I am coming to that in a moment: I want to deal with the broad aspect of the matter first. I am sorry that Deputy O'Gorman is not here because he would understand the point I am going to make now and, I may say, I am making this point in perfectly good heart. It struck me that it was the hard, down-to-earth question in relation to Youghal Bridge—a matter which affects his own constituency—that made Deputy O'Gorman see the point immediately when Deputy McGrath mentioned it. Deputy O'Gorman wants Youghal Bridge repaired or the matter attended to. As any man of common sense would realise, he realised that in order to have Youghal Bridge attended to money would be required and that someone would have to find it. It is a concrete example but the same principle applies over-all.
It seems to me to be a waste of the time of this House and a betrayal in a sense of our own trust, as supposedly representative members of the community here, to give in to the temptation to talk all that sympathetic type of talk about crushing somebody, taxing the poor man, and so forth, when we do not relate such things to the reality of the situation. Admitting all that, the question arises: Are we going to have the roads or are we going to save the money? If we save the money and take off these taxes, as the Opposition would have us do, is the motoring community ultimately going to be satisfied with the roads? At the moment I am taking this question in sections: the question of employment and so forth will come up later. If we save the money and let the roads deteriorate, will that be good for the motorist, for the community, and particularly for the motorist for whom so much is being said to-day—the motorist who uses his vehicle for purposes of business?
The Opposition cannot have it both ways. The Opposition have been talking about vehicles and seem to be a little bit sensitive to the fact that a lot of motoring might be described as in the semi-luxury class, as has been suggested by certain speakers, or in the category of leisure. They have been very careful to talk about people who are earning a living through mechanical transport. Very good. It is just these very people who want good roads. It is just those very people who want a good network to open up all the potentialities of the country to their transport. To anybody else it does not matter so much. If I am out for a Sunday drive, merely taking the air, and if I have to avoid a certain road because of its condition, it will not incommode me very much but if I am a businessman, dependent on my vehicle for the transport of goods, it is very important that I have an adequate choice of routes and that the roads along these routes are adequately good. Remember, a deterioration in the condition of the roads can hit that particular type of person a good deal more than has been admitted in this debate.
Apart from that, the cost of wear and tear of a vehicle goes up if the roads are not in good condition. Very many of us can remember the early days when cars first came on the roads. I shall take this opportunity to pay a tribute to a vehicle that I think will be remembered with gratitude, in this country, anyway, the old model T Ford, which was the only motor vehicle that would stand up to some of the roads at that time. Offhand, I can go back to 1926, and I can think of a stretch of the road between two towns on the way from here to Limerick that was practically impassable and could only be negotiated at about ten miles an hour. That meant considerable rerouting. I can remember the frequent punctures which one encountered and the wear of tyres. We have less of them nowadays and, although there has been a great improvement in the standard of vehicles and the quality of tyres in recent years, I think I can say that the infrequency of punctures and similar troubles is not completely attributable to improvements in the vehicles or in the tyres. The improvement in the quality of the road surface, I should imagine, is almost as big a factor. These breakdowns not only meant repair costs, but they meant loss of time and loss of efficiency.
It is all right to suggest that we might allow deterioration of a particular road for one year and to say that if it is attended to then, it will not be too bad. I grant you that, but if you allow that deterioration to drift on— and, goodness knows, we have had enough experience of drift in recent years—you are going to land yourself in a pretty kettle of fish at the end of the period. We know that during the emergency, for instance, because of certain other demands on available labour and other circumstances, there was a certain inability to repair roads. We know the condition into which the roads fell in these circumstances and the cost of putting them into repair afterwards. I think everybody will admit, if we are not to be faced by some enormous expenditure later, that we have got to maintain the condition of the roads. I think everybody will admit that, as a general policy, the right line is to have a gradual plan, a set programme, development and then maintenance of that development, rather than going sharply to the crest and then letting things deteriorate, pulling up with a jerk again. It is surely wasteful and bad business to approach it in that way.
I have laboured that, but the point I want to make, and let us be very clear about it is: Do we want good roads? If we want good roads, we will have to pay for them. We then come to the question of the methods of paying. How many times have we had questions in this House about roads? How often has the point been made of the great importance it is to a local community to have an adequate local road service dovetailed into the main road? As a city Deputy, I had not a particularly active interest in these questions, but I have noticed, as long as I have been in this House, the frequency of that type of question. It is obvious that good roads are a benefit to the community, both locally and over-all. Very good. We then come to the question of finance. I am assuming that my friends on the opposite side will at least admit that if you want good roads it means money. The question is where are we to find it. To develop and maintain the condition of the roads requires money. Whatever administrative body is actually going to supervise that job, the money will have to be found. It can be supplied through the agency of the Central Government, it can be supplied locally, through the local government organisation, or it can be supplied by a combination of both agencies. There are several possibilities and these are the mechanisms with which we are concerned.
