for Agriculture, and now we have the Minister for Industry and Commerce, all in their different ways, assuring the housewives of Dublin City that there is nothing really very much wrong, that everything is really fairly all right, and that apparently the clamour that can be heard in every bus, in every public-house and in the streets, in regard to the rising cost of living, is entirely created by articles in a particular newspaper, and that none of it is really due to the enormous change that has taken place in the political opinion of Dublin in the last few months—I speak mainly of Dublin— but is purely a conspiracy organised by the Opposition. I will be quite frank and say that I would be very glad if the Minister would test the electorate on this question. I would be delighted if he would submit to the whole country the question whether the people consider that the cost of living is being controlled, whether the promises of the Government in regard to the cost of living are being carried out and whether the people are satisfied, as the Minister seems to think, that we are enjoying all the heaven-sent prosperity and blessings that have been showered on us.
I would not like to see the Deputy disappearing from the House.
I would be delighted if the present Government would go to the country and try to ram the extra half-crown in the old age pensions down everybody's throat. I should be delighted to present them with all the printed paper they would like to have to tell every man and woman about the extra half-crown for the old age pensioners, but I still believe they would not come back here.
You believed that the last time.
The Minister was referring to Fianna Fáil speakers. At the present time there is not very much need for Fianna Fáil speakers to go around but we would be delighted if some Independent Deputies would give us the chance of getting the people to say whether they like the present Administration. We would be delighted if some Independent Deputies would have the courage to allow their names to go forward for election in the same way as ourselves. I myself am completely confident as to the result.
In the course of the last few weeks I have heard people myself in Dublin say that the situation has entirely changed. It has changed largely because the people of this country are incensed by the failure of the Government to carry out a solemn promise which was not to hold back the cost of living or to keep it where it was, but to reduce it drastically from what it was during the period when Fianna Fáil were in office. I do not know how many more times we have got to repeat in the House the promises that were made—the promises that were made in regard to a reduction of the cost of living. One can excuse persons with political experience from being overoptimistic in regard to the application of an entirely new policy. I have no objection if some particular Deputy gets up and says that he believes that, by a certain method of technical application, the drainage of the country can be largely increased in scope and volume. That Deputy may be entirely sincere and may have an excessive faith in a new policy; but Deputies who, with the experience of the last 25 years behind them, get up and promise to reduce the cost of living, and suggest that there was a conspiracy between the business group in the community and the Fianna Fáil Government to maintain it at an artificially high level—the Deputies who made those statements during the general election are going to be the Deputies who will bring the Government down and force it out of office because, as I have said, the people have not forgotten, and they will not forget, the failure of the Government to carry out their promise.
The Minister for Industry and Commerce, who has just spoken, apparently blames the Fianna Fáil Government for the war and the fact that a handful of traders sold sugar and tea at high prices during the war is supposed to be something for which the Fianna Fáil Government was entirely responsible and could not obviate. The fact that there is more tea now is, apparently, not due to the ending of the war or to the resumption of world-wide supplies, but to the beneficial acts of the present Government. No one in the country would believe the Minister that we are to give credit to the present Government for the fact that tea is now available in large quantities at, let it be admitted, a very high price. The public of this country know that India, the East Indies and China are far enough away from this country, and that it is only in peaceful conditions, with the resumption of completely normal economic conditions, can it be supposed that tea can be made fully available. If the Minister wants to go to the country on the proposition that we now have enough tea, let him do it. We would be delighted, but most people in the country would hardly accept that kind of, shall I call it, guff.
The same thing applies to a great many other commodities which are now in fuller supply than they were before. The Minister also takes credit, apparently, not only for having brought peace to the world, but also for a period of good weather which, for a time, has served the Government well. It has enabled the Minister for Agriculture to base his figures of production on the years 1946-47, a year in which we had very little artificial manures and extremely bad weather, and to boast of the enormous increase there had been in agricultural production for which the Government were supposed to be entirely responsible.
The curious thing is that the Minister for Finance has a way of being extremely honest and frank with the people at times. You had, on the one hand, the Minister for Agriculture boasting of an increase in agricultural production. Much of that was due to the good weather and to the free availability of artificial manures. We had the Minister for Finance, in the course of the last Budget debate, saying that agricultural production had at last resumed its pre-war level. There, again, the people are not going to be fooled by the misuse of statistics by Government Ministers. Either the Minister for Finance is right, that agricultural production is only just what it was after five years of an economic war in which we asked the farmers to make extensive sacrifices, or else the two stories are not true. It is impossible to prove a lavish increase in agricultural production based on a year when there was bad weather and very few artificial manures available, and at the same time tell the people that agricultural production is back where it was in 1939. That statement of the Minister for Finance always amuses me, particularly when I remember his speeches about the fearful sufferings of the farmers and of the no rate and no annuities campaign when we were making an effort to bring the country into the position whereby we were able to regain the ports for ourselves and at last settle all issues between ourselves and Great Britain except Partition. But in spite of the disaster of the economic war and in spite of all the things that we were supposed to have done to wreck this country, we have this little bleating from the Minister for Finance, that agricultural production has now resumed the level of the pre-war period.
The Minister for Industry and Commerce said that they were stockpiling certain commodities in the country. We heard the Minister for Agriculture say that apparently we have stocks of wheat for a certain number of months. We have not yet heard any Minister in the Government say whether their stock piles are of a kind that would be required in case there was an emergency. I wonder what is the volume of the stock piles of agricultural machinery parts, or parts for lorries and of tyres. I wonder whether the Minister would like to tell us by what period steel and foundry products have been delayed in delivery arising from the price freeze Order, and how long we would last if the war began now in regard to the provision of essential metals in this country. Will any member of the Government tell us whether we have adequate supplies of civil defence weapons and civil defence materials. I think that here we need a little bit more precise information. We need to be told whether there are real genuine stock piles designed to preserve us from disaster in case war broke out, or whether the Minister is merely referring to the fact that there are certain stocks of wheat which would not last very long at the present time.
The Minister for Industry and Commerce spoke of the increase in prices that took place during the world war, and suggested that Fianna Fáil had allowed the situation to get out of hand. I suppose I will have to repeat again the statement I made many times, that out of some 70 countries who gave statistics to the old League of Nations Economic Bureau, the cost of living went up here less than in 43 during the whole of the war period, in about seven countries it was the same, and there were ten countries where the cost of living went up less, largely because they chose to subsidise food at a higher level than ourselves. I say again that we are proud of that record. We have nothing to apologise for in regard to our ability to control the cost of living during the war period. I suppose the greatest proof that we knew how to control the cost of living lay in the fact that from 1943 to 1946 the price of most commodities hardly advanced at all, and that the old cost-of-living index, since some Deputies think that we deliberately abandoned it for dishonest reasons, reflected that stability in price levels from 1943 to 1946.
In 1946, we had a very serious inflationary situation for a period of about a year and the cost of living went up by 10 per cent. We had a howl from all over the country because, temporarily, we imposed taxes on beer, spirits, tobacco and cinema seats, a howl, I might add, that did not result in any reduction in our political majority in vast areas of the country but only in certain areas where the people were deceived in regard to the meaning behind our action. The whole of that brought in about £5,000,000 or £6,000,000 per year. Now we have a Government which increases the cost of Government from £65,000,000 to £93,000,000 and we hear very little about such small sums nowadays as the amount we raised on the tobacco, beer and spirit taxes. That is now forgotten. The sums raised now have reached vaster levels and no one would consider anything so small in these days as an increase of a mere £4,000,000 or £5,000,000. That is a sort of penny-stamp thing in present financial days.
I want to say a few words about the prices freeze Order. It is just as well to remind members of the House of some of the remarks of Deputy Norton, the Minister for Social Welfare, in making the announcement that there would be a prices freeze Order. We have always known, of course, that within the Government there has been a conflict between the Labour Party and the Fine Gael Party. We have always known that the Labour Party have been embittered by the fact that they were unable to carry out their promise to reduce the cost of living. We have always known that the same applies to Clann na Poblachta. Speaking in Kildare on January 12th, 1948, the Minister for Social Welfare said:—
"The first task of the new Dáil must be to enact drastic legislation to control prices at top levels, to impose severe punishment on profiteers and to reimpose the excess corporation tax so that it can be used to subsidise the price of the necessaries of life."
That speech was repeated by the Minister for Social Welfare in area after area all over the country.
What is the reference.
The speech was reported in the Irish Press of January 12th, 1948, and was made at Ballytore, County Kildare. As is well known, Clann na Poblachta promised to reduce the cost of living by 30 per cent. I could give endless quotations showing that the feeling in the minds of the smaller Parties was that prices could be broken and brought down drastically. Then, at the end of the debate of the Supplies and Services Bill, 1950, when apparently the general atmosphere appeared to be not too favourable to the Government, the Minister for Social Welfare entered the House and made a dramatic speech, as reported in column 1809, Volume 123, of the Dáil Debates. He went back again to the old profits that had been made and he seemed to dream the dream again of breaking prices by finding out who were all the profiteers who were supposed to be filling the Fianna Fáil election chest at the expense of the people of the country, and said:—
"Is not it as plain as a pike-staff that during that period, so far as the workers were concerned, they endured economic crucifixion at the hands of the Fianna Fáil Government because their wages were kept low while, on the other hand, we had created a new hierarchy of wealthy people, arrogant in their wealth, arrogant in their opulence, challenging anybody who dared to question their right to make extortionate profits, yes, and threatening with a cheque book at election time because one dared to question the profits that these people were allowed to make under the Fianna Fáil Government?"
These were the words of the Minister for Social Welfare. He was hoping, apparently, to get at the profiteers. Referring to the Supplies and Services Bill, he said, as reported in column 1818:—
"I want to say here and now on behalf of myself, and with a full sense of responsibility for what I am saying, that the public of this country have no confidence in the present price-fixing machinery."
In other words, that the general administration of the prices section of the Department of Industry and Commerce under the present Minister was somehow lax in their work, that the public had no confidence in them. He went on to say, as reported in the same column:—
"Nobody can blame the public for having no confidence in a price mechanism which they are not allowed to examine, which they are not allowed to see in operation...."
In other words, according to him, the prices examination should go on in public so that everybody would see what was happening, so that the public could attend. Then he went on to say:—
"We propose in this Bill to set up, not an inconsequential advisory committee which can ponder over a problem sent to it for a period of months but a price tribunal, a virile, vibrant, representative body of three or five citizens, selected on the basis of their competence and on the basis that they are citizens of standing. The function of that tribunal will be to examine every application for an increase in prices."
As reported in column 1819, just in case the public thought that the prices body would have too little to do, he committed himself still further and stated:—
"I would like to make it clear here and now, on behalf of the Government, that that price tribunal will not be an automatic machine for registering price increases. That tribunal will be expected to undertake the most critical and the most microscopic examination of every claim for an increase made to it, and there must be no increase given by that tribunal unless the case for such an increase is proved beyond all possibility of doubt."
Therefore, we were to have a body of five miracle-workers who, in a reasonable time, were supposed to make a microscopic investigation of all price increases. Everything was to pass through their hands. They were not to be an automatic machine for registering price increases, but to do a miraculous quantity of work in an extremely short time and to reassure the public that, if there were going to be price increases, they would be justifiable.
He referred then in column 1820 to the necessity of receiving applications from whole industries. He said that in the light of day, with the public present and the Press present, groups of industries would come before the Prices Body and explain why their profits were not excessive and why they ought to ask increased prices for their commodities. He gave the impression that the Prices Body would have before it not one, or two, or three industrial groups, but a great number; that the whole array of industrial federations would have to come before the Prices Body before there could be any price increases. He became even more optimistic. At column 1821 he said: "There may be a case for a profit freeze, though there are difficulties in the administration of any such freeze; but at least there will be a price freeze, the most extensive and practical price freeze that we can devise.""The most extensive"—mark the word—"that we can devise." Then at that point Deputy Byrne, with some misgivings in his mind in regard to the rate at which any Prices Body could operate apparently, said: "Will it be a general one?" and the Minister for Social Welfare replied: "It will be a general one and the Deputy will be tired counting the commodities"— counting the commodities—"that will be affected by it." Then, in conclusion, he said at column 1825: "We propose to institute a price freeze as well, but both these things will be done quickly and there will be price control over a wide range of commodities." In other words, the Minister for Social Welfare had gone back in his own mind to all the talk during the 1948 election. At last he was going to get at the profiteers and skin them.
