On the Report Stage, I would like to correct a statement which I made last night and which may, perhaps, mislead some people. There was a certain amount of confusion; Deputy Sweetman put me a question in relation to receipts and I said that if there were two receipts for the same payment, the second receipt did not require to be stamped. That is not, of course, a correct statement. All receipts must be stamped but one receipt will cover the two transactions if the second statement is not in the form of a receipt.
Finance Bill, 1953-Final Stages.
Question proposed: "That the Bill be received for final consideration".
If it is suitably phrased?
Yes, I want to make that quite clear.
Question put.
The Dáil divided: Tá, 68; Níl, 65.
Tá
- Aiken, Frank.
- Allen, Denis.
- Bartley, Gerald.
- Beegan, Patrick.
- Blaney, Neil T.
- Boland, Gerald.
- Brady, Philip A.
- Brady, Seán.
- Breathnach, Cormac.
- Breen, Dan.
- Brennan, Joseph.
- Breslin, Cormac.
- Briscoe, Robert.
- Browne, Noel C.
- Buckley, Seán.
- Burke, Patrick.
- Butler, Bernard.
- Calleary, Phelim A.
- Carter, Frank.
- Childers, Erskine.
- Cogan, Patrick.
- Colley, Harry.
- Collins, James J.
- Corry, Martin J.
- Crowley, Honor Mary.
- Crowley, Tadhg.
- Cunningham, Liam.
- Davern, Michael J.
- Derrig, Thomas.
- de Valera, Eamon.
- de Valera, Vivion.
- Duignan, Peadar.
- Fanning, John.
- ffrench-O'Carroll, Michael.
- Flanagan, Seán.
- Flynn, John.
- Flynn, Stephen.
- Gallagher, Colm.
- Gilbride, Eugene.
- Harris, Thomas.
- Hillery, Patrick J.
- Hilliard, Michael.
- Kenneally, William.
- Kennedy, Michael J.
- Killilea, Mark.
- Lemass, Seán.
- Little, Patrick J.
- Lynch, Jack (Cork Borough).
- McCann, John.
- MacCarthy, Seán.
- MacEntee, Seán.
- McGrath, Patrick.
- Maguire, Patrick J.
- Maher, Peadar.
- Moran, Michael.
- Moylan, Seán.
- Ó Briain, Donnchadh.
- Ormonde, John.
- O'Sullivan, Ted.
- Rice, Bridget M.
- Ryan, James.
- Ryan, Mary B.
- Sheldon, William A.W.
- Sheridan, Michael.
- Smith, Patrick.
- Traynor, Oscar.
- Walsh, Laurence J.
- Walsh, Thomas.
Níl.
- Barry, Richard.
- Beirne, John.
- Belton, John.
- Blowick, Joseph.
- Browne, Patrick.
- Byrne, Alfred.
- Byrne, Thomas, N.J.
- Cafferky, Dominick.
- Carew, John.
- Cawley, Patrick.
- Collins, Seán.
- Corish, Brendan.
- Cosgrave, Liam.
- Costello, Declan.
- Costello, John A.
- Crotty, Patrick J.
- Crowe, Patrick.
- Davin, William.
- Deering, Mark.
- Desmond, Daniel.
- Dillon, James M.
- Dockrell, Henry P.
- Dockrell, Maurice E.
- Donnellan, Michael.
- Doyle, Peadar S.
- Esmonde, Anthony C.
- Everett, James.
- Finan, John.
- Flanagan, Oliver J.
- Giles, Patrick.
- Hession, James M.
- Hickey, James.
- Hughes, Joseph.
- Keyes, Michael.
- Kyne, Thomas A.
- Larkin, James.
- Lynch, John (North Kerry).
- MacAuliffe, Patrick.
- MacBride, Seán.
- MacEoin, Seán.
- McGilligan, Patrick.
- McMenamin, Daniel.
- Madden, David J.
- Mannion, John.
- Morrissey, Daniel.
- Mulcahy, Richard.
- Murphy, Michael P.
- Murphy, William.
- Norton, William.
- O'Donnell, Patrick.
- O'Gorman, Patrick J.
- O'Hara, Thomas.
- O'Higgins, Thomas F.
- O'Higgins, Thomas F. (Jun.).
- O'Reilly, Patrick.
- O'Sullivan, Denis.
- Palmer, Patrick W.
- Reidy, James.
- Reynolds, Mary.
- Roddy, Joseph.
- Rogers, Patrick J.
- Rooney, Eamon.
- Spring, Dan.
- Sweetman, Gerard.
- Tully, John.
Tellers:—Tá: Deputies Ó Briain and Hilliard; Níl: Deputies Doyle and Mac Fheórais.
Question declared carried.
Mr. O'Higgins
That will keep you on your toes.
You will have to keep on getting up early, boys.
It cannot be long now.
Agreed to take Fifth Stage now.
Question proposed: "That the Bill do not pass."
Do I understand that the Minister has nothing to say in asking the House to pass the Final Stage of this intolerable burden on the people? The Minister comes in and, by his silence, indicates that he has nothing to say when asking the House to pass the Final Stage of this Finance Bill. We have had three days' discussion here in which the members of the Government patted themselves on the back for the daring and courage-which, apparently, in their mind, was only equalled by the interest they have in the ordinary people-which they had when they set out to impose theBudget of last year, following upon the year before, and now repeated this year, on the people, where every aspect of their economic life and their domestic life has been crippled and disheartened by the burdens they have been called upon to bear. They give us the idea that they foresaw the conditions that were going to arise for the people when they imposed the £11,000,000 additional taxation last year, when they took the £8,000,000 or perhaps this year the £9,000,000 additional from the subsidies that were given to the people for their food, and when they raised the bank interest or allowed the bank interest to be raised during the year. Their attitude now is that they foresaw the conditions that were going to arise, but that they foresaw that these dark days for the people would bring forward a glorious sunshine of prosperity afterwards.
They took very good care to deny when they were imposing these burdens that there would arise for the people the hardships in respect of costof living, the hardships in respect of unemployment, the hardships in respect of loss of employment, and the destruction of initiative and the destruction of confidence in those people who on the private side of our economy should invest their savings and put their energies to the developing of the private side of our productive economy so that the savings of our people could be used in that arena which from time to time members of the Government say is the most important arena of production and application of capital we should have, where provision could be made for gradually increasing the number of our people that are employed and that are looking for their living in manufacturing industry or in commercial industry or in the various other aspects of our national life outside agriculture. While the gloom and distress is still there they are trying to turn their backs on it and trying to turn their eyes to it and are insisting on painting the bright future that is going to come while every aspect of our economic life and every aspect of the Government work shows that their policy is sinking our people deeper into distress and deeper into lack of hope and lack of confidence.
The Minister has no need to read between the lines. He can read the actual statement of facts in the various reports of many of our manufacturing companies, their annual reports, and see the various ways in which taxation, the rise in the bank rate, the difficulty of getting savings to maintain and to develop their industries—how these factors in the situation brought about by Government policy are adversely affecting their power to maintain the very employment they are at the present moment giving.
The Government from time to time quote a few rosy words as to the way in which employment is improving, but the fact is that in the various industries dealing with the production of transportable goods the amount of employment given there is still substantially less than it was in 1951 and in 1952. The cost of living is still showing that there is not the tendency to stabilise that Ministers prophesied and that Ministers no doubt hoped for.
On the side of the capital development, the expenditure on capital works by the Government on the one hand and the provision of capital for the development and maintenance of our industrial and commercial life on the other, the Minister has given no idea where these savings are going to come from. Various figures are quoted by members of the Government as to the amount of capital works on the Government side that they intend to put in hand this year. Ministers are quoting the figure of £39,000,000 which the Minister for Finance himself indicated in his Budget speech was going to be reduced to £36,000,000. Will the Minister say where he is going to get that £36,000,000 and will he say the rate of interest he proposes to look for that money at, and if the Government depend upon the people's savings for the production of that £36,000,000, will he say from what sources he expects that those who are developing and maintaining our manufacturing and industrial structure here will get the capital assistance that they require during the year? The whole attitude of the Minister with regard to savings and with regard to capital is undermined and destroyed and distorted by the attitude that they insist upon keeping to with regard to the Marshall money. At the end of last year the Minister, himself, spoke at a Fianna Fáil Cumann held in Belturbet. He went up to some of the lonelier recesses of Cavan to say that, in raising the Marshall Aid money, "the late Coalition has put this country into pawn and the only thing they left to their successors were the pawn tickets". The Minister for Posts and Telegraphs is continuing to follow that from time to time, calling the Marshall Aid a heavy tonic and saying it had been taken at the wrong time and that the mixture was wrongly prescribed. It is now clear that the Minister for Finance got £22,500,000.
That is not so and the Deputy knows that.
The Deputy knows it because many voices have insisted throughout the country on running the Minister's misstatement andmembers of the Government have attempted to suggest that all they got out of the Marshall loan funds were pawn tickets. Out of pure pique and spite and as part of the deliberate policy to see that the spending power of our people was curtailed the Minister blew in that £22,500,000 on the capitalisation of the schemes then instead of keeping it in the way in which it was intended that it would be kept, to act as a priming force, to act as a subsidiary help to the savings of our people when for one reason or another the savings of our people were not sufficient, that part of it that was given to the Government, to carry on the Government work or when there was the demand that we actually came up against where the controllers of credit in this country insisted on getting more blood out of the turnip than they were entitled to get. Both the Minister's taxation policy and the deliberate policy of the Minister in throwing away the assistance that was put into his hands so that he might be able to flank himself and defend himself against extortionate demands for rates of money have brought him into the position in which he is now, a position into which the Government deliberately walked because they deliberately applied to this country a policy that was conceived by Great Britain to deal with their problems there. The problem there was to create unemployment in normal industries, in order to force people to work in armament industries and main export industries.
