It is not a matter for the Budget. The whole thing would not cost £6,000 or £7,000 in a whole year. It would not amount to three times the sum of £6,000. There is one other thing I would refer to and bring into the context, that is, the phrase used by the Minister for Posts and Telegraphs in regard to certain post office charges. He announced one as being an increase in surcharge on telephones from 5 to 25 per cent. and said with regard to it that it was merely to give effect to a decision taken before the change of Government. I know of no decision of the Government effecting an increase from 5 to 25 per cent. in the surcharge on telephones. I know that in a minute I found myself dead against such an increase. If what the Minister meant to say was that there was a general decision that post office charges should be increased so that the deficit in the post office position could be overcome, then he is right in that; but to say that there was a Government decision to increase the surcharge in telephones from 5 to 25 per cent. is, to my mind, a misstatement and I would like to have it corrected at the earliest possible opportunity.
With regard to what is in this piece of legislation, while welcoming it with whatever plusses there are as well as minuses, from the point of view of the taxpayer. I would like to make one or two points. First of all, those who would accept this legislation must remember they are accepting not merely the increase in the personal allowances for married men in Section 2 and the increase in the deductions in respect of children in Section 3 and the allowances in respect of total incomes of persons aged 65 and over in Section 4, but they are also accepting the increase on petrol and other types of oil by 2d. a gallon. The present Minister criticised that when I introduced it in the Budget on the 2nd May and said this was a tax going to bear most heavily on supporters of the Labour Party—he was addressing them —as an increase not only in bus fares but in the cost of transport of goods produced by farmers and by manufacturers and everything the workers consumed.
The present Minister for External Affairs, Deputy Aiken, brought in, somewhat irrelevantly, on this particular petrol tax, this phrase:
"The Minister for Agriculture thought £1,000,000 was a great thing to give 400,000 farmers..."
—in regard to an effort of his to increase the price of milk—
"...but of course he could afford to give £1,800,000 to a few thousand civil servants."
In the context in which that phrase was used, the context of this increased 2d. a gallon on petrol, Deputies are now accepting that, and I understand it is going to be accepted unanimously in this House to-night. The other matter that has been accepted in this piece of legislation is, of course, the remission of estate duties on estates of certain values and the reduction of the tax levied on certain estates of other values and increases on certain higher estates. With regard to that, the present Minister for Finance thought that people were capitalists if they left an estate of £2,000, and held me as far as he could up to public odium and scorn for having agreed to exempt the estates of such capitalists. He held that the people in Crumlin and Kimmage would have to pay increased moneys in bus fares, the cost of transport and taxes imposed on them for the commodities they would consume.
I notice that the Minister has slipped over so easily that he made a mistake in the form of a section which should be obnoxious not only to himself but to those who support him, Section 20. Section 20 is a section which gives effect to the thought of transferring from the Road Fund £300,000 to the Exchequer. That was vigorously contested on every piece of financial legislation in the last three years and Deputies of Fianna Fáil were hoarse with complaint about this raid upon the Road Fund. They complained that the local authorities should get the extra moneys which were being got in by reason of the duty on petrol and the increase in the tax itself. They said that the local authorities were being deprived of what was legitimately theirs because of this raid of £300,000 from the Road Fund. It is remarkable to see how easily the change over can be made. Deputies who used to get hysterical with annoyance over this £300,000 now accept it with equanimity as a proper raid and something which should be taken from the Road Fund to the ease of the Exchequer.
This legislation, however, is remarkable more for what is not in it than for what is. The last time we met the Minister for Finance gave us the present Government's agreement to the arbitration award made with regard to civil servants. He pointed out that the decision had been taken by the previous Administration and they were accepting the award in full even to the date from which it ran, the 15th of January. These increased charges now running have been accepted as running from the 15th January of this year and there was a Government decision that equivalent increases should be given to the Army and to the Guards. That decision had a footnote that a particular decision was not required with regard to teachers because teachers of all grades had arbitration machinery of their own; that arbitration machinery had been set in motion and one of these days would produce an award with regard to these people. I think, however, that the Minister gave us a sum of almost £2,500,000 as being the sum that would fall for payment in this financial year. It will, of course, be increased somewhat, as the award goes back two and a half months before the begining of this financial year. Without counting the teachers, 2.4 or 2.5 million pounds is the sum that will have to be found and which should be found by taxation if the charges falling for payment this year are to be met from revenue derived in the year itself.
