I move that the Bill be now read a Second Time. A Cheann Comhairle, Dáil Eireann in Committee by its vote on the General Financial Resolution having approved of the general structure of the Budget for the current year and having so reported to the House, it is now possible to proceed to give legislative effect to that decision. Since there can be no doubt left in any responsible quarter that additional revenue must be secured if the current Budget is to be balanced, and since the Opposition Parties agree with the Government that a balance must be secured, it would appear that the only question which might profitably be discussed at this stage is whether the additional revenue can be raised more equitably, more certainly, more conveniently and more economically by other means than those provided in the Bill.
In concluding the debate on the General Resolution I assured the Dáil that full consideration had been given to every practicable alternative to the measures proposed in the Bill, and I said that every one of them had been rejected for sound, practical reasons.
I think that should go without saying; for naturally no Minister for Finance—at least none who knows his business—would seek to get money in the harder way if he could get it in an easier one.
Now, there is no system of taxation which will leave in the taxpayer's pocket what the Government takes out of it to pay for the public services. There are, of course, certain financial anaesthetics—and they were liberally availed of by our predecessors—which will facilitate a dishonestly-minded Administration in taxing the citizen unawares or which will delude him with the belief that nothing is being taken from him while all the time his future, his future earnings, his toil and his labour are being mortgaged to sustain a factitious prosperity engendered by uninhibited spending.
It is because such measures were resorted to cover the three years 1949-51 that we are taxing the people to-day to pay for Deputy Dillon's day-old chicks.
But using such anaesthetics does not change the final result except to render the service more costly to the taxpayer, who pays not only the original cost of it, but in interest on the borrowed money pays for the anaesthetic as well. And the anaesthetic often costs as much and sometimes even more than the actual service.
Therefore if a Government is concerned with the interest of the taxpayer, and places this interest above considerations of Party, it will meet the cost of the public services as they arise; it will not put off until next year or many subsequent years the payments which should be made in this.
That is why the suggestion that the Government this year should deliberately budget for a deficit which was made by the Irish Trade Union Congress in its statement of the 22nd April, is to be deplored. It is truly regrettable that a body professing to speak for trade unionists should seek to condone a practice which, while it would enable us in this Government to follow the practice of our predecessors and evade our immediate responsibilities to the nation, would impose much heavier burdens on the workers and wage earners in the end.
It would be well for the politicians who seek to use these trade union organisations for their own ends to realise that the workers are not so simple as to be taken in by such proposals.
They know, and none know better, that borrowing money is a costly proceeding which should be avoided if possible; they know it is a bad thing for the State, just as it is for the individual to have resort to borrowing to meet current expenses and they know too that it is always the borrower who pays heavily in the end.
However, there is this to be said for the authors of the statement: They, like Deputy Larkin and other members of the Labour Party, recognised that a substantial increase in tax-revenue must be secured if the public services are to be maintained.
Even Deputy McGilligan, the Fine Gael ex-Minister for Finance, has been driven at last to admit that a greatly increased tax revenue must be secured by increases in the rates of taxation.
He knows, has known in fact since 1948, that the pace could not last, that borrowing to meet current expenditure could not continue and that eventually the financial problem would have to be faced up to, as we are facing up to it to-day.
His own speeches when he was Minister, and the departmental records prove that he had run down departmental stocks, he had appropriated the surplus account of the Post Office Savings Bank, he had raided the Widows and Orphans' Pensions Fund, but he knew on May 2nd, 1951, that he and his colleagues of the late Coalition were at the end of their tether.
That is why they requested the President to dissolve Dáil Eireann on May 7th, 1951, rather than face a debate on the Budget which they had introduced only five days previously on May 2nd.
They ran away from the crisis then. If instead of that they had faced up to it and brought in an honestly balanced Budget—a Budget in which due provision was made for the expenditure which they knew would arise during the year—it would have cost the taxpayer less and our task this year would be much easier.
If this Budget is more onerous in fresh impositions than otherwise it might have been, it is the Opposition and not the Government which must carry responsibility.
However, be that as it may, the fact remains that when the Budget for the current year was being prepared, it must have been clear to all sections of the Dáil that, as the Irish Trades Union Congress has admitted: "Certainly a most difficult problem existed in relation to the prospective gap between estimated expenditure and revenue."
It is not, therefore, the need for increased taxation to close the gap which the Irish Trade Union Congress questions, but the form the taxation takes.
Perhaps in discussing that issue we should remind ourselves that the primary purpose for which taxation is imposed is to raise revenue.
It is not imposed, as Deputy Corish seemed to suggest in his speech on the General Resolution, to prevent people from wearing mink coats or to put Chrysler cars off the road.
We may not like mink coats or their wearers, nor Chrysler cars and their owners, but it would be unjust to tax them merely to gratify a social spleen.
It is true, of course, that an alteration in an existing tax or the imposition of a new tax does induce social reactions, but these are not always what may have been anticipated.