The Minister is patting himself on the back, as other Ministers are, that they have stopped "the spending spree" of our people by bringing the balance of payments within control. I think the final figure given for the adverse balance of payments was about £15,000,000. What is our position to-day? We find that there has been a reduction in our trading deficit in January of £3,270,000; in February, of £3,150,000; and in March, of £2,670,000. That is to say, in the first three months of this year there has been a continuing reduction in our trade deficit to the extent of£9,000,000 and, if the preliminary figures be taken into consideration, £11,000,000. Part of that is due to slightly increased export prices and somewhat reduced import prices. There is a definite reduction in the value of our imports, however, and that, whether the import price is high or low, tends to improve our balance of payments; but the reduction in the value of our imports is reflected in commercial depression here and in unemployment.
When the Minister is boasting to-day that they are further bringing the balance of payments under control here, they are doing it by a deliberate policy of some kind which has as a result, as they know now, a continuing increase in unemployment and a continuing disturbance of the confidence of our commercial community. At the same time, there is standing in the way of necessary imports for continuing industrial and commercial life a very substantial increase in the demand made by the Revenue Commissioners on imports. We find that in the first three months of this year the sum of £10,234,000 was collected by way of customs on goods coming in. That was £1,468,000 more than was collected at the ports in the first three months of last year. While the policy of the Government on taxation, bank rates and so on, is continuing to harass the people and produce unemployment and to threaten the existence of the employment fabric we have here, not to talk of further development of it, the Minister's hand is in every pocket that he can find. He has taken £1,460,000 additional out of the pockets of people who are importing necessary and useful goods for the maintenance of our industries and of our people.
The reckless way in which the Government is proceeding is painted as a gigantic effort that was necessary to take this country "out of the financial and economic morass" that three years of the unified effort of every other Party in the House had brought. The fact is that in our three years, in the three years of the inter-Party Government, we reduced taxation, stabilised the cost of living, increasedemployment, induced enterprise, and increased production. We made use of the moneys that were so effectively and so generously made available by the American Government for the purpose of assisting, in a transition period, the trade of a Europe which was destroyed by so many years of war. We made use of these loans to put them into the hands of our commercial community to keep their businesses going. The funds made available to the Government as a result of this loan were husbanded, to be used to the very best advantage here. Instead of putting, as the Minister insists on putting, any additional accretions that arise out of our international trade, any additional increase in our sterling assets, into the hands of the British financial machine in order to help and develop the British machine, we were using every possible £ for which there was an opening here——
Buying maize.
——to back up our economy, to keep down the amounts we would have to pay for loans, to keep it as a protection against those who would demand higher rates of interest for their money and to use it to buttress up and assist the development, particularly on the agricultural side, that 16 years of Fianna Fáil operations had reduced to the condition in which we found it when we came in.
Does the Deputy not know that most of it was spent in buying maize at famine prices? Maize became a drug on the market six months later.
The Minister knows very well the circumstances in which the Marshall Aid was so generously offered and so definitely taken. It is a queer time for the Minister for Finance to wake up and attempt to belittle or to bite the hand that they went over to shake in Paris at the end of 1947.
That was a different matter. This was a commercial transaction.
The Taoiseach went over with his Ministers and officials to shake the hand and generously to accept the facilities that were offered.
There was no gift of £128,000,000. It was a commercial transaction.
When they come in here now, they are so blinded with prejudice and so determined to bolster up their consciences in relation to the damage they have done this country, particularly for the last couple of years, that nothing is too blatant for them to say or declare in relation to the work that was done during the term of office of the inter-Party Government. The Minister now has the country in the condition to which he has reduced it by his policy. He is lacking the assistance of the money we left him to be a priming source, a support to our people's savings in carrying on the capital work that the Government requires to carry on. While they are twiddling their thumbs and waiting for the prosperity that they boast about and pray for to come around the corner, they have nothing better to do than to belie and to calumniate and to demean everything that was done by any other person here during those three difficult post-war years. They even slander and insult those whom the Taoiseach in the end of 1947 went over to collaborate with and to make arrangements with for bringing to this country whatever benefits the Marshall moneys might offer us.
The Minister has nothing to say when asking the House to pass this Bill. The damage that the Minister is doing here, or the measure of the enormity of the Minister's action to-day, is indicated by, for instance, the total expenditure that is contemplated from both capital expenditure and supply services over the current year, compared with the last three years.
The expenditure for 1950-51 was £99,419,000; of that, the total tax and non-tax revenue was £77,356,000; in 1951-52, it was £123,494,000, of which the total tax and non-tax revenue was £83,905,000; in 1952-53, it was£128,723,000, of which the total tax and non-tax revenue was £95,918,000; and the estimate for the current year is £137,472,000, of which £101,172,000 is for tax and non-tax revenue. So that as between the year 1950-51 and the current year the amount of tax revenue has gone up from £67.7 million to £86.2 million, and when we take the non-tax revenue with that it has gone up from £77.3 million to £101.1 million. The capital that the Minister will be looking for is £36.3 million as against £22,000,000 in the year 1950-51.
These financial exactions and these savings are being looked for by the Government from a people who have been suffering for the last two years under the greatest excesses financially that the Irish people ever went through and in the most hopeless conditions from the point of looking in the future for employment for their children and the maintenance of their homes. It is no wonder then that in asking the House to pass the Fifth Stage of the Finance Bill the Minister was dumb. The Minister is dumb in inverse ratio to the way in which the fathers of families are talking and complaining and to the volume of prayer in their hearts that the inflictions which the Government have imposed on the people will pass away soon.
This measure will strike another blow at the agricultural community particularly, because barley is the raw material of the spirit and beer trade. The policy pursued by the Minister has brought to light certain statements made by him and by the Minister for Industry and Commerce. In his Budget speech the Minister for Finance said that taxation presses light on the land. We see now that he is attempting to gather tax from the land through the imposition of these duties for which the publicans and the assistants in licensed premises will be the tax gatherers. We remember, too, that the Minister for Industry and Commerce said that we should gather as much tax as possible from the people up to 7/- in the £ and let the Government do the spending for them. That is the purpose of this veryhigh level of taxation. I should like to remind the House of another statement by the Minister for Industry and Commerce in 1947, when he said that this country was facing four of the most severe years in its history. That was from 1947 to 1951. The change of government came about in 1948 and a different policy was pursued. Instead of four years of very great hardship we had four years of progress and prosperity under the inter-Party Government.
We had a Division in this House to-day and we should remember that those who voted with the Government voted for a reduction in the price of barley. That is what it amounts to. When the inter-Party Government were leaving office, in 1951, the price of barley was £4 4s. per barrel. When the inter-Party Government came into office, in 1948, the price of barley was controlled at 35/- per barrel. It had been held at that figure for several years. While the distillers were paying 35/- a barrel to the farmers for malting barley they were importing barley from the ends of the earth up to 89/- a barrel. When the inter-Party Government came in the fixed price for barley was abolished and the farmers were able to make the best bargain they could with the firms who used malting barley. The result was that there was a very large area of malting barley grown, in addition to the encouragement given in respect of the growing of feeding barley to supplement the maize imports that were necessary at the time.
The maize imports were necessary because the inter-Party Government set out on a programme to increase the pig population. When the inter-Party Government came into office they found a situation in which there was a racket in the bacon trade and the housewife was lucky if she got a lb. of bacon with her two ounces of butter, her half-ounce of tea and a couple of ounces of sugar at the end of the week. The inter-Party Government brought about a situation in which the housewife was able to choose from different grades of bacon according to the price. That bacon was put on the counters by importing the maize as farmers hadnot been got into gear in the matter of growing barley.
That encouragement given in the matter of barley growing has brought great advantages to the country inasmuch as the pig population has been restored to a very high level. We reached a stage in 1950 when we had a surplus and were able to export pigs for the first time in many years. We had a surplus of pigs and bacon which was brought about by the policy in relation to barley which encouraged farmers to grow barley and get the best terms they could from the distillers and a good price for the feeding barley and which brought up the pig population and increased the bacon supplies.
Is this in order?
It is relating to taxation.
I am dealing with the question of barley which is the basis of the beer and spirit trade now under discussion. We have a situation now where some of the distillers say that they bought too much barley last year and the year before and have a surplus in hands and will want no barley during the present season. That means of course that the production of barley has dropped considerably, apart from the fact that the Beet Growers' Association managed to upset the price of barley that was available to farmers in 1952, I think it was. I do not think it ever happened before that individuals claiming to represent the producers negotiated for a reduction in the price of the product.
That is absolutely untrue.
I do not think the negotiations have anything whatever to do with the question, whatever about the impact of taxation.
I will not proceed with it, if you do not wish me to. The position is that the basis of this taxation is barley. It is barley that is going to pay this tax. It is barley—when it hasbeen made into spirits and beer—that will pay the tax in the long run and the growers of barley are going to suffer. They suffered last season and the season before, owing to the deliberate policy pursued, and the deliberate plan to depress barley prices. We know that every effort was made to depress the price of barley and the policy of the Government in relation to barley prices——
The Deputy may discuss the effect of the impact of taxation upon the distilling industry, as it relates to the production of barley, but beyond that it is not relevant.
Very well, Sir.
He wants to get away with misrepresentation.
There is not a word wrong in what I said. Unless the Deputy does not understand the situation. We had the Minister last night making reference to Marshall Aid money——
Where did I make reference last night to Marshall Aid money?
Oh, indeed, you did.
Last night?
Yes.
Deputy Rooney must have had a nightmare.
If anybody ever had a nightmare it is Deputy Cogan. He is having it still, and is probably unconscious since the Wicklow by-election— the Deputy that has no constituency, as he is often referred to.
Deputy Rooney has always been unconscious.
Now, we are discussing finance. Deputy Rooney.
Concerning Marshall Aid in this matter, I would like to remind the Minister that the Taoiseach signed for Marshall Aid.
He did not, and I want to deal with that. That is a deliberate mistake.
Yes, he signed.
That is not right.
What did he sign for then?
The Deputy can listen to me when I am replying.
I am going to say he signed for Marshall Aid and in order to get it he put up a programme.
That is not true.
In order to qualify for this Marshall Aid in respect of which negotiations took place before the inter-Party Government took office, a programme was put forward and among other things it showed that it was proposed to reduce the acreage of wheat to 235,000 acres from a figure of something like 700,000 acres. Then we have all this wail about the wheat acreage, not of course about yield. That programme indicated that it was intended to reduce the acreage of wheat to 235,000 acres.
I do not see the relevancy of that.