In addition, there will be further increases promised by the present Administration. During the last election they made the point that the nation was not being properly looked to, that the defences of the nation were not being accepted in the way they should be. The present Taoiseach said that the civil Defence Forces would have to be enlarged so as to enable them to cope with whatever emergency there might be and the Taoiseach, in his first Press conference, said that the present Government proposed to do the things that the previous Government had not been doing. To bring that down to a concrete figure it was suggested that the Army should be recruited up to 12,000 men, an addition of about 5,000 to the present Army strength. Five thousand additional personnel in the Army strength would certainly run the country into an extra bill of something over £1,000,000, leaving out the increase in pay which the last Civil Service award drags with it as a natural consequence.
There is also the matter of the Guards. For the three years during which I was in the Government I used to hear that we were reducing the strength of the Guards far below what was proper in order to safeguard the community. It was pointed out to me that criminality was still at a high point and that it was very unfair to the people of the community to deprive them of the services of the Guards which the high statistics with regard to crime seemed to make necessary. I assume that that is another thing that will be taken in hand right away and that Guards will be recruited to the proper strength required to deal with crime. If in addition certain Guards are segregated to give police protection to some people who voted for the Government, who because they voted for the Government need police protection, and others are required to give supervision to certain people huddled around the Government extra charges will be required for both that protection and that supervision.
Teachers are an unknown quantity but they should know exactly where they stand with the present Minister, because very frequently during the past three years he bewailed the fact that what was called the Roe Report had not been fully carried out. Undoubtedly they look to him to give full effect to that award as well perhaps as some increase in it necessitated by the increase in the cost of living which the present Minister for Finance many times asserted had taken place. Anyway 2.4 million is enough to go on with regarding these people but by the time the present Minister has made even a shambling effort to fulfil his promises the present 2.4 million should have swollen to 3,500,000.
We are presented with what is called the Social Security Bill, a piece of legislation to give effect to what the recent Tánaiste, Deputy Norton, promised with regard to old age pensioners. The amount of money concerned is about £1,250,000 in the year, and if it is to be brought into effect with any great speed some part of that sum must be found and distributed in this present year. It is one of these indicators of what may happen to a Party when they are three years in Opposition that the present Government find it possible to bring in this piece of legislation at the present time seeing that in October, 1947, when they introduced legislation imposing new taxes to bring in £11,000,000 in a full year they said that they could not find £500,000 to effect some modification in the means test and give some increases to old age pensioners.
In addition to that, of course there are two or three rather important matters. During the election a great deal of play was made with what was called the Government system of black marketing or grey marketing in certain commodities. I have a quotation from one of the speeches, where it was alleged against me that off-ration unsubsidised tea, sugar and butter together with white bread and flour, were being sold at luxury prices in such a way that an advantage was given to well-off citizens over poorer citizens. It was said, of course, that that would be done away with almost immediately, and we no longer would have any of these dual prices, that either the ration would be increased at the fully subsidised rate, or in some way or another whatever quantities we have of bread, flour, tea and sugar would be distributed to the common people at the subsidised rate. A fairly considerable sum in millions will be involved in that. Yet it is hard to believe that, coming fresh from election platforms, the present Government would not press forward with the greatest speed on a matter like that, which requires only a little adjustment, and see that either a new ration will be given or a new subsidy will be provided.
