I understand that last night, in closing the debate on the Second Stage, the Minister for Finance said that the Coalition Government had spent recklessly and borrowed improvidently, leaving it to their successors to pay. I take that to be the keynote of the new finance system which is going to be followed under the present Administration. It answers one question which has been puzzling people for a long time, the people who have been asking from time to time where the statue of Queen Victoria which was recently removed from the front of these buildings went. She is quite clearly now installed in the Department of Finance and we are going to have Victorianism rampant. One has to say about that statue that it was at least old and depicted Queen Victoria at a late stage in her career when she might have derived some little learning from her experience over the years, but the dame now installed in Finance is Queen Victoria in her earliest years when she had not had time to learn anything of the world growing up around her.
If the group to which I belonged as a Government did spend recklessly, one would have thought that one of the first things that would have come from the Minister for Finance would have been a halting of that situation, that some of the reckless spending would have been stopped, and if it is possible to pass the judgement that expenditure was on the reckless side, it is possible surely to have the details examined and have some amendment made even at an early stage. When it is said that the borrowing is improvident I suppose that means that we are going to have the switch-over which was so often promised and, if the Government do not find it possible to restrict any of the schemes which the previous Government had in hand, they are at least going to have another method of paying. In other words, the taxpayer is going to be made bend his shoulders once more to the burden from which we relieved him from 1948 onwards.
I am told that we left it to our successors to pay. What did we leave our successors to pay? The piece of finance legislation under discussion covers what has been brought out in the Financial Statement and in the Financial Statement not merely was everything that fell for payment, and immediately for payment, in the present year met, but £1,500,000 was set aside for commitments which I said I had to consider as being there and as being real commitments. I added to that that that was no fund into which people could dip, a sort of reserve on which people could draw for any new schemes and that any new scheme called for new taxes. The people who talk about improvidence and recklessness and leaving others to pay then come before this House, knowing that the debt for the public servants has to be met. Is it an accusation against me that I did not provide for that?
An arbitration which had started ten days before came to a conclusion about 24th May. I suppose at the time when the arbitrator was sitting members of the present Government regarded it as a proper thing for me to include some sum in the Financial Statement ahead of there being any arbitration, and so give both the contestants before the arbitration board as well as the arbitrator himself a line on how much should be given. I met that situation by saying that that would require new taxes and we would have found new taxes for that commitment. The present Government have now to find them, as during the election they decided to raise the point as to whether the award of the arbitrator was going to be met or not.
During the election, the Minister had to lament about what was called the Roe Report in connection with the teachers. Last night, he went out of his way more or less to give a tip to whatever arbitration sits with regard to the teachers about giving an increase to teachers, and put himself in the awkward position that, if something amounting to the Roe award is given, he will not find it very easy to refuse to meet it. That is still to come, however. In any event, there are £2.4 millions to be met this year, plus £x for the teachers, and that is going to be a considerable sum. Yesterday the Government added on to the taxpayers' burden an additional £4000,000. No provision has been made for that. If it is a sin to provide for expenditure, without also making clear the means of payment, then, inside their first fortnights as a Government, the present Government have done exactly that.
We add on the £400,000 to the £2.4 million already there and we get something a little short of £3,000,000 to be provided in this financial year. There are, in addition to that, the matters which are raised in a general way by this phrase about improvident borrowing. The amount of the Supply Services as set out in the front of the Book of Estimates this year is £83,000,000 odd. That is divided, as I said last night, into almost £71,000,000 for "Other Services" and £12,000,000 for "Capital Services". If the present Government have their minds made up to the point that the borrowing for these Capital Services is an improvident matter, they should at least by this time know how much is improvident and what is the magnitude of the improvident part of it. In other words, they should know what is the part that is either to be dropped or to be switched over to the taxpayer.