Then the Prices Body started to work. It was quite obvious to anyone understanding the position that this body could not work fast enough. Prices had gone up considerably between July and December 2nd. Many commodities had been removed from the Price Control Orders. The moment the Korean war broke out and the world started to rearm at a much faster pace, it was inevitable that prices should go up. For some extraordinary reason—what the reason was we do not know—a small group among the Government Parties insisted for their own particular reasons that the Price Freeze Order should be retrospective to December 2nd. It would be impossible for a Prices Body, even with an army of inspectors, to check all the price increases that have taken place since that date in relation to the 1,001 articles made of materials bought at different prices in a previous period.
One of the first things that happened was that a number of traders consulted senior counsel and were advised by men of responsibility and repute, and in some cases that I know of by men who were dyed-in-the-wool Government supporters, that the Order was legally defective and the expression "goods sold under the same conditions of sale" was so wide and so vague that if a body of traders were to take a case into the courts against the Minister for Industry and Commerce it could be held that they could prove that the conditions under which goods were sold had radically changed since December 2nd and that, while the world was rearming, it could not be said that conditions of sale were the same and the traders concerned were therefore entitled to purchase goods at higher prices and resell them at higher prices without consulting the Prices Body.
The Leas-Cheann Comhairle has reminded the House that we must not cite names, but I would dearly love to tell the name of the senior counsel, a dyed-in-the-wool supporter of the Government, who advised traders that they were entitled to increase their prices.
Do you think he changes his legal views because of his politics? That is a most scandalous suggestion.
I merely mention that in passing.
Hoping you will get away with it.
There were other groups who during the brief period in which the Prices Body had effective control warned the Government that every week that went by the chances were 90 in 100 that they would have to pay far higher prices for goods, increased prices that would inevitably be passed on to the public, if they were delayed in making forward order purchases for raw materials. The situation was that every day that passed saw increases in the prices of metals and other commodities and every month would count; if they were not permitted to pass on these increases the natural result would be that prices six months from now, when the goods would come into circulation, would be very much greater as a result of the Prices Body being in operation. There were other groups of traders who quite frankly and recklessly just went ahead and bought commodities at higher prices, knowing the Order could never be enforced thus forcing the virtual ending of the Prices Body, which is now taking place. A great many traders, no doubt illegally and possibly, in some cases, unscrupulously, just went recklessly ahead and passed the goods on to their customers knowing something drastic would have to be done about the operation of the Prices Order.
We began to know just how effective this new body was going to be in breaking the profiteers, if they existed in the numbers in which the Minister for Social Welfare said, in reducing the arrogance and the opulence of the profiteers, if such arrogance and such opulence really existed, except as a nightmare in the Minister of Social Welfare's mind, and we began to learn just how much could be done when a question was asked about the work of the Prices Body to date. We were told that from the 12th January to the 14th February 172 applications had been made for increases, 172 different types of commodity in different fields of industry and different fields of trading; and we were told that of these, 46 had been considered, in 27 cases recommendations had been made, and in 13 cases action had been taken. Therefore, in less than 10 per cent. of the applications placed before the Prices Body in a period of one month, had any decision been given by the Prices Body despite the fact that all the time prices were tending to rise steadily.
As soon as we got that reply we knew that the Prices Body would never do the work the Minister for Social Welfare provided for it, namely, not merely trying to prevent prices rising, but to break the profiteering that had taken place, and fulfil a long-felt want so far as the Labour Party was concerned in regard to price control mechanism. Apparently the officers of the Department of Industry and Commerce were able to do their work fairly well in spite of the difficulties they had in assessing profits and in calculating the rates of profits for industries of a widely different pattern and construction. But apparently these five geniuses could not after all achieve miracles. I have every respect for the individuals concerned. They were placed in an utterly impossible position, and they were made to do the work of archangels and mathematical geniuses at one and the same time. Is it any wonder they failed in the attempt?
Recently we had the announcement that a huge list of articles had been taken off the list of commodities controlled by the Prices Body. That did not come as a surprise to us, because we knew that it could never work. We knew it was mathematically impossible for it to work. We knew it was chronologically impossible for it to work. We knew that any person experienced in administration would realise that no body of five persons could possibly do the amount of work entrusted to it by the Minister for Social Welfare.
I have not got the reference but a number of Deputies remarked in the course of the debate that, of course, it was not intended that the Prices Body should examine the prices or the profits made in connection with "fripperies" or articles having the character of luxury. They would not waste their time on those; they would concern themselves only with the essential commodities. The following is a list of so-called "fripperies" excluded now from action or examination by the Prices Body: clothing—a simple phrase covering a wide variety of articles; linen, cotton, wool piece goods; knitting wool—more fripperies; mattresses, sheets, pillow-slips, bed linen generally; footwear—that is a nice little bit of frippery which is not supposed to be under examination by the Prices Body. They would not waste their time on non-essentials like that. Furniture, ironmongery and practically all housing materials are being excluded from the work of the Prices Body. Included still for their examination are pig products, vegetables, cereals, confectionery, fuel, soap, vegetable oils, scrap metals, razor blades, and so forth. I notice the little item of razor blades is left in.
The principal articles left for examination by the Prices Body are the foods the housewife buys. I claim that the promotion of any kind of Prices Body is simply the result of the Minister running away from his responsibilities. If the Minister has not the confidence of the public in assessing the profits to be made on those vital commodities, he should not be Minister for Industry and Commerce. If a Minister in a Government which is spending £93,000,000 a year cannot satisfy the public at large that he can control the prices of the essential goods in that pathetic little list of goods left for the Prices Body to examine, then I claim that the answer is that he should go to the country because most of the goods here have been the subject of examination for years, by our Government, by the present Government. Every cost factor in regard to their sale is known backwards, forwards, sideways, upwards and downwards. Every single factor in relation to the way they are produced and distributed is known to the Minister for Industry and Commerce. Of course, the whole introduction of the Prices Body was nothing but a ridiculous and hypocritical confession by one group of the Government to another group of the Government in order to preserve the Government majority.
I dare say it is true to say that the officers of the Department of Industry and Commerce under the Minister probably could have exercised more price control during these last three vital months, if they had been doing their normal job, instead of trying to convert the normal price control mechanism into a new kind of administrative field of endeavour in which everything was supposed to be canalised to the Prices Body. If they had not been moving their desks and chairs around, figuratively speaking, in their offices and trying to get work for the Prices Body to do, they probably would have done more work in checking what excessive profiteering there may have been during the period.
We on this side of the House still say that profiteering can be engendered by creating a lack of public feeling of confidence in the Government, by making men cynical and, if there are more profiteers now than there were, it is because businessmen become cynical when one Minister goes to a public luncheon and tells the businessmen that, of course, he knows that only a handful, a mere minority of them, are engaged in profiteering and another Minister goes off to a group of trade unionists and tells them that he knows well that there has been rank profiteering, profiteering sufficient in volume to have created a situation whereby wages must be increased and whereby there is a general situation which is not conducive to the prosperity of the worker. It is that kind of talking out of one side of the mouth which creates lack of confidence in the public and which induces dishonest practices.
The Government can do more to prevent profiteering by allowing the prices mechanism of the Department to operate in the normal way, by speaking consistently on the degree of profiteering, by making a national and patriotic appeal to everyone concerned, so far as they can, to restrain their selfish ambitions. They can do more by that than by making all the futile speeches in the world and producing price advisory bodies which can effect nothing under present circumstances.
I hope that before the end of the debate we will hear something from some Minister or other on the exclusion of these many commodities from examination by the Prices Body and the reasons therefor.
I would like to take this opportunity of paying tribute to the officers of the Department of Industry and Commerce under the Minister for the great work they have done continuously for so many years, under appallingly difficult circumstances. As I have said, there can be an awful lot of guff talked about price control and profiteering. The workers know now, if they did not know it before—they may have been deceived by the Labour Party for the time being—that the profit that a company makes has nothing whatever to do, very often, with the price of the article. Workers in a number of factories in Dublin will tell you that they get paid the best in those factories where good management makes the largest profits and pays the highest dividends, and that the article sold is of good quality and that it is sold at the lowest price. The sort of fellow-traveller, semi-communist talk you hear in regard to the profits of companies is simply ignorant, meaningless talk. Very unsuccessful companies can raise prices in this country to the whole community. You have a group of industries, for example, all making the same product and all in an initial stage of development. The tariff has necessarily to be based on the protection required for the weaker units. The weaker units cannot be destroyed because they are in an initial stage of development, because we have not an industrial tradition. They can be warned, cosseted, advised and besought to improve production methods. Everybody knows that it is frequently the weakest elements in industry, and not the strongest, that raise prices and that the ones that make the biggest profit and that go around in the biggest cars—to use Mr. Norton's favourite phrase—are very often keeping prices at the lowest level and dictating the price to the rest of the community. There are exceptions to everything. I am merely trying to get away from the guff, the sort of foolish talk, that we hear in regard to this matter.
So much for the concession made by one group of the Government to another group of the Government over price control. It has become an almost nauseating Government——
You have not told us which group of the Government made the concession to which group of the Government.
——because of the hypocrisy associated with it and because the people have been so grossly deceived. Another concession made by the Fine Gael group in the Government to a smaller Party was in respect of the whole question of how much money should be borrowed and whether the cost of Government should be reduced. General Mulcahy, speaking at Callan, County Kilkenny, on January 13th, 1948, said:—
"Fine Gael propose, as a first step, that the expenditure of every Government Department should be rationed."
Speaking again at Macroom on January 30th, 1948, he said:—
"The cost of the carrying on of the State had gone beyond anything reasonable or understandable."
That was the background of the Fine Gael propaganda in regard to the cost of Government. During the general election we had Dr. T.F. O'Higgins reported in the Wicklow People on the 8th March, 1947, as saying:—
"Ministries should be reduced rather than increased. These new Ministries are extravagant and unnecessary toys—Health and Social Services."
Extravagant and unnecessary toys! The Ministry of Lands, we were told, should be linked with Agriculture. It would be a sad thing for the Minister sitting opposite me, if that were the case. Again, the Ministry of Posts and Telegraphs, we were told, was an unwarrantable development. I do not think I will pursue anything more on those lines, although I might be tempted to, very sorely.
When was that said?
I already gave the reference. It was made by Dr. T.F. O'Higgins at Moneygall, Offaly, and was reported in the Wicklow People of the 8th March, 1947. Mr. Costello, the Taoiseach, in an election address, delivered a solemn and, to my mind, over-conservative statement in regard to the preservation of the national finances. He was going back almost to the pre-Keynesian period, the period of 1931, when we were told the unemployed should be allowed to remain unemployed, and no one could do anything for them. These phrases look very strange now. How the Taoiseach reconciles his political conscience with what is going on, I cannot imagine. For example, he said in his printed election address:—
"Inflationary borrowing from the Post Office Savings Bank should be minimised and any essential borrowings made direct from the people."
As everybody knows, one of the features of the present borrowing is that it is not being done direct from the people; it is being forced through other sources.
"Our taxation should be designed so as to discourage unnecessary expenditure on non-essentials. Too much money is chasing after too few goods."
That was said by Mr. Costello, the Taoiseach, and he ended by saying:—
"All other considerations must, under present conditions, be subordinated to the overriding necessity of reducing the cost of living."
He went through the usual process of finding that he had, in some way or other, to make concessions to the smaller Parties. Some time ago he made a speech to the Bankers' Institute in which he announced very dramatically that foreign assets were going to be repatriated. That dramatic announcement was made in far too general a sense; it had to be modified in various ways later on. After a whoop of delight from the Clann na Poblachta Party came the statement that private savings were not going to be interfered with by the Government, that they were not going to be impounded, and it was pointed out that it was a sort of general policy to repatriate foreign assets, that they were to be repatriated for the purchase of capital equipment.
