The condition of affairs we are dealing with, the disastrous effect this reiteration of the Budget of last year is likely to have, dictates that we would review the position with the greatest possible clarity and that we would eliminate as far as possible the clouded atmosphere that the Minister for Finance created by his sarcastic and sneering attitude regarding the Budget of last year. The attitude that he took up here in the Dáil on the discussion was continued by him in his broadcast. There are certain aspects that I would like to get clear.
In speaking on the radio, as reported in the Sunday Pressof the 10th May, he said that “over the period from February 1948 until the last Budget of the Coalition worked itself out on the 31st March 1952, the total net borrowing of the Exchequer had increased by £90,000,000,” and that “the huge increase on the current expenditure and this inordinate borrowing is at the heart of the budgetary problems withwhich the Government and the taxpayer are confronted today.”
He further indicated that a substantial part of the money borrowed by the previous Government had been spent not to stimulate production but on projects for which there was "little economic justification." We have that attitude of the Minister, instead of facing up to the problems that exist to day and that are largely created by the Budget of last year. The present Budget, however, is a serious enough one to be dealt with on its merits. There will be a temptation, particularly in view of the Minister's attitude, to deal with it as one of a series of serious blows struck by the Fianna Fáil Party to the economy of this country. I have no wish to blur in any way the appreciation of the present situation by discussing it except on its merits. One of the ways in which the Minister seeks to blur the realities of the present situation is by reference to the "unproductive and unnecessary expenditure" of the inter-Party Government, the "legacy if the debt" alleged by the Minister to have been left by them, and the results flowing from it.
The Minister must allow those who are dealing with these matters in Parliament to realise that there are official returns prepared by the Minister for Finance and his Department and that annually there is issued by the Government, at the time of the presentation of the Budget, tables in connection with the financial statement. Table 5, in the presentation for 1953, gives a statement showing the capital liabilities of the State on the 31st March, 1953, and a statement of the assets held by the State against these liabilities. In an appended note it gives the position in relation to the liability of the State with regard to housing. The figures are available over the years from 1947-48 to 1952-53, showing the gross liabilities and total assets, and they give facilities for ascertaining the increase in the net liability with regard to State expenditure and the increase in the liability with regard to housing.
When we look at these figures we find the total increase in the State's liability in relation to borrowing, on the one hand, and its added housing liability on the other. For the year 1948-49 the increase in the net liability, including housing, was £2,459,171; for the year 1949-50, £10,507,630; for the year 1950-51, £11,362,587; for the year 1951-52, £22,950,510; and for the year 1952-53, £12,822,841. The amounts of increase net liability during the inter-Party years are comparatively small compared with the additional net liability which has gone on the State in respect of housing and general capital expenditure in the past two years. That is one way in which the increased expenditure on capital items and the increased dead-weight debt is presented to the House.
It is presented in another way in the White Paper, "Estimates of Receipts and Expenditure," issued on the occasion of each Budget. When we look at the position with regard to the total expenditure on both supply and capital items in each of the past few years and the total amount of money that had to be provided to meet that expenditure, other than by way of tax or non-tax revenue, we get an impression of the State's borrowings in another way. For the financial year 1948-49, the total expenditure was £81,056,000 of which £9,265,000 had to be found by ways other than tax or non-tax revenue—by borrowing. For 1949-50, the total expenditure was £95,383,000 and the amount that had to be found other than through tax or non-tax revenue was £21,358,000; for 1950-51 the total expenditure was £99,419,000 and the amount that had to be found by borrowing was £22,063,000; in 1951-52 the total expenditure was £123,494,000 of which £39,589,000 had to be found in a way other than through tax or non-tax revenue; and in 1952-53 the total expenditure was £128,723,000, the total amount which had to be found by borrowing being £32,805,000.
The Minister now presents us with a Budget in which the total expenditure under supply and capital headingsis estimated to be £137,472,000, taking the Minister's figure that the capital that will be required to be added to tax and non-tax revenue to meet that amount as £36,300,000, the figure given by him in his Budget statement. Here, therefore, we have the amounts which the State had to find by borrowing down along: £9,265,000, £21,258,000 and £22,063,000 up to March, 1951, and, since March, 1951, £39,589,000 and £32,805,000, and the sum which the Minister now tells us he will have to obtain for capital services, £36,300,000.
This is the Minister who was crying out about the havoc which the Government that went before this Government brought on the country by its profligacy and borrowing. I do not object to the Government carrying out a constructive programme involving the use of capital, and the amounts quoted there may be amounts which are worth spending, but, if they are, let them not make the case for spending them that they are amounts which pale into insignificance when compared with the capital moneys spent during the three years of the Government which preceded this Government. We ask the Minister to look at the capital expenditure in the past two years. These amounts are stated in pretty clear detail in every one of the Budget statements as they are made each year and I would call the Minister's attention, for the purpose of getting him to address himself to this matter, to certain figures.
I have here the estimates of capital expenditure offered in the Budget statements of 1950-51, 1951-52, 1952-53 and 1953-54. I will give four figures in each case running from the budgetary statement of 1950-51 to 1953-54 inclusive:—Housing In the 1950-51 Budget the inter-Party Government indicated that they would require £14,120,000 capital for their housing work. In the last two years of the present Government the figures were £11.73 million and £12.05 million; in the current estimate it is £10.54 million. Was there any profligacy or unwarranted expenditure in the housing proposals of the Budget of 1950-51?