Whatever sum it will be—and it will run into millions—must be added to the £2.4 millions for the public servants and the £400,000 in respect of the increased cost of creamery milk. I assume, as has been assumed in the House already, that, once the price of creamery milk goes up, the price of ordinary milk will go up also. Is that going to be met as an increased charge upon the people's costs during their workaday lives, or is it going to be a subsidy, or is it going to be divided, as in the case of the increased price of creamery milk? Have we any idea of what the division is going to be, because, if again some part is going to fall on the taxpayer's back, that is also an addition to the bill—£2.4 millions, with the £400,000 for creamery milk and whatever will be the amount in respect of ordinary milk? Have the Government yet cleared up their minds as to which of these capital services they are going to drop, or, if not dropped, are going to finance in another way? I know what Queen Victoria would have said and I suppose the Minister for Finance will speak Victoria's mind and say that all this should be put on the taxpayer's shoulders in any year.
While the Minister for Finance was orating in that way towards the end of yesterday evening, I noticed by to-day's paper that his colleague, the Minister for Local Government, was complaining that the amount of money put at his disposal for expenditure on the capital side under the Local Authorities (Works) Act had been reduced. Presumably that is to be increased and if so, I do not know whether it will be part of the funds that can be found properly by borrowing or improvidently by borrowing, but they have to make up their minds on that.
The question of off-the-ration, unsubsidised commodities—tea, sugar, butter, white bread and flour—was much discussed during the election. If these are not to be sold off the ration and without subsidy and, if, as seems likely, the ration is to be vastly increased but remain at the subsidised rate or with some slight increase, or if everything is to be let loose at the new price, we should be told what that price is and should be told so before the Finance Bill passes. The people are entitled to be informed at this point on certain matters. The cost of living is one of the heaviest points of the indictment framed against the last Government, whether on the official index figure or not. The cost of living has increased in three separate ways since the present Government came in and I suppose that, during at least a couple of times each week, there will be some further announcement regarding increased prices. It is peculiar that, in an election fought so much in connection with the children, one of the earliest increases is on butter which weights so heavily with the family person. One could not think of anything less suitable for a new Government to increase in price than children's foods, milk and butter, which take such a prominent place in the budgeting arrangements of parents in providing for the proper upbringing of young children.
In the debate on the Finance Bill last year, the greatest agitation was raised on two points—the price of petrol and the £300,000 lifted from the Road Fund. The three people most vehement in their opposition to the taking of moneys from the Road Fund were Deputies Childers, Walsh and Corry. Deputies Childers and Walsh are now members of the Government and Deputy Corry still remains the back bencher, although one would think he had served sufficiently long in that way to get promotion when promotions were so easy to get. These three divided Dáil Éireann the last time on the taking of the £300,000 from the Road Fund.
Deputy Childers had a long scientific and somewhat bewildering argument to show that the roads required greater money for maintenance now than ever before, that the remaking programme instituted, he said, in 1946 or 1947 had not been fully carried out and that consequently it was something approaching a crime to make any raid on the Road Fund last year, without the raid being repeated now. One is almost tempted to have a division, to see the parties now supporting the Government walking through the Lobbies in support not merely of the thing they were against last year, but against which they put up some most vehement arguments last year.
There was strong opposition last year also to the increase of 2d. on petrol. That is being accepted now by those who wanted it reduced to 9d. last year and who made the argument that unless it were reduced to 9d., not merely would bus fares be increased in the city to the deteriment of the unfortunate workers using transport, but the cost of every commodity carried by road— and I was assured that most things are carried by road now—would be raised enormously. Of course, the bleeding hearts of Deputies were wide open with sympathy last year to get the price back to 9d. from the 1/3 at which it was. I think it is a good tax and I am not abating my enthusiasm for it when taxes have to be found. Deputies were very agitated about this last year and said that people who have moved out from the city to areas like Kimmage and Crumlin but who must come in every day to their work were suffering under severe hardships by this extra tax of 2d. on petrol.
I want to challenge again what the Minister for Posts and Telegraphs said yesterday regarding the surcharge on telephone rates, from 5 to 25 per cent., being a decision of the last Government. I challenge that and think it is untrue. If I am wrong, it should be easy to counter by quoting the Government decision and giving the date. I know that personally I minuted a file dead against the proposal, as I did against another about raising the letter rate, as I thought both were too heavy impositions on the people. The Minister for Posts and Telegraphs in a somewhat deceitful way yesterday used a phrase which could bear the interpretation that there was a Government decision. Again he is a wrong. There was no Government decision, except to make the Post Office pay its way. It may be that, as he has been put in charge of the Post Office, he is making the point that it is for him to decide the detailed ways in which the extra revenue will be found. I would again like to hear quoted the Government decision that Post Office charges should be raised in this way.