If the Government is going to supply the money, the Government has got to get the money, and the only way the Government can get the money is by the expedients open to them—borrowing, taxation and so forth. This Government has been forced as the result of three years' drift—and the situation in the country was allowed to drift during these three years—to fall back on all the expedients available to them to raise money. If the money is not to come from that source, it has to come from the rates. In other words, the local body has to raise the money, and the only way they can do it is through the rates. That we want a good road system I do not think any member of the Opposition will deny, with the possible exception of Deputy Giles, who told us: "Do not worry about the roads. They are only used by the big fellow." I do not think the Deputy was really serious in that statement. I think the Opposition, if nailed to it, would have to admit that we need roads. Very good. They come in here to-day—many of them are members of local authorities —and they tell the Minister for Finance and the Minister for Local Government: "Do not collect this money." At the same time, they want roads as much as anybody else. I should be very much surprised, if a proposition were brought before this House to curtail road development or to do as was done by their Government—to cut road grants and so forth —if we would not hear a howl from them that would reverberate over the whole country. Let these members of local authorities ask themselves this question. They want roads. In fact, I should be surprised if they did not make it a point of their local programme to say: "We are going to have more roads and more employment on the roads." There is one particular section that I know would come out very strongly on that line.
I ask the Deputies opposite to face the facts. If the money has to be found, you are asking your local ratepayers to find it. All right. It is an arguable proposition. Are you going to ask the local ratepayers to raise the money completely for this purpose? Deputy Giles talked about the farmers. Remember, the farmers are very substantial ratepayers. I think that when the Deputies opposite do face the facts there will be no question of throwing the whole burden on the rates. The roads are a national concern and there will be no question of throwing the burden clean back on the local authorities in that way. The rates are up already and have been rising for years, and to stimulate a further increase in that way would certainly not be justified, particularly when the mechanics of balance are more readily available to the Central Government than they are to the local authorities. In the case of the local authorities, you could easily get discrepancies as between county and county and area and area so that it is much easier for the Central Government to keep a proper balance.
We reach the position therefore that we cannot ask the rates to bear the burden completely. We then have to fall back on the Minister. At this stage, I think it is fair to ask what generally would be a fair approach to this. I know that in principle you could crystallise this into far too rigid a form that would admit of various answers, but I suggest that, in broad terms it is an equitable and a reasonable proposition to-day that we will collect this money from the road users, from the people who are getting the immediate benefit, and that the other economic adjustments will work themselves out. Further, it is a reasonably general proposition, which I have never heard assailed in principle, to say that the Road Fund should be a special fund—that it would be just as well to maintain that fund and introduce some kind of order into your general finances. That is all the Minister is trying to do—trying to get money for the roads, and trying to get it in what has been more or less the accepted way. If the money has to be got, and it seems the money has to be got, that is the unfortunate and unpopular fact of the situation. It is one of the facts of life, just a necessity in life that has been there ever since the days of Adam, that if you want something you have to pay for it—to work for it.
Deputy O'Gorman spoke about raids on the Road Fund. Here we are up against a type of juggling that was brought into our finances by the Coalition playing around with them and in the meantime letting things drift. I turn up an instance of it here and it is no harm to give it. I do not want to do this in the same spirit as Deputy O'Gorman, but we get from it an instructive lesson. I refer to Volume 110 of the Dáil Debates, column 1048, which contains the first Financial Statement by the then Minister for Finance in the Coalition Government. It is worth reading this paragraph from it:
"The additional motor vehicle duties imposed by the Supplementary Budget are expected to yield £300,000 this year as compared with £200,000 last year. Provision will be made in the Finance Bill for the transfer of the former sum to the Exchequer from the Road Fund.
The customs duties on motor spirits (mineral hydrocarbon light oil) and on propellants such as diesel oil (hydrocarbon oil, other sorts) were reduced from 1/3 to 9d. per gallon as from 1st June, 1946, with reductions in the excise duties on home refined oils from 1/1 to 7d. The amount of petrol retained for home use has risen from 18,000,000 gallons in the year 1945-6 to 31,500,000 in 1946-7 and to nearly 38,500,000 in 1947-8. This is almost equivalent to the figures for 1938-9. Hydrocarbon oil (other sorts) has risen from 600,000 gallons pre-war to 2,400,000 for 1947-8. The number of new private cars registered for the first time in 1947 was 8,294, nearly three times as many as in the previous year, and this in spite of enhanced prices. In a time of financial stringency such as the present, it seems not unreasonable to look to petrol and oil as a proper source of additional revenue. I have also in mind the fact that petrol entails dollar expenditure. I propose, therefore, to raise the customs duty of 9d. per gallon to 1/2 in each case, with an increase to 1/- in the case of the excise duties. The additional yield of tax for the current financial year is estimated at £910,000."
I have read the whole paragraph so as to avoid the possible accusation that I was taking bits of it. In that quotation we find the case made that we should take money specifically from the road users, over and above other people, for general purposes. Where do the Opposition stand now? Let us face the fact that they said then it is only fair in times of financial stringency not only to take money from the road users, but to transfer it to the general account for the benefit of everybody else. In other words, that it was fair to do that in the case of a specific tax on road users. To-day, they come in here and tell us the exact opposite, the implication in their words being that somebody else will subsidise the road users. The two points of view are completely contradictory, and I think I am justified in drawing attention to that. Not only, as I say, was the money collected on the lines set out in the quotation which I have given, but the same policy was carried out in the following year, as Deputies may see by referring to Volume 115, column 484. Not only was the money collected in that way, but it was transferred over to the general account, and on top of that there was a cut in road grants. Everybody knows that the road grants were actually cut, and although I do not want to press the point unduly there was a certain deterioration in the condition of the roads as a result— and a certain employment problem. The witness to that fact is that the question was fully debated on a special motion in this House in February, 1949. Actually, there was a reduction in the road grants, so that you had the two things: (1) a raid on the Road Fund and (2) a reduction in the road grants.
