A few months ago we were told that this country is living beyond its means, that it is eating too much, consuming too much and wearing too much clothes. We were told that we could not afford that standard of living. We were told that the necessary correctives for that situation were an austerity Budget and a hair-shirt economic policy. At the same time as we are being told that, the Minister for Agriculture is sent in here with a green Bill to deceive green people and the House is asked to vote £250,000 to buy a racehorse. I do not know how the Minister can reconcile talk about our financial position, described by the Minister for Finance as serious to the point of desperation, and the homilies from Ministers every week warning the country of the grave economic crisis with which it is confronted with this proposed purchase. It is in a welter of despair and bleakness that the Minister for Agriculture comes in here and asks us for £250,000 to buy a racehorse.
The question as to whether this is a good investment has been posed in the course of this debate. I do not know that anybody here is qualified to express an opinion, not even the Minister, as to whether this is a good investment. Nobody knows what this horse, untried at the stud, will do in the years to come. I think Deputy Briscoe was quite right and very candid when he said: "This is in the nature of a gamble." We do not know what this sire's progeny will be like. Nobody can say with any certainty whether his progeny will or will not be a success. Its progeny will certainly be remarkable if they fetch prices comparable to the animal itself.
We are being asked to pay £250,000 for this horse. Let us ponder well upon the fact that this horse is, after all, the progeny of a mare and a stallion the total cost of which was about £4,000. The parents of this animal cost between them £4,000. It is their progeny that is being offered to us at £250,000. In a paper the other day I saw a statement by somebody with a flair for horseflesh. He ascertained the weight of this animal and, having ascertained the weight, he converted the animal into gold and he discovered that this small country with the grim future indicated by the Government has literally bought this racehorse for its weight in gold. We have, in other words, asked the owner of the horse to weigh it and told him that we will give him its weight in gold. That is what we are doing and we are doing that at a time when our people cannot pay their way, when our people are flying to Britain faster than they ever did in the past and when every employment exchange is a living picture of misery. This is the time when we decide to buy a racehorse for its weight in gold.
Imagine the way the welkin would ring had the inter-Party Government done this. The Fianna Fáil propagandists would have turned out at every chapel gate on Sunday morning and the people would have been told the crime the Government proposed to commit against the nation in buying a racehorse for its weight in gold. That is exactly what the Fianna Fáil Government is doing now and it has selected the worst possible time, according to its own members, in the economic position of our country to engage in this recklessly extravagant experiment.
Simple minded Deputies have affirmed here that this is a bargain. I hope we do not fall for any more bargains of that kind—£250,000 for a racehorse—because if we do there will be more and heavier blisters on the backs of our people in a very short time. We have a situation here in which other countries interested in horseflesh and in the bloodstock industry could probably have bought this animal and would have infinitelygreater resources for paying for it than we have.
The United States of America has lent thousands of millions of pounds and given free grants of thousands of millions of pounds to various countries in Europe but the United States stopped short at buying this animal at the price we are proposing to pay for it. If it be alleged that somebody in America offered a price higher than we are paying I would like to have the identity of that person established. I would like to know why that transaction did not go through. Some interesting stories might be told at that level if people probed the matter a little further. The truth of the matter is that there was obviously nobody in the market willing to pay this price. We developed a fetish in connection with the purchase of this animal at £250,000 and our people are being asked to pay for it at a time when they are being told they are eating too much, wearing clothes of too good quality and a hair-shirt austerity Budget is necessary to bring them back to the realities of a situation in which the Government proposes to purchase a racehorse for its weight in gold.