The greatest complaint made during the election, however, was with regard to the system of financing adopted by the last Government in the last couple of years. The Book of Estimates for the present year has on the cover the sum of £83,000,000 odd, but that is divided as to £70.9 millions for other services and £12,000,000 for capital services. I have been told that this £12,000,000 was a misnomer and that these services, if provided at all, should be provided out of the proceeds of taxation. This was alleged to be increasing the national debt at an extraordinary pace and to be of an extraordinary and bankrupting type. I assume that the present Government will be most alert and speedy about bringing that state of affairs to an end. What they propose to do I am anxious to hear. Whether it is proposed to drop what are called the capital services costing £12,000,000 or to tax the unfortunate taxpayers to get the £12,000,000 in order to avoid borrowing for that purpose I do not know. As between these things, there is a fairly considerable number of millions that will have to be found before this time next year and, instead of asking Deputies to allow all stages of this legislation to go through to-night, we should at least have such a delay as will enable the Minister to collect his forces and let us know what he proposes to do with regard to these bills which he is marking up for himself in the near future.
I will leave over for the moment, because it has not approached the region of a concrete proposal, the whole question of social security. In my time we had introduced legislation called a Social Welfare Insurance Bill. I understand that the best indication we have as to the future legislation is that the word "insurance" is to be dropped and that the Social Welfare Bill, whatever it may be or whatever money it will involve, is to be, if promises count for anything, along these lines: that there will be no increase in the cost of contributions either from the employer or the employee; that whatever has to be found for the new benefits will be taken from the taxpayer; and, in addition, of course the taxpayer will have to find the full cost of administration. Deputy Norton stated that the present Minister for Social Welfare, when making a calculation while in opposition, made a slight error of between £3,500,000 and £4,000,000. Listening to the Minister the other night, I understood that he rather accepted that he had made a considerable mistake, one of some millions, if not exactly £3,500,000 or £4,000,000. What he proposes to do about finding the money is a point which I await some explanation of with a considerable amount of interest.
The present Government will find themselves in a somewhat different position from that in which they were before. It was easy before to stop people getting increases in emoluments. There was always the remedy of the standstill Order and, as we know from what is supposed to be a wastepaper basket find, there was a piece of legislation projected in the autumn of 1947 to have a new wages freeze. The trade unions were consulted, but the general election of 1948 came on and the matter was left in abeyance until after the election. The mood that wanted wage freezes is still there. Similarly, I think the mood that wanted compulsory tillage is still there. You do not get rid of the old Adam by sending some weakling who is appointed Minister for the time being down to a county committee of agriculture to say that, no matter what he said in this House this year, compulsory tillage was now off. Neither will you get rid of the old Adam by announcing that wage control was abandoned. The mood that projected these things is still there. I have no doubt that if finances get tight these will be matters to which there will be resort. We have still as a member of the Government as Minister for Justice the Deputy who said, when complaining about the cost of increases to the Civil Service, the Army, the Guards and the teachers, that that was a situation which Fianna Fáil was determined to prevent and would have prevented if only they got a majority. They have the majority now. The question is, are they still determined to prevent these things? Will they prevent them by the mere passage of the legislation which no doubt they can carry with their followers and their camp followers in the present grouping?
One matter that makes me insist upon a clarification of some of these things is that we were criticised for our expenditure, as it was called. We had reduced taxation, but still we were getting a greater return from revenue because of the policy we had adopted. Particularly, we were criticised because of what was called the enlargement of the national debt. It was said that a very high point had been reached in a very short space of time. It has to be remembered with regard to that that the last Government floated three national loans. They floated each after they had presented them to the country with a clear-cut financial statement and a piece of financial legislation which, if carried out, would give effect to whatever was contained in the financial statement, and each time they got their return.
The present Government will need money soon. Are they going to be as frank with the public as we were? Will they say what is the bill that has to be met? What is going to be the cost eventually of the increase in pay to all types of public servants? What is the cost of either the new rations or the new subsidies or the increased rationing? What are they going to take off capital services and meet out of taxation and what will that amount to in the way of taxation? What are they going to do under the various headings I have mentioned, small and large? It is said that they will have to take £300,000 from the Road Fund, because that is part of the arrangement for this year. If, next year, they do not take £300,000 from the Road Fund, that is £300,000 that will have to be met. If they intend to carry out the promises lavishly made during the election and give an increase to milk producers, will they tell us where the money is to come from? Is it going to be met by allowing the price of butter to rise, with the consequent increase in the cost of living, or will it be found out of subsidies which will have to be met by a contribution from the taxpayers?