Vol. 126 No. 12
I move:—
That a sum not exceeding £99,700 be granted to complete the sum necessary to defray the Charge which will come in course of payment during the year ending the 31st day of March, 1952, for the Salaries and Expenses of the Office of the Minister for Finance, including the Paymaster-General's Office.
On a point of order. I want to direct the attention of the Chair to the fact that the Minister is commencing at 20 minutes to five o'clock.
Sir, the introduction of the Estimate for the Department of Finance is the first formal opportunity I have had of giving to the Dáil and the public the preliminary results of the review of the financial situation which I have been making since I came into office. My review will not be exhaustive because I shall have to limit my statement this evening to an exposition of facts, trends and desiderata. It will be granted, I think, in that connection that careful consideration of the various aspects of the situation and a close study of developments, must precede any attempt to formulate remedial measures.
My immediate purpose, therefore, is merely to draw attention at this stage to the seriousness of the situation and to foreshadow the difficulties which it will create for all of us. Some of what I shall say has already been said by my predecessor in his Budget statement, but it may be advantageous to put it in sharper relief and supplement it with more up-to-date information.
In my view, four features of our present situation clamour for discussion. They are, first, the character and adequacy of the current year's Budget; secondly, the problem presented by an unwieldy programme of capital expenditure; thirdly, our trading position with the rest of the world as reflected in the balance of payments between ourselves as a community and our debtors and our creditors; and, fourthly, the rapid dissipation of our external assets.
Before discussing these elements in a general situation it may be advisable to say a word or two about inflation, and to remind the Dáil and the country what inflation is and what the consequences of a prolonged inflation will inevitably be. The best known if somewhat hackneyed definition of a state of inflation is, "too much money chasing too few goods". That is a definition which every economic neophyte recites when he wishes to pontificate on a very complex problem.
Which he does not understand.
Would the Deputy apply that to the late Minister for External Affairs? The definition is too simple, however, to be comprehensive or wholly accurate. In our case, since we have reserves of sterling and are able to draw on them to bring in more goods than our current earnings will buy, we can let the first impact of excessive spending fall to a considerable extent on imports and, therefore, avoid its immediate impingement on our monetary system by taking the first brunt on the balance of payments, but, nevertheless, this excessive spending exercises a powerful influence on our domestic costs and prices and provokes eventually an extremely unfavourable reaction.
The consequences of an "import" inflation are ultimately as serious as a purely "price" inflation. If it were allowed to continue, it would quickly exhaust our external assets; it would lower the external as well as the internal value of our currency, and would give rise to all those social and economic evils and maladjustments which are inevitably consequent upon an uncontrolled increase in the value, or rather I should say, the volume of money.
Pick it up and read it, and you will not be misreading "value" for "volume".
The Minister should be allowed to make his statement without interruption.
He is reading it.
The Minister has the right to read his statement if he wants to. He has the statement there. It may be that he is short-sighted like myself, but he is misreading it.
I shall leave the Deputy alone. He has to play the rôle of perpetual nuisance. Unfortunately, the Deputy's talents are not equal to the Deputy's pretensions and, therefore, people no longer take him seriously.
On a point of order. If the Minister is reading his speech he is doing so without the permission of the House.
The Minister should be allowed to make his statement without interruption. The Deputy will get an opportunity to speak later.
I have made a point of order.
On a point of order——
I propose to sit down until some of the Deputies regain control of themselves.
The Minister should have the manners to sit down while a point of order is being made.
I have more manners than Deputy Sweetman ever had.
Surely, the House is entitled to have a ruling on the point of order.
The Chair did not hear any point of order.
I made a point of order that if the Minister wishes to read a statement, which was probably prepared by somebody else, he can only do so with the permission of the House.
Poor Deputy Davin.
I have made a point of order. I have no objection to the Minister reading a statement, but he should have the manners to ask for permission.
According to the rules of this House, that is a matter entirely for the Minister himself.
I am not reading a statement. I have prepared what I am about to say and I am quite entitled to refresh my memory from my notes. If Deputy Davin is not capable of doing that sort of thing, then he should keep silent. I was pointing out that the whole purpose of these interjections and interruptions was to prevent an ordered statement being made in the House because the one thing which the members of the last Government fear is that there should be an impartial and unbiased examination of the position in which they have landed the people of this country. The perilous position in which they placed us has left us defenceless on every front, not merely on the strategic front but on the economic front, on the diplomatic as well as the economic front. I was saying, if I may be permitted to repeat myself, that if "import" inflation were permitted to continue, it would quickly exhaust our external assets. It would lower the external as well as the internal value of our currency and would give rise to all those social and economic evils and maladjustments which are inevitably consequent upon an uncontrolled increase in the volume of money. I hope that has sunk into the minds of the Deputies opposite. This, as I was about to say, is our present peril. It is, let me emphasise, the direct result of the policy pursued over the past two years.
Before I proceed to relate public finance to the wider context of national income and expenditure and to consider the part the Budget should play as a moulding influence, there is something that must be said, first of all, about the mere arithmetic of the recent Budget. I should like again to remind the House that this Budget was not of my framing. In order that the business of the State might be carried on, it was necessary for me to take over the Department of Finance as a going concern and to endeavour to administer its affairs as best I could, within the limitations which had been imposed upon me by the commitments of the previous Government. Therefore, the Budget which I now propose to examine briefly is, as I want to emphasise, not my Budget. It is, as has been said, a poor thing, but, thank God, it is not my own.
No one with even a rudimentary acquaintance with economics should be complacent about Budget deficits in present circumstances. I think that all will concede that, in an inflationary situation such as exists in the world to-day, the least the State should do is to refrain from making things worse. Yet the country is faced to-day with the likelihood of a large deficit this year on the current Budget. I regret to say, having regard to the fine tradition which obtained up to recently in the administration and control of the Department of Finance, this position must have been patent to my predecessor last May, even though he failed to take the measures necessary to avoid it. Budget deficits are definitely inflationary in their consequences. They entail borrowing or the creation of money for completely unproductive purposes; in other words, they necessitate either the diversion of savings from productive use in order to meet current outgoings, or the injection of new purchasing power into circulation without any offsetting increase in the supply of goods.
All Budget deficits do that!
No doubt the Dáil will recall that my predecessor, Deputy McGilligan, contrived to make current revenue and expenditure balance on paper at the £81,000,000 level. "Contrived" is a good word to use in that connection for he allowed an entirely inadequate sum, only £1,500,000, for uncovered items, although he had good reason to believe that the total of these would far exceed that amount. Moreover, he again adopted this year, as in last year, the highly questionable device of treating as proper to be met from borrowing as much as £12,000,000 of voted expenditure. Most of this expenditure is of a recurrent or unrealisable character and most of it contributes little or nothing to offset the cumulative charge on the Exchequer for the relevant borrowings.
The uncovered items of which my predecessor had forewarning included increases in pay for the Civil Service, Garda Síochána, Army and teachers, the subsidy to cover the losses of Córas Iompair Eireann, the improvement in old age and blind pensions and additional grants to the Tourist Board and other commitments.
The total of which the Minister estimates to be?
The Deputy ought to behave in an orderly fashion in the House.
What does the Minister believe these to amount to?
The House dealt with Deputy Dillon last night and he ought to have learned his lesson.
The Minister got a good lesson.
The Minister ought to be allowed to make his statement without interruption. Deputies will get an opportunity later of speaking.
A civil question is not an interruption and that is what the Minister was asked.
The whole purpose of these interruptions is to break my train of thought.
Is there one?
Deputies opposite do not want this to get into the newspapers. Even the additions I have already mentioned and which have materialised will amount to well over £5,000,000 this year. To this sum, there must be added the cost to the Exchequer of the recent increase in creamery milk prices and the provision which must be made for writing off the arrears of fuel subsidy and the loss on Deputy Dillon's imported butter. A moderate estimate indeed of the commitments not provided for in the published Estimates would, I think, be £6,250,000, towards which £1,500,000 has been allocated to the Budget. Apparently my predecessor had some hope of repeating the miracle of the loaves and fishes. He hoped to make £1,500,000 do the work of £6,250,000. There is, however, this gap of virtually £5,000,000 already manifesting itself in the balance of the present Budget.
Pure blather.
One may say that at the date on which the Budget was introduced a gap of some millions at least was foreseen by my predecessor. But it is remarkable—or is it remarkable?—perhaps it is just what we would expect from the record of the late Coalition—that the country was not told about these amounts that were uncovered by the Budget. Instead, it was assured that the Budget, which was introduced immediately before the last general election, would show a surplus at the end of the year of £50,000. The Deputy who, as Minister for Finance, was responsible for the presentation of that false and misleading account to the people of this country is the Deputy who alleged last week that certain State documents had been mutilated.
Apart from the fact that the provision of £1,500,000 for foreseen items was grossly inadequate, no allowance whatever was made by my predecessor for Supplementary Estimates in respect of expenditure not foreseen at Budget time. I suppose that in due course he will come into the House and plead, in extenuation of that omission, that he was relying upon the buoyancy of the Budget. In view, however, of the international situation, it is very doubtful if any hopes that the revenue will greatly exceed expenditure will be realised. It is, unfortunately, very probable, on the other hand, that expenditure will exceed the revenue by many millions of pounds. So much for the character and adequacy of the current Budget.
Let us now consider the problem of our capital expenditure. The desirability of meeting capital expenditure in a way that will not stimulate inflation is self-evident. I hope that even that fact will be conceded by Deputy Dillon, but the prospect, I regret to say, of doing this is unfortunately very dim. We may leave aside for another occasion the question whether all the expenditure included in the capital Budget is genuinely productive. I have already indicated that, in my view, much of it cannot be relied upon to add in any material degree to the income of the nation or the State. I think that my predecessor shared this view also, and with good reason. In his Budget statement, he admitted—and here, Sir, I propose to read—"that a considerable proportion of the State investment programme relates to projects which are not productive in the financial sense."
Such as housing.
"And that the growth of State expenditure on capital projects which are not directly remunerative carries with it the risk that the increased debt charges will entail a net addition to taxation."
Perhaps the Minister will give the source of his quotation.
It is from the Financial Statement and the relative columns can be determined by the Deputy himself.
That is hardly being courteous to the House.
On a point of order——
The words which I have repeated——
On a point of order, if a Deputy purports to quote precise words used, there is upon him an obligation to furnish the House with the reference. So far as I know, the Minister did not profess to paraphrase but professed to quote Deputy McGilligan.
He quoted the document.
The Deputy who last night was posing here in the House in the role of injured innocence now assumes the role of mosquito.
It is very rude not to wait for the Leas-Cheann Comhairle.
Would the Minister say if he quoted from the Official Reports?
The volume is 125— somewhere around about column 1897.
Did it not take a lot to get that much out of him?
If the House will bear with me, I will very speedily get the reference. I should say that the quotation itself was taken from the document which was circulated to the House on the occasion of the Minister's Budget speech.
We are learning something now.
Now he is in trouble.
Just wait.
Just like Deputy Walsh, the Minister for Agriculture, who, when he was a Deputy, was very handy for finding out these things.
Deputy Flanagan was promised a reward but did not last long enough to get it.
He never ran like a ram to get it, anyway.
There are a lot more things than quotations which we should be discussing now.
Do we hear the big bad bear?
On a point of order——
Deputy Dillon is exploiting his nuisance value.
Would Deputy Cogan like to hear about Thomas Millett?
As the Minister has given the volume or the number of the volume, is that not sufficient as a reference?
The Minister has done nothing of the sort. He should treat this House with courtesy.
Now I hope to be able to satisfy Deputy Dillon's passion——
It is not Deputy Dillon, it is the House the Minister is satisfying.
——for references. The quotation which I have made will be found in Volume 125——
The Minister would need to go back to school again.
Would Deputy O'Hara wait for a moment? It is Volume 125, column 1904, a notable year as the year of Deputy Dillon's birth. It is a pity he does not show his age.
No, it was 1902, I am sorry to say.
Well, I cannot say that the two years have added anything to the Deputy's store of wisdom or experience.
I am thankful to the Minister for his gracious compliment.
This is a point on which the Opposition should be exposed to the House. In that connection, I might be permitted, with the Deputies' agreement, to quote from the hallowed words of my predecessor, who said:—
"The growth of State expenditure on capital projects which are not directly remunerative carries with it the risk that the increased debt charges will entail a net addition to taxation."
Having said that, may I show that the statement was well-founded— because, in fact, the service of debt in the present year will cost £7,350,000, or £3,130,000 more than in 1947-48? Perhaps, with this figure of £3,130,000 on our mind, we may digress for a moment and pause to contemplate what our position would have been if our predecessors had not imposed on us the obligation to tax the people in order to provide this considerable sum. It is tantalising to think that if that £3,000,000 odd were available for tax reduction in this year, the rate of income-tax might be reduced to 5/6 in the £.
With no inflationary result?
The duty on beer might be lowered by 2d. per pint or perhaps the price of a packet of 20 cigarettes might be 1/6 instead of 1/8 as is normal to-day. Looked at in another way, we might remind ourselves that the £3,130,000 of taxation which our predecessors left us to find for the service of the national debt, as compared with the figure for that purpose in 1947-48, would meet the cost of the recent increases in Civil Service remuneration and the increases in pay of the Garda Síochána and the national teachers. Or, if we like to look at it in another way, if we had that £3,000,000 odd available it could have been used to cover wholly by subsidy the recent increase in the cost of milk—which I think a Fine Gael Deputy alleges is not sufficient—and would not only cover the recent increase in the cost of milk and butter, but it would leave over at least £2,000,000 to reduce considerably the price of other subsidised commodities.
Without inflationary results.