In the course of later speeches the Taoiseach made it clear that, so far as he was concerned, he favoured a classic form of repatriation of foreign assets, a form that would be accepted by all of us, namely, not to import X pairs of boots at a given cost, finding the money by which to pay for them from dividends you receive on English stocks, but to spend some of the money you have abroad on boot-making machinery and make the boots at home. This is a very simple, if rather crude way of carrying out what might be described as the right form of repatriation of foreign assets. All of us would like to see it happen.
One of the most valuable things in the nation's economy is to have a foreign reservoir of purchasing power, particularly if there is a transition from one form of economy to another. It is an excellent thing, if we are to have all the national and industrial development possible here, that we would still have money invested abroad giving us purchasing power. It is a question of how to balance two economic trends of policy.
Now we have the result of another concession to a small splinter group in the Government Party. We have a serious admission by the Minister for Finance in the Parliamentary Debates, column 789, Volume 124:—
"The disturbing feature, of course, is the deficit in the balance of payments, particularly when that is marked by the great increase in consumption here, especially when that great increase in consumption is attached to the non-essential goods. The continuance of such a situation for any period would be highly dangerous."
In other words, the crank policy has not worked, the policy of going out to borrow all you can without considering every step of the way, without considering what every effect is going to be, without looking at the whole of the national economy, without restraining oneself here and there even if it means, perhaps, doing some things in ten years instead of five, even if it means that the progress of the nation might in some respects have to move a little more slowly, but steadily and assuredly.
That policy has not worked and the result has been what was foretold to the Minister, that if you create an inflationary situation by borrowing in any one year more than the people save, the result will be an inflation of one kind or another. The Minister has admitted the inflation is taking place in the form of a misuse of our foreign assets and the Minister has made an appeal to the public to refrain from buying luxuries. It is a futile and ignorant appeal. I do not know whether the Minister makes it sincerely. Does he imagine human psychology is such that, by the Minister making one speech here, the people will suddenly ration themselves in the purchase of luxuries, cigarettes and things we might import? Does he imagine you can have a change in the habits of consumers induced by a speech of that kind?
A situation such as we face has to be controlled carefully from the start. Action has to be taken by a Government that has the courage not to spend sometimes. It has to be done by a Government which reviews national policy for a far longer period than it is likely, according to the rules of human nature, to be in office. One of the curses that has affected the whole of European history is the habit of Governments always thinking in terms of what is going to happen in five years. When you start borrowing on a long-term project and you take into account money borrowed from America and all the other economic influences which concern us, caution has to be exercised and everything has to be examined. Caution cannot be exercised by a Coalition Government. There is always one group who want to spend wildly and another group who do not want to spend enough, and the result is confusion and argument between them. I am glad that so far the present Government have not made another concession to another splinter group in regard to the method by which we control our currency. Of course, a lot of the speeches made by Clan na Poblachta Deputies are extremely ignorant. They never go into details and never face up to facts. A considerable amount of what I have heard in public myself would mean this, that in addition to all the other difficulties created in connection with Partition, we would have the present spectacle of inviting a Deputy from the North down to sit in the Dáil on the one hand, while we put up currency stations on the Border on the other hand, if some of the lunatic policies were put into operation.
This is breaking the link with sterling? I just wanted to check on it.
We would have that further problem to consider with all its implications. I am glad to say that the speeches and proposals made are so vague and so honeyed in tone that nobody believes that any member of the Party concerned ever considered the matter seriously. The day that a Deputy in this House gets up and, in the course of three hours, described exactly what he wants to do on that subject, I will take off my hat to him. I have only heard the use of vague general mellifluous phrases which have no bearing on the situation. If ever we consider taking a step of that kind we must make certain that the evil that is likely to come from it will not be greater than the good.
I wanted to speak in great measure on this whole question of the Prices Body and the fact that I hope the public appreciates the change that has taken place. The Prices Body is now only immediately controlling the price of essential foods and the result has been the appointment of a lot of extra inspectors and the increase of the administration of the office of the Department of Industry and Commerce as a consequence. We, on this side of the House, would say that the Minister with the officers at his disposal before the Prices Body was formed, was entirely capable of controlling the prices of those commodities, because all the conditions in connection with them were no more or the factors in connection with them were no more. It is another proof that the boasts of the Government in regard to the control of the cost of living were not justified. I would like to say again that the more we hear Ministers getting up and talking about the prosperity of the country and that complaints in regard to the cost of living were not justified the happier we are. The more people like the Minister for Agriculture, the Minister for Finance, and now the Minister for Industry and Commerce say that the housewives should not be displeased or discontented the more delighted we are because they will find the greater will be their retribution.
Several times in the course of this speech Deputy Childers used the word "guff". I am not quite sure of the meaning of it but if it means gross misrepresentation in a carefully modulated tone it described Deputy Childers's speech very accurately. The Minister for Industry and Commerce spoke here this evening. The Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Industry and Commerce is on record. The record is available to Deputy Childers, Deputy Aiken and to the other members opposite. When he spoke regarding the cost of living in this House some time ago, neither the Parliamentary Secretary nor the Minister made the claim that the cost of living had not increased.
The Parliamentary Secretary did, anyway.
He made no such claim.
Of course he did.
Deputy Aiken can read and Deputy Aiken can hear and he had the opportunity of reading and hearing the Parliamentary Secretary. This is not the first time that Deputy Aiken was corrected in that particular kind of misrepresentation.
I proved it here out of his own mouth in the last speech on that question.
The Parliamentary Secretary, the Minister and the Taoiseach dealt with the cost of living as between August, 1947 and August last. They then proceeded to deal with the period from August last onwards. Deputy Aiken knows that as well as I do.
They thought they could bluff their way out, but they did not succeed.
Deputy Aiken knows his little interruptions may hit the headlines in the Irish Press and that is the purpose for which they are made. Deputy Aiken and the controlling director of the Fianna Fáil organ know very well that by the use of that organ they can get across to the people of this country just the type of misrepresentation that the Deputy and Deputy Childers tried to pull here this evening.
It was the Irish Independent which scare-headed that prices had risen.
If it was, the Deputy's organ was not far behind. The speech is on record. I challenge Deputy Aiken, either in this House or outside, to show me any quotation from the speech of the Parliamentary Secretary, even taken out of its context, which will justify the case he is trying to make here now.
Deputy Childers, before he finished, could not resist gibing at the members of the Clann na Poblachta Party in connection with the question of breaking the link with sterling. My views —I think it is possibly the only thing on which I agree with Deputy Childers —agree with the views which by implication Deputy Childers expressed on that subject. I feel that Deputy Childers might do his own Party a better service if he checked the speeches of his one time leader in Finance, Deputy Seán MacEntee, before he decides to frolic in the field of the currency link.
In 1932 Deputy Séan MacEntee spoke as follows:—
"I think it was the President (Mr. Cosgrave) said that we were anchored to the pound sterling and now the pound is a millstone round the necks of the people and is dragging them down to the bottom of the sea. The financial and economic position of the country would be much better if we had an independent currency instead of being tied to the sinking pound."
The speech was reported in an article in the Sunday Independent in 1947, as a reprint or a rehash of some of the views of this particular Deputy in relation to finance. It was quoted by the present Minister for Finance in this House in Volume 114, column 1891. That was Deputy MacEntee a number of years ago. Deputy Aiken is probably thinking now that, possibly, he was just as foolish as Deputy MacEntee was then, but Deputy MacEntee, in the meantime, has carried the portfolio as Minister for Finance for seven years and has probably come to a different point of view.
In any event, I do not think that during his period as Minister for Finance Deputy MacEntee made any other speeches along those lines. He waited until he went into opposition again and then he burst into print— this time in the columns of the Sunday Press on November 13th, 1949. This article is headed in large letters “Diddle-um-dandy” and was written by Séan MacEntee, T.D., Minister for Finance, 1932 to 1939. Here we find the bold Deputy MacEntee getting back to his first love again. This time he is a little bit more prudent, a little more cautious. He does not come out in the same bold language as he did when talking in 1932; he comes out, though, in a way which is very dear to Deputy MacEntee's heart, with a little gibe at Clann na Poblachta again and says in the course of the article:—
"Thus, despite the cackle of Clann na Poblachta at the last general election and despite Mr. Norton's financial windbaggery——"
a typical MacEntee term,
"—— when in opposition, we have, by the deliberate decision of the Coalition, remained firmly attached to sterling."
Any fair-minded person analysing that paragraph of Deputy MacEntee's article will be forced to the conclusion that, if it is an honest article, what Deputy MacEntee wants to imply is that the decision of the Government was a wrong decision and a decision with which Deputy MacEntee does not agree and, accordingly, Deputy MacEntee is now back to the time when he thought it would be better to have an independent currency instead of being tied to the sinking pound. However, in case there might be any misunderstanding about what the Deputy meant by the paragraph I have quoted, he dotted the "i's" and crossed the "t's" a little later on when he said:—
"Even to the Clann na Poblachta and Labour Ministers, the link with sterling became a holy and indissoluble bond as sacred as the wedding ring."
Again, the gibe and again the implication that Deputy MacEntee does not agree with what was done and does not agree with the maintenance of the link with sterling. That is Deputy MacEntee on 13th November, 1949, veering back to the policy, which I presume was the Fianna Fáil policy enunciated by him in 1932.
However, there are more important things in this discussion than dealing with Deputy MacEntee. Because he was more recently Minister for Finance in a Fianna Fáil Government, one of those more important persons is Deputy Aiken and I propose to deal with some of the matters raised by Deputy Aiken in the course of his contribution to this debate. One of the things Deputy Aiken did was to complain bitterly—I was not here to listen to him, but, judging by the phrases he used, it seemed to me he complained somewhat heatedly—that this Government since they took over from Fianna Fáil had dissipated the reserve stocks of fuel which a prudent Fianna Fáil Government had built up in the Phænix Park over a number of years. The whole tenor of Deputy Aiken's argument regarding fuel was that this Government were wrong to sell the fuel, that if Deputy Aiken was still in office with his colleagues huddled around him in a Fianna Fáil Government, the notorious dump in the Phoenix Park would have remained a dump and would not have been touched in any circumstances. The quotation in point is to be found at column 806 of the Official Reports of 28th February last. Referring to the Government, Deputy Aiken said:—
"They did their utmost to create a fuel crisis because not only did the British fall down on their promises but our own Government was selling at a cut price the stocks of fuel which had been built up during the Fianna Fáil régime."
Deputy Aiken might also remember occasionally that what is spoken, in this House, in any event, goes on the records and that his deputy leader, Deputy Lemass, made a speech from the Opposition Benches for the first time for a great number of years on 18th February, 1948. Deputy Lemass at that time was an ex-Minister for only about half an hour and he was talking with an extensive knowledge of the position regarding supplies in this country as they existed in 1948. The Deputy gave a very full and a very moderate review of the position in relation to supplies and he dealt with this question of the turf and timber in Phoenix Park. At column 59, Volume 110 of the Official Reports, he said to the new Minister for Industry and Commerce:—
"There are a number of other problems which I am leaving to him. Most of them are problems resulting from the fact that efforts to accumulate stocks have been rather more successful than otherwise. In particular I want to refer to fuel. We have on hands a very large stock of American coal. At the present rate of disbursement there will be large stocks on hands next winter. There is about a ten years' supply of firewood at the present rate of usage."
Then, at column 60, he gave a warning and advice when he said, in reference to the dumps:—
"It is necessary to remember that they will not keep indefinitely. Turf deteriorates, and timber deteriorates even more rapidly than turf, and, clearly, the stocks must be disposed of before they become useless."
The advice given by Deputy Lemass was carried out by this Government, and carried out after considerable difficulty, as the Minister for Industry and Commerce told the House this evening. On 18th February, 1948, Deputy Lemass advises and warns in these terms. On 28th February, 1951, just three years later, Deputy Aiken has not yet wakened up to the fact that his own deputy leader intended to act in that particular way, if we are to assume that that speech was honest. Deputy Aiken complains against the present Government that they have created a fuel crisis by selling at cut prices the stocks of fuel which Fianna Fáil had built up during their régime.
Did you not sell a hundred thousand tons at 55/- a ton only two months ago?
We sold a great number of tons at £1 a ton.
You sold coal at 55/- a ton a couple of months ago.