Also in the programme was intimated the acreage of barley and oats intended to be grown, among other agricultural products. Now, Sir, the policy pursued by the Minister in relation to the licensed trade has caused the value of licensed premises to fall sharply. The values have fallen even more sharply than the stocks and shares held by people who were getting, perhaps, 3 per cent. on them when the Minister decided to give 5 per cent. and other advantages with his National Loan last year. Their stocks and shares have fallen, just as the values of licensed premises have fallen considerably in consequence of this taxation policy being pursued by the present Government. But, at least, it is consistent inasmuch as the Tánaiste said a few years ago: "Why not collect the taxes from the people and let the Government do the spendingfor them?" The Government is still trying to get money from the people and do the spending for them and this is a typical example of it.
The consumption of whiskey during the last 12 months dropped 22 per cent.; the consumption of beer dropped 16 per cent., and it must be the increased taxation and the policy of the Government in relation to other matters affecting the domestic homes of our people that have caused that very considerable drop. The Minister, of course, quoted figures to suit himself last night. When he quoted figures for the months of April and May, 1953, he did not say a word about May last year, or April, and it would have been very helpful, at least to people who want to hear the truth if the Minister did give the figures for the same period last year and this year, or even the year before. But the Minister did not do that.
Let us remember too, Sir, that when the Minister intervened concerning maize imports the value of our total live-stock exports from this country at that time was £39,000,000. In consequence of our policy of bringing maize into the country when it was required and when there was no barley being grown by the farmers owing to the fixed price of 35/-, let us remember that our exports were increased from £39,000,000 to £100,000,000 in consequence of having imported maize to rear pigs and provide bacon for this country and for export. At that time, it was hard to get the farmers to believe that there was profit in barley growing after the difficult years they had when barley prices were fixed down to 35/- a barrel.
They could not sell it at any price in 1948.
It was only in 1948 we got going, and the Deputy is wrong if he wants to say they could not sell it in 1948. He is losing his memory as well as everything else.
Finally, I want to say that even at this stage the Minister should realise that if he reduced taxes on spirits and beer he would get greater revenue. It has been proved in the past that the 6d. per glass imposed on whiskeybrought in less revenue than a smaller duty would have brought. That proves that he has taxed spirits and beer to beyond the level where revenue can be buoyant. The buoyancy of revenue has disappeared in consequence of these heavy taxes and I feel that even at this stage the Minister should make up his mind that it is not the rate of taxes that is going to get revenue for him; it is the volume of taxes and the turn-over and the buoyancy that is there and that has disappeared at present.
Last week Deputies of this House were invited to reaffirm their confidence in a Government which had captured the reins of office with the assistance of Deputy Captain Cowan and his colleagues. To-day we are asked to reaffirm our confidence in a Minister for Finance and the policy enshrined in the Bill that is now being discussed by the House and which in my opinion is responsible for the partial destruction of the economy of this country as well as upsetting the ordinary living conditions of the plain people in every part of this country. I listened attentively and in amazement to the Taoiseach speaking here last week. I was amazed when he claimed that the policy of himself and his Government was in strict accordance with the old Sinn Féin policy.
I do not know how anybody who ever knew the late Arthur Griffith or who ever read, as I read when I was a much younger man, the wonderful things he advocated in his paper and from public platforms, could assert or try to prove that the policy enshrined in this Finance Bill is in accordance with the policy advocated in those far off days. The late Arthur Griffith—and the Minister for Finance was one of his ardent supporters—never advocated the policy that money should be the master of the Government in this country or that the Government, if it was a proper Government and had any desire to carry out its own financial or economic policy, should be subject to the decisions of a small group of people who sit outside this House, but not very far away from this House, and who in effect lay downGovernment policy. Will the Minister when he is replying—I merely want him to make this clear because I find it very difficult to get a clear statement on the matter-state specifically whether it is the Government or the Standing Committee of the Banks sitting in College Green who fix interest rates on loans, either public loans or loans required by citizens carrying on private business?
I have asked people who are in control of the Department of Finance, and some of them said that it was the Joint Standing Committee of the Banks who were responsible for the fixing of the rates of interest. Others said that the last word is with the Government. If the last word is with the Government, particularly with the Minister for Finance, in fixing interest charges for national or local loans or loans provided under the private banking system for citizens of the State, then I would ask the Minister how he can defend the interest charge of 5 per cent. which he gave so willingly and so enthusiastically and which he is still defending as far as I know, to the people who subscribed to our last National Loan? If it is possible and I believe it is possible that all the money that has been lying on deposit, the increasing sums which have been put into the banks on deposit by farmers——
The farmers who were riding around in Chryslers, according to Deputy Costello.
I am addressing my remarks particularly to the Minister for Finance. Deputy Cogan, I think, has not yet assumed any authority in the inside councils of the Government. If it is possible to get at 3½ per cent. £100,000,000, £50,000,000 or £20,000,000 —the amount which the Minister recently sought and secured at a rate of 5 per cent.—from people who have their money in the banks, is it not a crime on the part of the Government willingly to hand out an additional 1½ per cent. for a loan which they could have got for 3½ per cent.? I do not pretend to know what is happeningin the constituency represented by Deputy Cogan or any other constituency but I speak with fairly intimate knowledge of what is happening in my own constituency and I assert that never in my time have trade and industry been so badly hit as they have been as a result of the increase in the rate of interest for loans to farmers, ordinary citizens and people engaged in private enterprise.
How can a farmer who is short of working capital increase agricultural production at a time when the rate of interest for agricultural loans has been raised for some reason from 5 per cent. to 6 per cent.? Can Deputy Cogan, who is defending the Government on this Finance Bill, justify the raising of the rate of interest on agricultural loans from 5 per cent. to 6 per cent. at a time when he and every one of us are only too anxious to encourage farmers to increase agricultural production? The farmer who has not got capital has to borrow at 6 per cent. the money necessary to increase agricultural production. That is adding to the cost of production, a thing that should not be necessary in my opinion. Is there any reason why the rate of interest on agricultural loans should have been raised, even if it is admitted, for the sake of argument, that there was some justification for raising the rate of interest on other types of loans?
There are many Deputies sitting on either side of the House who, unlike your humble servant, are members of local authorities. What is the position to-day in regard to loans sanctioned for local authorities for every aspect of their activities, but particularly in regard to housing, the provision of sewerage and water-works and such types of loans as are made available to local authorities through the Local Loans Fund? I made inquiries recently regarding the amount of loans outstanding or due by the two country councils in the constituency which I have the honour to represent. I got the figures in one case. For the year ending the 31st March last, the total amount for which the ratepayers of the County of Laoighis are liable and haveto pay by means of rates for the repayment of loans and interest is responsible for a rate of 4/11 in the £. Would Deputies believe—I know of course Deputies like Deputy Corry must know the facts and therefore they cannot refuse to believe—that County Laoighis had to provide last year for the repayment of loans including interest a rate as high as 4/11 in the £? Of that 4/11, 2/8 represents interest and 2/3 repayment of the principal. The ratepayers are called upon to pay 2/8 in the £ to the gentlemen who, in effect, control the financial policy of this Government.
The capital figure which has to be repaid, regardless of the rate of interest, renders necessary a rate of 2/3 in the £. How in the name of goodness can this country survive this system when the people have to raise in their rates each year a sum, 60 per cent. of which is paid to a limited number of private bankers who operate in this country with the goodwill of the Minister for Finance and the Government? I do not know what country could survive that financial system for another 20 or 25 years or perhaps even for ten years.
I do not think the banking system is relevant to this Bill.
The Finance Bill, I respectfully submit, has a definite bearing upon the moneys provided for local loans.
But it does not provide the Deputy with an opportunity for advocating a change in the banking system.
Actually, I did not use the word, Sir. It is pure waste of your time—which is more valuable than mine—and the same applies to that of the Minister for Finance, to advocate a change in the attitude adopted by the Minister for Finance in the past couple of years.
We are agreed, then
I agree that we are wasting time in trying to convert the Minister for Finance on a matter of thiskind. The financial system which he is defending in this House to-day, through the machinery of the Bill that is now in its Final Stages, cannot be justified and it will have the effect of paralysing the economy of the whole country.
The most serious—and I say this in all sincerity to the Minister for Finance—problem confronting the country to-day is the restriction of credit. I am not sure that the Minister is fully acquainted with what is going on in the country in that respect. Is the Minister aware that every trader in this country who, to a certain extent, was responsible from year to year or from the beginning of any year to the end of that year for financing the operations of tens of thousands of farmers, and other people, is now experiencing the very serious effects of the restriction of credit which has taken place since the Minister introduced last year's Budget? Does the Minister deny that? If the Minister attempts to deny that there is a restriction of credit then all that I can say to him—and I do not say it with any personal animosity— is that he is not fully acquainted with what is going on in the country.
What is the real cause of the hold-up in the housing programme, so far as local authorities are concerned? There seems to be an impression among a lot of people in this city— the people who are not fully acquainted with what is going on— that the number of motor-cars one sees in our cities and towns and throughout the country generally is a faithful reflection of the financial position of the people as a whole. I wonder how many Deputies are aware of the fact that over 80 per cent. of the private motor-cars now operating in this country are purchased under the hire-purchase system?
At what rate of interest?
Apparently Deputy Corry has been making a study of that matter. He may have more up-to-dateinformation on it than I have. In any event, it is not a system that one can advocate so far as the safety of the financial position of the country is concerned. If it is true-and it has been asserted in this House and apparently there are figures to prove it—that over 80 per cent. of the private cars of this country are purchased under the hire-purchase system, will Deputy Corry, who is a faithful follower of the Minister for Finance, say that that is a sound financial state of affairs so far as the people themselves are concerned?
I will deal with that.
Pray for them.
I am afraid that the Minister and some of his colleagues are not fully acquainted with the true financial position of the people of this country. I suppose it is useless talking in this House or giving any reasons as to why there should be a change in that policy.