Unfortunately, Sir, the contemplation of these happy conditions cannot in present circumstances be more than a day-dream from which we must now awake. Our predecessors, having created the present state of affairs, have left us to deal with its harsh realities. The £3,130,000 with which so much could be done to alleviate the lot of the taxpayer is not, unfortunately, available to us. Far indeed from it. It has to be raised by us to meet the charges on the public debt which was so recklessly contracted by the late Government in its three short years of office. To console us, when we are labouring under this obligation, we have the fact that in the last financial year an outlay of £8,100,000 of borrowed money for supply services produced a return to the Exchequer of one-eighth of 1 per cent. I leave it to the members of the Opposition to work that sum out in terms of pounds, shilling and pence.
And that is the criterion the Minister applies.
It is not a bad criterion to apply either to a person's private affairs or national affairs. I am perfectly sure if Deputy Dillon was dealing with his own private concerns that that is the invariable rule he would apply. He would say to himself: "If I make such and such an investment what am I going to get back from it in terms of dividend, profit or interest?"
So money is more important than men, women and children?
That is the Minister's thesis.
Without money, men, women and children cannot live and when resources have been squandered——
I am listening.
——the people whose resources have melted away as they have over the past three years will have to suffer very severely. It will not, of course, be Deputy Hickey or Deputy Dillon who will suffer. It will be the under-dog.
I am listening with interest to the Minister.
The Deputy is always very keen on interest, particularly his own interest.
You are a professor on that.
That is just what I expect from the Minister.
I could develop this theme very profitably, but I wish to revert to a consideration of the financial problems which will present themselves to us by reason of the expenditure to which we have been committed. In that connection I want to stress first of all that the segregation of expenditure as between current and capital has only a limited significance. Perhaps, even Deputy Dillon will agree with that. The mere identification of items as current or capital does not necessarily imply that one should be met from expenditure and the other from borrowing, entirely irrespective of the economic circumstances of the time.
In our circumstances now and in pursuance of present policy, the overriding objective is to see that the community surrenders enough purchasing power to cover all the State outlay, current and capital, on the one hand to curtail expenditure regarded as being in the national interest or, on the other hand, to adopt methods of financing its expenditure which are undoubtedly injurious to the national economy.
Normally the State can secure purchasing power from the public either compulsorily, through taxation, or, voluntarily, in the form of savings. It is true that while Marshall Aid was flowing into this country during the past two or three years, there was a third method. That is to say, the transfer from the public to the State of the cost in Irish currency of imports financed by American loans or grants. That third course, however, I suggest, should be avoided if possible. Whatever may have been the position in theory some time ago, the release of counterpart moneys now must be regarded as having a predominantly inflationary influence. The goods they represent have, for the most part, already been consumed or absorbed into our economy. Current savings, on the other hand, whether they take the form, for instance, of deposits in the savings banks or commercial banks, purchases of savings certificates, subscriptions to national loans or industrial issues or the reservation of profits to meet purchases of new plant, are an appropriate means of financing productive capital outlay. Unfortunately, however, the problem which we face and which so far has been concealed from the people is the complete inadequacy of current savings to meet the present scale of capital outlay. What that means for the State with its capital Budget of £29,000,000 this year, will, I think, be better appreciated if I refer to last year's experience.
Last year, £22,400,000 was issued from the Exchequer to meet capital expenditure. Against this, the savings obtained by the Government from the Irish public amounted to only £12,000,000 of which £3,300,000 represented small savings, that is to say, new savings bank deposits and purchases of savings certificates. It will be realised, therefore, that the increase required in our savings is of such an order of magnitude as to exclude undue optimism as to the outcome of a savings campaign. Nevertheless, we must do our utmost to secure the necessary effort. This endeavour—I shall be fortified by the belief that there will be general agreement with the view of my predecessor, the view expressed by him in his Budget statement that "increased savings are an alternative much preferable to increased taxation or increased restrictions"—again, Sir, the reference is Volume 125, Official Dáil Debates, column 1907.
Congratulations!
The implication of this statement, however, I think, should be realised. It is, in fact, essential that the public should appreciate it and that the public should face up to the implication of my predecessor's statement that if savings continue to be so gravely deficient and if some order is to be maintained in our economic affairs, certain alternatives must be faced. The alternatives in question are neither of them welcome nor to be adopted without mature consideration because these alternatives are either a curtailment of capital and current expenditure or an imposition of increased taxation to help in financing them.
I do not wish these remarks of mine to create undue apprehension, but it is my duty to disclose to our people the weakness of our present financial situation because the country must face up to the implications of a continued deterioration in our public finances if that is in fact what the future holds for us. How essential it is that our public finances should be reorganised and put upon a better foundation becomes all the more apparent if we survey the broad field of national income and expenditure.
National income is the income that accrues to the community in any year to consume or invest. That is to say it is the gross revenue after provision has been made for the maintenance of the sources of this income, land, plant, machinery, buildings, etc.; in other words after provision has been made to meet the depreciation of our productive assets. If a community wants to improve its capital and increase its future income—and, I think, a wise and prudent community like a wise and prudent individual will want to do that —there should be set aside a sufficiency out of income in the form of savings to finance new investment. The remainder represents what is normally available for consumption.
On the other hand, this is what has been happening in recent years: an excess in the pool of resources over and above what the national income will allow in any year can be secured for domestic use by establishing a net inflow of goods from abroad, but this will involve a deficit in the balance of payments which, in turn, has to be financed by external disinvestment. The external disinvestment involved in such a procedure can, of course, be fully justified if the external resources are applied to raising correspondingly the level of domestic investment. Not only can it be fully justified but it has been the policy of Fianna Fáil since its foundation to encourage such a diversion of resources from external to domestic investment.
From whom is the Minister quoting?
I am quoting from no person.
From the late Montague Norman?
It is impossible to deal with these imbecilities. I was saying—and no doubt this is what Deputy Davin wished to prevent me from saying—that external disinvestment can be fully justified if its purpose is to raise the productive capacity of the nation. I was saying that not only can it be fully justified——
That syllogism is confused.
——but that it has been the policy of Fianna Fáil since its foundation to encourage such a diversion of resources from external to domestic investment. One of the first Budgets which I introduced in, I think, the year 1934, when I was Minister for Finance, provided very substantial inducement to investors to invest in Irish industry, to realise their investments abroad, bring them back and reinvest them here in productive industries at home. I remember that when I put that proposition before the Dáil in the Budget, I think, of 1934, among the people who opposed it most resolutely and opposed it quite unintelligently was Deputy Dillon, who was then on the Front Bench of Fine Gael. He was at that time, of course, a member of Fine Gael.
Before they fired him out.
Recently, or perhaps over the past three years, it has been argued that the national income is now higher than in pre-war days. It is important, therefore, for us in this context to consider how this increase has arisen. I am sure that Deputy Dillon will listen to me while I make one very important observation because we must begin from the melancholy and depressing fact that in agriculture, our basic industry for which Deputy Dillon was responsible over the past three years, the net volume of output is still below the 1938 level. Notwithstanding that millions of dollars flowed into the country, notwithstanding that plant and fertilisers were available in greater measure than they were ever available to the farmers of the country before, the startling fact remains that, in the year 1951, the volume of agricultural output in this country is lower than it was in the year 1938.
Would the Minister tell me where he got the volume of output for 1951——
1950 shall we say? I am sorry.
——seeing that the figure for 1951 is not yet ascertained?
Surely the Deputy is not going to claim all the credit or discredit for 1951.
I am just correcting the Minister; that is all.
It was a slip of the tongue; I meant 1950. I make a present of that to the Deputy. The fact remains that Deputy Dillon was bombasting up and down the country as the greatest Minister for Agriculture Ireland had ever produced, the greatest Minister for Agriculture in the world, we were told by some of his infatuated admirers. Notwithstanding that he had millions of pounds to spend, notwithstanding that he did spend millions of pounds on grandiose schemes, notwithstanding that he had machinery, implements and fertilisers at his command, the position was that, in the year 1950, the net volume of agricultural output in this country——
Was much higher than in 1947.
——was lower than it was in 1938.
Now compare it with 1947.
I know that Deputies do not want to have impressed on them these unpleasant facts, but they are facts, statistical facts that Deputy Dillon cannot deny.
It shows how badly you left agriculture in 1947.
Much of this boasted improvement in the national income is attributable to increased industrial output and this in turn has depended in great measure——
On the Shannon scheme.
——on expenditure which has been heavily subsidised by the State. For example, there has been a substantial increase in building. Many houses are going up to-day reared upon foundations laid by Fianna Fáil. There has been a substantial increase in building and construction and in industries producing building materials, furniture and household equipment. As I referred to building materials perhaps I could remind the House——
Might I remind the Chair that the Minister proposed to speak for three-quarters of an hour and has now exceeded that?
There was no such commitment.
I was addressing the Chair. The Minister stated in the House that he proposed to speak for three-quarters of an hour. That is not so long ago that the Minister could forget making that statement, which was made quite clearly in the House.
I did not say anything of the sort. I said I might speak 30 minutes, 40 minutes, 45 minutes or as long as it would take me to say what I have to say, subject, of course, to the fact——
Just a few words, like the Taoiseach.
——that a considerable amount of time might be wasted in dealing with these senseless and disorderly interruptions from the benches opposite.
The Minister is a good judge of disorder.
This will be the last time that the Opposition will accord the Government courtesy here.
I suppose Deputy O'Higgins is looking forward to his holidays just like Deputy Norton and Deputy Dillon.
I like to see the Minister working.
We kept the Minister away from a cocktail party this evening.
If the Deputy means that he has prevented me from attending, as a member of the Government, the honouring of the national feast day of a foreign nation which maintains a representative here, he is entitled to whatever credit he can get out of that.
It will be all the better for your not being there.
The Minister.
On a point of order. There was a definite arrangement between the Whips that no speech would be longer than 45 minutes on either side. The Minister will find that that is true, if he will consult with his chief Whip.
There was no such arrangement and if that arrangement were made the Deputy was here in the House when this question was raised by other Deputies—and the Ceann Comhairle quite obviously knew nothing of it. I know nothing of it either. It is quite clear that the Deputies opposite do not want the country to know the position in which they have landed it. That is the whole purpose of these interruptions.
On a point of order. The Whips from the various Parties met about a fortnight ago when they drew up this programme. I think that Deputy Killilea was there with the Parliamentary Secretary, Deputy Ó Briain, and it was definitely understood that the speeches by the Ministers would be short and would not exceed 40 minutes.
I have no knowledge of any such arrangement.
Deputy Killilea can substantiate what I say.
It was not mentioned when the time-table was put before the House. It was not mentioned to-day.
What about Deputy Dillon's two hours yesterday?
On that, the arrangement was three hours, not two hours. The Minister has every facility for finding out from Deputy O Briain whether that arrangement was made or not. Let him do so. I will accept Deputy O Briain's word.
The Minister is welshing on his contract.
Deputy Sweetman should not regard himself as the arbiter of the debates in this House. At least 20 minutes of the time allotted has been wasted by senseless interruptions by the Opposition. I was saying if I may be permitted to resume now, that there had been a considerable increase in industries producing building materials.
On a point of order. Are we not entitled to know how long the Minister will speak?
Sit down and take your medicine. You are in favour of monetary reform. You are being educated now.
By a political fool.
Does the Minister know that he is talking like a first year economics student at the university, though not as well?
The Minister should be allowed to make his statement without interruption.
But he has nothing to say. In all decency, the Minister should sit down.
On a point of order. Last night the Minister deprived a member of this side of the House of an opportunity to speak. Should we not be allowed to speak now?
That is not a point of order. The Minister on the Estimate.
It is quite clear that the Deputies opposite wish to prevent this information about the financial position of the country from being disclosed to the public.
Stop flying kites and come down to earth.
I was saying that there had been a considerable increase in the production of industries manufacturing building materials. It is interesting, perhaps, to remark in passing, in connection with that particular aspect of the matter, that we had established in this country under the Fianna Fáil Government, a great industry for the manufacture of cement.
How does this arise on the Estimate, a Leas-Chinn Chomhairle?
Under the Fianna Fáil Cement Act, two factories were established to manufacture native cement.
Is this in order?
Would the Minister relate that to the Estimate?
Yes, Sir.
It will take the Minister an hour to do it.
I am pointing out that I am going on to deal with the deficit in our balance of payments.
It would be better if you went home.
Or to the cocktail party.
Maybe he was there before he came here.
Order! Deputy Flanagan must cease interrupting the Minister.
I will, if I am permitted to deal with the more important question of the deficit in our balance of payments——
That has nothing to do with cement.
It has, because, if the Fianna Fáil programme had been given effect to and had not been sabotaged in 1948, we would be manufacturing in this country 250,000 tons of cement which at present we are importing from abroad and at a higher price than we could manufacture it at home.
And you would be putting it down in Santry.
On a point of order. How can the desirability of manufacturing cement for the domestic market, as opposed to purchasing it from Mr. Jantzen in Denmark, be brought within the Estimate of the Department of Finance?
Mr. MacEntee rose.
I have raised a point of order. I consider that the Minister's remarks are manifestly irrelevant.
The Minister is travelling wide of the Estimate in dealing with cement.
So be it. I was merely pointing out, if I may be permitted, in order that I may try to keep some sort of coherence in my speech, despite interruptions, that I want to say that, in so far as there has been any increase in the productive capacity of the Irish people, that increase in the productive capacity has not been manifested in our basic industry of agriculture but has been manifested in those industries which depend mainly upon heavy State sub-sidies—for instance, the industries which are ancillary to the building of houses.