I certainly would like to be told the date and to have the decision quoted to me whereby the raising of the surcharge on telephones from 5 per cent. to 25 per cent. was carried. If it was carried it was carried without my knowledge and, as a matter of fact, as far as I could as an individual, I was dead against any such proposal and minuted my view on that, that I would not have it.
However, Post Office charges are one of the things raised and maybe it will not hit the people in their costs of livelihood too much. The cost of butter has gone up, the cost of milk is clearly going to go up, and the taxpayer is obviously going to be faced with a very heavy burden almost immediately. I am not sure that that burden will be placed upon him by the present Government because what happened in the last few days has shown quite clearly that Deputies are going to be asked to parade before their constituents again very soon. That is clear when one observes a procedure of cashing in as quickly as possible on promises of benefits and when one sees a Finance Minister who finds it consistent to declaim against others for an improvident financial policy, and yet to bring in financial legislation which does not cover the costs of the year. He admits that the costs are not covered and the bill is mounting up at the present moment to somewhere in the region of £3,000,000. That is not any exaggeration of the exact amount that has to be found for the things we already know about.
Of course there are other things in the offing. There is what is called social security. We have the old age pensions, a piece of legislation that is going to be flashed through the House. When will the benefits come and when will the bill be presented to the taxpayer in order to met these increases? We are told that there will be new social security. All we know of that in its preliminary stages as announced by the present Government when they were in opposition is that they are going to keep the rates of contribution by employers and employees as they are and that any difference either in costs of administration or in greater benefits is to be met by the taxpayer.
Somebody in the Government can add up. I cannot because I do not know the sums to be put on each line. In any event, however, they are the headings. There is then the question of the off-ration sales of certain commodities and we have been promised that they are no longer to be sold off the ration. Whether they are to be fully subsidised or sold at the economic price I do not know, but somebody might tell me what that is going to cost. We also have the offloading on to the taxpayer of services met by borrowing so far together with provision to meet the expenses of borrowing. £12,000,000 services are going to be met by the taxpayer and taken off the loan funds. Those are two biggish items.
What else will the Government add to all that? Have they any resources other than those they had before and which broke them as a Government? During the election they were itching to say that the country could not get on without the taxation they imposed in autumn 1947 on beer, tobacco, wines and income-tax. Are these what they have in mind again? These are what they really will have as sources of revenue if they get through another election which they will run before the bill is presented and before anybody has to say how the revenue will be derived. It is a bill that will be hanging about and which somebody can meet after the election while the promise of benefits will be held dangling before the people with the view that success may come certain people's way this time.
The legislation we have under discussion at the moment is good legislation which is meeting the expenses of the year in a proper fashion, legislation under which in a difficult year it was found possible to give alleviations and alleviations particularly to the family man. The Budget was hailed as a good Budget and the Finance Bill was hailed as a good Finance Bill. A change has since been brought in. Those were the commitments of the year; there are now other commitments and the fact that there are is a matter which must increase suspicion and suspicion is current in most people's minds.
If anybody tells me that borrowing was improvident, I would ask them to examine it in this way: the test to be applied to the capital Budget was whether it was profitable from the social point of view. I would define that as whether the national income would be raised by as much as the interest on the cost of what was being done. That is a sound economic test and judging by that test what we did was good. Another ways of judging it is to think in terms of the national debt having increased; so it has. One might say that the charges on the national debt have increased; so they have. If the national income increases in a certain way, that is all right. If the national income increases in such a way that the impact of the new national debt charges is no worse than the impact of the old charges was on the previous income, then the situation is no worse. That is the test I apply. It is a good test. Anybody who is going to say that it was improvident might tell me by what standard, by what test, it was improvident. Let us leave out Queen Victoria. We got rid of Queen Victoria from outside, but certain people want to reinstate her inside the House. We have the old-time, moth-eaten views. The old things have now been dusted out.