Will the Minister say, when he is replying to this debate, whether he is satisfied that there is still a restriction of credit so far as a big section of the real producers of this country are concerned? Will he say if he is satisfied, apart from the question of restriction of credit, that the interest rates charged by the banking institutions for loans to those who are prepared to engage in national development are reasonable? I am very well acquainted with a number of traders in my constituency and they tell me that since the Budget of last year those of them who have to get short-term credit, for the purpose of providing accommodation for their customers, particularly for their farmer customers, are constantly being carpeted by the local bank managers and reprimanded for their failure to keep their overdraft down to a reasonable figure. I could quote names, cases and places to the Minister on this matter. Some of the traders in my constituency with whom I am fairly well acquainted have to see their bank managers every Monday or Tuesday morning and make a confession to them and do penance and give an explanation as to why their overdraftis not brought down. As every Deputy is aware, the overdraft accommodation is given for the purpose of giving facilities to their customers.
On more than one occasion I have heard the Taoiseach say in this House that he is not aware that there is any restriction of credit so far as creditworthy people in this country are concerned. Will the Minister for Finance repeat that statement, if he believes it to be correct? I must assume and I will assume that the Minister for Finance, who is a very active man apart from the policy that he advocates, must be fully acquainted with the day-to-day financial affairs of the country and must, for that reason, be in close touch with what is going on and with the policy being carried out by our banking institutions.
Surely the Minister for Finance will not deny that, since his Budget policy of last year came into operation, traders all over the country are in trouble with their bankers because they are not able to keep down their overdraft to the level demanded by these bankers? One trader in my constituency who does a big trade with hundreds of farmers tells me that he has to see his bank manager every Monday morning and make a confession and do penance for the sins which the manager and the directors of the bank say he has committed in respect of the size of his overdraft. That trader, and his father before him, has been engaged in business all his life. He explained to me—and I am sure that this is nothing new to Deputy Corry and other Deputies who are acquainted with what is going on in their own areas—that, as is the usual custom in a provincial town or in a small town in the country, hundreds of his customers can afford to pay him only once or twice and, in a very limited number of cases, three times per year. The extra accommodation which that trader requires, as a result of the policy contained in last year's Budget, is roughly £10,000 a year. He has been doing penance every week for the sins which he is alleged to commit against the banking system by being brought into the bank manager's office every Monday or Tuesday morningand carpeted for not bringing down his overdraft. He has to give credit to the farmers until they are in a position to sell their barley, beet, wheat, cattle or some other commodity which they sell periodically. I submit to the Minister that that system of restricted credit cannot survive another two or three years without endangering the whole structural economy of the country. I do not know whether the Minister is fully acquainted with the situation. If he is not fully acquainted with what is going on in the country, and with the methods being adopted by bank managers since last year in regard to credit facilities, then it is time he wakened up to this very serious situation.
I do not blame the bank managers personally. I know a number of bank managers and I know that they are acting on strict instructions, so far as the restriction of credit is concerned. What would have happened when the bank strike was on, if the traders had not provided facilities for their customers? I am not too sure that the Minister is really fully acquainted with the position in the country, so far as making credit available to farmers and all classes of people who were in a position to get credit on fairly reasonable conditions before the Budget of lest year is concerned. Does he admit even now, after the experience of a year or more, that there is a deliberate policy on the part of the banks of restricting credit to creditworthy citizens? If so, how does he defend a continuance of that policy or what action, if any, does he propose to take to alter that policy? There is very little hope for the revival of agriculture, for an increase in agricultural production or for an increase in employment in the agricultural industry, unless and until the financial policy of the Government, as I now know it, is radically altered.
Deputy Davin, whom we are all glad to see back and taking such an active interest in financial policy, has referred to the restriction of credit in the past year. Deputy Davin should go back a couple of years to the time when DeputyMcGilligan was Minister for Finance and when we were putting questions to him, even though we were supporting him, as to whether or not he had given instructions to the banks to restrict credit. Deputy McGilligan on many occasions denied that either he or the Government had given such instructions to the banks. I mention that to remind Deputy Davin and other Deputies that it is not last year that the restriction in bank credits commenced to operate, but in 1948 and 1949.
And before that.
Definitely there were very serious restrictions in these years and complaints were made to me by creditworthy citizens that the banks refused to give them credit. It has been my experience that the restrictions on the issue of bank credit and bank overdrafts have been substantially eased in the past 12 months. That is my own personal experience and it is the experience of people with whom I have been in contact, that there has been an easing of the restrictions on bank credit by the banks.
In the city?
In the city. I cannot talk for the country, but that is definitely so in regard to the city. Anyone who is acquainted with bank managers in the City of Dublin knows definitely that there has been a very substantial improvement in the matter of bank credits in the past 12 months.
One of our great difficulties in Dublin at the moment is our serious unemployment problem. We have some thousands of young men able and willing to work who are unable to obtain employment. These young men in desperation have taken to the streets in organised demonstrations, clamouring for work and drawing very effectively the notice of the public to the fact that they are being denied work, although they are able and willing to work. Then, because they take these active steps to draw attention to their plight, to their demands, we find a newspaper, The Standard,over which some Deputies have control—DeputyMacEoin, for instance—alleging that these men who are looking for work are Communists.
It does not seem to have any relevancy to the Finance Bill.
With respect, the question of employment has.
We are discussing the general financial policy of the Government.
I want to put it in this way, that, within the general financial policy of the Government, provision can be made for employment and can be made for the employment of these thousands of men in the City of Dublin who want to work and who are willing to work and anxious to be provided with employment. Obviously, if they are provided with employment and are paid decent wages, it must react to the general benefit of the people and must assist, not only the industrialists but also the farmers.
They are blaming you and the other Independents for the existence of unemployment in the past two years.
Deputy O'Leary knows, and I do not think he ought to forget, that, from 1944 to 1948, he was a member of the National Labour Party who had the Labour Party by the throat and were supporting the Fianna Fáil Government during that period.
Surely that does not arise on the Finance Bill?
It arises not on the subject we are discussing but on the interruption.
The difference is that he is not supporting them now, and you are.
That is right. We put them out and you put them back.
Deputy O'Leary should restrain himself.
The Dublin workers are blaming him, Deputy Dr. Browne, Deputy ffrench-O'Carroll and Deputy Cogan for having the country in the condition it is in at the moment.
Deputy O'Leary cannot make a speech at this stage—Deputy Cowan is in possession.
That is the position, so far as unemployment in the City of Dublin is concerned, that there is work —we have work—for these men. The Minister for Finance can provide all the money necessary to make employment available for them, but when schemes of employment are mentioned, schemes of big employment, of public works, which are absolutely vital for the provision of this employment, the condemnation comes from Deputy MacEoin, whom Deputy O'Leary now supports. He does not want the Castle knocked down and rebuilt because that would give employment to our unemployed people in the City of Dublin.
He wants houses built for the people.
Dublin Corporation is providing houses at the same rate as it has been providing them for the last four years. It has built 10,000 houses in the last four years.
And if they had been let continue they would have them all built now.
Dublin Corporation has within the last two months given out contracts for 1,000 houses. We are having a meeting to-morrow, as Deputy Byrne knows, to consider and decide what action we will take because the private contractors who have got the contracts for these 1,000 houses have made no effort to start work. That is one of the difficulties we have. A thousand houses have been handed out to private contractors to build, and the money for these houses has been provided by the Minister.
At what price?
The price does not matter. The price has nothing to do with it.
Wait until the rent is being fixed.
The price has nothing to do with the fact that we have given out contracts for 1,000 houses and the contractors will be paid for these houses.
Were they signed contracts?
They were signed contracts. Deputy Byrne and I and other members of the corporation approached the Minister for Local Government. He removed every obstacle that was in the way of getting these contracts out quickly. We gave them out two months ago and there are not 60 men employed on these contracts at the moment.
Why?
Because under the system of private enterprise these private building contractors, whom Deputy Dillon supports but I do not think Deputy Davin does, want to finish some other contracts they have on hands at the moment, and when they have finished those they will transfer their men. Although we gave them contracts for 1,000, hoping that would provide employment for a great number of our citizens, we find the contractors will not start the work.
Have the banks anything to do with that?
The banks have nothing to do with it. The money has been made available for the contractors by the Dublin Corporation for these 1,000 houses. At the moment a few men are engaged digging foundations, and that is all.
The banks finished a lot of the contractors.
These are big contractors who have been handling Dublin Corporation schemes for the last few years. They have certainly made no complaint that they are held up for lack of finance. If they were held up for lack of finance now they would have known that two or three months ago when they signed the contracts.
Why do you not do it by direct labour?
We are discussing the practical problem of putting people to work.
Putting the people you put out of work back into work.
No. Many people come to my house every day who have come back from employment in England to work in Dublin. They are anxious to get employment in Dublin because things are not so rosy or so good in Britain.
Conscription is being put into operation.
They are not afraid of conscription. No one will tell me that an Irishman is afraid of conscription. Conditions under which they live in England are not as good as conditions under which they could live in Ireland, if they had employment here.
Why do they go to England then?
Deputy O'Sullivan always reminds me of a little canary. He perks out his head and says something. Unfortunately I do not understand canary language.
Tweet, tweet!
Deputy Cowan understands Deputy Corry though.
We are doing everything we possibly can in the Dublin Corporation. There has been no reduction in the number of houses being built. The Minister has increased the subsidy for every house built for tenants to £1,250. For every house built for a tenant the Minister gives that amount in subsidy and that subsidy is responsible for the reduction of rents to the point at which we can now provide houses for tenants in Dublin at 5/6 or 5/9 per week. We can provide a four-roomed or a five-roomed house, if necessary, at that figure.
For 5/- per week in the City of Dublin?
Yes, for widows or people who are unfit to work, or for some other reason.
That is news to local authorities in rural areas.
The working tenants are paying for them.
The rents under the differential system run from 5/3 to 36/-per week.
How many are occupying 5/- houses?
Strange as it may seem, the majority are paying less than half the maximum. They are paying less than 18/-.
The man who works pays for the man who does not.
That is so, but the rents of those houses have not altered in the last three years.
You have evictions though.
The differential renting system operates.
Mr. A. Byrne
There is only a subsidy of £250 for houses for newly weds. Make that clear.
I am not talking at the moment of the couple of hundred houses we provide each year for newly weds. I am talking about the 2,200 houses we provide for people with large families. Deputy Davin has spoken about the hold-up in the housing programme. There is no hold-up in Dublin City. We are building as many houses this year on an average as we built last year, the year before and the year before that again.