I suggest that Deputy Aiken should not be upset at this stage, as I have only started on him, and I have a long way to go yet. Deputy Aiken was merely following the Party directive which was issued to the gallant warriors of Fianna Fáil, as recounted in the Irish Press on Friday, January 14, 1949. That sounds wrong to Deputy Aiken. He is not really just three years too late. He is only coming along a year after the Party directive was issued, to give a belated boost to the line which it was decided to adopt. We find in the Irish Press of 14th January, 1949, a lengthy article on the fuel dumps in the Phoenix Park. It is headed: “People lose over £1,000,000 on lorries.” That is accompanied by a photograph showing six or eight lorries loaded up with timber in the Phoenix Park. This is written by an Irish Press staff reporter. Complaint was made on very much the same lines as Deputy Aiken complained when he spoke in this debate. The particular phrase which caught my attention was this:—
"The Government was sacrificing £1,064,000 of the taxpayers' money on the sale of timber alone."
This was about a year after Deputy Lemass stated in this House:—
"Turf deteriorates, and timber deteriorates even more rapidly than turf; and clearly stocks must be disposed of before they become useless."
The present Minister for Industry and Commerce came before this House on a number of occasions to explain the steps which he had taken regarding the sale of this stuff that was in the Phoenix Park. He found that he had to reduce the price of the timber there to as low as £1 a ton before he could find a buyer, before he could put into operation the advice which was given by Deputy Lemass in 1948—which is derided by Deputy Aiken in 1951.
There is a number of other matters which Deputy Aiken touched on in the course of his speech. One was a complaint regarding the importation of wheat. I think it is most unlikely that Deputy Aiken and Deputy Lemass would fit in the same bench if Deputy Aiken were to mention wheat out loud and Deputy Lemass were present. Either that or Deputy Aiken gives Deputy Lemass credit for being even more brazen than he is. Does Deputy Aiken think that either the Deputies on this side of the House or the people throughout the country have forgotten the particularly improvident purchase of 75,000 tons of Argentine wheat at something in the region of £50 a ton, contracted for and purchased by Deputy Lemass just two days before he went out of office as Minister for Industry and Commerce, against the advice of every one of his advisers, against the advice of grain importers, of the Rank organisation and of everyone whom he approached in connection with it? Deputy Lemass concluded the purchase of 75,000 tons of Argentine wheat two days before he went out of office, at a time when he knew, and when all of his then colleagues in office knew, that within two days they were going to be ex-Ministers. I have never yet heard it satisfactorily explained by any of the Fianna Fáil ex-Ministers why they and why Deputy Lemass were not prepared to allow that position to wait for another two days, to give the new Government an opportunity of considering it with fresh minds. He was not prepared to do that. He saddled the incoming Government and the country with a sum of, I think, slightly over £2,500,000. Is it any wonder that I suspect that Deputy Lemass and Deputy Aiken would not sit comfortably side by side in those benches if Deputy Aiken were to mention the question of wheat out loud in Deputy Lemass's presence?
Another interesting point was dwelt on by Deputy Aiken and it is one which will come as something of an eye-opener to some of the Fianna Fáil Deputies who have so courageously in the last three years been endeavouring to defend Deputy Aiken's Supplementary Budget taxes on beer, tobacco and cinema seats. Even Deputy Briscoe, I think, who followed Deputy Aiken, speaking here on 28th February, as I understood him, was prepared to continue advocating the Fianna Fáil penal taxes imposed in the Fianna Fáil Supplementary Budget of 1947.
Deputy MacEntee has gone on record on a number of occasions as regretting the fact that those taxes had ever been removed. The only mistake Deputy MacEntee makes, as far as consistency is concerned, is that every time he mentions the taxes he finds a different use for them. One time they are to be used to increase the price of milk to the milk suppliers; another time they are to be used for the purpose of continuing the flights of Constellation aircraft between here and America; or for this, that or the other. Deputy MacEntee has made it clear that, in any event, in so far as he may have a guiding hand in the formation of Fianna Fáil policy, in the forefront of that policy is the immediate reimposition of the taxes on beer, tobacco and entertainment. There were a number of Fianna Fáil Deputies—I do not know whether Deputy Ó Briain is one of them——
I will speak for myself.
——who have also gone on record in this House as thinking that those taxes should be continued. We find that when Deputy Aiken contributed to this discussion he decided that things must be getting a bit too hot, that the boys down the country do not like being reminded of the 1947 Supplementary Budget, that he would pull a quick one and try to get away with it; and he calmly assured the House that this 1947 Supplementary Budget taxation was for one year only. It was not intended to keep it up. It was for the purpose of gathering in £4,000,000 to meet a particular crisis. That will certainly be news to Deputy MacEntee, news to the other Deputies who have been for three years fighting in the trenches to justify Deputy Aiken. They have endeavoured to justify him by pointing out year after year that if we had left on the Supplementary Budget taxes on beer, cigarettes and cinema seats we could use the money for this or that purpose. Instead of two prices for tea, sugar and butter, you could level the prices out and have low prices with the big subsidy, because Fianna Fáil would have continued the Supplementary Budget taxes. Apparently they would not, at any rate if we are to believe Deputy Aiken's story as told in this House on the 28th February last.
I am surprised that the Deputies opposite should still talk about elections. They have been endeavouring to pull a big bluff throughout the country since the clarion call went out from the Leader of the Opposition some months ago. They have always been good at bluffing, I will grant them that, and I will also grant them that as a general rule they have been very well regimented and are used to obeying orders. When their Leader sounds the going they all nod their heads and follow suit but when Deputy de Valera senior issued his cry for a general election a few months ago I did notice on this occasion that there seemed to be a little rebellion from the boys on the back benches, I did not notice any great enthusiasm on their part to take up their Leader's call.
Not over there anyway.
Only one or two of the more rash and irresponsible of the Fianna Fáil Deputies went out in support of Deputy de Valera's call. It seemed that the general impression was that Deputy de Valera was all right; he could afford to talk like that because he was sure of his seat but the ordinary Deputy was hanged if he was going to look for trouble.
That applies very well over there.
Mr. Brennan
Would Deputy O'Higgins not be in the same position himself?
I know the reason for their silence; since the general election when Fianna Fáil obtained 41 per cent. of the first preference votes cast there were three by-elections. In one of them Fianna Fáil retained their seat in East Donegal.
With an increased majority.
In the other portion of Donegal where they had had a majority at the previous election they lost that majority and their seat.
With an increased vote.
Do not talk nonsense.
I would like to know if this is a debate on elections or on the Vote on Account?
At the moment I am referring to remarks made this afternoon—I think you were in the Chair, Sir—by Deputy Lemass.
They were not very long.
He said that they wanted an election at any time and on any grounds.
He spoke on it all right but he did not analyse it.
I will not analyse it very much. You have managed to spring the trap; you have let Deputy Aiken go before I was finished with him.
I cannot hold any Deputies here.
The position in any event was that on four occasions since the general election of 1948 the people had an opportunity of expressing their views. The last occasion was in the local elections of last September which resulted in the heavy defeat of Fianna Fáil throughout the country.
Ní headh, we got a majority in Limerick and in several other places.
You kept the drum very quiet with all your victories.
In the county and borough councils 517 Fianna Fáil representatives were elected as against 870 others; in the corporations 66 Fianna Fáil representatives were elected as compared with 119.
Not always.
No, only last September. In urban councils 138 Fianna Fáil representatives were elected as against 220.
Does this not look like an analysis?
No, I could go into it very much more closely as I have the figures for the different constituencies. However, I will not.
The Deputy would not be in order.
That is the position and the facts can be checked by Deputy Ó Briain or anyone else who wants to check them. The true position is that Fianna Fáil are aware of the fact that they were losing a lot of ground.
The biggest Party in the country since 1932; they still are and will be.
They will not last long.
Try it out.
The fact is that they do not want a general election and never have wanted one.
In the morning if you give it to us.
I think that the occupant of the Front Bench might not interrupt so much.
Ní abróchaidh mé a thuille.
I believe that if this Government decided to seek a dissolution of the Dáil——
What a hope.
——and to go to the country there would be very few smiling faces on the benches opposite.
Would the Deputy tell us something about the Vote on Account?
And less over there.
If Deputy O'Brien——
Ó Briain.
——would stop interrupting me I would not be going off the line. I have dealt with most of the points raised by Deputy Aiken in the course of the debate.
There is one correction I would like to make in what Deputy Childers said in relation to the Prices Freeze Order. The Minister for Industry and Commerce has already pointed out that Deputy Childers is one of those Deputies on the Fianna Fáil Benches who are not prepared to admit that any step taken by the present Government can be right under any circumstances. Deputy Childers, in common with other Fianna Fáil Deputies, has spent a lot of time criticising the Government because of price increases, deploring the fact that the Government has not been able to keep down the price of this or that commodity and at the same time, of course, seeking increased prices for different sections of the agricultural community. Deputy Childers has possibly, I think, been more verbose than most of the Fianna Fáil Deputies in regard to the general question of the cost of living and price control. When the Government introduced the prices freeze Order Deputy Childers was the first to denounce it. Now that the Government have excluded certain commodities from the operation of the freeze Order, Deputy Childers is not satisfied and is not prepared to admit that the Government can be right in any action which they have taken.
Deputy Childers endeavoured to persuade the House that what the Government had done was to exclude these various commodities including clothes from price control. I do not think that is so. It is possible that Deputy Childers is right and that I am entirely wrong. I understand the position to be that clothing and a number of other commodities referred to, are not released or excluded from price control. They are merely excluded from the particular Order which we were discussing, namely, the Freezing of Prices Order. That does not remove or exclude them from price control. They are still subject to the price control which existed prior to the making of that Order—the same price control which existed when Deputy Lemass was Minister for Supplies and Minister for Industry and Commerce. I hope that Deputy Childers or some of the other Deputies on the benches opposite will check up regarding the accuracy of that statement because I am sure that Deputy Childers would hate to go down the country and make speeches such as that which he has made here this afternoon, if he was not strictly accurate.
I too should like to know if the Deputies opposite, when they criticise the Minister for Finance and the Gov ernment generally in relation to this Vote on Account, have any alternative to offer. We know that the general picture of Government policy over the past three years has been different from the picture which was presented to us by Fianna Fáil—certainly in the last few years of Fianna Fáil's existence in office.
Squandermania.
Fianna Fáil were able to produce a wages freeze instead of a prices freeze. Suppose we start from there. We find the position that the wages of workers—certainly of the more lowly paid workers —were pegged down at a time when the cost of living was rising. It was either Deputy Kissane or Deputy Childers who said that it rose ten points in a year.
Per cent.
I think it was actually 10 points. However, that was the mentality that was there. No serious effort was made to control prices. The principle was adopted that if wages were controlled then there was no justification in many cases for manufacturers and people of that sort increasing their prices because they had not to pay more in overheads by way of wages. The wages were frozen but unfortunately the prices still kept rising. I am not endeavouring to explain why they kept rising. I am not entering into the controversy which flared at one time as to the reasons for the rise in prices—as to whether it was due to profiteering or as to whether it was due to causes which were outside the control of the manufacturers or producers. The prices of the commodities continued to rise and Fianna Fáil kept down wages.
This Government came into office on 18th February, 1948. It was the intention of this Government and I think of all the individual Parties and Deputies supporting the Government to endeavour to reduce the cost of living. I do not claim that they have succeeded in doing that, but I claim that they have succeeded in putting nearly every section of the people of this country in a much better position to withstand price increases than they found themselves in during the days of the Fianna Fáil régime or during the days when the Fianna Fáil Leader apparently considered that 45/- a week was a sufficient wage for a working man.
That is not correct.
It is correct.
Deputy Donnchadh Ó Briain will be able to give us his views on that particular speech by his leader when I have finished. My understanding of the position is that Deputy de Valera, in some place in Clare, quoted the wage of either £2 5s. or £2 15s. a week as being a reasonable wage for or average wage of the working man.
Can the Deputy give the exact quotation?
Deputy de Valera mentioned 45/- a week in my hearing in Castlebar. What has Deputy Ó Briain to say to that?
Have you documentary evidence?
Does the Deputy doubt my word? I heard Deputy de Valera say so.
I want to hear Deputy O'Higgins.
