The Budget debate need not conclude at 5 o'clock to-morrow? The General Budget Resolution need not be put to-morrow?
Committee on Finance. - Resolution No. 5—General (Resumed).
It need not be put but I should expect the ordinary course would be followed.
In ordinary circumstances, there would be unlimited time for a debate on the Budget.
I think a discussion on the precise manner in which the proceedings of Dáil Éireann are to be brought to a close to-morrow should be more properly undertaken by the Whips.
In the circumstances in which the Minister's proposals for this Budget are being discussed, I do not think it is necessary and, indeed, very probably not possible, to discuss the Minister's statement in any great detail or to enter into a complete analysis of all the matters touched upon by him in the course of his speech. The time for that consideration is when there is a new Government no longer in opposition but in full possession of all the facts.
I should like at the outset of the remarks I have to make to reiterate the protest that I made some time ago against a procedure which has been adopted by the Minister and by the Government in general in introducing the Budget proposals before a dissolution. Many of these proposals will, by virtue of statutory provisions, fail to have any real effect but, apart from considerations of that kind, it is not proper, as I submit to the Deputies of this House, that a fading Ministry, one going to the country on the eve of a general election, should deal with the economic and national life of the country and, perhaps, hamper a succeeding Government in its policy and in the operation of its plans. Such a fading Ministry as we have at the present moment will necessarily be more concerned to justify itself and its past rather than to indicate a courageous action and constructive effort to solve the problems that are undoubtedly facing the country— problems of some serious and grave difficulty.
Having made that protest, I propose only to deal, very shortly I hope, with some of the outstanding features of the Minister's statement. I think, when it is realised how little the Minister's statement contains of any constructive economic or financial proposals to deal with the future difficulties facing the country and when it is appreciated how slight the reliefs that have been given really are, the question will be properly put by many was it for this that the country was allowed during a period of nearly two months to remain in a state of dislocation and instability, and with business practically brought to a standstill because of the proposals by the Minister in his Budget speech that were awaited?
Whatever may be said about the Minister's claims, I think three things stand out from his speech. The Minister's speech is really a recantation of the policies which he put into operation in the famous or infamous Budget of 1952. The proposals in the Budget as a whole are an admission of the failure of those policies and in many respects they furnish striking justification of the charges that we made on this side of the House, after the Budget of 1952, that the Budget proposals of that year contained wholly unjust and unnecessary overtaxation. With these three outstanding matters I propose to deal and I propose to confine my remarks very largely to those three outstanding features of the present Budget.
Deputies will recall the eloquence of the Minister for Finance in dealing with the proposals to do away with the greater part of the food subsidies then in question when on the 2nd April, 1952, he said at column 1136, Volume 130, of the Official Debates:—
"the largest item of current expenditure in which significant economies are readily possible and fully defensible is food subsidies."
The Minister there indicated his policy as regards the food subsidies then in existence, that their removal was readily possible and fully defensible. The proposal in this Budget to give £900,000 of the taxpayers' money towards the wheat and flour subsidies to bring about the rather insignificant reduction of a halfpenny in the 2-lb. loaf is a reversal of that policy and an admission that the statement which I have quoted was entirely indefensible. It will be remarked, I am sure, that at page 48 of his Budget speech the Minister did not say: "I am increasing the food subsidies on bread and flour". He referred very coyly and delicately to sub-head J (1) of Vote 50.
Of course, in restoring certain of the food subsidies which were, according to himself in 1952, an economy that was readily possible and fully defensible, he is going back upon his policy stated there. Now, at the end of three years' experience of that policy in regard to the withdrawal of the food subsidies, he goes back upon that and admits, not explicitly but impliedly, that that policy was wrong and incapable of being defended. As a matter of fact, those other reliefs which are contained in this present Budget are really in the nature of subsidies, because they themselves are rendered necessary by the consequences of the Minister's and Government's policy, particularly in reference to the assaults which they made upon the incomes of all sections of the people by the financial proposals of the Budget of 1952.
Slight as those benefits are to the income-tax payer, to the owner-occupier of a house, to the widows and the other persons who will gain by them, they will be appreciated, but they would have been of far more value to those people had their incomes not been irrevocably assaulted and injured by the policy enshrined in the 1952 Budget. The effects of that policy are still in operation, are still being felt by every section of the community. The electorate at the recent by-elections which have brought about the general election which is now pending and on the eve of which this Budget is introduced certainly did not agree with the Minister's statement and would not even now agree, nor will they agree at the forthcoming election, that the year which has just passed was a year of progress in industry and agriculture, of increased trade and of higher incomes. That preposterous claim, made as it was in different ways during the campaigns of the recent by-elections, was repudiated in a starting fashion by the electorate of Cork and in equally significant fashion by the electorate of County Louth.