If I may, having pointed out how this increase in our national income, of which so much has been said, has been secured, I should like to go on to deal with the other problem, the problem of consumption. The consumption, especially of non-essentials, has risen in a greater degree than the national income. In consequence, less is being saved to finance improvements in our productive capacity. This deficiency in our savings has been supported in recent years by incurring dollar debt and by realising our sterling assets. The great misfortune is that the resources supplied by these external dis-investments have been dissipated, as they have been used to a greater extent for consumption purposes than to raise the normal level of domestic investment.
How long more has the Minister got?
If I might pause here in order to vindicate myself. It has been alleged by Deputy Corish and Deputy Sweetman that there was an agreement that Ministers should limit their speeches to 40 minutes.
Both sides.
The Parliamentary Secretary says there was no definite agreement to limit the Minister's time.
What else does he say?
Did not the Minister give an undertaking when he started that he would only take three-quarters of an hour?
The Minister should read the note.
If I were to stigmatise that statement of Deputy S. Collins as it deserves to be stigmatised the House would probably expel me as it did Deputy Dillon recently.
There was an agreement that no speaker on either side would continue for more than three-quarters of an hour.
I have not been three-quarters of an hour.
You are exactly an hour on your feet.
Was there not half an hour of interruptions?
Most of them by you.
Order!
I was saying that the deficit in our savings has been supported in recent years——
You are saying nothing and you are still saying it.
——by incurring dollar debt and in particular by realising our sterling assets. The great misfortune of course in this connection is that the resources supplied by this external disinvestment have been dissipated as it has been used to a greater extent for consumption purposes rather than to raise the normal level of domestic investment. This was particularly so last year. In that year current savings fell substantially below what was necessary while consumption greatly increased. To compensate for the deficit of £30,000,000 in the balance of payments there was £6,500,000 of additional home-investment as compared with 1949 and about £5,500,000 of increased stocks. For the balance, for £18,000,000 of our external resources which were realised and spent there is nothing to show.
So far this year as compared with last year the position has been much worse. The trade deficit for the first five months, that is to say, for the first five months of this year during which the Coalition Government was in office, is more than £20,000,000 higher than for the same period in 1950. The prospect is that there will be as much as £120,000,000 of a deficit for the year, or over £30,000,000 more than last year. We face, therefore, a balance of payments deficit of £60,000,000. Notwithstanding all that we have been hearing in recent years about the repatriation of our external assets for the purpose of employing them here at home, capital goods account for a very small part —almost one might say a minute fraction—of the total increase in imports compared with 1950. It is true there has been some increase in stocks, possibly enough to balance the increase in the volume of imports, but this leaves the increase in price—which is responsible for £12,500,000 of the excess over the first five months of last year—completely uncovered.
Now as against this huge and overwhelming deficit, and here are the true facts to be set against the ballyhoo that we have been listening to for the last three years, exports increased in value in the first five months of this year by only £2,700,000. Set that £2,700,000 against the £20,000,000 increase in the deficit in the balance of payments and, apart altogether from this insignificant price increase, actually there has been a decline in volume. An increase of course in agricultural output is much to be desired, and that is the justification for paying to the farmer a price that will enable him and induce him to increase his output and meet these ever-mounting costs that have been piled upon him by the defunct Coalition. An increase in agricultural output would reduce pro tanto the trade deficit. Unfortunately, however, immediate relief from this quarter can scarcely be expected with agricultural output, as I have already said, below pre-war level and domestic consumption so much above it. Nor do the conditions under which we trade——
You deplore domestic consumption?
——offer any better hope. The rise in import prices, which has been steep and is still in progress, has outpaced the rise in export prices, and a further and continuous deterioration in the terms of trade seems indeed to be inevitable.
Now I have dwelt on these matters because, properly interpreted, the balance of payments is the most significant single indicator of our economic position. We have reason to be content when we have something to show for the deficit in the balance of payments, whether it be by a corresponding increase in home investment, in productive industry, or in stocks, because in either case no permanent damage may result. But when we are rapidly drawing upon our external capital merely to boost for the time being our standard of living, the situation is one that must cause us all the gravest anxiety.
I would remind the House that my predecessor had some weighty observations to make on this point in his Budget statement this year.
In his capacity as a corporation solo I take it.
He was speaking for you, I presume, or do you disagree with him? Is this another case of Cabinet disagreement now beginning to emerge?
You had better not talk about that.
Though the Minister for Finance was purporting when speaking in the House to express the collective view of the Government upon this very important matter, nevertheless he apparently was not speaking for Deputy Dillon. Perhaps he did not speak either for the then Minister for External Affairs and other members of that disunited Cabinet.
There is a cuckoo or two in your nest—Deputy Cowan's Government.
I wish to remind the House of something and I hope that I shall be permitted to do so without these unmannerly and foolish interruptions. I was about to remind the House of what my predecessor, Deputy McGilligan, said upon this particular question. He admitted the undesirability of realising our external assets merely to boost domestic consumption when he said at column 1882 of Volume 125 of the Official Report:
"What is abnormal and, if it persists, can be seriously damaging is to use up our external resources for consumption purposes."
He went on to say in column 1884:
"Only if the gap in the balance of payments is narrowed so that external disinvestment is balanced by additional home investment— rather than by excessive consumption —can we be satisfied that as a nation we are making ends meet and not wasting our past accumulations. One of the great benefits conferred by the possession of external assets is ability to ride out periods like the present of exceptional difficulty and stress but this external mass of manoeuvre is the mainstay of our economic independence."
It is a grave matter for reflection that our external assets have been reduced by £90,000,000 during the past three or four years, that a further reduction of £60,000,000 is in prospect this year and that only a small fraction of this total disinvestment is offset by an addition to our productive capacity.
Would the Minister give us the figures for the £90,000,000?
Allowing for extern holdings in Ireland of non-nationals, our net external assets were estimated at £225,000,000 in 1949. If the present rate of disinvestment continues, Ireland will, by 1954, have lost her creditor status. We shall have no external resources to fall back upon in an emergency. To quote Deputy McGilligan, there will be no mainstay for our economic independence and our standard of living; our production and our population must decline. This is a position that we must do our utmost to avoid.
The way would be clearer to reaching conclusions on policy if the future course of imports could be foreseen. But, with the international situation so clouded, and the effects of rearmament still impossible to assess, it is perhaps better to wait for further light. We should, however, be considering how far it is possible to prevent our economic position from being further weakened. Various things are contributing to the general state of overspending which results in using external assets largely for consumption purposes; private and public spending are causing congestion that can be relieved only by a reduction of one or the other; credit facilities are encouraging outlay on less essential goods; money incomes of all kinds are being raised irrespective of increases in output.
Bearing what I have said in mind, there are certain propositions related to financial policy on which, I think, there should be general agreement in present circumstances: (1) that we should try to control inflation, at least to the extent of not letting our money depreciate faster than the currencies of countries with which we have close economic connections; (2) that if we incur deficits on the balance of payments, it should be to improve our domestic capital or increase our reserve stocks, mere dissipation of external resources for immediate consumption being undesirable; (3) that the Government should endeavour to obtain enough purchasing power from the public—in the form of taxation or savings—to finance Government expenditure; (4) that a substantial increase in savings at the expense of spending on the less essential consumer goods is urgently necessary in the national interest; (5) that an increase in production for export, particularly in agriculture, is urgently needed to reduce the trade deficit; (6) that income increases should be moderate since the realities of the situation preclude full and immediate compensation for rising prices which, in the main, are merely the outward evidence of the reduction in national living standards temporarily forced upon us; (7) that, in the words of my predecessor: "in present circumstances it is desirable that the banks, while continuing to finance capital projects, the laying in of essential stocks and normal import requirements, should discourage any merely speculative or excessive borrowing." A similar injunction—of course I am quoting Deputy McGilligan—applies to other lending agencies.
What is the source of the quotation?
Volume 125, column 1879. I have memorised most of these quotations and I used them with good effect, from the period of May 17th to June 1st. It is because of these quotations some of you are sitting over there.
The Five Feathers.
I was quoting from my predecessor and I was saying that the situation requires measures which he outlined in his Budget speech but to which he had not the courage to give effect. One could develop the propositions which I have put before the House at great length and, if we were discussing them in close debate, one could qualify them in various ways. However, I think that what I have said provides sufficient matter for serious consideration. It will be seen from the figures which I have put before the House and the country that the present predicament of the Irish nation, of this State and of the people of this State, is grave and serious and must be dealt with accordingly. I hope, when it does come to be dealt with, that the people who are sitting on the opposite side will realise that their responsibility in this matter is at least as heavy as ours and that they will permit whoever should have the unpleasant task of proposing these measures to this House to make a serious wellconsidered statement such as I have endeavoured to make to-day, without senseless interruption, without attempting by meaningless interjections to prevent the people of the country, whom they are supposed to represent and whose interests they are supposed to safeguard, from knowing, at long last, the truth about those discreditable three years.
Might I ask the Minister one question? Are we to take it that this marathon speech by him of 1 hour and 20 minutes is a long way of saying to the people: "Get ready for the Fianna Fáil hair-shirt policy in future?"
It would be much better for the people of this country to go around wearing a shirt and trousers than to find their creditors coming in and taking their shirt and trousers and their independence from them.
It is a hair-shirt this country is asked to wear now.
When I heard that the Minister was on his feet I was sorry that Deputy McGilligan was indisposed both yesterday and to-day and unable to come in to speak. When I came into the House I found myself in an atmosphere in which, it seemed to me, a very famous person named Rip Van Winkle had suddenly woken up.
The speech that was made by the Minister for Finance was a speech that could have had some meaning, in so far as it had any meaning at all in its theory, before the American crash of 1929. It was a speech that one could have quite appreciated, that one could have felt was in its proper context if it had been made, not merely before the American crash in 1929, but by the Party to which Mr. Hoover belonged even in those days.
During the last three years Deputy MacEntee, as he then was, and his cohorts in Fianna Fáil have been parading around the country, and even taking every opportunity to say in this House that we are likely to come up against sooner or later, and more sooner than later, a world conflagration, a serious international situation in which there would be international warfare and all that goes with it. The speech that the Minister has just made, if again it means anything, is an entire negation and an entire denial of all that he and the Fianna Fáil Party have been saying for those years.
If there is ever a time during which it is desirable for a Government to embark on a wise constructive policy of spending, it is a time when there is a danger in the international situation that there may be a further shortage of materials and a further international inflationary position. I think that Deputy McGilligan had to-day a written question addressed to the Minister to which the answer given showed that the value of the pound in terms of goods before the last war compared to the present time reduced by approximately half. Let us consider the position that would have emerged or will emerge if there had been or if there should be any international disturbance of the same nature. God forbid that an international disturbance should take place next year, but if it did come about, and if the work which has been done by the inter-Party Government under the wise and constructive financial policy of Deputy McGilligan had not been accomplished and had then to be undertaken, it would cost double as much as it did, in fact, cost. I heard one of the Minister's new and devoted adherents, Deputy Dr. Browne, when he was Minister for Health, talk on the same lines to his predecessor in office, Deputy Dr. Ryan. He pointed out, and pointed out correctly, that if the moneys that were in the Hospitals Trust Fund had been spent on bricks and mortar before 1939 the same number of beds would have been made available at something considerably less than one-third of the cost they would have cost after the war. Exactly the same analogy can be drawn in regard to the spending to which Deputy MacEntee has referred in such slighting terms.
The two main things which Deputy MacEntee—I beg your pardon, the Minister, though I must confess it is hard to believe that the speech we heard was a speech from a responsible Minister — proceeded to castigate, stripped of the fog which he tried to put around them, were the expenditure on housing and the expenditure on drainage, whether in respect of field drainage or arterial drainage or in respect of what I shall term for the moment minor arterial drainage.
So far as expenditure on housing is concerned, Deputy McGilligan never suggested to this House that it was an expenditure which he proposed to measure in terms of percentage returns. He took the view—and I think it was the correct view and the modern view —that it was desirable to ensure that the social return that would be obtained from the benefit of seeing that our people would be properly housed in a period when there was likely to be one of rising prices, was infinitely better than any question that could merely be measured in terms of percentage interest rates. In that respect let me remind the Minister that the position ever since 1947 was an entirely different one from what it was before. If there were a position where prices were likely to drop, then there would be a very sound reason, perhaps, for holding back as regards expenditure, except in so far as it was necessary to prime the pump, but so far as capital expenditure is concerned on goods and services that obviously would cost more subsequent to an inflation, it would be a very unwise Minister that would adopt a policy to ensure that such expenditure could not be incurred. So far as I can understand the Minister's concluding remarks, the effect of his warning to the banks must be taken to be that he does not want them to finance industry except to a very, very limited extent. It would be interesting to note whether those people who find their bank credit in industry reduced will realise when those credits are reduced, as, no doubt, they will be after the Minister's warning, that it is the Minister and his warning that have been responsible for that situation arising.
The Minister gave us a dissertation on the Budget. He told us that the Budget did not provide sufficient taxation. Quite well I can remember one instance in which the Budget did provide additional taxation.
I can remember the Minister when he was on this side of the House making the welkin ring about the additional impost that was being proposed then by Deputy McGilligan as Minister. In fact, I think, if my recollection does not serve me badly, the Minister not merely made the welkin ring but made the troops walk up into the Division Lobby against it as well. Now, apparently, he is prepared, and the Fianna Fáil Party are quite obviously prepared, to swallow most of the things they were saying on this side of the House and to utilise their position over there to carry on the viewpoint and the ideas which were put forward by the inter-Party Government.