I am glad, Sir, I do not think Deputy Kissane is particularly anxious to hear me. Notwithstanding the fact that the cost of commodities has risen in the past three or four or five months, and I freely admit that it has, practically every section of the people and every section drawing allowances—whether by way of pay or by way of assistance allowances from State sources—have had their remuneration or allowance, as the case may be, considerably increased. An increase has been given to civil servants, teachers, Gardaí, the Army and to the old age pensioners. When we mention the old age pensioners it is time again to draw attention to the different mentality evidenced by the approach of the present Government to the question as compared with that of the previous Government.
And the one before you.
Más rud é nach féidir leis an Teachta smacht do chur ar a theanga, caithfidh sé imeacht.
In 1946 and 1947 the Fianna Fáil Government had an opportunity, on the discussion of motions in this House dealing with this subject, to make their views known. I do not know the exact terms of the 1946 motion but I know that Deputy Aiken, who was the then Minister for Finance, estimated that it would cost the people something like £12,000,000 a year and that he was not prepared for that. In October, 1947, another motion was moved by the present Taoiseach and the present Minister for Defence requesting some modification in the means test as it applied to old age pensioners. Every Deputy in this House and most people outside the House know the reception that that motion got from the Fianna Fáil Government. It was estimated that it would cost the country something in the neighbourhood of £500,000 a year. It was too much, according to the Fianna Fáil Government, and out the motion went.
On the other hand, since this Government were elected to office, they have already increased substantially the allowances paid to old age pensioners, to widows and orphans and to blind pensioners. In addition to that, they have modified the means test applicable in these cases. What really has Deputies opposite in a bad temper is the fact that on Friday last the Tánaiste announced that, in connection with the Social Welfare Bill, there was going to be a further substantial improvement in the conditions of old age pensioners and others drawing subsistence allowances from the State and that particular regard would be given to Army disability pensioners. The Fianna Fáil Party had prior to that been very "cocky" in relation to the Social Welfare Bill. When the Tánaiste delivered his speech on the 2nd March last, all the Deputies opposite quite obviously were disconcerted. I do not know whether or not it would be a parliamentary expression but the phrase that springs to my mind to describe the feelings of the Deputies opposite, as portrayed in their countenance, is to say that they were completely "flummoxed".
Proposals for legislation under discussion actually in this session should not be debated now. The Deputy will have an opportunity of dealing with them on the Bill when it comes before the House.
I was getting round to discuss the suggestion made again by Deputy Lemass to-day that the Government's proposals in connection with the old age pensioners were a dishonest bribe to certain members of the Dáil supporting the inter-Party Government. I do not claim to be quoting the exact words of Deputy Lemass but they were certainly to the effect that the decision was a bribe, not based on merits, and that the Government had to make some concession to some Deputies supporting them. All I want to do is to point out that in a panic the Fianna Fáil leaders met that same evening and rushed a statement to the papers next day, which showed that they would have offered the same bribe and that they were prepared to stand over the Government's proposals in that connection.
One of the Departments which shows an increase in the present Book of Estimates is the Department of Defence. The Minister for Finance dealt with the increase in that Department and in a number of other Departments. He dealt with the increases which were necessary for what he described as stock piling. Deputies opposite have criticised the amount shown in the Book of Estimates and I think we may safely anticipate that during the discussion on the Estimates, which will come along later, their attitude this year will be precisely the same as it has been for the last few years, namely, that they will criticise the Budget and the Book of Estimates on the grounds that expenditure is too high, and when the various Estimates come to be discussed they will press the Minister to spend more money on this, that and the other.
During the past year a number of Fianna Fáil Deputies have spoken with regard to our needs in relation to the question of defence. I think the total increase in the Department of Defence is something over £1,000,000, and it is clear from the Estimates that whatever criticism had to be made by Deputies opposite, all the time when criticism was being made, action was being taken by the Government in an effort to get whatever we could, by way of armaments, to prepare the ground and to prepare plans should any emergency situation come upon us. Credit for doing that was not given to the Government by Fianna Fáil Deputies during the past year. I should like to say that I think that of all the speeches made in relation to Government policy and Government activity, the most scandalous speeches—and I am using a mild word when I use the word "scandalous"—were made by Deputies opposite in relation to the question of defence. It was not merely that the bona fides of the Minister for Defence were questioned but the bona fides of every member of the Government and of Deputies supporting the Government were also questioned and the suggestion was made, not only once but on a number of occasions, by different Fianna Fáil Deputies that this Government were deliberately, for reasons known to themselves, setting out on a policy designed to leave this country defenceless, in the event of another emergency breaking upon us. Deputy MacEntee, with a little less subtlety than his leader, said so in terms that were unmistakable. Speaking at a convention of the Fianna Fáil Party in the Dublin South-East constituency, as reported in the Irish Press on the 3rd May, 1950, he said:—
"When we find this policy of reckless borrowing, aggravated by a dishonest and improvident refusal to make proper provision for repayment, is associated with contemptuous neglect of the essentials of the nation's defence, we may ask ourselves what is the meaning of it all. Is it a co-ordinated plan to justify and make easy the occupation of this country in the event of war?"
That was the suggestion made by Deputy MacEntee in May last at a Fianna Fáil convention in his constituency. If that suggestion were made by Deputy MacEntee only, I do not think anyone over here would take it seriously nor do I think anyone in the country would take it seriously because we all know Deputy MacEntee well, but the next person who spoke along these lines, who spoke in a similar vein but in a very much vaguer way was the leader of the Fianna Fáil Party, Deputy de Valera. He spoke at Ennis on the following month and is reported in the Irish Press of the 30th June, 1950, as follows:—
"Such is their attitude (meaning the attitude of the Government) that people are often suspicious of it, that they do not desire to have us as strong as we could be made."
Who are the people who are suspicious? Is he referring to the people such as Deputy MacEntee addressed in the convention of the Fianna Fáil Party? He does not elaborate on that particular point. He uses a typical "Dáil Reporter" phrase—"people are suspicious".
The next person to follow the Party line was Deputy Childers, who spoke at Clonbroney, Longford, and whose speech was reported in the Irish Press of the 29th August, 1950, as follows:—
"If they (again referring to the Government) had any sincere desire for unity, the least they could do was to convince the Six County Unionists that day by day the Twenty-Six County Republic was not becoming the soft under-belly of the 32 Counties and, indeed, of both the island peoples."
He went on, later in his speech, in case that reference might appear to be as vague as Deputy de Valera's, to say:
"At the moment, the defenceless condition of the country was a magnificent contribution to Partition and a direct aid to Russia."
Then we had Deputy de Valera coming back to the attack, as reported on the 11th December, 1950, again in the Irish Press. He was speaking this time in Roscommon. Here we had the fangs bared in no uncertain manner. There was no vagueness about it this time. He is reported as saying:
"Indeed, the lack of preparation on the part of the present Government would make one believe that they want us to be defenceless."
He had the grace to add:
"I hope that is not true."
The suggestion running through these four or five speeches which I have quoted is that the members of this Government were deliberately embracing a policy which was designed to leave this country defenceless in the event of war, that they were pursuing an economic policy which had that as its object, that they were afraid to spend money on defence, and that they were afraid to increase taxation for that particular purpose. The Book of Estimates shows quite clearly that that is not so. I hope that the Deputies who made those particularly vile speeches will have the grace, some time during the course of this discussion, to apologise to the Government for those suggestions.
Lastly, I want to refer to a speech made by a member of the Fianna Fáil National Executive. I do not think I am allowed to refer to him by name. He is not a member of this House but he is the editor of one of the Fianna Fáil Party organs. He declared, speaking at Mountmellick, as reported in the Irish Press to-day:
"In normal world conditions this state of affairs would be serious—in present circumstances it may prove disastrous for this nation. We have a weak Government—weak from top to bottom. This will not be lost on certain foreign powers. Because of his obvious weakness, Mr. Costello is evidently prepared to jeopardise our freedom. It should be remembered, of course, that Mr. Costello did not participate in the fight for independence."
That is the typical type of crossroad effort which one would expect from the National Executive of Fianna Fáil. I want to finish by saying this: if the coming together of different Parties in this House, particularly of Deputies, many of whom had fought on different sides in the Civil War, did nothing else but get away from a type of mentality in public life which was always going to look behind and ask: "What did you do in 1916?" and "Where were you in 1916?" and eliminate that from public life, it was worth forming this Government. As far as I am concerned I will always be proud as a member of the Fine Gael Party that we were able in 1948 to join with Clann na Poblachta, with Clann na Talmhan and with Labour, to join with Deputies many of whom would have disagreed with the leaders and founders of the Cumann na nGaedheal Party away back when this State was being founded. I do not think that the type of speech which I have quoted should be made in Irish public life to-day. It certainly should not be made by a person who is only the same age as myself. He has no right to jeer at or gibe at people who were in public life in the early days of this State.
I do not feel any bitterness for people, no matter which side they took in the Civil War. I am prepared to pay all honour and respect to those soldiers who fought for Irish freedom and Irish independence in the past. I am prepared to pay equal honour to a man like the present Taoiseach who, in his own way, as Attorney-General in the first Irish Government was responsible for the formation of this State, responsible for the work done in the Statute of Westminster, and responsible for a lot of the constitutional development which Deputy de-Valera, senior, and other Deputies on the Fianna Fáil benches have claimed credit for ever since. I hope that that type of effort will not be made in the future, and I hope that that type of speech is going to die out.
The Deputy is speaking about one who is not a member of this House.
I merely want to express my contempt for that kind of utterance, whether he is a member of the House or not.
The man can be identified, but cannot answer.
The man I am referring to is in a position to answer, and I sincerely hope and trust that he will.
But not under privilege.
The Deputy did everything but name him.
Thar aon Aire Airgeadais a bhí sa Dáil seo riamh, is Aire gan náire an tAire seo—agus deir an seanfhocal sa Ghaeilg, "do dhuine gan náire, is fusa a ghnó a dhéanamh". Nuair a bhím ag éisteacht le cainteoirí ó bhinnsí Fhine Gael sa díospóireacht seo, téann m'aigne siar go dtí na blianta nuair a bhí an Páirtí sin mar Fhreasura annso: Téann mo chuimhne siar ar óráidí a chualamar ó bhinnse tosaigh Fhine Gael nuair a bhí Vóta i gCunntas dá thairiscint don Dáil ag Aire Airgeadais i Rialtas Fhianna Fáil, faoin ualach uabhásach a bhí á leagadh ag an Rialtas san ar an bpobal. Ní raibh duine b ghlóraí ná ba ghéire ag seinm an phuirt sin ná an tAire a tháinig os comhair na Dála an tseachtain seo caite leis an Vóta i gCunntas so, an ceann is aoirde a loirg aon Aire riamh ó 1922.
Beyond any other Minister for Finance that we ever had in this country, one would expect some semblance of shame from the Minister who introduced this Vote on Account in view of his pronouncements in the past and of the pronouncements of leading members of the Fine Gael Party when they were in opposition about taxation and about our financial position. But we had not any apology from the Minister for presenting us with a bill of this nature. As regards its size, it is an all-time record, the biggest that we have seen since 1922, when Votes on Account and Books of Estimates were circulated here for the first time. When I tried to examine these figures, my mind went back to the years when Fine Gael was in opposition, back to 1946 and 1947 and to the speeches delivered by various Fine Gael Deputies in connection with the discussion on Votes on Account and the proposals of the Fianna Fáil Minister for Finance in his Budget statement. I remember the talk there was about squandermania when the total figure to be got from the taxpayer was nothing like what it is now. The last year that Fianna Fáil were in office the total figure was £65,000,000. In this Book of Estimates, we have a total of something like £83,000,000 which the people are expected to provide this year and, in addition to that, there will be a further £9,000,000 or £10,000,000 to provide for the Central Fund services.