Similarly, under health, sanitary services, the figures running from1950-51 down are; £1.16 million, £0.78 million, £0.67 million and, in the estimate for this year, £1.80 million. Was there profligacy and extravagant expenditure in the proposals of the Government that preceded the present Government?
Under the heading of hospitals the figures were: £0.42 million, in 1950-51 £0.24 million, £0.38 million, and now £5.08 million, under the special circumstances indicated by the Minister for Health and the Minister for Finance. On those figures was there extravagance and profligacy in the past?
Under the heading agricultural development the figure in 1950-51 was £6,260,000, of which there was only £3.13 million spent. The estimates for subsequent years were £5.16 million, £3.99 million, £4.72 million for the coming year. Does the Minister find there the profligacy, extravagance and worthless expenditure that he speaks about?
Under the heading electricity development, in 1950-51 the estimate was £4.75 million. In the subsequent years the estimates were £4.75 million, £9.00 million, £8.00 million. The same question arises there with regard to the Minister's charge.
For turf development the estimate in 1950-51 was £1.50 million and the subsequent years' estimates were £1.10 million, £1.75 million, £1.27 million.
Under the heading telephones, the estimates were: 1950-51, £2.25 million and in the subsequent years £2.00 million, £1.75 million, £1.50 million.
For schools and State buildings the figures were: 1950-51 £1.12 million subsequent years, £1.17 million, £1.16 million, £1.30.
For afforestation the figures were: 1950-51, £0.36 million—actually there was £0.43 million spent— and in subsequent years the estimates were £0.85 million, £0.6 million, £0.68 million.
Under the heading, fisheries: in 1950-51, the figure was £0.20 million, which included a certain amount of mineral development and tourist expenditure. In the following year the figure was £0.11 million; a certain amount of mineral development beingincluded. In the subsequent year the figure was £0.16 million and for the coming year £0.15 million.
The estimates for transport were: in 1950-51, £1.86 million and in the subsequent years £1.54 million, £3.41 million, £4.40 million. In 1950-51 there was only £0.77 million spent.
The total actually spent in those years as far as I can find out was: 1950-51, £24.61 million; in the following year £35,000,000; in the subsequent year, £32.27 million and the estimate for this year is £36.30 million.
I ask the Minister what does he mean by obscuring and bedevilling consideration of financial matters with regard to capital expenditure and the use to which it is being put by the stuff that he has been going ahead with, by the stuff that he has been publishing in relation to the capital expenditure that I speak of. The fact is that the last Government embarked upon a sound and satisfactory scheme for using the country's credit to build up necessary developments here that the people, without State assistance of some kind or another, could not have carried out. It is not only neglecting his duty to the people but it is bedevilling for some queer purpose the whole financial situation and the political situation and the work of this Parliament when he comes in here and makes the statement that he has made, and when he goes on the air or to his various meetings and makes the charges that he has made.
The Minister may be wishing to confuse the situation a bit and the suggestion that he may be wishing to make is that Marshall moneys were borrowed for the purpose of paying for imports to this country that he would not approve of. That is not what the Minister is saying. The Minister is saying that the Government that was in office for three years before the present Government borrowed huge amounts of money and misspent them in unprofitable ways. I ask the Minister to take the figures that are given there and to reconcile them if he can with the statements that he has made and particularly to take the moneys borrowed by the Government and the credit available to the Governmentor actually spent under the headings that I have given.
On the question of the use made for trading purposes of the dollars obtained under Marshall Aid, we made use of Marshall Aid moneys that were made available so that within necessary limits the ordinary natural trading of the country and its trading connection with the dollar countries could be maintained over a period in which certain rectification and improvement in international trade was being worked for and was expected. The dollars that were provided for traders who were importing dollar materials here were made available to the Government, who made them available to the merchants and, in return, accumulated from those who used dollars sterling equivalent. The sterling equivalent of the Marshall Aid which was used for maintaining and assisting natural trade came into the possession of the Government and was used in the best way that the Government could use it to make the moneys profitable while they were in the custody of the Government. The Minister himself spent £24,500,000 of those moneys.
In his circulation Budget statement of April, 1952, page 32, he says:
"It is important, in view of the problems which we will have to face in the coming year, that the Dáil and the public should realise how the borrowings of £41,000,000 were raised and why the process must not, and indeed cannot, be repeated. We borrowed for Exchequer use small savings in the form of deposits in the Savings Banks and purchases of Saving Certificates. We also used the available income of the social insurance funds for ways and means advances. The net receipts from these sources were approximately £7,000,000. The American Loan Counterpart Fund provided £24,500,000. It is now exhausted. The remaining £9,500,000 we had to find by selling British Government securities of the Post Office Savings Bank and social insurance funds, replacing these securities by our own."
A sum of £41,000,000 for capital purposes was used by the Minister forFinance in the year 1952—that is plainly shown in the White Paper for the year ending 31st March, 1953—and £24,500,000 of that was Marshall Aid money which the Minister no doubt is charging up as having been borrowed by the previous Government. If it was, it was left behind for him to spend in the year 1952-53.