One of the Minister's digressions into the realms of agriculture showed quite clearly that he did not appreciate that any expenditure on land reclamation or on drainage work was obviously an expenditure that could not show immediate returns. I am quite confident that when the history of the first 50 years of this State comes to be written there are two things which will stand out in that history as being the two main features from an economic point of view. One of these things will be the Shannon scheme, which the Minister described as a "white elephant", and the second will be the land reclamation scheme. It is typical of the attitude with which Fianna Fáil approach the whole concept of our economic life. They never had the courage, even though they had 16 years, of which 11 were completely free from any international disturbance, to start any big scheme which could be compared for its lasting and permanent effect with the Shannon scheme or the land reclamation scheme.
Did the Deputy never hear of the Erne?
The Minister cannot ride that horse. The Minister fulminated up and down this country, not against the Shannon scheme purely as a hydro-electric scheme, but against the magnitude of it——
No.
——and the cost.
That statement is quite untrue.
If that statement is untrue, and I do not think for a second that it is, then there was no sense whatsoever in the remark which the Deputy once made and for which he has been so very sorry over the years, namely, "white elephant".
My criticisms of the Shannon scheme were not founded on the magnitude of it.
The Minister's objections to the Shannon scheme were because it was something big and constructive.
No.
The Minister is only interested in something big that is destructive. He is now apparently going to try to destroy a lot of the constructive work done in the last three and a half years. During the election campaign, the Minister and his colleagues were taking the line that national expenditure was much too high on the one hand and, on the other hand, that all the work that was being done was necessary. The Minister has to-day realised that those two statements are not compatible. If the last month has at least taught him that much, we can be grateful for small and tender mercies. I do not know what the Minister intended by his vague threats; I do not know what he has in mind. But there is one thing that will certainly arise out of an analysis of the speech he has just made—that the Minister wants to make sure that the people of our country are going to have what was described—I think it was by Deputy Boland, but I am not absolutely certain—as a policy of austerity and a hair-shirt policy—described so aptly by him some four years ago as being on the way and being so very necessary.
The Minister, when campaigning during the general election, made it clear that Fianna Fáil were standing on their 1948 policy. From his speech to-day it is perfectly clear that they wish the country to go back to that policy of austerity and to that hair-shirt policy, and the Minister will find that that is not a line that is likely to keep him long on that side of the House.
I listened to the Minister's speech for a substantial period this evening and it is quite easy to see that some sick person did not give him that speech to deliver in this House. He was obviously in a very bad physical condition when he attempted to prepare the speech himself. I have never listened to a worse dirge than I listened to this evening from the Minister. I want the House, and the back benchers of Fianna Fáil particularly, to note that you are going to pass out of the period of prosperity and stability which you have had for the past three years. You have to put your arms out and put on a Fianna Fáil hair-shirt, because, so long as Deputy MacEntee is Minister, you are going to get hair-shirt economics and a policy of austerity for the next three years.
He will not be there for three years.
For as short a period as it is possible to make his tenure of office.
Put two more on to it.
I wish you luck, because you have five doubtful supporters in this House. Deputy Corry is a sporting man, and I will wager with him that the moment the Fianna Fáil boat rocks on this austerity policy they will lose these five fellows immediately, because they will squeal for the land and there will not be enough lifeboats to take them.
Every time that bell rings in the next five years there will be 20 of you running to the gate before you are kicked out.
This is not a betting matter.
You will bring in Mr. Hartnett.
Deputy Norton on the Estimate. Deputy Corry should restrain himself.
I got a challenge and I had to accept it.
I want to red-light the future for the Fianna Fáil Deputies. I want them to go back this week-end and every other week-end and read the Minister for Finance's speech to the people outside the chapel gates and tell them to cheer up after reading that dreadful dirge which has been served on the country by the Minister who, quite clearly, does not know the facts and who is so bound up in his Victorian economics that he cannot diagnose what future course this country ought to plot for itself. We had this evening a demonstration of a most distressful country. The Minister believes that it is bound to be a distressful country with an impoverished standard of living. It will be your pride and privilege to live in a country of this kind which is poor. You will have to put up with low wages, bad houses, intolerable social conditions, underemployment, irregular employment and home assistance. You are being led blindly in the darkness by the present Minister for Finance who is going to be a very ephemeral leader so far as the country is concerned.
I reject with every atom of energy I have this poorhouse mentality which was chalked out for us this evening. Dickens, in his daftest days, never thought of a Bleak House so daft as the one which the Minister built up. There is no need for us to occupy the Bleak House which the Minister has erected this evening in a manner which was more concerned with showing off his histrionics than it was in diagnosing correctly the economic circumstances of the country.
I say to the country and to the Fianna Fáil Party, "do not follow the Minister for Finance in these hair-shirt economics." There is no need for these hair-shirt economics. We are living to-day in an age in which poverty is an absurdity, and in which nobody can justify by reference to any economic thought or economic philosophy a condition of life in which people are under-employed, are unemployed, are compelled to tolerate a low standard of living, or to live in the filthy hovels to which they were condemned 50 and 100 years ago. This is 1951, not 1851, and our people to-day will not tolerate the standard of living which was prescribed for them 100 years ago. There is no reason why they should do it. There is no justification to-day for asking them to do it. They have to-day the right to a decent standard of living. They have economic justification for it. I see no reason why they should be led into this land of darkness by a Minister for Finance who is still living in the shadow of his Victorian economics.
The Minister's policy this evening, in so far as one could call it a policy at all, was a policy of despair. His seven points were seven "don'ts"; don't do this, don't do that, don't do the other thing, don't do anything that spells a better standard of life. The Minister's speech this evening was an invitation to return to a low standard of living, to return to every one of those social evils and economic abscesses from which the country has happily got away in the past three years more rapidly than ever.
I suggest to the Minister to go to the country to-morrow again, as he can do now—he can get a dissolution this evening if he wants it—and tell the country that he stands for the hair-shirt policy which has been announced here this evening. I challenge the Minister to do that——
You will not be here any more then.
——and I challenge Fianna Fáil Deputies to do that, to tell the people now that their new policy is the policy of the hair-shirt and the policy of driving down the standard of living of the people. If they do that, they will get no endorsement from the people who in the past three years have been enabled to enjoy the standard of living which this country is capable of giving them. All the figures show that our industrial production is up, that the productivity of industrial workers is up. To preach a policy of a return to their pre-emergency standard of living —because that in effect was what the Minister did—is something which the workers of this country will not tolerate. The logical significance of the Minister's speech this evening was that, if the country is not going to be threatened with a wage-freezing policy in the immediate future, at all events, so far as the Minister is concerned, he will do his best to clap down on any demands for improved wages and salaries consequent upon increased costs of living or consequent upon greater production and productivity on the part of the workers.
I say to the Minister that the wage-freezing days of 1941 and 1951 will be very different. However Fianna Fáil, under the impact of a world cauldron of war in 1941, could manage to get away with a wage-freezing policy, there will be no getting away with a wage-freezing policy in 1951. The Minister had better make up his mind that, however he diagnoses the economic position, the masses of the people will not follow him along a road which can only mean a depressed standard of living for them.
We had lamentations from the Minister about spending. The Minister was concerned that we were dissipating our external assets. The Minister was concerned that we were spending money on a certain type of activity which apparently he disliked. The greatest blow our external assets ever received was the fact that they were in Britain and that when prices rose in Britain and throughout the world our external assets, instead of having been previously repatriated, in either capital goods or consumer goods, were divided in two by the rise in prices or the shrunken value of money in Britain.
If we had taken our external assets out of Britain in 1939 and if we could have converted those assets into capital goods or even consumer goods, we would be a very much wealthier nation than we are to-day by having those external assets there. If we had repatriated these capital assets before 1939 we could have built hospitals then cheaper than we are building them to-day; we could have built sanatoria then cheaper than we are building them to-day; we could have electrified the country and the railways then cheaper than we could think of doing it to-day; we could have built houses then for £350 which are now costing £1,200 to build.
We could have done all these things if we had repatriated our sterling assets from Britain in the years before 1939. We left them in Britain, and Britain gave us back for them anything from 8/- to 10/- for every £1 worth of goods that was exported to Britain in the days of stable prices. Now we are advised to keep our sterling assets in Britain. Would the Minister tell us what will be the value of the sterling assets if Britain goes to war? Britain has now no metallic backing. Britain has not even zinc to back her note issue to-day, much less gold. There is practically no metallic backing for British issues to-day. What will be the value of our assets in Britain if Britain goes to war? What will be the value of those assets, particularly if Britain should be overrun in a war, or what will happen to those sterling assets and to their value if even Britain continues to gear her economy to a rearmament programme which may run for the next four or six years? Is not it quite clear from all the indications in Britain that the value of our external assets will continue to decrease and decrease?
If only we had been wise enough in the years before 1939, when we were being counselled to leave our external assets in Britain while this country was under-populated and underdeveloped and its industrial possibilities scarcely scratched, we could have done with these external assets a considerable amount more than we could ever do to-day even if it were possible to-day, in existing circumstances, to repatriate the assets which are now in Britain.
The country has to remember— statistics furnished by the Minister for Social Welfare yesterday prove this— that we have now less unemployed in this country than at any time since 1922. That means that there are more people in employment to-day than at any time in the past 30 years; there are less people unemployed to-day than ever before; there is a wage standard and a domestic standard in the country to-day better than at any time in the past 30 years. To engage in futile puerile lamentations about the amount of goods which our people consume, in the face of these obvious facts, is almost to regret that we are beginning to throw off the economic shackles which at one time we believed were the natural consequences of our political shackles. We now have got rid of most of our political shackles, but some people apparently regret that our economic shackles are going as well.
Is it not an occasion for congratulation and is it not an occasion when we should rejoice when we know that to-day we have more people than ever employed? What are they employed doing? I remember 1933, 1934, 1935 and 1936, when people got employment on miserable relief schemes, three or four days a week, for a few weeks in the year, at the rate of 4/- a day. An unfortunate married man was expected to go home to his wife after four days' work in a week with 16/- in a paper bag, and that was to keep a whole family—man, wife and four or six children—for a week, under the Fianna Fáil Party. They got that work for a few weeks in the year. For the rest, they lived on home assistance or on the miserable pittance they got as unemployment assistance benefit.
These relief schemes are gone. The four-shilling-a-day mentality is gone and our people are now finding employment. They are getting it regularly in industry and in agriculture, and, so far as they are getting it under schemes of public works, on what are they employed? They are employed now in a vast and fruitful field on a scheme of land reclamation which represents an investment of millions of money in the soil of Ireland, the country's greatest source of wealth, an investment which will pay dividends not merely during this but the next generation. Is there any reason why we should deplore the investment of money in schemes of that kind? We are spending £40,000,000 in reclaiming and refertilising the land of this country. My only regret about that scheme, and in this I am expressing a personal point of view, is that it was not operated more rapidly than it was.
The civil servants made a good thing out of it. They got 75 per cent. of it.
The Minister can blackguard the civil servants if he likes, but under the Act he is obliged to protect them. The fact is that formerly people were engaged on the worthless task of digging holes and filling them in again, whereas now they are engaged in worth-while national activities. They are engaged on a vast and fruitful scheme of land reclamation which every intelligent economist realises is calculated not only to enrich the land of the country but to increase its production and productivity, which will provide wider opportunities for employment and will give the farmer a return for the industry, energy and capital which he puts into the exploitation of his land.
Our people are engaged, too, in afforestation. Is not that obviously a fruitful and useful work for our people? Our people are also engaged on a scheme of rural electrification. Is not that obviously a useful work for the nation? To-day there are more people engaged in building houses than at any time since man first set his foot on the soil of Ireland. Will anybody attempt to deny that all these activities: housing, land reclamation, afforestation, rural electrification, the building of hospitals and sanatoria, do not represent very valuable national work which will yield not only substantial dividends in this generation but which will yield dividends in the form of a better standard of health for our people, as well as dividends in the form of economic stability and of social progress?
I have no use whatever for the mentality which imagines that we are rich because we have got money invested in London while our people are unemployed at home, or for the mentality which points to our sterling assets in the Bank of England while our people live in hovels, in rain-soaked mud cabins here. The mentality which takes pride in the fact that our money is locked up in the Bank of England while our country is underdeveloped and our people are forced to tolerate a low standard of living is comparable to the case of the recluse who sleeps on a filthy mattress on the floor in a filthy outhouse and dies from malnutrition, and then somebody finds £1,000 in notes wrapped up in the filthy mattress. The coroner holds an inquest on the body of the dead man. He is described as having been eccentric and an oddity. He died in misery, poverty and squalor and £1,000 in notes is found wrapped up in the filthy mattress.
Intelligent people classify a person of that kind as being an eccentric, but they do not select people like him as Ministers for Finance and do not make legislators out of them. They do not suggest that they are the type of people to carve and weave a nation's destiny. People of that kind are regarded as oddities and eccentrics. But the people who do the same kind of thing in a national sense are oddities and eccentrics, just as much as the recluse was who died in misery and poverty and squalor, even though he had £1,000 in notes hidden from the public view, while inflicting on himself a poverty which yielded him no dividends, and not even admiration for his unwanted sufferings.
The Minister this evening mixed up, of course, his economic review with a political tirade. The tirade was much more obvious than any ability to give an economic diagnosis of the present situation, but in so far as one could piece together whatever fragments of his mind were revealed in the course of his economic diagnosis of the existing situation one could see there clearly the mind of a person who believes that our standard of living is too high, that our people eat too much, that their clothes are too good, that houses are too plentiful and too good for the people, that the standard of living of the people to-day is something which they never previously had, and, in the Minister's view, it is something to which they are not entitled.
I reject that philosophy as something that is unworthy of our people. I know of no economic condition in this country which justifies any reduction in the existing standard of living of our people. This country can afford its present standard of living, and, so far as the masses of the people are concerned, if this country can afford an O'Connell Street, a Grafton Street and a Merrion Square packed with the biggest motor cars that the wealthy classes of this country can import, then this country is going to give a decent standard of living to the men and women who render service to the nation, whether that service is given in the field, the factory, the shop or the office.