The slight and comparatively trivial reliefs which have been given by this Budget are secured by a series of devices some of which are perfectly legitimate and in accordance with financial rectitude and some of which, had they been operated by the Minister's predecessor, would have evoked from the Minister for Finance quite a series of denunciatory phrases culled from his very abundant vocabulary of abusive epithets. We have heard from the Minister and from his various colleages the unjustified and outrageous charge that Deputy McGilligan's Budget of 1951—and perhaps some of the others but certainly that of 1951—was faked. I hesitate to use that word but I will say that some of the devices to which I will shortly refer are of dubious justification. Some of those devices are perfectly legitimate but when they were operated by the Minister's predecessor and the Minister's predecessors, the present Minister for Finance poured scorn upon them and stated that they were contrary to what he called "the principles of financial rectitude".
I want to recall the Minister's attention and that of the Deputies to what we said here in the discussion on the Budget of 1952 in reference to the failure of the Minister to take into account in considering the amount of taxation that he would impose upon the people in that year the traditional item for overestimation. At column 1274, Volume 130, of the Official Debates of 3rd April, 1952, I made the charge then in a series of counts in an indictment that the present Government were in that Budget unnecessarily and unjustly overtaxing the people. In proof of that statement I referred to the fact that the Minister had neglected, in considering the amount of taxation he would impose to balance his Budget at that time, to take into account that traditional item known as overestimation. I said:—
"The fourth item consists of failure by the Minister for Finance to take any account in his calculations for taxation for the amount of money that would be required to be met by taxation for the traditional item known as overstimation. That traditional item of overstimation is also sometimes spoken of as economies..."
May I pause there because the phrase which I then used is of particular significance and importance having regard to the use which the Minister makes of the expression "economies" and also of the euphemism he employs in relation to this matter of overestimation. He calls it undetected overestimation.
I went on to say:—
"That traditional item of overestimation is also sometimes spoken of as economies and consists of departmental savings. We estimate for that, and we think it is a conservative estimate, £2,000,000."
We pressed upon the Government at that time that by taking into account in the amount of taxation imposed by the Budget of 1952 overestimation to the extent to £2,000,000, taxation to the extent of £2,000,000—a not insignificant amount—could have been saved and the taxpayers would at least have been saved that amount of taxation. The Minister for Industry and Commerce purported to deal with the various counts in the indictment that I preferred against the Government at that time in relation to overtaxation. Dealing with the fourth item to which I have referred, the Minister dismissed it in a few words. He said:—
"The calculations which Deputy Costello made to support his contention that taxation is being imposed unnecessarily were based upon three assumptions."
The first is not relevant to the point I am making at the moment. He dealt then with the second point:—
"Secondly, that the Department of Finance is incapable of estimating accurately the interest on the public debt; and thirdly, that the accounting officers in every Department are incapable of estimating the cost of the services administered by their Departments."
He alleged that I was stating that officials of State Departments are incapable of estimating the cost of the services administered by the Departments. He then asked a rhetorical question: "Does anybody believe that?" He said that:—
"Deputy Costello's calculations were based upon such obvious fallacies that, I am sure, most Deputies saw them at once, and that it is not necessary to expose them further."
That is the way in which he threw aside the case I made that the Minister ought to have taken into account the conservative sum of £2,000,000 for overestimation. He tossed that aside, asking does anybody consider that departmental officials are incapable of accurate estimation?
The Minister for Finance then came to deal with the point in his reply to the Budget debate of that year. At column 940 of Volume 131 of the Official Report he referred to the arguments I had advanced, including my argument in relation to overestimation, as "specious and misleading" and tossed them aside, taking refuge in a publication that had been issued by the Irish Trade Union Congress as an answer to my charge.
What do we find now? Last year the Minister took into account overestimation, characterised as economies, to the tune of £3,500,000. This year, notwithstanding that he failed to make these economies of £3,500,000 last year, he proposes now to take into account in balancing his Budget and in giving the slight and trivial reliefs contained in his budgetary proposals the remarkable sum of £4,000,000. Now, I want to make it absolutely clear that we justify any Minister for Finance in taking into account some reasonable figure for overestimation. When the Minister was taxing the people in the cruel, unjust and outrageous way in which he taxed them in 1952 he refused to take overestimation into account. Last year he alleged that in order to balance his Budget he took £3,500,000 into account. We only suggested £2,000,000. This year he is taking £4,000,000 into account. It is essential and necessary and in every respect justifiable to take overestimation into account. What is not necessary, justifiable or defensible is that the Minister should take into account too great an amount for overestimation.
In 1952 we suggested £2,000,000. This year the Minister proposes to take £4,000,000, having failed last year to make economies to the tune of £3,500,000.
That, of course, is not right.