You have admitted that there is a hold-up.
As far as the corporation is concerned there is no hold-up. There is a hold-up so far as the private contractors are concerned. We will be discussing that to-morrow and I hope we will have the support of the Government in overcoming ourdifficulties in connection with contractors who accept contracts for 1,000 houses and will not put the work in hands right away.
What is their explanation?
We will know that to-morrow. We have sent out an inspector to interview them all.
Is there not a time limit?
We pressed the Minister. We had numerous meetings in an effort to get over the difficulties. We got the contracts out and got them signed. Two months later only a small number of people are employed on the building of these 1,000 houses.
The banks are holding them up.
They are not. The contractors have not said so. Deputy Davin is trying to suggest something that the contractors themselves do not allege.
They are afraid to say it.
Why not try direct labour in the City of Dublin when you cannot get the contractors to do the work?
We have a direct labour organisation of approximately 500 to 700 people.
I cannot see how all this arises on the Finance Bill. It might have been raised more relevantly on the Estimate.
I will finish the particular point. We have 500 to 700 people employed on a direct labour scheme. These men have done wonderful work. They are excellent. I want to see all our corporation houses built by direct labour and by our own organisation, but we are stymied by the building contractors that Deputy Dillon and Deputy MacEoin support. They do not want that. They prohibited it. I am in favour of havingour work done by direct labour in the city.
The method of erecting houses cannot be debated on the Finance Bill.
It is definitely related to finance.
Pity poor Deputy Cowan. He has to wriggle out of his present awkward situation.
Deputy Dillon is——
Very near sick of your hypocrisy.
——what one might term the ideal type of gentleman. He was an Independent Deputy of this House for many years and always asserted his rights to do what he thought was right, but he denies that to another Independent Deputy just because that Independent Deputy takes a different line from the one he takes. Deputy Dillon is a bully in his heart.
The Deputy might come to finance.
He would like to truncheon people into his way of thinking and when they will not have that there is no language too foul to use in regard to them.
All I intend to do is to expose the Deputy and that I am going to do in a few minutes. I will not leave a rag on him.
We know Deputy Dillon. I have described him before as one of the ham actors of the House.
You also described him as being one of the best Ministers for Agriculture ever.
I admit that Deputy Dillon, as Minister for Agriculture, had many good qualities but that does not say that when he spoke in this House he did not act as a ham actor.
The House is not discussing Deputy Dillon.
As a ham actor.
Would you, Sir, allow the Deputy to continue for the benefit of direct labour and relate his remarks to finance?
Deputy Cowan missed the bus.
I knew the vote was coming off and I knew that some of the people opposite——
Their hearts were not in it.
We had a reserve of three outside the Dáil door but we knew they would not be needed. In any event I was this morning between 10 a.m. and 10.45 a.m. endeavouring to obtain corporation houses for two families who were to be evicted to-day. I think I was doing very good public work during that period. At least I was able to hold the sheriff up by 11 o'clock.
Small wonder that the heavens opened.
Deputy Dillon will get a chance of ham acting in a few minutes.
Would the Deputy use an adjective which would describe his activities?
As far as finance is concerned we in Dublin Corporation are not held up. We have plenty of works to be done but if we are going to have the approach to public works that we have had from Deputy General MacEoin during the election campaign in regard to the provision of new buildings, new buildings for the civil servants, new buildings for Dublin Corporation and new buildings for the Dáil, then there will be no work for the thousands of people who are unemployed in Dublin City.
We have all got to face the reality of that situation. I know Deputy Collins realises that. I know that Deputy Collins is a very intelligent Deputy who can see beyond his noseand is not tied up with the reactionary outlook of some of his older colleagues. He knows that the only way by which you can solve the unemployment problem is to provide employment for the people who are unemployed.
Short of exterminating them, what other remedy could there be?
Extermination is more peculiar to the Deputy than it is to me.
Certainly the Deputy has not hesitated to try and raise bogus armies when he liked.
Thanks be to God I never exterminated people who were opponents of mine.
What are you saying?
We are talking about the problem of unemployment and I say there is only one way to solve the unemployment problem and that is to provide employment for the people. We have the money. I take the same line as Deputy Davin does in regard to monetary policy but monetary policy is not holding us up. Under our financial policy we have the money to provide the employment. We have the employment for the people but we have got to get a change of mentality in regard to the value of public works. Many countries in the world have maintained prosperity and their people in very good employment for the last 100 years by means of public works. The provision of large sums of money for public works in these countries is accepted as a matter of course. Nobody in those countries would dare suggest that there should be a reduction of even £100 in the Votes for public works.
Which country does the Deputy refer to?
I am referring to France at the moment. No Deputy in France would suggest the reduction of one penny in the Vote for public works. That has been so for the last 30 years.
Would not the Deputy think that the building of harbours, breakwaters and the protection of fisheries would be a better form of public works than the building of a new Dáil?
Who fathered that?
You have got to take everything in its turn. The building of a Dáil spread over a period of five to ten years would give good employment during that period.
That would be poor satisfaction for the unemployed rural people.
The rural people and the city people all live in prosperity together. The more prosperous the people in cities are the more prosperous the people ought to be in the rural areas.
It is the other way round.
I want to put it that the more money we spend in the cities buying the things the farmers produce the more chance the farmers have of being prosperous. It is one of these big problems that we should not have to discuss in this way across the floor of the House. We should all be agreed upon the value of and the necessity for public works. As I say, we have the public works and the Minister for Finance will provide the money for them but we have got to have a change in the mentality which opposes public works.
A couple of years ago we had a suggestion for the building of a road to Bray. There was an absolute necessity for that. It was killed by the Minister for Finance in the late Government on the representations and the propaganda of the Irish Independentand of people who opposed the spending of public money on a work of that importance to the community. I would much prefer that Deputies on all sides of the House would get together and study this whole problem of public works because it is only by means of public works that we can solve the unemployment problem.
Does the wages content matter in that connection?
There ought to be the proper trade union wages.
Will the wages percentage be related to profits to the contractors?
Absolutely. That is the problem and there will be no fundamental disagreement between Deputy Davin and myself in regard to a matter of that kind. We ought not to score points off one another, but we should try to get the works going as quickly as we can. Any Deputy who gets up and says it is a scandal that the State should even consider the spending of millions of money on public works is an enemy of the unemployed and an enemy of the worker.
The Government have cut down the money under the Local Authorities (Works) Act to the county councils.
I want the Deputy to remember this, that the Works Act that was brought in was in the nature of a temporary measure to remove certain obstructions. It gave a certain amount of employment, and in so far as it did these things it was a good Act.
There was a 75 per cent. wages content in it.
You could not keep Works Acts going on for ever.
There is a good many years' work still left to be done under that Act.
So long as there is valuable work to be done, I say that we should do that work. So long as work is to be done under the Works Act that will enrich and benefit the country, then I say do that work. I think that, in the long run, there would be very little disagreement on this problem between myself and Deputy O'Leary and Deputy Collins; but when I see a man like Deputy MacEoin going out and making election speeches and appealing to the farmers down thecountry not to vote in a particular way because the Government are going to carry out these public works that would give employment to thousands of our citizens, then I say I cannot understand that.
Does not the Deputy know that you could have half the unemployed engaged in taking up the rails of the old tram lines if the Government were honest about giving employment?
We had a scheme from Deputy Byrne recently for the demolition of old houses in the City of Dublin. We, in the corporation, got a report on that this morning, and from that report we find that all that we can employ on that work for a period of three months is 40 men. That was supposed to be a pretty big scheme. I mention it to show that as far as the Dublin Corporation is concerned, we have examined every proposal that will give employment. We are not held up in any way by money. Every halfpenny that we spend on the roads in the City of Dublin is provided by the Government. The ratepayers of Dublin contribute not one halfpenny to the maintenance of the roads we have at the moment.
That is news to us in the country.
It is a revelation.
I am telling the truth. We have a city engineer who is a very able man and all our relief grants, all the money that we get from the Road Fund and all the money we get from the Government—all these moneys are providing the excellent roads that we have in the City of Dublin.
The rest of the country is paying for them.
I do not mind who is paying for them, but the people of Dublin should realise that not one penny of the ratepayers' money goes into the provision of new roads or to the maintenance of old roads in the City of Dublin.
The Minister is getting embarrassed.
He is not. That is a fact, and I am proud of it—that we are able to do that without calling on the ratepayers for one halfpenny for the provision or maintenance of these roads in the city.
The Deputy had a right to tell us that before the by-election.
Do not mind that.
Is the Deputy saying this about the streets of the City of Dublin?
Yes. The trouble about this House is that there are so many people who talk here without knowing what they are talking about.
I certainly never knew that the man with ten acres of land in the West of Ireland was paying for the streets in the City of Dublin.
And he is not. The people who are paying are the people in the City of Dublin who are paying motor vehicle duties.
There is not one penny, as I say, paid for that purpose by the ratepayers of Dublin.
We will have to see about getting our share of that.
You are getting everything that is due to you.
Does Deputy Cowan want a new road to Bray so that the Minister's car can speed down to the by-elections?
I am sure the Deputy will agree that the more new roads that we provide to bring greater numbers of people to see the beauties of his own County of Wicklow, the better he will like it. Is that not right?
I would agree with the Deputy if we had not to pay another 2/- in the £ in the rates. We do not get everything easy.
We do.
You are lucky. We will have to demand similar treatment.
Get the banks to pay it under the hire-purchase system.
Deputy Cowan should be allowed to make his speech without interruption.
The only point I wanted to make was that, as far as the provision of employment is concerned, there is no problem in regard to the money, and there is no problem in regard to the works. The works are there to be done. What we want is a change of outlook. I would appeal to the Fine Gael Party to give up this idea of opposition to public works that are essential. I am nearly sure that Deputy Dillon would come round to my way of thinking on public works that are essential, not the type of public works that were carried out in the famine days when they were building gazaboes so that people could see their sons or their relatives on ships in the Irish Sea from the middle of the country. I am speaking of public works that would be of benefit and utility, such as new offices for our civil servants, new roads, new parks, new Government buildings and new corporation buildings.
What would the labour content in these be?