I, at all events, reject the poverty-stricken economic angle from which the Minister surveyed our national position this evening. I know of no justification, as I have said, why there should be such gloom or despair. We have had during the past three years a period of unexampled prosperity for the people, a period during which the people enjoyed a standard of living incomparably higher than they ever had before. As Fianna Fáil said during the election, their policy to-day is the same as it was in 1948, and in 1948 they promised the country four grim and hard years. We gave the country, instead, more than three years of stability and prosperity.
Now, the country is apparently going to get, by delayed action in 1951, the four grim and hard years which the present Minister for Industry and Commerce prophesied when he spoke at Letterkenny in October, 1948. I do not think you will find it easy to get the country to wear the Fianna Fáil hair-shirt. You are not going to find it as easy to get these people to play with their ball and chain as economic prisoners as the Minister for Finance thinks. Our people have tasted stability; they have tasted a better standard of life; and however much it may displease Victorian financiers and economists, I do not believe that our people can ever again be led back into a condition of life which compels them, alone in Western Europe, to tolerate a standard of living less than their own fertile land is capable of giving them.
This is not a desert island and this is not the American dustbowl. This is a fertile land which properly organised is capable of giving a decent standard of living to all our people. I want to say to those in Fianna Fáil, to the people who are the hope and the only hope of redemption of the Party, that if you allow the Minister for Finance to lead you by the bridle along the road of austerity which he marked out here this evening, your political tenure of these benches is going to be even shorter than it normally will be. If you believe that is a good policy, I challenge the Government to go to the country on it and ask the country for a mandate to put into operation a hair-shirt policy, because that was not their policy at the elections. You concealed that from the people. Go back now to the people and ask them for authority to follow the line of policy indicated by the Minister for Finance this evening. The end of that line will bring us back to days which we had happily left and which I hope our people will never again see in this country of ours.
I wonder if the Chair might tell Deputies that over half the time for this Estimate has been spent and that it was intended to give half the time to a consideration of the Estimates for Public Works and Buildings and the Office of Public Works? It is a matter for Deputies themselves; I am merely reminding them of the situation.
Is the Chair aware that the Minister took one hour and 27 minutes of the two hours?
I am not commenting on anything. I am simply indicating the position respecting time.
It is rather amusing to hear Deputy Norton talking of the hair-shirt policy and of the ball and chain which Deputy Norton, with the assistance of the other angel now leaving the House, Deputy Dillon, so ably fixed around the ankles of the agricultural community for the past three years.
Nonsense!
They were handed a country in 1948 which was well found and well got, and, as I previously described it, their attitude was the attitude of the gentleman who took over furnished rooms in a town and sold the furniture.
Notice taken that 20 Deputies were not present; House counted, and 20 Deputies being present,
I take it that the Estimate introduced by the Minister to-day is the Estimate which was prepared by his predecessor, and it is surprising to hear of a hair-shirt policy in connection with it. Having sold all the furniture, having got rid of all the available assets, where did they propose to find the cash for the next 12 months? There was left in stock in this country, in 1948, £11,000,000 worth of fuel. That was sold and burned and nothing put in its place, but the £11,000,000 was spent in what is known as riotous living. Coal to the amount of 48,000 tons disappeared. It was sold and burned, and the money was spent, and nothing put in its place. When we go now to Mother England, with whom the bargain for the coal was made, we are told that we can get only two-thirds of what she guaranteed to give us, and we have to go elsewhere and purchase coal at double the money.
Another matter to which I should like to draw the attention of these gentlemen is the fact that the hair-shirt policy on the agricultural community, as brought into force by Deputy Dillon, ably assisted, so far as legislating with his feet goes, by Deputy Norton and his colleagues, leaves us in the position of having to go abroad with £1,500,000 immediately to pay for 3,000 tons of foreign butter to give to our people to eat. The shortage of wheat alone compels us to go abroad again to purchase that wheat on the foreign market. Deputies have heard of the wheat agreement. We know that the price of wheat to-day is £33 to £35 per ton under the wheat agreement, but we also know that, if there are not produced in this country £250,000 tons of wheat, every ton by which we are short of that amount must be purchased abroad at £45 per ton.
That is absolutely incorrect.
That is the wheat agreement, and I advise Deputy Rooney to take a little time off from the tomatoes to read it.
I will not find the £45 a ton.
Under E.C.A., 50 per cent. of our requirements of wheat are to be produced here, and I suggest that we are far short of the acreage required to produce that this year and that for every ton of wheat we are short we will have to pay to the foreigner not the £33 a ton under the wheat agreement but £45 a ton.
That is wrong, completely wrong.
It is a bit cheaper than the Argentine wheat.
That is No. 3 position. No. 4 is that we will have to go abroad again and pay from £2,500,000 to £3,000,000 for sugar. All the items I am giving, with the exception of fuel, are a portion of the deliberate policy of the previous Government in driving this country out of agricultural production.
Fianna Fáil disposed of the beef.
We hear about all the people employed, but we know that there are 30,000 less on the land to-day than there were three years ago. You might have them in the towns or cities, but they are not on the land. They have gone off it.
You can bring them back now.
I believe that Deputy Rooney, too, removed from the land. He even took the glass off the glasshouse.
You can bring them back now.
That is a position in which this Government have to find something over £20,000,000 that in the ordinary course of events it would not have to find in a well ordered country. I am sorry, it will be far more, as the £11,000,000 worth of fuel, that was sold and done away with and nothing put in instead, will cost something like £20,000,000 to replace.
There is the dump in the Phoenix Park.
There is no dump anywhere, except the dump that is over there. They are in the dumps.
Not a bit.
It is a pretty hefty dump when Deputy Collins is in it.
An intelligent one, for a change.
Those are the facts and they cannot be denied. That is what must be faced by the Minister for Finance during the next 12 months. He has to find for the Minister for Agriculture the money to pay the Danes and the New Zealanders for the butter that should be produced here at home by our own people from our own cows. The Minister for Finance must also find the £3,000,000 odd that will have to be paid for the foreign sugar, that must be brought in here, since the hair-shirt policy in regard to agriculture by the previous Government left us so many thousand acres down. Again, owing to the wheat policy of Deputy Dillon, we will have to ramble abroad and buy wheat at an exorbitant figure.
Not as dear as the Argentine wheat, with its maggots and weevils.
Order.
Yes, indeed, and you will be lucky if we get it at that. I knew I would get the Deputy under the hide. These are the facts that the Minister must bear in mind. He will have to realise that you cannot take a bullock in the morning and get milk out of it.
You might.
I am afraid I would have a pretty tough job, especially in the case of all those white faces booked for the British market, where our sterling assets alluded to by Deputy Norton are to be swelled up by beef, whilst we buy on a dollar market what we have to replace them with. However, we will hear the economic lawyers in a minute.
Not in a minute. I guarantee the Deputy will talk for another half hour.
If the Deputy keeps quiet and gives me time, I will get through this, perhaps, before nine. These are the things I would like Deputies to remember. We also had from Deputy Norton talk about people living in hovels. I have seen no hold up in the housing policy, nor will we see any hold up in it anywhere.
In Cork.
I have terrible patience with the Deputy over there. When the last Government came into office, we had in the South Cork Board of Health area proposals on hand, and in some cases the land bought, for something like 700 houses. We went right ahead, the change of Government did not stop us, and we have schemes for 1,000 or 1,500 more.
We have them built.
We are going ahead and have heard nothing from the Minister for Finance or anyone else about any slowing up in the programme. I do not know what Deputy Norton meant by talking about hovels. The only hovels we have at present are those occupied by the country boys, who have been drifting into the towns and cities through the policy pursued here for the past three years by the late Government. Those are the only changes I know of. Naturally, when a country boy comes in here, he gets into the worst house and is not going to get a good one. Then he is begging off the like of Deputy Rooney—if he is on the local authority, which God forbid—to go and build some little hovel for him.
They came out of the fields.
Deputy Norton seemed to have a terrible abhorrence that anyone would endeavour to curb anything, especially free spending. Free spending was all right while you had the furniture to sell, while you had the £11,000,000 worth of fuel to sell, especially when you had no intention of replacing it. But that £11,000,000 is gone now and this Government must provide fuel for the people for the coming winter.
Make sure you do it.
We could have done it.
Deputy Corry is entitled to speak without interruption. The barrage of interruption that comes from those benches must stop.
Everyone knows there were just two months in the city when the poor had no fuel last winter.
Deputy McCann may make a statement later if he wishes to do so.
It is very hard to listen to them.
These gentlemen started a few months ago to prepare to bring back the turf workers, whom they drove out of employment in 1948. They started only three months ago to bring them back and then they gave us the task of producing in this country this year two years' fuel. A year's turf can make up in part for the 40,000 to 60,000 tons of turf that were in the dumps and which they destroyed and spent and a certain amount can make up for the coal they bought from John Bull and which John Bull did not deliver. Those are just a few of the items with which the Minister for Finance has to deal.
When Deputy Norton talks of increases in wages and salaries, we of this Government are not prepared to have three-fourths of the people of this country living as the hewers of wood and the drawers of water for the other one-fourth. The sooner that sinks in on those on the opposite benches the better. The agricultural community are not going to be asked to continue to produce under the price-freezing game that was practised by the previous Government.
Would the Deputy say from what portion of Deputy Dillon's speech he is quoting and from where he is getting the quotation?
I am quoting from nothing.
I know.
I am making my own speech. I need not quote anybody's speech.
But you purported to.
I did not.
As far as I know, the Deputy is not purporting to quote any particular statement.
The Deputy stated there was a price-freezing policy imposed by the previous Government on the agricultural community of this country for three years. Producers of milk were paid the 1947 price for milk until the life was frightened in them some four months ago and Deputy Dillon came along with a mangy penny.
And then they voted for an inter-Party Government.
They were good judges.
I am not worried much.
You may be at the next election.
The Deputy should keep to the Estimate.
Certainly, if the gentlemen opposite keep a bit quiet. I am concerned with that condition of affairs and I am also concerned with the fact that at least on two occasions during the past 12 months the very self-same Deputy Norton, who complains about wage freezing, trotted around the lobby to express his dissatisfaction at any increase in the price of milk being given to the farmers. The farmer was to be kept with the ball and chain on his ankle but the farmer, like the gentlemen described by Deputy Norton, decided that he would have no more of it.
On a point of order. Is it right for the Deputy to address the gallery?
I should not like to address Deputy O'Sullivan in the hope of getting an intelligent answer. Deputy Norton alluded to the section of the community with the ball and chain. He undoubtedly fixed that ball and chain on the agricultural community of this country. The result was that they got rid of him and let Deputy Dillon go over to Denmark for the Brian Boru butter. They left Deputy Dillon, when he left office, with the larder empty, and his successor is being compelled to travel again to the Continent to purchase butter for the use of the Irish people. Did ever any sane man think that he would see that condition of affairs brought about in this country? That very self-same policy was adopted again under the influence of Deputy Norton supported by the city representatives of the Fine Gael Party. There was not backbone enough in the so-called Clann na Talmhan Party to offer any opposition.
The same attitude was adopted in regard to sugar and in regard to the growing of beet.
The Deputy told us all that before.
Many times before.
We are faced with that position and the Minister for Finance is absolutely correct in pointing out what extra money he will have to find to make good the gap. Unfortunately, as I pointed out to this House before, you will not get a farmer to change his methods of farming in three months. It is too late now for sowing wheat and the people of this country will have to pay through the nose for the next 12 months for our shortage in that respect. It will take at least two years before our milk production will be such as to provide a sufficiency of butter in this country for our own people.
Two ounces.
The bad deeds men do unfortunately live after them and the bad effects of the kind of game played by the gentlemen opposite when they were masquerading as a Government will live in this country for more than a few years.
To be quite honest about it, I did not hear the Minister's statement but I do know this much, that the Estimate the Minister has introduced and which was prepared by Deputy McGilligan was left short of those items I have mentioned and which I state are essential. They will have to be got wherever they are to be had and at whatever price that has to be paid for them. The money must be found for them. That is briefly the position and there is no use in talking of a hair-shirt policy in so far as one section of the community is concerned, particularly when that hair-shirt policy has been imposed on the agricultural community of this country for the past three years.
I heard a lot of talk about land drainage in this House. What is the position in regard to land drainage? Under the Fianna Fáil scheme for land drainage any farmer who wished to carry out drainage operations on his land got 50 per cent. of the cost.
Up to a limit.
Possibly you should know. I can dredge a bog in the morning for which the Land Commission would pay me £4 an acre for forestry. I can dredge that at £12 an acre and drain it.
How is this related to financial policy?
We were accused of curtailing the money for drainage.
Certainly that accusation or charge was not made by anyone so far in this debate. A glancing reference was made by the Minister to money spent on agricultural machinery; that was the only reference to drainage. Perhaps the Deputy was not in the House.
I am dealing with a statement made by Deputy Sweetman.
If the Deputy relates it to financial policy I will hear him. I confess that I do not see the relation myself.
I have no intention of going further than Deputy Sweetman went. If we find schemes which, in the opinion of this Government, will not be of lasting benefit to the people, we will deal with them in our own way and find the money necessary for the other matters in an entirely different way. Each scheme will have to be examined on its merits. The Minister is responsible for finding the cash for all. He has also to find the cash for the items to which I have alluded, which are very serious items.
I know that Deputies over there are anxious to speak. I do not wish to curtail the time one minute beyond what it is necessary for me to point out those facts to the House.