Some of the promises made by the Fine Gael Front Bench when in Opposition should be brought to their notice and they should give some explanation to the people of the volte face which has taken place. When Deputy McGilligan became Minister for Finance in 1948 he said that his policy was to be one of “economy and retrenchment”. Is this an example of the policy of economy and retrenchment which we were to see when Deputy McGilligan became Minister for Finance? It is a very queer example of it. Suggestions were invited as to how economies could be made. There were suggestions made by Fine Gael speakers when in Opposition and it might be no harm to bring them before the Minister for Finance now. He might even at this late hour consider some of them. I admit that some of the suggestions made by his colleagues which I am going to remind him of now might not make very substantial economies, but they might help him to do something. One of them was referred to already by Deputy Childers. It was made at Moneygall, County Offaly, and was reported in the Wicklow People of 8th March, 1947—four years ago:
"Ministries must be reduced rather than increased. These new Ministeries (meaning Health and Social Welfare) are extravagant and expensive toys. The Ministry for Lands should be back with Agriculture. The Ministry for Posts and Telegraphs is an unwarrantable development. Whether the Army could not be in a common department with the police in times of peace should be explored."
That was Deputy T.F. O'Higgins, now Minister for Defence. There is a suggestion from a colleague of the Minister for Finance which, if pursued, would yield an economy. It would be a meagre economy, I admit, when one considers the astronomical figures we are presented with here. However, it could be considered as a beginning in implementing the policy of economy and retrenchment announced in February, 1948. The adoption of the suggestion of the Minister's colleague of course might interfere seriously with the delicate equilibrium of the Coalition structure, and I am sure it is unlikely to be accepted. It is only one of the Fine Gael pronouncements which have been thrown into the discard.
There were other suggestions from various members of the present Government when in opposition. Deputy Mulcahy, as he was then, said that Fine Gael proposed as the first step that expenditure on every Government Department should be rationed, when speaking at Callan, County Kilkenny, on 30th January, 1948. We have only to examine the Book of Estimates to see what happened about that rationing. The rationing is going on all right, but it was increased all round and increased very considerably. For instance, the Department of External Affairs in 1941-42 cost £86,596; in 1946-7 it was up to £128,568; last year it was £359,350; and this year we are being asked for £376,800 for that Department—up and up every year, particularly since the Coalition took office.
It is giving good service now.
I think the Department of External Affairs did far better service when it was headed by the then Taoiseach and when the cost was practically one-third of what it is now. That is a good example of the implementation of this rationing, spoken of by Deputy Mulcahy, as he was then, at Callan on 30th January, 1948. The Minister for Finance, when he brought his first Vote on Account before the Dáil in 1948, stated that he would find economies in the Department of External Affairs, but there were very queer economies made. In any case, when Fianna Fáil was the Government, there was no separate Minister for that Department and the Department of Health and the Department of Social Welfare were run by the one Minister. Of course, again, the delicate equilibrium of the Coalition structure would not allow for going back to that system. They were economies, at any rate, that could be made and, if rumours flowing around are true, there might be an opportunity for implementing some of them now.
One of the principal reasons why I wanted to speak in this debate was to discuss a subject which is very important for the constituency I represent, and that is the question of the price of milk supplied by dairy farmers to creameries. Various Coalition speakers have been talking about the increases that were given all round since this Government took office. But there is one very deserving section of the community, one very important section of the community, that has got nothing by way of an increase. The price at present in operation for milk supplied to creameries was fixed on 1st April, 1947, by the Fianna Fáil Minister for Agriculture. It was fixed at ½ per gallon for milk supplied in the summer months and ¼ for milk supplied in the winter months. Nobody can deny that there was justification for the increase granted then. Dairy farmers considered that it was a tardy increase. Many of them, particularly those purporting to represent the interests of the dairy farmers, were not satisfied and made the welkin ring because of the low level at which the Minister fixed the price. If the increase granted then was deserved, surely the demand being made now is doubly justified.
That matter will arise on the Adjournment and, I presume, also on the Estimate for the Minister for Agriculture.
I merely intended to refer to it briefly. I thought I was in order in dealing with it.
General economic and financial policy.
This is the dairying industry which is supposed to be the basis of the agricultural industry.
May we take it then that this will not be repeated on the Estimate?
I will not go very far with it. It has been said time and time again that dairying is the centrepiece of the agricultural industry. It is for that reason that I refer to it now. When the Estimate is introduced it will be too late to induce the Government or the Minister to do anything. The dairying year is regarded as opening on 1st April. We shall hardly reach upon the Estimate for the Minister for Agriculture before that date. I want to know now will anything be done to meet the demands made by the dairy farmers? The Minister has refused to see the representatives of the producers' organisation or discuss the matter with them. It would be very desirable if he did discuss it with them, since that organisation is representative of the entire milk producing community, irrespective of Party or politics. They should be heard.
Production costs in the dairying industry have increased very considerably. When the cost of living increases in the urban areas, various sections of industrial workers make applications through their organisations for increases in wages to meet the rise in the cost of living. When the cost of production in agriculture goes up the farmers, particularly the dairy farmers, have no redress. When Deputy Smith was Minister for Agriculture he gave them an increase in April, 1947. The present Minister for Agriculture tried to short circuit their demand last year for an increase by actually proposing a reduction. Production costs this year are literally soaring, and everything affecting the farmers' costs of production has increased. In some cases we have brought about that increase ourselves by legislation, such as that providing for a weekly half-holiday for agricultural workers and annual holidays. It is probable that those reforms had to come, but there is no compensation for the dairy farmer to make him more content with his lot. I am afraid that we will have the position again next year of finding ourselves with insufficient butter to meet the ration, and we will be compelled once more to go outside and pay a very high price for something we should produce out of our own resources. Possibly we may not be able to get the butter next year. I hope those Deputies supporting the Government, who in the years gone by were ardent spokesmen for the dairying industry, will make their weight felt now and will see that the demands of the farmers are met, particularly the reasonable demands for a reasonable increase made by the dairy farmers. Those Deputies have failed to use their influence so far to compel the Government they are supporting to give justice to that very important section of our community. There is no indication in this Vote on Account that anything will be done for the dairy farmers. The time is running out and the dairy farmers want to know where they stand. If some indication is given now it may have the effect of ensuring that there will not be a butter shortage next year and we will not be compelled to go outside and pay an enhanced price for a commodity that should be produced off our own land.
With regard to the Vote on Account in general, Fine Gael—and this Vote on Account has been introduced by a Fine Gael Minister for Finance— played one tune when they were in opposition. The £65,000,000 collected by Fianna Fáil in the last year they were in office was, according to the present Minister for Education, squandermania, and he said that Fine Gael would reduce that figure by £10,000,000. It is now £83,000,000, an all-time high record in my recollection. All the promises made to reduce taxation and the cost of the public services during the election campaign were a fraud and a deception on the people. The Fine Gael Party should be honest enough and decent enough now, when their Minister finds he cannot reduce taxation, to admit that they were all wrong then.
I have listened to the speeches on this Vote on Account. Most of the speeches on the Opposition Benches were more or less on the same lines as those of the last general election. Practically every Fianna Fáil Deputy harped on what Fine Gael said before the last election. The ordinary man does not worry much about what any politican said during an election campaign. He takes it all with a grain of salt. The whole idea of candidates during an election campaign is to win votes. The better his speech suits the farmers the more votes he will get, and so on. That is as old as history. The ordinary people do not worry.
I would prefer to see Opposition Deputies endeavouring to discover why this Vote on Account is so high. Apparently they do not worry about that aspect at all. The one thing that struck me about the speeches made by the Fianna Fáil Deputies was their sadness and their bitterness. I can understand their being sad because it is obvious that this money is being spent on reproductive work; it is obvious that wages are good, that the bulk of our people have good employment, that the prices the farmers are getting are satisfactory and the country generally is in pretty good trim. Nobody is worrying very much. The money is in circulation and is being spent on very good purposes. I agree that it is difficult for Fianna Fáil to see all that and not realise that the ground is slowly but steadily slipping from under them. There is no doubt at all about that. I know that the activity of the present Government is literally breaking their hearts. They cannot understand the unity that exists. They cannot understand how the Government continues to stick together. The fact of the matter is, of course, that this Government has unity of purpose. Their aim and ambition is to give good service to the people. The Government is composed of people with brains, ability and initiative and those qualities are being harnessed to the task of regenerating the country. We are in the happy position of seeing work being done which was neglected for 25 or 30 years. The older generation who took part in achieving the freedom of the country waited a long time for this day. We now see being realised objects that our ancestors died to attain. We have a peaceful happy little country. There is plenty of work at reasonably good wages and good conditions. This Government have done that. They have opened the jail gates and cleared out all political prisoners and have created unity and peace. What more could be expected or desired? I am quite satisfied that the people are confident that they are getting a fair and square deal. We are not afraid to face the people at any moment. We know whom they will return to office.
When one reviews the various Estimates for the Departments one realises that money is being spent, almost lavishly, but to good purpose. No one should worry about the expenditure of money so long as there is a full return for it. I do not worry as to whether an Estimate is big or small. The country does not worry about that. The important thing is that it should be money well spent on reproductive work, in keeping our people at home, in developing industry. That certainly is the case at present. There is no emigration unless one takes into consideration those who have gone because they want to emigrate, not because there is no work for them here. There is work for every man and woman who is able and willing to work, at good and reasonable wages. There is no reason why any man should leave the country. There are always those who want to go to the ends of the earth. I say more power to them. Let them go and earn their living in any way they like. That is freedom.
Agriculture was in a depressed condition over a long number of years. What is the position of agriculture to-day? Our farmers were never in better trim. They are getting good prices for almost all their produce, with the exception of eggs. They are not worrying about that. They will get a good price for eggs in time. Is it not a happy thing that farmers should get good prices and that their labouring men can eat reasonably cheap eggs for their breakfast? They could not do that for 16 years under Fianna Fáil because there were no eggs. Our farmers are free from compulsion, free to work their land as they think fit, to cultivate those crops that they think best, not at the dictation of a Minister for Agriculture or officials.
There are better wages for farm workers than there were under Fianna Fáil. Wages are increasing as the cost of living increases. Agricultural workers are getting annual holidays and half-holidays and they are reasonably content. With steady prices, contented workers, the country is on the upward trend.
When the land rehabilitation project will have been in operation for a few years there will be almost full production, which will solve most of our problems. Half of the land was waste but under that scheme of rehabilitation, of fertilising, liming, surveying, the entire land of the country will be made productive. Then, with more highly educated farmers, we can look forward to great things, irrespective of whether this Government or another Government is in power. A foundation is being laid on which future generations can build. For 700 years this country was kept down by force and was in a backward condition. Now we are on the upward march and are fast catching up on countries that are years ahead of us in research. The people, although they are paying big amounts, are satisfied that they are getting a good return. That is all that matters. The Local Authorities (Works) Act has been of the greatest help to agriculture. Under that Act a great deal of drainage and other important work is being carried out.
There was a good deal of discussion here in past years about bog development. I am glad that bog development eased off for a year or two until all the racketeers and the rackets were cleared out. I certainly agree that, during the war, turf had to be cut but when we remember the position a few years ago we must admit that it was time that position was brought to an end. Who derived the benefit from the bog scheme? It was Bowmakers and others who lent the money to the unfortunate dupes who bought lorries. The big financiers reaped the benefit. I know one business concern that was able to buy up every petrol pump for miles around and who acquired a complete monopoly in petrol for the bog areas in my part of the country. That was nothing more than a racket and a public disgrace. Was not it time that such things should cease? Now that bog development is being resumed I hope a proper check will be kept on every phase of the activity, that the people will get a fair deal, that the men will be paid decent wages, that they will be properly housed and that the people will get their turf at a reasonable price and in good condition and that only those bogs which will give a fair return will be developed. There are many bogs which do not deserve the name and which contain only spodach, which should not be put on the market. It was through the sale of that type of turf that the public were fleeced in the past.
There is a housing drive such as there has never been before, to house in the quickest time, in proper hygienic houses, workers of all types. There is a scheme whereby farmers, big and small, and white collar workers can build houses for themselves with reasonable State aid. All over the country, building is being carried out and new houses are being erected. The whole landscape is being changed. It is grand to see sanitary dwellings taking the place of old insanitary thatched houses. That is the work of the present Government. We want to see it going ahead, and it will go ahead.