I wonder have we lost all sense of human values when we go into the market and pay £250,000 for a racehorse. If we want to sell ourselves to the world as the most simple people in it, we seem to be making pretty substantial progress in that direction because paying £250,000 for an animal in the circumstances in which the Government says the country is to-day is in my view taking leave of our senses. If the Government or the Directors of the National Stud want to invest some money in humanity they can begin to do that with their own employees down at Tully in the County Kildare. They might take a look at the wage rates paid by the National Stud—the National Stud that proposes to buy this racehorse for its weight in gold— and they might see whether there is not a distorted sense of human values in paying £250,000 for a racehorse while maintaining the standard of wages in force at present in the National Stud. If there is to be any extravagance let us be sure first of all that we are beingfair, humane and prudent with the staff employed in the National Stud.
I wonder what the House or the people would think of an individual who, while not able to provide for his children, not able to ensure that they got work, not able to ensure that they had a decent standard of living, not able or unwilling to pay his bills, nevertheless decided that he would buy the fastest motor car in the world. I think a very low valuation would be placed on that individual if he presented himself for public examination. But that is precisely the position of this Government to-day. It cannot provide for its 90,000 unemployed. It cannot ensure that people will get the bare necessaries of life. It will not pay its debts to lowly-paid civil servants who have secured an award from an arbitration board. The Minister for Education will not admit to the teachers their entitlement to an increase in wages to compensate them for increased prices. Although the Government defaults on all these fronts the Minister for Agriculture comes in and says: "Give me £250,000 to buy one racehorse." That caps a previous decision to spend £500,000 of the same people's money in running an air service between this country and America. An air service is of no interest whatever to 99.9 per cent. of the people who will never be able to afford the luxury of paying high rates for travelling on a transatlantic service.
It is not possible to consider the purchase of this animal strictly on its mathematical merits, if there be any mathematical merits in the purchase. You have to consider this whole question with the background against which we are being asked to pay the money. The Government tells us the country is in a most unhealthy state economically. This Government is responsible for creating an all-time record in respect of high prices and an economic disorganisation which shows itself in 90,000 unemployed people. We have now reached the stage under this Government at which the Celt is leaving the country faster than he ever went before. This Government tells us it has no money for this, that or the other worth-while scheme. In themidst of that welter of despair, the Minister for Agriculture says: "Forget about that, why not let us have a little gamble on this horse with £250,000" without evidence that it is worth £250,000, without any recommendation to this House that it is worth anything like that figure. That unpredictable step is taken at a time when the Government is preaching to everybody in the country the necessity for cutting down on the present standard of living.
Whatever view we might take of this matter in other circumstances in which the country was enjoying a higher standard of living and a larger measure of prosperity than that which exists to-day, in present circumstances, we in this Party, at all events, are opposed to the nation's money being used in this way because we think it is a lop-sided and distorted conception of economic and human values. The purchase of this racehorse has been recommended by some Deputies on the Government Benches with a boastful and bragging reference to purchasing horseflesh. I would be much more interested if we were boasting our achievements in elevating human beings to a higher standard of dignity than they have to-day and in doing something to rescue the 90,000 unemployed people from the plight which they are enduring to-day and from the grimmer plight which awaits them if even half of what the Government Ministers say is likely to happen takes place.
There are much more urgent problems to be undertaken than running a transatlantic service and buying one horse for £250,000. There are human problems encompassing human misery, involving human sacrifice, and involving an invasion of the standard of living of our people. These call out for urgent solution and instead of concentrating their endeavours on relieving the problems which encompass so much misery this Government engages in the reckless task of buying a racehorse, doing something which, as Deputy Briscoe said, is just a gamble, and a gamble which may turn out to be a very considerable loss for the nation as a whole.
The Government would have beenwell advised to tell the directors of the National Stud, if they initiated the move to buy the horse, the present was not considered to be an opportune time to engage in this reckless expenditure. At the same time as the Government was pleading it could not pay its debts in other directions and had no money to put the 90,000 unemployed people into employment, this purchase was proposed. It is because I think it represents a completely distorted sense of values and a complete abandonment of all prudence in governmental and economic matters that I am opposed to the expenditure of £250,000 on this animal, so long as there are many human problems to be dealt with in the country.