I only want to intervene briefly, but I want to warn the House that if any Minister for Finance in this country purports to give an economic review and bases that review on the perversions which the Minister for Finance employed to-day, he is doing his country a reckless disservice, and if the Fianna Fáil Party accept an economic policy, based on the foundations laid by the Minister for Finance to-day, they are starting this country on a steady march to inevitable ruin. No business, no nation, stands still; it either goes forward or goes backward. The Minister for Finance to-day has declared it as his intention to insist on the reversion of the trend. I assure you that the trend has been forward. You ought to realise in time that his purpose is to force the starting of this country on the road back.
I would like to draw the attention of the House to two figures which the Minister quoted to-day. Speaking of our net external assets, he said that they had been diminished by £90,000,000 over the last three years. There is one common source for the sure ascertainment of our net external assets which is familiar to the mind of anybody who concerns himself with these matters, and that is the external assets of the joint stock banks to be ascertained in the quarterly return of the Central Bank. If this is the statistic which the Minister for Finance desires us to believe he referred to I challenge the accuracy of all he said on that statistic and let his declaration stand or fall by its accuracy or its inaccuracy. I asseverate that it bears no relation to the ascertained truth and I believe that the phrase was deliberately formulated to create on the mind of the House and of the country the impression that he was referring to a well-known statistic but provides in the formula employed by him an escape clause which, when his misrepresentations are nailed down, will entitle him to say: "That is not the figure to which I was referring; I was referring to an estimate"—which, admittedly is not susceptible to a precise check.
I take his second figure. He said that the new capital investment in the agricultural industry had only one result; taking 1938-39 as the base year—I refer to the Statistical Abstract, 1950, Table 53 page 57—for volume, not value, of agricultural production as 100, he said that we had barely reached that base in 1950. The latest figure in the Statistical Abstract is for the calendar year 1949. What are the facts? No isolated year is any index of value to anyone who understands statistics. What matters is not the static position of the nation at any given time; what matters is whither the nation economically or politically is travelling. Here is the story.
In 1939 the volume of production was 100; in 1947, at the end of which year Fianna Fáil handed over this country to the inter-Party Government, the volume of production had fallen to 91.9; at the end of 1949, after two years of our administration, the volume of production was 99.7 and rising. If you take the figure for net output, excluding turf, which I do not think can properly be described as agricultural produce, again taking the base year 1938-39 as 100, in 1947 it was 97.1, and in 1949 it was 101.3 and rising.
I ask Deputies themselves to take down the copy of Stastistical Abstract which they themselves have received and let them themselves read Tables 53, 54, 55 and 56, and ask themselves, having read these tables, whether the Minister for Finance has truthfully reproduced for them the facts or has he sought to mislead them into the madness of reversing the present trend of economic development in this country and deliberately embarking on a deflationary spiral which, if we once get involved in it, may lead us not only to economic but to political disaster as well. Let us face it. Fifty years ago, simple people were prepared to accept as something analogous to an Act of God the hardships and suffering and misery brought down on their heads by manipulators of money, who were primarily concerned to maintain the value of their monetary savings and fortunes. The mass of our people will not stand for that now, and God forbid that they should. The wealth of this country should have upon it as its first charge a decent, moderate standard of living for all our people, with any subsequent available surplus as the reward for superior exertion or ability. But no civilised people in the world will accept the doctrine that they are to be made poor, that they are to be condemned to destitution, so that those who possess riches may be confirmed in their title.
The Minister for Finance to-day said that he wanted to deal with the adequacy of the Budget, and that it was manifest that no provision had been made for the charges that would come in course of payment in this financial year under the Budget presented by Deputy McGilligan as Minister for Finance. I propose to traverse that statement in detail. There is full provision made for every charge that can come in course of payment for the financial year for which that Budget is designed under the proposals made by Deputy McGilligan to this House when he was Minister for Finance.
Do not forget that it is only three and a half short years since there was an emergency Budget in this House, designed to raise £7,000,000 sterling additional revenue, and that within three months of coming into office the Government that succeeded Fianna Fáil removed every one of these taxes, raised old age pensions and extended social services substantially. We are now faced with a proposal by Fianna Fáil to repeat in 1951 exactly the same folly as that which they embarked upon in 1947. Providentially, the Supplementary Budget of 1947 was followed by the General Election of 1948 and instead of having had four harsh, difficult and trying years we have had three and a half years of the greatest period of expansion in industry and agriculture that this country has ever known. Do not forget that if you measure the condition of our society by the barometer of population you will find that for the first time in a century, since 1847, the population trend of this country changed last year. Study the population index for 100 years and it will be seen that in every quinquennial census that was taken the population had declined. For the first time in a century, at the last enumeration the population of this Irish Republic has risen.
The Minister for Agriculture purported on his Estimate to give statistical information relating to live stock in this country. He did not tell the House that in that comparison he was either comparing figures 12 months old with figures two years old or he was comparing January estimates with June enumeration. The live stock of this country are enumerated once a year, in June. There is a spot check in January and estimates are made on that spot check. The Minister for Agriculture has not got the June figures yet, but he realised there were sufficient Deputies in this House who would not appreciate that finesse in statistics and he purported to compare like with unlike. I challenge him to produce the June figures when he gets them—for these matters have been proceeding under my hand for three years and I know their trend. I have not seen them. Nobody has seen them. Let the Minister produce them. I will stand or fall on the policy of our Government by what those figures show—and no living man has seen them yet because they are not completed.
The Minister for Finance says to-day that two of the things he is concerned to deal with are the unwieldy capital programme and the balance of trade. Nine months ago the Government of which I was a member surveyed the scene, consequent on months of work, to estimate the position of this country in respect of raw materials and essential supplies. The Government gave a direction—and I challenge the Minister for Finance to deny this, for he has it on the record—to every Department of State, to every local authority and to every man in business to survey his resources and to lay in for our people from 12 months' to two years' supplies, with the injunction that that was not a precept to be belled abroad—for when you are going into a market to buy scarce materials you do not want to proclaim that you are buying under instructions to accumulate a certain good quantity, whatever the cost. But unless we were to face the possibility of widespread unemployment, with a variety of other social evils, we knew it was the duty of the executive authority of this country itself to bespeak supplies and to facilitate all others who could effectively collaborate to that end— and we did it. We directed everybody to throw our balance of trade into glaring disequilibrium so that we would have the stuff. I personally got from the Government authority over and above the ordinary trade channels to go out and buy 100,000 tons of superphospate of lime and bring it in. It has never been done before. Is there no Deputy in this House to discern the fact that, if the Minister for Agriculture was given unprecedented authority to go into the market himself to buy essential raw materials, that was a pretty fair index of the policy the Government was most deliberately following?
Of course, the balance of our trade has been deliberately disrupted in the last 12 months because we wanted to disrupt it. If we had not so disrupted it the goods we had to have would not now be there. The United States of America has set up a vast organisation for no other purpose than to stockpile. The Lord Privy Seal of the British Government has been charged with no other task but to stockpile. The French Government, the Belgian Government, the Dutch Government, the Danish Government and the Swedish Government were all charged to stockpile. Into that maelstrom of scarcity the Irish Government had to move, not disposing of the resources of countries like Great Britain and the United States of America and not disposing of the resources of many wealthy countries with colonial possessions and eagerly sought goods which they could offer as an inducement; we had nothing to offer except money, and mainly sterling at that.
Are we to be rebuked for what we then got for our people, and they are in the country now, the supplies that Fianna Fáil most confidently prophesied 18 months ago we would find ourselves unable to get? Do not the Deputies themselves remember yelling from these benches, where they then sat, that we were going to be left short of all sorts of essential materials? Do they not remember glorying in the fact that the inter-Party Government was going to be caught short? Were they such fools as not to realise that the only reason why we could not blast them out of the way with the facts was because to put the facts on the records was to destroy the opportunity that we were charged to exploit on behalf of the people? What tripe is this the Minister talks about consumer goods? He knows, he must know, that the character of our imports has been under strict and critical review for the last six months lest in the programme of stockpiling there might have been an unauthorised and improvident spending spree on nylons or Dutch jam, or rubbish of that kind.
Or butter.
——or rubbish of that kind which was so abundantly bought in 1947.
And two ounces of butter.
Here is the belief that Deputy MacEntee, Minister for Finance, would hold out upon this matter. Deputy MacEntee, Minister for Finance, feels that it is wrong that our people should eat their own butter. Deputy MacEntee, Minister for Finance, looks back and he says: "When we were in office and when we produced 700,000 cwt. of butter we prudently shipped 400,000 cwt. abroad and we got good sterling cash for it and we let the Irish people eat 300,000 cwt. and do with margarine for the rest." That is the very essence of the difference that here divides us. We glory in the fact that our people produced 700,000 cwt. of butter in 1950, that they were able to pay for it, that they were able to eat it, and that our people did eat it. The present Minister for Finance's belief is that our people are living too well and we ought to slash the ration—the eight ounces to four ounces—and ship half that butter abroad. Had we done that we could have reduced the adverse trade balance by well nigh £3,000,000. There is the issue joined between us.
Is it the Fianna Fáil policy to say: "You should have halved the ration and shipped half that butter abroad." Believe me, there were economists who held the view most strongly that we should. I remember economists of distinction and prudence saying to me: "The people are eating too much meat; a lot of that meat which is being eaten in Ireland ought to go abroad to restore our balance of payments." The reply of the Government to which I belonged was: "That is not the way in which to restore the balance of payments." There are two ways in which one can restore the balance of payments. One is to cut down our imports and let the people go hungry. The other is to increase our exports and let the standard of living of our people rise. There has grown up in this country the cursed conviction, as Deputy Norton said, that the poor, dirty Irish ought not to have a high standard of living, that they are poor and God meant them to be poor, and they ought to have a wretched, low, degraded standard of living.
Unless they go to Birmingham or Manchester, New York or Chicago, they can never hope for anything else. But our Government was consecrated in the faith and to the belief that that was not true and that if we used the resources God gave us to their best advantage we could produce from the land of Ireland, for all our wealth ultimately comes from our land, a sufficient product to give our own people an abundance and a surplus to export sufficient to pay for all reasonable imports that our people would demand.
Were we wrong? Does Fianna Fáil intend to abandon that faith and make up its mind that the people have been living too high and that they ought to get down from the perch to which they never should have aspired? That is the issue and it was never better illustrated than it has been by what the present Minister for Finance said about the butter. Should we have shipped the butter abroad? There were plenty of people ready to buy it. There were plenty of people who would give us £3,000,000 for it. Or should we have let our own people eat it? It would appear that the Minister thinks we should have shipped it abroad. The Danes did. The Danes cut their butter ration in two and they only gave their own people four ounces and they shipped the balance to Great Britain and got money for it and they told their own people to eat margarine. We did not do that. The Minister believed that the Danes were right. Does the Fianna Fáil Party believe it? They ought to have the courage to say whether they do or not.
The Minister said nothing of the sort, of course.
He is running away.
That is what the Minister believes. The Minister makes the case: your imports are extravagant and there is only one way of correcting that—cut them down. I say there is only one way of correcting that situation and that is by expanding your exports, and the only way you can expand your exports is by making two blades of grass grow where one grew heretofore. There is only one way whereby one can get the whole economy of Ireland to yield a richer product and that is by getting it ultimately from the land. If you get it from the land it will flow through the whole economy and ultimately emerge as the surplus product on which the standard of living of our people depends. That is why we embarked upon what the Minister now calls unwieldy capital enterprises. That is why I got authority to tell the people that there was £40,000,000 sterling for the improvement of the land of Ireland. That is why I got authority on behalf of the Government to proceed with the expenditure of £40,000,000. It ill-becomes the Minister for Finance, who, in a sense, is head of the Civil Service, to utter the cheap jeer to which he gave expression in this House to-day that the Civil Service get the bulk of any money spent on the land project. He knows the stupid, mean dishonesty of that comment.
I know what the figures are.
He knows that a ten-years' project was embarked upon, that to administer it and work it a machine had to be established, which had before it a programme of work stretching out over ten years, that if that work was to be done throughout the country the machine had to work over the whole country, and that to credit only one year's result of that machine was as honest as to build Nelson's monument and then to declare that, if his memory was to be perpetuated, we must build another monument every year since Nelson died. Nelson wants only one pillar to stand on but, according to the calculations of the Minister for Finance, if Nelson died in 1800 there would be 151 pillars in O'Connell Street now. There are 180,000 acres of the land of Ireland at present in the process of rehabilitation. There are crops growing to-day on land where there was nothing but rocks 12 months ago. There are crops growing to-day on land on which the sight of man had never fallen in human memory which has been cleared of scrub, rocks and obstructions.
Where?
I shall tell the Deputy where and he ought to know—in East Galway. Let him go down and travel over the road between Athlone and Ballinasloe and he will see seven acres of land on which the eye of man had not previously fallen in human memory and there is a crop of oats growing on it now. Go down and nest in it if you want to.
Seven acres after three years!
I thought it was Deputy Beegan made the interjection.
It would be interesting to know the cost per acre but we shall find that out.
Here is where issue is joined between us and I want to join it now. Our people for centuries have suffered from land hunger. Why? Because we had not sufficient land to give them. Divide up all the farms in Ireland, resume them all into the hands of the Government, and divide them out equally between all the farmers who live upon them, and you will not have 12 acres for every farmer because that is the size God made this island. If there is an acre to be retrieved, if three acres are to be added to every holding in Ireland, which will change the life of the small farmer from one closely approximating to destitution to one of reasonably modest comfort, is the measure of its value to be the pounds, shillings and pence, it will produce on the morrow of its reclamation or its measure to be that we have raised that farmer from chronic destitution into the position of an independent small farmer who is beholding to nobody, for his own or his family's livelihood? If Deputy Beegan's case is that he does not get 4½ per cent. on every £1 laid out in the reclamation that is being done, I make him a present of it. If Deputy Beegan's case is that from now on, not a pound will be spent on drainage or reclamation in this country that does not yield its 4½ per cent., let him close up the Board of Works——
Nothing of the kind.