I have not gone into that, but whatever the labour content is we want to provide employment, and we want these works to be done. You cannot provide for the unemploymed unless you have work for them to do.
The labour content in a number of the works which the Deputy has enumerated would not be more than about 25 per cent.
That is a guess by the Deputy. I would not hazard that kind of a guess. All that I know is that when you do a considerable amount of big building work, such as the building of new corporationpremises, you give a large number of people employment, particularly to skilled workers.
I have been trying to work it out so far as the new C.I.E. building is concerned.
I did not go into the statistics relating to the C.I.E. building.
Sixty-five per cent. of the cost is represented by interest paid to the boys in College Green.
I am not concerned with interest but with providing work for the unemployed.
These people do not work. They may with their heads.
I suggest that on the type of building the Deputy has referred to, the greater part of the expenditure would be in the ultimate finish and equipment.
No. If we are going to build new roads——
The Deputy was talking about Government buildings.
Government buildings and corporation buildings. We want these and if they have to be provided it is better that we should provide them now when we have 60,000 or 70,000 people unemployed. It is better that we should do that work now than leave it to another generation to do it.
What about the ratepayers' contribution?
I am not concerned with the ratepayers' contribution or anybody else's contribution. What I am saying is that the Government have the money and can provide the money to enable these works to be done. These works are necessary works and will enable people to be employed at good rates of wages. I say that can be done. I do not mind the rates going up another 1d. in the £ or another 3d. if that is going to help to keep somehundreds of families in the City of Dublin in reasonable comfort.
The Deputy knows that another 1d. in the £ on the valuation in the City of Dublin brings in £10,000. That sum is not going to keep hundreds of people in employment.
No, but there is the suggestion all the time that we are not to provide money from any source to provide employment. If we do provide employment we have got to provide the money for it.
That is the Central Bank policy.
It is a great pity that the Deputy was not here for the early part of my argument.
I know the Deputy too well now to be convinced.
It is funny. I remember the time when I was down in Waterford doing the best I could to get the Deputy to the Dáil.
Sure.
I gave him considerable help. The Deputy perhaps will see things in a different light in the near future. I think Deputy Kyne would agree with me that we want to provide employment for the people who are idle——
Sure.
——and that if there are public works to be done they should be done, and that, as long as money is provided for them, it is the important thing. The Government ought to provide money to give employment to the people who are idle, doing work that is necessary to be done. This is an emergency situation and ought to be tackled now. What I have been putting to the Deputy is that any Deputy like Deputy General MacEoin who goes around the country criticising the Government for daring to do public works——
No. That is not right. It was certain types of public works.
But the only types that are available. For instance—I am talking about the City of Dublin— the public works that are available here to give our unemployed people work must be done if they are to be taken off the unemployment market.
What is holding up your contractors in the corporation?
I do not know at the moment. We will know that to-morrow and if there is any legal power by which we can compel them to work more quickly, we will do it. However, I do not want to express an opinion until we know definitely.
They are not working at all.
The corporation have given them contracts for 1,000 houses.
That is about the seventeenth time you have said that.
I cannot repeat it often enough because I want the people of Dublin to realise that if the houses are not being built it is not the Government's fault or the corporation's fault; neither is it due to the rate of interest or shortage of money. It is due to the fact that we are trying to maintain this private enterprise system when it is not satisfactory.
In a contract there is a time limit. You must start at a particular time.
That is one of the problems we are going into.
It does not arise on the Finance Bill.
It is very important.
However, we will know to-morrow.
Mr. A. Byrne
Why did we give them the contracts? Are we not bound to give them to the lowest tenders?
Deputy Cowan.
Mr. A. Byrne
I am trying to help. I want to assist the Deputy.
You are assisting me. Deputy Byrne is quite right. Under the system we have, we must give our contracts to the lowest tender.
How does this particular point arise on the Finance Bill?
I do not know how it arises, but it has arisen.
The Deputy should get away from it.
I must apologise to the Deputies. I would very much like to go further into it. However, the important thing is that Dublin Corporation have contracts out for 1,000 new houses. They are not held up for want of money. As far as the Dublin Corporation is concerned it is doing its level best to make the contractors start the work and give employment, particularly to our skilled workers, so many of whom are idle.
Is there a penalty clause in the contract?
These points do not arise on the Finance Bill.
Now that the unemployed have started marching, you have wakened up.
I intervened on this particular part of the Bill merely to make clear the position as far as the Dublin Corporation is concerned. I also wanted to impress on the members of Fine Gael in this House now necessary it is in the public interest that they should change their ideas in regard to public works. If they do they will be in harmony with the rest of opinion in the House. As far as the provision of employment for 10,000 people in the City of Dublin is concerned, I want to say to the Minister that it is not a job that can be dealt with by the Dublin Corporation or by any other local authority. It is an emergency situation and it must be handled by emergency methods. I would impress on the Minister thenecessity for the adoption of some scheme whereby this whole matter of public works could be dealt with by a committee of Ministers, a committee of Deputies, a committee of civil servants or by some people appointed specially by the Government, whether it be a number or an individual, to deal with the problem.
Surely not another commission?
No. It is not a commission, it is the appointment of persons to do the job, not a commission to think about it.
And to get the Minister out?
It is a proposal to pass the buck, a very venerable device.
It it is not a proposal to pass the buck. To appoint a person to do the job, to give him all the money he needs and the co-operation and help he needs, is not passing the buck but it is doing the job.
Did we not appoint the Minister to do that?
No. That is not the Minister's job.
I thought you said it was.
I said the Minister must set up the machinery to do the job.
Are you advocating a Ministry of Labour?
I am suggesting that machinery be established to get these big public works going.
To explore every avenue, to turn every stone.
We will leave that to Deputy Dillon.
You have a housing director in the corporation.
I am telling Deputy Davin that as far as house building in the Dublin Corporation is concerned,we are continuing to build at our average over the past four years, an average of 2,300 to 2,500 houses a year.
There is a full stop at present.
There has been a hold-up for two months but the housing director cannot do anything about it. The building of houses is not the solution. In four years we have built 10,000 houses; in another four years we will have built a further 10,000, and then we hope that our target will be another 10,000 houses, so as to continue the employment of the people who will then be engaged for those eight years in the building of houses. However, it is the big public works that must be done.
Something like the Bray Road.
What about the Blue Lagoon?
Yes, the Blue Lagoon, if you like; or a tunnel built under the Liffey. There are one hundred and one things that could be done. There are many places in Dublin where we could have underground tunnels, and that work will have to be done, but it will have to be done under the control of some authority set up in an emergency way to deal with it. In some cities one sees where one road is run right under the other. Why can we not make an effort to do that in Dublin? It would cost thousands of pounds but it would give substantial employment. As somebody said here, you cannot make omelettes without breaking eggs. You cannot provide employment unless you are going to do that type of work, and you cannot provide employment unless the finance to pay the men is there. We have a guarantee from the Taoiseach and from the Minister for Finance that there is no shortage of money to do these works.
Why do they not give it out?
The works are there but the whole problem is thatthere is too much opposition from the Fine Gael Party to the doing of any public works that would give employment.
You have a majority over there to get the work done.
I will finish on this note. When young men in this city demonstrate against the conditions under which they and their families are existing we have the Fine Gael mentality in General MacEoin's paper which suggests that they are Communists.
Listen to these figures, Sir. In 1951, there were 65,877 persons unemployed in Ireland in January. In January, 1953, there were 87,283 persons unemployed, an increase of 32 per cent. Deputy Cowan is about to disappear because he does not want to hear the facts. In February, 1951, there were 63,000 persons unemployed. In February, 1953, there were 89,579 unemployed, an increase of 42 per cent. In March 1951, there were 59,570 persons unemployed. In March, 1953, there were 85,541, an increase of 43 per cent. In April, 1951, there were 54,913 persons unemployed. In April, 1953, there were 84,041, an increase of 53 per cent. In May, 1951, there were 49,187 persons unemployed. In May 1953, 76,178, an increase of 60 per cent. In June, 1951, there were 37,125 persons unemployed. In June, 1953, there were 63,589, an increase of 71 per cent.
Something happened between 1951 and 1953. What happened? There was a change of Government to begin with but that made no difference until that Government published a White Paper in the autumn of 1951 and introduced a Budget for 1952, of which this is a reproduction in this Finance Bill and I am saying in this House that the purpose of the Budget of 1952 and of the Finance Bill at present before the House was and is to create unemployment. I say the policy of Mr. Seán MacEntee, the present Minister for Finance, was deliberately designed by fiscal methods to create a pool of unemployment in this country and in every step he took he had the active co-operation and vote of Deputy Peadar Cowan and I challenge DeputyPeadar Cowan or the Minister for Finance to deny that.
The Minister for Finance to-day said that he had never suggested or never encouraged any restriction of credit in this country. On the 18th July, 1951, column 1899, here is what the Minister for Finance said in Dáil Éireann:—
"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."
If the Minister for Finance in Dáil Éireann makes that statement in public debate, what interpretation is to be put upon it by the joint stock banks of this country? If they hear him go on to say: "We propose to provide for a larger volume of capital expenditure than ever was provided before", is not the clear direction in that statement, then, let the joint stock banks restrict credit?
They have done so.
Is not that what he says? He says: "Private and public spending are causing congestion that can be relieved only by a reduction of one or the other." In the next breath he says: "I propose to sponsor more public spending than ever was spent before." Does not that imply, does not it follow in irresistible logic, that he says: Therefore there must be a reduction in the credit facilities provided by the joint stock banks?
That is the same Minister who gets up here and says: "I never did it. I never advocated the restriction of credit." I challenge him to deny that he used those words. He dare not deny it.
The Taoiseach repudiated it.
That is not all. That is the Minister for Finance who declared before the world, never mind the bankers of this country, that the lowest penny at which he would dare to ask the moneylenders to lend moneyto the Government of Ireland was 5 per cent. and because he did that he raised the lending rate on the Local Loans Fund and under the Small Dwellings (Acquisition) Act by as much as 1½ per cent. Is that true or is that false?
And the Agricultural Credit Corporation.