When we came into power, the aged and the sick were crying out for further assistance. They could not live on what they received. Fianna Fáil could not afford to give them any more. We said that it was a shame and that when we got into power we would do it. The first thing we did as a Government was to make the old, the sick and the infirm a first charge on the State. We are not satisfied with the position yet. They will get further increases, as is only right. For the last two years there has been talk of a social security scheme. The Minister has brought in a scheme that we can be proud of. The Minister has given us a scheme that we will have every reason to be proud of; the workers and the farmers are proud of it.
The Deputy must not discuss legislation.
I would like now to refer to our hospitalisation scheme. Under Fianna Fáil there was good money allowed to lie idle, the money intended for the erection of hospitals. That was left lying idle when it could be utilised erecting hospitals. The hospitals were not built by Fianna Fáil. When this Government came in they decided that that money was lying idle long enough, and they were determined to give the people the hospital services that they deserved. Excellent work is going ahead all over the country and we are proud of it.
We have had frequent references to the Army and we are told we should have a big, efficient Army marching up and down the barrack squares. We do not believe in that. We are a peaceful, law-abiding people. This is a small country. Any equipment we need in the way of arms or ammunition, we must get it from across the water. There is hardly a water pistol to be had here, not to mention a shooting pistol. What about the dud ammunition—millions of it—that came to this country from across the water under Fianna Fáil? There is not a word about that to-day. In their time they had thousands of men marching and they supplied them with dud ammunition. That was a poor position.
That ammunition was replaced.
We know why you got that ammunition—it was duds who received it. We now have a fine Army doing its job in a quiet, efficient way. We have a sound foundation for a bigger Army. The country does not need a big Army. What the country needs is contented people, people who will fight like tigers if they are molested at any time—as they have shown in the past. All you want is a contented, well-fed and vigilant people. They will give a full return. I am satisfied that we can build around our present Army a group of fighting men of whom we will be proud, just as in the past. We have nothing to be ashamed or frightened of.
This is a big Vote on Account. I would like it to be smaller and I would like if we could reach the stage when these Estimates will diminish instead of increase, but when the money is put to a proper purpose, when it gives good employment to our people and when they give us a full return, then we are doing good work. I advise Fianna Fáil to give up worrying about the speeches that were made in the past. We all remember their election programme in 1932. Their election in that year was the greatest mistake this country ever made. We all remember the time they would not come into the Dáil or Seanad.
What has that to do with the Vote on Account? That was 19 years ago.
I am pointing to the false promises that were made at that time. I told the people then that all those promises should be taken with a grain of salt. In the short period in which this Government has been in office great work has been done. The workers are receiving decent wages. There is contentment, peace and security, and we are satisfied the country is definitely making progress.
Major de Valera
Unless I misunderstand the Deputy who has just spoken, he seems to adopt a very cynical attitude indeed to promises made by political representatives. If there is one thing more than another about this Government, in its financial, as well as in its other affairs, it is its cynical disregard for promises, and if there is one bit of damage more than another that has been done by this Government, which is likely to be the hardest to remedy, it is the damage done to public morale in such a cynical and irresponsible way.
I can start with the speech made by the Minister for Finance on the occasion of his first Vote on Account when he came in with the new Government three years ago. If one relates that and the protestations of himself and his Party to what followed, one gets ample, uncontrovertible proof and substance for the charge which I am making. I say again that it is a disreputable, a cynical and a damaging thing to make reckless promises, and that the making of such promises inevitably has a damaging effect on public morale.
It is time you woke up to that.
Major de Valera
It is time you woke up to it, and the people will wake you up to it. We kept our promises. Up to the time you became the Government there were Governments in this country which at least would exercise their responsibility and which would have the courage to do the unpopular thing if it were in the people's interests. The emergency was hardly over when a number of persons from all the groups on the far side of the House went recklessly before the people of the country, trying to exploit the situation which then existed. They refused to see the difficulties of the post-war situation. It was enough for them to see certain things were happening and the reasons were secondary, or they brushed them aside. They exploited grievances—if you like to call them that—in order to get votes, and they rashly promised remedies that were impossible of achievement. In that way they damaged public morale and they prevented, to a large extent, the effort which should then have been made to build up this country, an effort which, if it had been made, would have placed this country in a happier position.
Of all the Parties involved, the Fine Gael Party is the most culpable. It was the most dishonest in its promises and it should have known better, because at least it had the experience of Government and had not the excuse that, perhaps, some of the other Parties had, that they did not realise or could not have realised all the difficulties.
I will mention the cost of living. If this Government are to-day having difficulty in facing this problem, in handling this admittedly complex and difficult problem, if they are unable to handle it in any degree effectively, that is largely because of the demoralisation which they, and particularly Fine Gael, caused in the community at that time, and have continued to cause up to the present. The exploitation of that difficulty, the pretence that it was a problem capable of immediate solution by a mere wave of the hand, and the false promise that it would be solved and that they had the means of solving it —all that is now recognised.
The same thing can be said in regard to turf and in regard to agriculture. It is interesting to go back and see what the Minister for Finance said at that time. It was a cynical approach—that is the only way it can be interpreted now. These protestations were made and surely we were right to expect that some effort would have been made to implement them?
I turn to Volume 110, columns 221-222, Dail Debates. Referring to the Estimate of £70,000,000 odd which he presented to the House on that occasion:—
"I have described the Estimate as amazing. I should apply the further terms to it—prodigious and prodigal. When the previous Ministers the last time found themselves with an addition of some £16,000,000 as compared with the previous book, it apparently never occurred to them that it was possible to subtract anything from any of the several headings. The whole idea appeared to be a complacent system of accepting increases; of not searching out for any possible decreases and of securing them from time to time. The attitude of the present Government towards this booklet and towards Government expenditure generally may be described in this way, that we want, first of all, to ensure retrenchment over as wide a field as possible. We are looking for economies in public expenditure, save where that expenditure is going to be reproductive or where it is socially desirable. Our second objective is to reduce the cost of living. A factor in the heavy burden of the cost of living which people have had to submit to for many years past, is the amazing increase in the cost of Government spending."
All that was undoubtedly true at the time.
Major de Valera
The quotation goes on:—
"Therefore, we hope if we can reduce public expenditure to do something to ease the burden on the masses of the community. Our third objective is to transform some of this wasteful expenditure and non-productive and, possibly, unnecessary services, over to the field of production, to speed up production, which has been running at a very low level, to as high a point as possible in a limited number of years."
Take the progress of the Minister for Finance in the period. He starts to talk about retrenchment. He allows the amounts in his three Estimates to rise year after year. As far as one can see, on going through the figures, he has just simply let them rise. There has been no serious evidence of any effort at retrenchment and, of course, it is unnecessary to comment on the cost of living. Everybody knows what the position is there. Relate that to what this Minister and, particularly, the Fine Gael Party had been preaching when they went to the country. They went as the Anglophile—the believers-in-the-Commonwealth, if you like—Party whose programme was to be retrenchment. Their big criticism was the amount of money that was being spent by the Government. Economies in the public service were something about which we heard a lot at the time. There was talk about the cost of living and similar things. They then came into office and, mark you, the Minister, who made this speech, was a Minister with a great number of years' previous experience as a Minister in the Cumann na nGaedheal Government. He could never plead in his defence that he was inexperienced but nevertheless, after assuming office, he comes and presents himself still on this conservative basis which he maintains for a considerable period of time.
I recollect—I forget exactly the occasion, but it was either a year or two years ago—when some question arose on one of the financial debates. The Minister for External Affairs intervened with some of the financial ideas about which he had been fond of speaking. In the ultimate they led to questions to the Minister for Finance who, I think, was responsible for the debate. Ultimately the question was asked: "Which of you is to be taken as expressing the Government's view on this matter?" because, up to that time, the Minister for Finance was still, apparently, adhering to the conservative Fine Gael approach. When confronted with that problem, as far as I can recollect, the Minister gave an answer somewhat on the lines of the man and the wife in the old story who were asked who was the one. The Minister for Finance in this case gave the answer that he was the one. This is what the public were led to believe was the financial policy of this Government. This is the basis upon which that Party secured its votes equally with its Commonwealth policy, as it called it. This was the Party which held out to business people and others, during its first year in office, at any rate, that this was the Government's line of policy and naturally induced them to act in this regard. What is the result? The result is weakness on the part of the Minister for Finance, whenever he is confronted with a difficulty vis-a-vis his other colleagues, leading to prodigal spending and unbridled borrowing.
One could very well imagine what that same Minister for Finance would say if he were sitting in these benches and an opponent of his were to give the same performance in this matter as he is giving. Let Deputies, who have been in this House for a number of years, just imagine the speech the Minister for Finance would make under those circumstances. The fact is that, not only has he increased Government spending, not only has he been prepared to open the purse where it is politically expedient to do so, but he has allowed finance policy to drift along because, quite obviously, there is no purposeful drift whatever in his financial policy. He lets it drift along in such a way that the spending of the community is, as he admits himself and adverts to, not in the most advantageous channels. His colleague, the Minister for Industry and Commerce, can point out, with some truth, the large amount of spending under certain non-essential heads, as he did at a function—I think it was at the annual dinner of the Irish Association of Advertising Agencies on 30th January last. One wonders if that is not just another manifestation of the cynical attitude of this Fine Gael wing of the Government. One wonders about that type of spending meaning a buoyant revenue, spending on such things as gambling and drink, which carry higher taxes and mean more into his coffers.
One wonders whether the cynicism does not go to the extent of wilfully encouraging such spending to help him to meet the financial burdens which his ill-considered drift brings upon him and upon the community. That picture of promise, that picture of pretence following promise, that picture of utter and cynical failure in performance must indeed be damaging, and has indeed been damaging, to public morale and to the confidence of the people in their own institutions. What confidence can the people of a country have in a Government composed of Parties, who—I can scarcely find a word to describe it—so badly, so meanly, so disreputably and in such low fashion set out to win the confidence of the ordinary people by these tricks; let them pay the price; and then are—as you all are at the moment —afraid to face them?
Last week, Deputy Ryan said that the Government were not spending enough.
Major de Valera
It is a damaging thing for any people to be put in the position in which they must fail to have confidence in the Government that should be leading them.
Turn to agriculture, and we get the same type of thing. Deputies opposite probably have not forgotten the representations with regard to oats and there was one period when the same thing was done with regard to potatoes. We are now hearing about eggs and egg producers. Farmers and agricultural producers were induced directly by statements by the Minister for Agriculture to take a certain course and they are not well launched upon that course when they find that they have been put in a position in which they incur loss. The oats is an old story; the potatoes are an old story; but poultry are a living example of it. I realise that it is very hard for certain Deputies to have to stand behind the Minister for Agriculture. They have my sympathy, but nevertheless they are standing there.
Deputies opposite will also remember the promises and the representations made with regard to feeding stuffs, but there is many a farmer in the country at the moment who knows what the price of maize is and how it is working out. There are Deputies who know the difficulties being created owing to the shortage of feeding stuffs for animals.
Admittedly—let me hasten to admit it and let me not be guilty of what is so characteristic of the Fine Gael Party—there was a weather factor in that this year. Let us make all due allowance for that, but the weather, we know, can be good one year and bad another and it is no excuse for not looking ahead, for not making preparations, for not running the country on some business-like lines and for drifting from day to day at the mercy of every wind that blows.
Now let us take turf. I turn to the speech of the Minister for Finance in the same debate about which I have spoken and I quote this paragraph at column 603:—
"I have heard Deputy Bartley and Deputy Breslin. They said that whether we want turf to burn or not, we must cut the stuff. About the time of the famine, a series of things called follies were built, buildings for which there was no real use. I could also perpetrate follies by cutting turf on one bog and sending it to another and then bringing it back again for the sake of giving employment. Is that the fatuity which is going to be the basis of the policy which is going to be carried out?"
What happened three years ago? Three years ago this Government, obviously without any proper examination of the problem—and in fairness to the other Parties, though they must take the blame for having supported it, I must say that it was again characteristic of this Fine Gael mentality—took a sudden decision which meant that overnight the small turf producer and the worker engaged in turf production were displaced.
That was a Fianna Fáil decision.