There is not a single shilling spent by the Board of Works that will survive that test and it should not.
It is the talk of the countryside and the most critical of it are the Deputy's own supporters.
Deputy Beegan's doctrine, following closely upon that of Deputy MacEntee, is that unless there is an economic return in strict terms of pounds, shillings and pence of 4½ per cent. on State expenditure, it must be looked upon with suspicion and dread. I want to ask Deputy Beegan if a river overflows every year and inundates relatively little land but, in the process of inundation, flows in the back door and out the front door of one small farmer's house every year, forcing the members of the family to live for a week on the dresser with the cups, what is the economic value of the work designed to stop the river flowing through the house every year? Are we to allow the farmer's wife to remain with her children on the dresser for a week in every year while her husband brings the groceries home in a boat until we ascertain the economic value of ridding each square yard of her kitchen floor of these recurring floods? Are we to say: "She had better stay on the dresser; she made her bed and let her lie on it; she knew she was marrying into a flooded neighbourhood and she should not have married into that neighbourhood if she objected to floods." That is not my view of how public money should be spent.
The Deputy's views have changed on how money should be spent on drainage.
My views are that every acre of land we can convert into agricultural land, and that will produce a crop for the man who works it, is worthy of reclamation. Once he has made a reasonable contribution, the society to which he belongs should retrieve that acre and add it to our common store. Make up your minds on this; make up your minds that if Deputy Beegan and the Minister for Finance are going to take their economics from Walter Baghot, whose views prevail most commonly in certain quarters, you are not only going to bring our people to a period of horrible destitution but you are going to put the whole economic and political fabric of this State in peril.
Of course, inflation is a danger against which every prudent man will watch and take precautions. I challenge the Minister for Finance now to deny that he found in the Department of Finance when he went there a full and careful inquiry proceeding and in progress for the last six months, designed to study every statistical evidence that was available from every source so that the first evidence of inflation of a character dangerous to the economic fabric of this State would be detected and proper action instituted forthwith to set it right. I challenge the Minister for Finance to deny that in his Department he found a careful statistical inquiry, conducted by some of the finest economic minds in Ireland, into the nature of the circumstances giving rise to the apparent unbalance of our visible trade, with this injunction: the disequilibrium of our visible trade balance is to be regarded as prima facie evidence of inflation and the inquiry is to proceed on the assumption that that prima facie evidence is there and only its clear rebuttal will discharge the Government from the obligation of taking certain classical measures to deal with it. He could not do that. I know, because the former Minister for Finance, my colleague, asked me into consultation in those discussions, in those plans and in those investigations. Did the Minister for Finance think it a fortunate circumstance that his predecessor was indisposed? Did he think he could get away with the fraud of pretending that a man who has more brains in the fingernail of his little finger than the present Minister for Finance has in his whole carcase, would fall into the economic errors of which the present Minister can speak like a parrot but the true nature of which he understands no more than my foot?
It was not a desire to interrupt the thread of the Minister's discourse that made me direct the attention of the House to the fact that he was reading his speech. I knew the blasted document he was reading. I could have nearly recited it myself. It is sent out by the Department of Finance every six months. There was never a Government established in this country since this State was set up that has not been thrown into confusion and bewilderment twice a year by the document which that poor, silly creature came in here to read to-day. I have seen it again and again and again. I have corresponded about it. I have pointed out its fallacious folly. I have pointed out that it might be written by the great-grandmother of the man who penned it and she would have been regarded as a very conservative woman. There is not one of the Minister's colleagues who does not know that threadbare old circulation, and somebody who is pretty closely associated with it was the hero of the following incident. I name no names and the individual to whom I refer is not a civil servant. He was discussing that dog-eared, ragged document, and the second party to the discussion said: "Look why do you not make up your mind that God did not predestine this country to be a nation of paupers and that Ireland is as good a place, and maybe a better place, than anywhere else in the world in which to invest money at the present time." The orthodox veteran shrugged his shoulders and, as he was leaving the room, he looked back and said: "Well, I have been prophesying for the 25 years that this country was going to go bankrupt and, to tell you God's truth, I do not know why it has not." It was quite manifest that this able man had, in his relative youth, accepted an economic doctrine and faith and had become so rigid in these beliefs that his concern was not to adjust his economic beliefs to the manifest evidence of fact but to make the fact fit into what he believed was bound to happen. He had done so far 24 years and in the twenty-fifth year there was forced from him the unwilling concession that, according to the wisdom he acquired, this country should have gone bankrupt long ago and that he did not know why it had not.
That is the mentality your Minister for Finance has absorbed like blotting paper in the last three weeks. I warn this House that those who propagate such doctrines may look ludicrous and be a legitimate figure of fun for us all, but do not ignore them, when you have enjoyed the jest of their survival. I warn this House such men are dangerous because it is fantastic the insane lengths to which the old-fashioned economist with simple faith in the sovereign remedy of deflation is prepared to go in order to prove himself right. Once the orthodox economist convinces himself that national stability is founded on deflation, he is prepared to wreck the whole State in order to prove that it was not his theory that was wrong but the inability of the people to take it.
They pushed that little man there who has as much understanding of national economics or finance—I think it was Deputy Cogan who applied the proper description—I shall not say as the baby in the cradle, but about as much as the senile delinquent in the bath chair. I am indebted to his colleague, Deputy Cogan, for that apt description. Senile delinquents sucking their biscuit and their bottle of warm milk in their bath chairs may seem quite harmless. However, a nation on the march has velocity, and the most decrepit senile delinquent that ever sat in a bath chair, if he chose to take his stance in front of the "Twentieth Century" express, might take a hard knock himself, but it would be nothing to what would happen to the passengers in the "Twentieth Century" express, because his bath chair might derail the train. A senile delinquent he may or may not be. I think the expression verged in frankness on the borderline of severity. His colleague and supporter will be a better judge of that than I. Senile delinquent though he may be, I warn this House that, imbued with the doctrines which he has confessed himself to accept to-day, persuaded as he appears to be that the budgetary methods of his predecessors were at fault, that man is dynamite. I am not, however, unduly alarmed.
I have kept for the last thing I want to say the reason why I think we may all safely disregard his statement to-day. If rumour speaks truth, they are going to drop him. They dropped Deputy Little to see how the ship would survive the dropping of that anchor or pilot. The ship does not seem to have missed the pilot or the anchor, whichever word you care for. If rumour speaks right, another couple of venerable pilots or anchors are scheduled to go by the board and, if my political sagacity does not mislead me, one of the veterans who has been informed that the plank awaits him and he must walk it, is determined to walk it with an air, strangely enough, not of chivalrous panache, but has chosen to prepare himself for this stimulating experience with an exterior of orthodox respectability—frock coat, well-burnished silk hat——
Clearly that is not relevant to the Estimate.
I suggest that the approaching disappearance of Deputy MacEntee from the Fianna Fáil front bench is the explanation of the speech he made here to-day. He knows perfectly well that the Party to which he belongs are not going to follow him in that line of policy. He knows that he is not going to be long with them in his ministerial capacity. He will not suffer to be thrown overboard as Deputy Little was. He is going to walk the plank in a silk hat, frock coat and spats of Threadneedle Street respectability, to vanish for ever in the political tide of this country as the last relic of a disreputable economic past.
Any of us who heard the Minister for Finance can realise the shock which will be caused in the country when the people read the statements made by him. The people can be sure that the policy which brought about the expansion and the prosperity that we knew in this country during the past three years is about to come to an end. We are going now to follow a new line to be adopted by the Minister for Finance, according to his statement to-day. He is going to reverse the trend of economic development which our country knew during the last three and a half years, and to adopt the policy enunciated here to-day. It is clear to anybody who heard his statement that neither he nor his Government is able for the task. They appear to be afraid of the task, and for that reason they are running away from the policy which gave our people a greater measure of employment than ever before, a greater measure of prosperity, and a better standard of living. All these things were to go by the board if the Minister adopts the policy enunciated by him to-day.
It looks as if he will adopt the policy which his Party had in mind in 1947. It was enunciated by Deputy Lemass in Letterkenny when he said that the nation was facing the four most difficult years in its lifetime. Instead of that, when the inter-Party Government took office, we experienced the greatest period of prosperity and expansion that the country has known during any three years of our native Government. Similarly, Deputy Boland, in 1947, coming up to the general election, told us that we must be ready to face austerity and a hair-shirt existence owing to the international situation and world conditons. Instead of having austerity and a hair-shirt policy, we had peace and plenty and a greater measure of employment than ever before. Last year our people consumed 13 ounces of butter per head per week. Never before were our people able to eat so much butter. We did not stop them; we would be only too glad to give them more if they wanted it.
The Minister, in the course of his speech, indicated that he regarded the years 1938 and 1939 as a starting-point from which he should direct policy. Let us remember that, in 1938 and 1939, we had sterling assets of approximately £400,000,000 in London and at the same time we had here 119,000 persons on the unemployment register. If those are the days which the Minister for Finance considers to be a good point from which to start out on an economic policy for this country, I cannot agree with him. If he pursues the policy announced to-day, there is no doubt that the standard of living of our people will be reduced and brought down in a very short time. During the general election the Minister's leader criticised the fact that our national debt had increased, but he omitted to tell the public that the national debt had increased because we had invested money in capital development. We invested practically £30,000,000 in the provision of houses for our people. We were not afraid of that policy of capital development because we knew it would bring a better standard of living to our people, which should be the aim of every Government. I do not believe that the policy announced by the Minister to-day will improve the standard of living of our people. I doubt if it will be followed. When the Minister gets an opportunity to think it over again and to decide whether he will adopt the policy pursued by the inter-Party Government or will pursue the new policy announced by himself, he will see that his policy will not be practicable.
We are now exporting manufactured goods from this country in competition with the manufacturers of other countries. Goods manufactured in this country are being sold across the counters in other countries. That is as a result of the policy pursued by the inter-Party Government. We knew that if we could expand production to such a point where we would be able to export goods we would then be provided with the necessary finance to import the goods which would add to the standard of living of our own people. If the Minister is going to depart from that policy, it means that the standard of living must inevitably come down.
The Minister, in the course of his speech, referred to economy and national savings. Everybody knows the attitude of Fianna Fáil in this respect. They could offer only 1 per cent. to our people for money they would lodge in the Post Office. The result was that the people were withdrawing more money from the Post Office than they were putting in. That occurred over a number of years. When Deputy McGilligan took office he decided to give a rate of interest which would encourage people to lodge money and encourage national savings. I want to know now from the Minister which policy, the Fianna Fáil policy of offering 1 per cent. and asking the people to save or the policy of offering them 2½ per cent. and asking them to save, is of greater benefit to the country.
The Minister mentioned also that our assets had been dissipated but he knows very well in the back of his mind that our assets were used, particularly during the last 12 or 18 months, in stockpiling.
They were not.
Certainly, they were.
I have given the figures. The Deputy was not listening.
Order!
Do not let him repeat Deputy Dillon's falsehoods now.
Is the Minister suggesting that there was no stockpiling?
I have given the figures. The money was not used to stockpile. There is £18,500,000 for which there is nothing to show.
I will wait for the Minister's reply to that point, but so far as I know the money was invested in stockpiling.
That is what you have been told.
We went into the international market in an effort to obtain the classes of goods which were becoming scarcer and scarcer every day because of the present international situation. We had to go into competition——
You have not got the goods.
——with other nations in the international market trying to get those things. Perhaps the Minister will say that it was not an investment on our part to bring into this country far more artificial manures than we could possibly use within a reasonable time. They are there now to be used on the land according as they are required. Similarly, our own traders have been stockpiling. They have been bringing into this country as rapidly as they could all classes of building materials which are going off the market rapidly. Every other sphere of trade in this country can prove to the Minister, if he wants to find out, that they have been stockpiling and that they are getting ready for any eventualities that may arise from an international emergency.
I was glad to hear the Minister beginning to boast about electricity considering that he and his Party were opposed, first of all, to the Shannon scheme and, secondly, to electricity itself.
The Deputy is talking through the top of his hat.
Did not the Minister describe the Shannon scheme as one "white elephant" on one occasion?
I certainly did, and there is a report in the Department of Finance by experts saying that it was.
Does the Minister stand over his criticism of the Shannon scheme?
Certainly.
Why deny it to Deputy Rooney now?
The Shannon scheme is not electricity development. It was we who developed the Erne. It was we who projected Portarlington, against the opposition of the Deputy who is hee-hawing now. We started the rural electrification scheme.
It was you who increased the price of electricity, too.
The Shannon scheme was a very useful white elephant during the war. We know where we would have been without it.
Time is running short.
Why does not the Minister conduct himself?
I shall not delay the House because I know there are others who wish to speak on this matter.
A lot of ground has been traversed here this afternoon and I do not propose to go over the same ground or even to touch upon it. I want to make an appeal to the Minister to consider a reform in a certain direction. It is something for which, I think, he has direct responsibility. I refer to the collection of income-tax. Several questions have been raised recently in this House, even in the last three years and I think for years before that, but more particularly in the last three or four years, because of changed conditions as far as wages and salaries were concerned. The position of the ordinary worker, the tradesman, the manual worker, the man in the foundry, who is receiving such a rate of wages that he has to pay a certain amount of income-tax is that at a certain time in the year he is presented with a bill for what he and his colleagues regard as an exorbitant sum, a fairly big sum to have to pay in bulk. The Minister will appreciate, as we all do, that it is not a very nice thing for a mason, a plasterer, a bricklayer, a carpenter or a foundry worker, who may be in receipt of £8, £9 or £10 per week, to be asked to pay to the Revenue Commissioners a lump sum of £20, £30, £40 or even £50.