We will come to that. I am talking now about houses. Did not he raise the interest rate under the Small Dwellings (Acquisition) Act by 1½ per cent.? Very well. A man goes to borrow £2,000 to build his house. What is 1½ per cent. on £2,000? Is not it about £25 to £30 a year? Is not that 10/- or 11/- a week on the rent the man has to pay to redeem the loan he raised to build his house? How many men of our personal acquaintance in this country had plans made to acquire their own house under the Small Dwellings (Acquisition) Act and pay for it out of their weekly earnings who, when the rate of interest was increased and the weekly charge raised by 10/- or 11/-, cancelled their arrangements? How many small contractors had five or ten houses built and customers for them who woke up the morning after that increase was made to discover that seven of the ten houses were jettisoned and were now on his hands and the bank was clamouring for the money and he could not pay the bank because the fellows could not borrow the money to buy the houses? How many small contractors of our personal acquaintance have gone into liquidation, sold their houses at scrap prices because they were made by the banks to sell, dismissed the two or three men they had working with them and have themselves gone back on the flooded labour market?
I am told by these innocents here that they do not understand why the unemployed are marching through the streets of Dublin. Some of the unemployed men who are marching through the streets of Dublin to-day may well have been small contractors who were employing men three years ago and not only are the three or four men they employed walking on thestreets but the contractors are out walking on the streets with them because they have gone back to the job of looking for work which they themselves were in a position to supply three years ago. Deputy Cowan does not know why they are walking on the streets.
I may go to Alderman Byrne or Deputy Belton, members of the corporation, and I may say: "These are people who have friends in Monaghan. There is a man and his wife and two children. They want a house. They are at present living with the father and mother." The reply is: "Put it out of your head. If he has not four children he has not a chance." Can you imagine the exasperation of a man who is living with his father and mother and four or five children and his wife and two children and is told by Deputy Peadar Cowan that the proper way to employ the unemployed in the streets of Dublin is to build a new Dáil when he wants to get a house to put his wife and two children into it? Go down into Meath Street, the streets I was born and reared in, Marlborough Street, Lower Gardiner Street, Summerhill, and tell the people living in the tenement houses there that Deputy Peadar Cowan thinks they ought to go on living there till he has built the Bray road and that if the bugs do fall out of the rotten roofs they can go on falling until Deputy Peadar Cowan has built a new Dublin Castle and that he cannot see in the City of Dublin any employment for the men walking the streets of Dublin unless we pull down Dublin Castle, unless we build the Bray road. I declare to God it leaves me speechless to listen to a fraud of that kind.
Deputy Peadar Cowan's vote alone is what has established in this country a Government that has increased unemployment to the knowledge of us all by as much as 40 per cent. in two years, and now Deputy Peadar Cowan wants to tell us that the unemployment in the city is due in no small measure to the fellows coming home from England because they cannot get work in England and they want to come home todraw the dole in Ireland. He ought to be ashamed of himself. God knows the Government that are hanging on to his coat-tails for their existence ought to hang their heads. If Deputy Peadar Cowan stood in his constituency to-morrow morning it would take a whole regiment of the Irish Army to bring him safely through the constituency.
Surely that does not arise on the Finance Bill?
God knows where we got the patience to listen to that fellow this morning tell us how to solve unemployment and call on Deputies of the House to gather around him, to resolve with him to relieve unemployment, his vote alone having put thousands and thousands of people into unemployment in the course of the last two years. I say with deliberation that Deputy Peadar Cowan's vote has been used in this House to put into unemployment in this country from 20,000 to 30,000 people over the last two years and I say that it was the deliberate policy of the present Minister for Finance to bring that unemployment about, and I say that the increase in the bank rate, to which Deputy Davin referred, has thrown thousands of men and women in this country into unemployment, and I say that the Minister for Finance that endorsed and encouraged that development is a public enemy in this country.
I am perfectly certain that if we could resume the policies that obtained in this country before the blight of Fianna Fáil fell upon us again, unemployment in this country could be brought under effective control and a growing body of men given decent employment in doing useful work. I think the facts speak for themselves, that throughout the period of the inter-Party's administration unemployment steadily declined in this country. Under Fianna Fáil's administration since 1951 it has steadily increased. I believe it could be made steadily to decrease again if there were in this country a Government that had the courage to use our own resources for the benefit of our own people and that did not feel it incumbent on them torequire our people to pay 5 per cent. for the use of money while they were lending six times as much to the British Government at 1¼ per cent. to build houses for their people while we charged our people 6½ per cent. for the money to build houses for our people. When I look at the faces of the Fianna Fáil Deputies sitting opposite me blushing at the mention of these facts I wonder what has happened our country that the folly of one man can be allowed to create the problems with which we are struggling at the present time. I do not want to depart from that without reaffirming that I am certain that the present acute unemployment problem could be remedied. I do not agree with Deputy Peadar Cowan that the appropriate remedy for it is panic measures alone. I gladly endorse emergency measures of a temporary kind to deal with the immediate problem, but that is of no avail if there is not an enduring policy designed to maintain the level of employment and not to rush from one crisis of unemployment into another, which seems to be the approach of Fianna Fáil to this problem.
Now, Sir, I want to talk a moment about the Minister for Finance and his attitude to Marshall Aid. I want to recall that the Minister for Finance on December 7th, 1952, speaking at Belturbet used these words: "What justification was there for raising the Marshall Aid loan at all? In raising that Marshall Aid money the late Coalition has put this country in pawn and the only thing they left for their successors were the pawn tickets." Now I want to ask the Minister for Finance will he tell me did the Irish Government on the 9th July, 1947, issue a note accepting the Marshall Plan? I want to ask the Minister for Finance did Deputy P. Smith, Minister for Agriculture of the Fianna Fáil Government, arrive in Paris by special charter plane on the 8th July, 1947, to negotiate the Marshall Loan? Was he followed to Paris on the 9th July, 1947, by Deputy Lemass, Minister for Industry and Commerce, from Amsterdam? Did they attend the conference in Paris on the 12th July, 1947? Did Deputy Lemass, on the 13thApril, 1947, pledge the support of the Irish Government to the Marshall Plan? Did Deputy Lemass conclude his attendance at the conference on the 15th July and proceed thence to luncheon at the British Embassy in Paris? Did the party fly back to Dublin by special charter plane, which had been kept in Paris during the conference, on the 16th July? On the 20th September 1947, did Deputy de Valera fly to Paris by special plane, accompanied by an army of civil servants? Did Deputy de Valera, on the 22nd September, 1947, sign the agreement and report at 5.32 p.m., at the Quai d'Orsay;and did he that evening dine at the British Embassy to celebrate the occasion?
It had nothing to do with the loan—nothing whatever.
Did Deputy de Valera fly home to Dublin on the 23rd September and make a statement in Dáil Éireann on the 8th October, 1947 on the whole proceedings? Did he tell us that he had given to the Marshall Aid authority an estimate of Ireland's probable requirements, to be financed by Marshall Aid dollars in 1947-48, 1948-49, 1949-50 and 1950-51? Did he tell the Marshall Aid administration that this is what he wanted to borrow the dollars for and that these are the things he wanted to spend the Marshall Aid dollars on? And did he furnish this list to the Marshall Aid administration on the 23rd July, 1947? Did he cause a copy of this list to be laid in the Library of Oireachtas Éireann, set out in an Annex, O.E.E.C./1/ Table II A—Requirements: Wheat and Flour, to be purchased with dollars?
Now the cat is out of the bag.
There is an answer to this.
In wheat equivalent 675,000 tons in 1947-48; 651,000 tons in 1948-49; 590,000 tons in 1949-50; and 590,000 tons in 1950-51. Rye: 5,000 tons in each year, 1947-48, 1948-49, 1949-50 and 1950-51. Barley, to be purchasedwith dollars: 1947-48, 180,000 tons; 1948-49, 200,000 tons; 1949-50, 200,000 tons; and 1950-51, 200,000 tons. Maize to be purchased with Marshall Aid dollars: 1947-48, 400,000 tons; 1948-49, 450,000 tons; 1949-50, 500,000 tons; 1950-51 600,000 tons. Signed, Eamon de Valera, Taoiseach of Éire. We were Éire then; we developed into the Irish Republic later on.
Was Deputy MacEntee there?
Oats: 1947-48, 705,000 tons; 1948-49, 610,000 tons; 1949-50, 570,000 tons; and 1950-51, 570,000 tons. Now, rice, to be purchased with dollars, to furnish forth the table of the populace of this country. Rice: 1947-48, 3,500 tons; 1948-49, the same; 1949-50, the same; and 1950-51, the same. Butter, to be paid for with dollars: 1947-48, 56,000 tons; 1948-49, 56,000 tons; 1949-50, 56,000 tons; and 1950-51, 56,000 tons.
Where was that butter coming from?
Echo answers "Where?" Sugar: 1947-48, 130,000 tons; 1948-49, 140,000 tons; 1949-50, 140,000 tons; and 1950-51, 140,000 tons. Meat including bacon—here it is, Table 11A, Required Products, Category A—Meat including bacon: 1947-48, 160,000 tons; 1948-49, 160,000 tons; 1949-50, 160,000 tons; and 1950-51, 160,000 tons. This is almost unbelievable. These are the requirements under Table 11 B. Cheese: 4,000 tons in each of those four years.
Mitchelstown?
Processed milk, 6,000 tons in 1947-48 and 10,000 tons in each of the other three years. Eggs and dried eggs, 40,000 tons. Fish and salted fish, 17,000 tons in 1947-48, 21,000 tons in 1948-49, 21,000 tons in 1949-50, and 21,000 tons in 1950-51. There is a provision here for potatoes: 3,000,000 tons of potatoes in each of those years. Wine: 35,000 units. Tea: 11,000 units. Cocoa: 2,500 units. Coffee: 800 units. Tobacco: 6.2 thousand units. Those figures are foreach of the four years. These are commodities that the Fianna Fáil Government negotiated the Marshall Aid Loan on.
We did not negotiate the Marshall Aid Loan and the Deputy knows that statement is untrue. The Marshall Aid Loan was negotiated by the Minister for External Affairs of the Deputy's Government, apparently with the connivance of the Minister for Finance—and I have the promissory notes signed by Deputy McGilligan.
Does the Minister acknowledge the list I have read out?