Major de Valera
The Deputy is very fond of saying that. I am not saying that some readjustment of the situation would not have been necessary, but what you are guilty of is doing a thing like that without making adequate provision for (a) safeguarding the future of that industry and (b) safeguarding the worker and small producer involved. It is not for your adjustment or attempts to change that you are being criticised; it is for the way you did it, in order to give the colour that Fine Gael was implementing its policy. Overnight, the thing was done, without any regard to the future of that industry and without any regard to the workers and small producers involved. Was that helpful to public morale?
What is the position in regard to public morale at the moment, arising out of that situation? I will tell you what that position is. We had this decision, with an aggravation of the situation by the cutting of the road grants. You did two things and there was no excuse for them and there is less excuse now than ever, in view of your prodigal spending.
I do not think the Leas-Cheann Comhairle is a spendthrift at all.
He has not got it to spend.
Major de Valera
Deputy O'Higgins finds me a little hurtful, but I will make my remarks through the Chair. Deputies opposite will recollect that the first effect of that Fine Gael decision, coupled with the cutting of the road grants——
What decision? You have not told us?
Major de Valera
Deputy Sweetman wants the whole story again. With your permission, Sir, I will give it and I shall be obliged if Deputy Sweetman and Deputy O'Higgins will refrain from interruption, because I might become nasty. I said that it was criminal, irresponsible and damaging to the morale of the country to stop turf production without making adequate provision for the small producer and worker engaged in that industry. I said that that, coupled with the decision to cut the road grants, and the cutting of the road grants was exceedingly damaging, and I said that there was no excuse for it because it was done under the colour and guise of saving money. Deputy Giles and other Deputies were talking here about spending money in the proper channel. The money has been spent and has been lashed out. We had a question the other day and we were shown how the money was lashed out.
Is it being badly spent?
Yes.
Major de Valera
These operations were stopped on the plea of economy. We have the turf works stopped and the turf workers demoralised and we have no economy.
Does the Deputy say that the money was badly spent?
Major de Valera
What the Deputy says is that Deputy McQuillan from across the Shannon was a party to that decision which involved the stopping of turf production, with consequent damage to the turf producers and workers, and the cutting of the road grants, and he cannot get out of that.
Is the money being badly spent?
Deputy de Valera is entitled to speak without interruption.
Major de Valera
I feel exceedingly complimented at the irritation which the truth has obviously caused to my friends on the opposite side.
Does the Deputy not know an untruth?
Major de Valera
Every word I have said is the truth and the whole truth. The trouble is that the Labour Party and Clann na Poblachta must take the responsibility for that Fine Gael move.
They put you out anyhow.
Major de Valera
Look at the cost to those people whose votes you seduced with your false promises, for doing that.
There are 77 who will never come back.
A Deputy
There were 11 more.
Major de Valera
Apart from that serious aspect of it, there is this desperately serious aspect from the point of view of public morale and the task which has to be faced now and which it seems we will have to face in the future. The first effect of that was unemployment in the rural areas and immediate emigration. We have had those figures time and time again and I need not give them now, but the incontrovertible fact is that under the present Government emigration, which they promised to reduce, expanded and more people went under them than in the last two years of the last Government. That was brought about very largely by the decision, and the implementing of the decision, to stop these turf schemes, without making any other adequate provision for the workers and the small producers involved. Deputies who live west of the Shannon and in turf areas know that that went a large way to destroying the confidence of people in turf. It went a long way to undo the confidence which we had built up in native fuel, thanks to the stress and necessity of the emergency.
Coupled with that, the Fine Gael Party again were at pains, on every occasion before they secured office, to decry turf as a fuel in the city areas. On every possible occasion they tried to minimise its value and represent it as useless and as an imposition on the town dweller. They not only demoralised the producer by the action which I have mentioned but they demoralised the consumer by their propaganda about the fuel and by their determination to set the towns back on turf at all costs. They added to that their campaign about the fuel dumps, the fuel reserves that came in very useful at a later date. Now, at the present hour, faced with the situation that was always a possibility and that in any event should have been guarded against as a matter of routine, we have urgent and extraordinary efforts being made to get coal and we have belated efforts to get turf produced and we have a reversal on this turf policy. The trouble is this—and this is the danger and the thing that I criticise the Government for and for which I say they are not worthy of the confidence of the people if they are guilty of such lack of foresight as brings us to the present position—having demoralised both producer and consumer, the task of producing turf now is infinitely harder than it would have been if a rational, objective, sensible approach had been taken to this matter. No; they were too keen to show that Fianna Fáil were wrong and too keen to give an apparent justification to Fine Gael's shortsightedness and the net result to-day is that you have a near fuel famine in this country.
Is the Deputy trying to stop the turf drive now?
Major de Valera
I am not; I am trying to encourage it and tried on several occasions. The people who discouraged it were those opposite and one of the great difficulties now is to get over the attack and the damage done to public confidence on both sides.
The same thing is having its effect in regard to coal in the city. I understand that there are certain stocks there but, thanks to the shilly-shallying, say one thing one day and another another day attitude of this Government, the Dublin coal merchants—I can only talk about what I hear in the city—do not know their position and the Dublin consumers are not able to get coal. That is the fact in this city at the moment. In other words, the lack of confidence which the Government has created in itself has led to a lack of certainty for business man and for consumer alike—and, of course, it is the ordinary citizen who is paying for it.
The cost of living is another excellent example of the same thing. I might very profitably go back on the history of this matter, shortly, with reference to the Minister for Finance, to just one year ago. I think it was Deputy Cowan or Deputy Lehane, or perhaps both of them, who first mentioned, in this House, approximately a year ago or a little later, I think about May, the trend in the cost of living. It was one of those Deputies who asked a question relating to it from the Minister for Industry and Commerce. The answer which he got —notwithstanding that both the housewives and the unions were by this time calling urgent attention to the problem of the cost of living—was that the prices situation gave cause for satisfaction, or words to that effect. If Deputies want the exact quotation, I can give it: I gave it on a previous occasion, I think, when dealing with the Supplies and Services Bill. That is the key-note, that is the headline which was followed. Although the index did show the trend, the Minister's attitude was: "Everything is happy in the garden".
The next occasion on which the matter came up was on the Taoiseach's Estimate. It is rather interesting, going back on that debate, to notice that the cost-of-living index was up to 102 in May. Some of us raised the matter on the Taoiseach's Estimate. We drew particular attention to a statement by the Minister for External Affairs where he admitted the difficulty and called on the housewives to solve the problem themselves. There was a statement in some detail about that time by the Housewives' Association. The matter was adverted to on the Taoiseach's Estimate, but it was rather significant to note that on that occasion all Ministers steered clear of the problem, perhaps it was in the hope that it would steal by. Meanwhile, as Deputies have seen since, the cost of living continued to rise. Then we had the spectacle of the Parliamentary Secretary coming in here to the debate on the Supplies and Services Bill and basing his whole speech for the Bill on the thesis that, up to August last, the cost of living had not risen. I am not blaming the Parliamentary Secretary; he was merely taking the line of his superior. That is very obvious and nobody could expect him to do anything else. It was, however, an astounding statement and an astounding attitude of the Government to try to bluff the people, because that is nothing less than what it was. That was the idea behind this pretence that the cost of living had not risen and, by inference, that there was no problem to be tackled and dealt with.
Some of us, Deputy Cowan, Deputy Davin, myself and some more on all sides of the House, came in here with a very factual answer to that statement. Taking food, clothing, footwear, one could prove arithmetically, on the official published prices in the Trade Journal, on common knowledge and on the articles priced in the shops by individual Deputies, that the cost of practically every essential item had gone up in the three years this Government was in office. The effect on the public? Well the Deputies know it and well they know that the loss of confidence in this Government to-day, which is so manifest outside this House, is very largely due to their attitude on this problem.
For instance?
Major de Valera
Here is the danger, the serious thing about the whole position, the reason that such an anxiety is abroad: when confronted with this problem, when their bluff was called, they panicked. We had seen for two and a half years the attitude of the Taoiseach, the Minister for Defence and others towards "mythical" wars and difficult situations but immediately they were stampeded over the cost of living there was a statement about an "emergency." That was the excuse for everything overnight. Devaluation was invoked—I will deal with devaluation in a moment—and the Tánaiste came in and made his speech with all the appearance of seriousness and earnestness promising to freeze the price of everything. So many commodities were included that they could not be enumerated. If that is not panic let everyone judge for himself. Then there was an immediate reverse; faced with a difficulty they put in a sudden clause for a tribunal. That again had all the appearance of being ill-considered. The Bill was first introduced without the clause and then with it. The Prices Freeze Order which did not appear until a considerable time later was made retrospective and no sooner was it made retrospective than they started to exempt and speakers to-day have drawn attention to the long list of exemptions.
Take the Tánaiste's speech and the Government's action and see if there is any ground for confidence in them. The grounds for confidence in them can be deduced from their actions and history as I have outlined them.
Did you read the Tánaiste's speech on Friday?
Major de Valera
This is a significant thing and a pointer to what the country might expect at the hands of this undetermined, unforeseeing Government——
Those are mild terms.
Major de Valera
They panicked at the set back which the Parliamentary Secretary's speech gave them. Then on the 30th January we find the Minister for Industry and Commerce standing over every word which his Parliamentary Secretary had said. Take the Irish Times.
Give us the Irish Press.
Major de Valera
The Irish Times would be more acceptable to Fine Gael. I will quote from the Irish Times of the 30th January and it is substantially the same report in all the papers:—
"Defending the Government's actions in regard to prices and the cost of living, the Minister for Industry and Commerce (Mr. Morrissey), declared last night that in no country for which he had been able to get statistics had the advance in prices and living costs since last autumn been less than in the Republic of Ireland....
"Mr. Morrissey defended the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Industry and Commerce (Mr. Liam Cosgrave), who, he said, had taken a big part in the controversy. ‘May I say here, on the first occasion on which I am speaking in public since the passing of the Supplies and Services Act, that I endorse every word uttered by Mr. Cosgrave in that debate in Dáil Éireann. I have already complimented him on his stand, but I feel that it is only fitting that the courage and integrity which he has displayed should receive public recognition from me, for whom he was then deputising.'"
I think it was correct that the Minister should have stood over his Parliamentary Secretary's statement when he was obviously carrying out a policy laid down by his Minister. That fact I should say is creditable to both. From the point of view of the community, however, where are we with this Government when Deputies sitting behind it and even Ministers repudiate it? They rush one way and rush back like frightened animals. They rush one way and another not knowing what way to escape.
The Deputy might be a bit more realistic.
Major de Valera
The cost of living is a very realistic thing. If the Deputy wants me to go into figures again I will be only too happy to oblige him.
No, it has been hard enough to listen for the last half-hour anyway.
Major de Valera
There is yet another example to the damage of public morale. What confidence can the public have in a Government that behaves like this? Look back at devaluation. I remember in this very House a Deputy on this side many months, almost a year, before devaluation giving warning that it might come. Every business man knew for a long time beforehand that there was a possibility, to say the least, of its coming. Everybody knew that such a move was possible, but apparently the Government drifted along complacently into devaluation, and when it broke all the Minister for Finance could do was to give us a very fine explanation over the radio of why he had to bow to the inevitable.
If you were in office you would do the same.
Major de Valera
The time to give warnings of the effects of devaluation was beforehand, and that was the time to head off those difficulties. Incidentally, if Clann na Poblachta had any say in the matter devaluation would have been an ideal opportunity to give effect to their ideas.
Would you change the system?
Major de Valera
That was the time to do it, but you sang dumb like the Minister for Finance. Before it happened was the time to head off its effects and to take appropriate action to minimise them. Instead we got a very excellent dissertation as to why we had to follow suit with the people across the water and devalue. What was the heading in the Irish Independent? I was curious enough to go to the Independent to see what the heading was to the Minister's speech on that occasion and sure enough I was not wrong: “No increase in the cost of living”, a banner assurance by the Minister for Finance. When the crisis came the attitude of the Minister for Finance and of those who supported him was: “We are an agricultural country and devaluation is not going to have any effect on us.” That was the whole tenor of their approach, their whole excuse for inaction. Now to-day the same devaluation is made the excuse for many of our difficulties. Where are we with this Government? We were told when the news broke that its effects would be relatively little and we are told to-day that all our economic difficulties are attributable to devaluation.
Progress reported; Committee to sit again.