As far as the Civil Service is concerned, there is a pay as you earn system employed for deduction of income-tax. I think civil servants have income-tax deducted every month, and I know that as far as Ministerial or Parliamentary Secretaries' salaries are concerned there is a deduction every month. That is for the convenience of Ministers. Personally, I found it very convenient when I was in receipt of such a salary, because I do not think I would have liked it very much if I got a bill once or twice in the year requiring me to pay a very large sum of money. I am asking the Minister to consider this matter. I do not expect that he will give a direct reply as to whether or not he will introduce the pay as you earn system, but I think it is worthy of consideration.
I see my friend Deputy Alderman Walsh from Drogheda coming in. He has experience of this matter in a town like my own, and I am sure he will support my plea to the Minister to introduce some system of pay as you earn. The Minister may mention certain difficulties that will arise. I agree that there will be difficulties in having the income-tax collected and maybe a little expense, but it is worth it because workers at the present time cannot afford or cannot be expected to save up sums such as £20, £30 or £40. Even if the worker and his family decide to buy a suite of furniture, a table, a dining-room suite or a bedroom suite, which would cost £50 or £60, they cannot pay for it in a lump sum. The usual thing is to buy it on the hire purchase system.
Inasmuch as the pay as you earn system for income-tax is employed in the case of civil servants, Ministers and Parliamentary Secretaries, the time has come when it should be employed in respect of wage or salary earners. I would ask the Minister seriously to consider that.
I would suggest that the onus should be on the employer to make the necessary arrangements to have the income-tax deducted periodically, and to have it remitted to the Revenue Commissioners. Everybody must agree that there is a crying need for that reform at present. The Minister may be inclined to say that there is no demand for this, that the trade unions have not asked for it, but if the Minister consults his officials he will find that at least one of the congresses catering for trade unions had negotiations with Deputy McGilligan when he was Minister, and, I think, with his predecessor, Deputy Frank Aiken.
There is only one other matter which I wish to raise. It is something that concerns the Parliamentary Secretary more than the Minister. It is a matter I have complained of ever since I came into the House. I do not refer to the political atmosphere when I refer to, if you like, the chemical atmosphere in this House.
I want to make a plea on behalf of the younger Deputies. I have seen Deputies lose their health by reason of the fact that this Chamber and the House generally are not well ventilated. It is true that other things are well ventilated here, grievances in particular, but the House is not well ventilated. I am sure that many of the older members who have been here since 1922 or 1923 have seen colleagues of theirs fade away and lose their health because of the fact that the House is not properly ventilated. If that particular matter is not attended to, I can visualise that quite a big percentage of the younger Deputies will soon find that their health is run down. I do not know what can be done in that respect. I suggest that the Board of Works should tackle this particular problem for the protection of the health, if not of the older Deputies, at least of the younger Deputies who have not been accustomed to lead a sedentary life, such as we have to pursue as members of Dáil Eireann.
The last matter that I want to bring to the notice of the Parliamentary Secretary is the Dáil restaurant. I know that there is a restaurant committee. I think I am voicing the opinion of many Deputies when I protest against the manner in which Deputies are catered for in the Dáil restaurant. I am not making any complaint against the waitresses, and I want to be quite clear about that. No later than yesterday I counted 14 or 15 tables on one side of the Dáil restaurant, all of which were occupied. Three unfortunate girls were expected to look after that number of tables, at which about 60 Deputies or Senators and their friends were seated. I had the experience myself of having to wait 25 minutes or half an hour to get a meal. I will not say anything about the condition in which I got the meal, or in which it was served.
If those in control of the Dáil restaurant have subsidised premises placed at their disposal, if they have other fittings provided, if the premises are free of rates and if they have cooking utensils provided, then I suggest that Deputies should get better attention than they are getting in the Dáil restaurant. The conditions of work here are such that we cannot go out to a city restaurant or to a hotel much as we would like to do so. I suggest that one of the biggest improvements that could be effected in the Dáil restaurant would be to have more staff there. I have quoted the example of the three unfortunate girls who were expected to look after 15 tables with 60 diners. I do not know what the Parliamentary Secretary can do about it, but I think it is something which comes under the Vote for which he has responsibility. Whoever is responsible, I am raising the matter now and I am making a protest as regards the bad catering and the bad service. As I have said, it is not the fault of the waitresses, but of the management or whoever is responsible for not having sufficient staff there.
My intervention in this debate will be very brief. I am intervening for the purpose of correcting some figures which were quoted by Deputy Dillon. He was very emphatic in condemning the Minister and others for the manner in which they have treated the official statistics. He himself, in order to show the enormous progress which has been made in agriculture, quoted figures from the Statistical Abstract for 1950. What I would like to point out is that, while the figures he quoted are correct, they were very carefully selected with a view to serving his particular purpose. He purported to show that there had been a substantial increase in the volume of agricultural output while the Department of Agriculture was under his control, but, instead of quoting figures for net agricultural output he quoted figures relating to the gross volume of agricultural output which, of course, is not a true index of output at all. We know, of course, that net output is actual output, having deducted from the gross figure the requirements that go into production.
The Deputy quoted figures relating to three years—1939, 1947 and 1949 in regard to gross output. I am going to give the figures for net output. I had them here before me while he was reading the figures for the three years mentioned. The figure of net agricultural output for 1938, which was the basic year, was 100. By 1941-42 it had risen to 112; in 1942-43 is was 108; in 1943 it was 105, and in 1944 it was 106. By 1945 it had gone up to 112 again. In 1946 it was 106; in 1947 it was 98; in 1948 it was 97, and by 1949 it had risen to 102. We, therefore, get the position that in 1949, which was one of the best years for agriculture in living memory, it was only 2 per cent. higher than it was in 1938, and it was 10 per cent. lower than 1945 and 1942. There was a reduction of 10 per cent. on the two best years during the emergency. I think that, if Deputies like to average it out, they will find it was a rather substantial reduction on the average figure for the whole period of the emergency when there were no fertilisers available, and when there was a very great shortage of agricultural machinery and implements.
I do not think that 2 per cent. of an increase over the figure for 1938 represents anything to boast about, particularly when one has regard to the fact that 1949 was an exceptionally favourable year. I think that the figure for 1950, if given, would show that it was 2 per cent. less than 1949. I think it could be borne out, and proved beyond all question, that it could have been possible in the years 1948, 1949 and 1950 to have far exceeded the output for 1945 and for 1942. It would have been possible to do that if only we had a Minister for Agriculture who regarded his function to be that of promoting an increase in agricultural output, but, unfortunately, the Minister for Agriculture at the time thought that his function was to promote the import of cheap maize into this country and to drive our farmers out of production. That was the policy he advocated in 1948.
May I ask whether, at this stage, it is in order to have a review of the administration of the Department of Agriculture over the past 12 months?
So far, Deputy Cogan is relevant.
I indicated at the outset that my intention was to reply briefly to figures which had been given by the former Minister for Agriculture. The significance of these figures lies in the fact that, in order to make good deficiencies caused by the failure of the former Minister for Agriculture to promote an increase in agricultural output, we have had to import enormous quantities of maize and wheat as a result of his failure.
On a point of order. May I have a ruling from the Chair as to whether a debate on the Department of Agriculture is in order on the Vote for the Department of Finance?
Deputy Cogan is in order in replying to points raised by a previous speaker.
He is criticising the administration of the Department of Agriculture.
I am pointing out that the most important point that was raised by the Minister when introducing the Estimate was our adverse balance of payments, and that that adverse balance of payments has been aggravated by our failure to expand agricultural production. I am suggesting that it could have been expanded if we had a Minister in control of agriculture who had the instinct or the desire to carry out that expansion. I sincerely hope that that whole policy will be reversed, and that a real effort will now be made to encourage our farmers to get the last ounce of production from their land by growing our requirements in wheat, feeding stuffs and in the other things which are necessary to maintain both our human and animal population.
Leaving aside all these questions of economics, there are a couple of small matters which stick out in regard to the Office of Public Works which require some explanation. One of these is the policy of the Government with regard to the granite loading ramp erected in front of Leinster House. Is it intended that that should remain there? Can it serve any useful purpose? Does the Parliamentary Secretary think that it could be used as a dancing platform for ex-Ministers?
Why not for Ministers? The Minister for External Affairs is an expert dancer.
We could have competitions on it. We had a visit by a number of folk dancers from various countries some time ago, and they used this platform with great effect. It might be a very useful exercise for some Deputies like Deputy Dillon and his understudy, Deputy Flanagan.
Perhaps the Deputy himself would give us a step.
I do not intend to say anything about the bathing pool at the other side of Leinster House.
It would be no harm if some Deputies would wash themselves.
It would be a difficult matter to wash Deputy Flanagan.
I doubt if the same water would wash the Minister for Finance and myself.
The Presidential residence in the United States is frequently referred to as the White House, but if something is not done with Leinster House in the near future, people will be referring to it as the Black House.
There are a few stains inside as well as outside.
If money can be spent on these fantastic schemes, such as the dancing platform in front of Leinster House and the bathing pool at the back, a little money could be spent in brightening up the exterior of the building and making it a little less gloomy and depressing for visitors.
Might I inquire from the Minister whether it is proposed to give consideration again to the plans and schemes which the Fianna Fáil Government had in contemplation when they left office for the pulling down of the buildings in Merrion Square at fabulous cost to the taxpayers and for the erection of new Government Buildings? I should like to know if the Minister intends to put these plans into effect?
Is the Deputy asking a question?
I was about to say a few words, if I am permitted.
I was going to call Deputy Byrne, but, as Deputy Flanagan is on his feet, he may continue.
For my guidance in dealing with the remaining Estimates and Votes which have to be moved, would you tell the House how much time we have?
The discussion concludes at 8.40 p.m.
I suggest that it will take a little time to move the Votes, but I assume it will be in order to move them after 8.40 p.m.
Yes.
I have been waiting for some hours to get in for a few minutes. It is a pity that a Deputy who is used to saying what he has to say in a few minutes has to sit listening to long-winded Deputies speaking for an hour and a half and saying what could easily be said in ten minutes. I want to ask the Minister to take over where his predecessor left off in the matter of the promised provision of extra dressing-room accommodation for the youths who play soccer football in the 15 acres in Phoenix Park. Briefly, the position is that there are 27 football grounds there which are used five times every week-end—twice on Saturdays and three times on Sundays. That means that 54 teams of 11 players have to dress or find somewhere to dress, and only 16 teams can find accommodation. The rest have to dress in the open with grave danger to their health. I do not want to go into the merits of the matter, because they are too obvious, but I want to tell the Minister that his predecessor was on the point of signing the minute sanctioning the building of extra dressing-rooms, and if he will consult the Commissioners of Public Works, he will find that that is the case.
The Minister's speech was devoted completely to the most brutal criticism possible of his predecessor.
No. It was very mild in the circumstances.
He did not devote one part of his speech to anything in the least constructive. We all know the type of man the Minister is. The first cruel and harsh thought that comes to his mind concerning a political opponent comes from his lips. I interpret his speech as meaning that many months will not pass until he comes to the House with a Supplementary Budget. He is moaning and groaning that the country is in bad financial shape and I only hope and trust that he gives us back a country in a condition as good as that in which he got it. The policy of the Fianna Fáil Government for 16 years and of the Minister for Finance in particular was to concentrate all their energies on digging deeper and deeper into the taxpayer's pocket, and I believe that the Minister at this moment, is engaged in examining how he can go down deeper and deeper into the taxpayer's pocket. I want to warn him, and my words are few, that, while he is in office, be that period long or short—I hope and trust for the country's sake it will be short —the advice of the Opposition and of the country is to keep his hands out of the taxpayer's pockets. The taxpayers have experience of the wild and crazy schemes of "codology" sponsored by his Government in the past and I believe that these schemes are going to impose a further burden on the taxpayers. While Deputy McGilligan sits on this side, the good days of the past three years are gone. I hope the Minister will bear in mind that the taxpayers will not have his hand being dipped down deep into their trousers' pockets.
I should like to inquire, since Deputy Corish and Deputy Cogan have made reference to Leinster House, when we may expect the disappearance of the doghouse at the entrance to Leinster House which masquerades as a waiting-room.
That is the most disgraceful construction in the City of Dublin. Improvements have been carried out in most Government buildings and I hope and trust the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister will give sympathetic hearing to the pleas that have been made over a long number of years for the removal of that eyesore, the erection of a decent waiting-room, the provision of a proper shelter and a proper office for the ushers who have to work under a very heavy strain while this House is sitting. They have been neglected and the appearance of this House has not been at all what we would like it to be as a result of this eyesore remaining there. I hope that in the year ahead some steps will be taken to see that a decent waiting-room will be provided with the least possible delay for visitors and others who have to visit this House.
Mr. Dunne rose.
I must put the motion, as the time is up.
Very well, Sir.
There are only four minutes.
Subject to the Chair, if Deputy Dunne or others wish to raise any questions, I cannot obviously reply to them to-night; but in so far as they are questions relating to administration or to abuses which they would like to have remedied, if the Chair would permit the questions to be put I would try to answer them to-morrow.
It is an order of the House, not subject to the Chair's discretion.
I was not aware the time was so limited.
That is the reason I was so short. I was anxious to facilitate the Minister.
The matters I wanted to raise are of a wide nature and could not be dealt with summarily by the Minister. They could not be framed in the way of short questions. Therefore, I bow to your ruling.
It is not my ruling; it is an order of the House.
It is the same thing.