That is a list of possible dollar requirements to be obtained from the sterling pool.
The Minister has come this far—that is a list of the dollar requirements.
I did not say so.
I want to listen to this. What did the Minister say?
I will tell you when I get up.
I thought he was getting into deep water. This, he says, is a list of commodities that we required to get.
To enable the O.E.E.C. organisation to come to a conclusion as to what were the probable requirements of the whole of Western Europe.
But these were the requirements of Ireland. I want to pin him down to this. He will wriggle and twist, but we will pin him down.
I have it here.
The debate is not to continue by cross-examination.
He intervenes, a Cheann Comhairle, to deny this, but when I have nailed his ear to the post he says he will answer later on.
It would bebetter if the debate were not continued by cross-examination.
Much better, but he jumps in to protest. I nail his ear to the post and then he lapses into silence.
You will get an answer in due course.
This is the list of dollar commodities that Deputy Éamon de Valera stated in Paris we would require in due course under the Marshall Plan. That document was composed and issued under the Marshall Plan.
By the Taoiseach.
What did he go to Paris in a special aeroplane for?
I will tell you.
When he did come back, what was he celebrating at the British Embassy if it was not their general participation in the Marshall Plan? What was the purpose of the Marshall Plan: He says: "To give information as to what we required in the dollar area to be financed from the sterling pool". Will he tell us when winding up, when he has promised to tell us everything, what transpired at the discussions in London between the Minister, the Minister for External Affairs, the Minister for Industry and Commerce and the British Chancellor of the Exchequer?
I will tell you what transpired in June, 1948.
We all know that. There was inaugurated in this country a policy that provided more employment and a greater measure of prosperity than Ireland had ever known before. That is what happened in June, 1948. I am asking now, is the man who says that the Marshall Plan put this country in pawn the same man who went to Paris in 1947 to say that we so urgently required eggs and dried eggs from dollar sources that we were putting in our requisition four years in advance? Is he the man who went to Paris to tell them that wewanted meat, including bacon, so urgently that he was putting in his requisition four years in advance? Is the man who spoke of wanting 590,000 units of wheat, as well as flour, rye, barley, maize, oats, rice, in each of these four years the same man who stumped this country and stated that Marshall dollars were squandered on consumer goods? Will he tell us that when he gets up because that is what he did? That is the official document. That is the document to which his Government put their signature. These are the purposes for which the head of the Fianna Fáil Government vouched in Paris that Ireland required Marshall Aid.
Was that a free grant or a loan?
A loan.
That is worse.
When he asked for the loan he said he asked for the opportunity of participating in this Marshall Plan with a clear conscience and in his statement, I am quoting his words now from the report of the "European Recovery Programme, Basic Documents and Background Information", presented by the Minister for External Affairs, P. No. 8792, he says:
"To seek from another what one could supply by one's own efforts is always unworthy. It is doubly so when the assistance is requested from a friend who has proved himself generous repeatedly. I am happy to sign this report on behalf of Ireland because I believe it to be an honest report."
That is the report in which he tells us of our requirements for dollars over the following four years and he puts his hand on his heart in Paris and says: "I am happy to sign this report because I believe it to be an honest report". If it were not, he says himself that he would disgrace this country by fraudulently approaching a generous friend, and that he can only approach a generous friend for the help because, "cross my heart and hope to die," this is an honest report. The report says that in 1950-51 hewanted dollars for 590,000 units of wheat; 5,000 units of rye; 200,000 units of barley; 600,000 units of maize; 570,000 units of oats; 170,000 units of meat, including bacon; 10,000 units of processed milk; 40,000 units of eggs and dried eggs; 21,000 units of fish; 3,462,000 units of potatoes; 230,000 units of vegetables; 77,000 units of fresh fruit; 35,000 units of wine; 11,000 units of tea.
Is the Deputy repeating all that?
I am reminding the House that the man who put his hand on his heart and declared that to be an honest and true report is the same man who, with his colleagues, had gone through this country saying that Marshall dollars were squandered on consumer goods. He will do it again and he will find on his back benches a small minority who will understand the perfidy of that conduct and who will go out and repeat it, and he will find a vast majority who believe that the inter-Party Government borrowed dollars to spend them improvidently on consumer goods against the strong remonstrance of their own leader and who will go down the country and make fools of themselves protesting that it is true, until one day they will wake up to find that they have been made stooges of by their own leader, that they have been made public fools of by their own leader, and that they were being used as one would use a clown to entertain a crowd and to divert the attention of the crowd from the facts and from the conduct of which one has been guilty and which one is bitterly ashamed to admit before one's neighbours. That is the same Minister who says that the Marshall Aid scheme was putting this country in pawn, whose own leader signed that agreement, whose own colleagues flew in special aeroplanes to Paris and stayed in Claridges Hotel until they signed the agreement for the Marshall Aid scheme.
He says that when we left office we left them nothing but the pawn ticket. There was a sum of £28,000,000 odd in hard cash on the desk of the Ministerfor Finance, Deputy Séan MacEntee, when he took office in 1951——
He is not denying that.
——of which he spent every cent in the ensuing five months. And he cannot deny that. He says it was the commitments of our Government that forced him to spend that money. I say that the commitments of no Government can bind the Government's successors. We found commitments when we came into office to buy Constellations to fly across the Atlantic, to and fro. But we cancelled them, because we said we did not believe they were good commitments and we came to Parliament and told Parliament what we were doing. We violated no constitutional principle and did nothing that was not in strictest accord with the Constitution.
And the Argentine wheat?
We had to pay for that. I found a contract signed by the Minister for Industry and Commerce for the Argentine wheat and I had to pay for that—£50 a ton for what I could have bought for £35 a ton a week after I had come into office. My gracious me! Was there not coal coming up the Liffey from West Africa, and people coming up to this House to get the commission on it? The coal was coming up the Liffey for months after we came into office, but we had to take it, and pay for it and store it because it was a contract. If it had been a commitment, it would have gone back down the Liffey like a scalded cat, and the commission men after it. We had to take it, and pay for it and store it, and that was some of the junk that had to be financed in 1951. But that is another story.
We found commitments when we came into office to pull down the Kingsbridge and rebuild it at a time when there was not enough money in C.I.E. to pay the coal bill.
Surely the Deputy is travelling?
I am putting it to you that we are admitted to have left theGovernment over £28,500,000 in dollar aid, "but," said the Minister for Finance, "that was all offset by commitments," and I am pointing out that commitments do not bind a succeeding Government. We did leave £28,500,000 which he could dispose of as he thought best, and no commitments hypothecated that money.
The Deputy is going farther back than that.
I am only speaking of my knowledge of commitments placed on the Government of which I was a member. We had plenty of commitments left to us by Fianna Fáil, but with these commitments we felt perfectly entitled to come before the Dáil and say that we thought they were bad commitments and that we were abandoning them. The contracts were another matter. If there were contracts signed on behalf of an Irish Government they had to be honoured and fulfilled. I am saying that we left them £28,500,000 on the desk and that of that money they still retain £6,500,000 sterling with accrued interest, and they cannot deny it—the grant counterpart fund of the Marshall Aid scheme which they still retain.
And this, then, is the man who says that this country was put into pawn. If it was, why did he not take the £28,500,000 that he found on his desk when he came into office, and walk round to No. 10 Merrion Square to the American Embassy and put that money down as a credit.
There was one simple reason. You contracted to repay in dollars.
There was no reason whatever, why, if there was any obligation on him, he could not take the money to the American Ambassador and say: put that £28,500,000 in your safe here in Merrion Square, and the undertaking is that we will find dollars, if dollars be available over the next 60 years, and as each instalment falls due, draw it out of your safe in sterling and we will find dollars to meet it. At the present moment the problem is thatwe have too many dollars. If we wanted to pay our annual instalment in dollars, we need not have bought figs, prunes and raisins last year from California. Instead of buying the figs, prunes and raisins we could have gone round with the dollars to the American Embassy and said: Now, take the first instalment of that sterling that we left as collateral out of your safe, and we will not buy figs and prunes and raisins from California. We will give you dollars in exchange for that sterling which we left as collateral for the redemption of our debt. Is that true, or is that false? Could not the dollars, used to buy figs, prunes and raisins—to make mince meat for export to Great Britain and which we sold for sterling —have been used for the redemption for the annual gale of debt if the Minister wished to do it? And could not this £28,500,000 sterling be left with the American Ambassador to be converted into dollars as each gale fell due for our account? Could not that have been done if the Minister felt that the country was in pawn?
There is no use in exposing this little man because the more you expose him, the brassier his countenance becomes. Every fraud and slander and libel that he could utter he has uttered about this country deliberately and if you nail them down and expose them for what they are he floats off on some other expedition to prove that our country is bankrupt and rotten and down and out. But the facts remain. The agricultural industry which he in his White Paper said held no hope of making any contribution to the balance of payments problem of this country by increased exports, has virtually solved the balance of payments problem of this country by its increased exports.
Under the direction of your successor.
Listen to me, my successor can do a lot but my successor cannot persuade a cow to have a calf in 24 hours. My successor can do a lot, but he cannot make a sheep have a lamb in five minutes instead of five months. My successor can do a lot, but he cannot get a sow to farrow 24 hoursafter she goes to the pig. Rub that out. It is not veal calves we are shipping abroad. It is three- and four-year-old bullocks, or the beef from them. Even Deputy Corry will admit that. And it is the exports of the agricultural industry that have corrected the balance of payments problem of this country, although the Minister tried to justify his whole budgetary policy and the murderous impositions he placed on this country by the confident prediction that it could not possibly contribute to the balance of payments.
There is one last point I want to make. The Government wanted the votes of two particular Deputies to win its vote of confidence last week and promised the two Deputies that the proposal to put £500,000 extra on the farmers of this country would be cancelled, and in consequence of that promise they got their votes. I say that notwithstanding whether there was a deal or haggling, those votes were paid for, and that the consideration of getting them was that the proposal to increase the rates on farmers be withdrawn. I want to know is that true? And if it is true, from what other source is that money going to come? It is very relevant. Where is the money to come from to implement that undertaking? The Minister for Finance said that he depended on that £500,000.
Progress reported; Committee to sit again.