I will prove that in the course of the remarks I have to make. Whether or not he made the economies last year, but assuming that he did, why did he not take into account in 1952 when he was imposing penal taxation of an unprecedented character, taxation which has had such disastrously continuous and lasting results upon every section of the community and every family in it, a sum for overestimation at that time? Does not that justify the charge we made here that to the extent of that £2,000,000 which we said he should take into account the country was overtaxed to that extent? But £4,000,000 is far too much to take into account for overestimation. It is roughly 5 per cent. of the amount of estimated expenditure on public services. No business concern would retain in its service an accountant who tolerated such a high percentage as 5 per cent. as a margin of error for overestimation. Yet, that is what the present Government is doing in order to balance its Budget this year and to give the slight and trivial reliefs contained in the Budget.
How much would the Deputy suggest?
It is not for me to suggest now. I suggested £2,000,000 in 1952 and my suggestion was scornfully turned down. The people were penally taxed. The Minister refused to take overestimation into account at that time. Am I to suggest now that he should do so when he refused in 1952 and unjustly taxed the people?
The Deputy says £4,000,000 is too much. How much would the Deputy suggest?
I am making three charges in reference to this matter of £4,000,000. First, the Minister did not make the economies he said he would make last year to the extent of £3,500,000. Secondly, he is entitled to take some amount, a reasonable amount, into consideration for overestimation; he failed to do that when he ought to have done it in 1952. Thirdly, £4,000,000 is too much; it represents 5 per cent. and 5 per cent. is too much.
How much too much?
I am not making any suggestions to that Government that refused to do in 1952 what they ought to have done. This year, on the eve of a general election, they are doing what they refused to do in 1952. By refusing in 1952 they unnecessarily and unjustly taxed the people to the extent of at least £2,000,000, the conservative estimate that we suggested ought to be taken into account. Now they propose a sum that represents 5 per cent. of expenditure, a sum far in excess of the conservative estimate of £2,000,000 that we suggested should have been taken into account in the Budget of 1952.
Mr. A. Byrne
And they increased the loaf to 9d.
I would like to deal now with these so-called economies. Last year, the Minister stated that he proposed to balance his budget by effecting economies to the extent of £3,500,000. Looking at Table I of the Tables in connection with the Financial Statement of 1954 which was supplied to us yesterday, on the expenditure side there appears a figure of £87,867,000 as the original estimate of expenditure that would be incurred during the progress of the financial year 1953-54. They estimated that they would spend, in accordance with the figures in this Table, £87,867,000. Looking down at the last item in the last column of that expenditure Table, under the heading "Actual," you find that, whereas the estimated expenditure for the year was £87,867,000, the actual expenditure was £87,601,000. Subtract the actual expenditure from the estimated expenditure and you get something less than £200,000. In other words, had they made their economies of £3,500,000 that estimated expenditure of £87,867,000 should have appeared in the actual expenditure as £3,500,000 less, and yet it appears almost the same, something short of £200,000.
Let us see how they have done this. It is somewhat difficult to read this Table. It would seem, at all events, as an effort to conceal what is actually being done. While the columns on the expenditure side of the Table, the second and third columns, are headed "Estimated" and "Actual," in the first column you have, under the third heading, two sums, one on the left and one on the right. On the right it does not say what the sum is supposed to be. We have to deduce what it is intended to be. You have here three items. You have the original estimate of £87,867,000 on the right. On the right, again, you have that figure of £87,867,000, but it does not say what that is. Then you get, "Add: Other Supplementary Estimates £750,000," and on the right of that again there is the significant figure of £3,361,000. It does not say what that is, but we know what it is.
We interpret that Table as being this, that, whereas in the estimate which the Minister made for what he probably would require to meet anticipated Supplementary Estimates during the financial year, he put the figure of £750,000. Actually, the figure was £3,361,000. The amount of these Supplementary Estimates, of £3,361,000, was a startling increase on the figure of £750,000 which was the estimated cost of Supplementary Estimates during the year. That was paid for by increased revenue that was not anticipated but that came in and not by economies. But it was fully paid for in that way. What, in fact, was done was that the economies were eaten up by these inflated Supplementary Estimates of £3,361,000, and that figure ought to have been somewhat nearer the expenditure anticipated by the Minister when framing the estimate in the beginning. The economies are got on paper. The last entry under Item 3, on the right hand column, refers to "Economies, etc.". The anticipated figure is £3,500,000, but actually they got £3,627,000 by a remarkable piece of paper subtraction. In actual fact, the economies were never made.
There is the estimate for overestimation and other economies. That is the first method by which the Minister proposes to balance his Budget, by overestimation and by economies, or by economies which may be called overestimation. He referred to them in the phrase, which I have already mentioned, of undetected overestimation. The Minister could not detect overestimation in 1952 because, according to the Minister at that time, there was no such thing as overestimation. His colleague, the Tánaiste, cast that aside, and the Minister poured scorn on me when I suggested it. But the taxpayers have had to pay this year to balance his Budget and to give these comparatively trivial reliefs which are contained in this Budget. In order to do that the Minister must resort to too high a percentage on the total estimate for expenditure for these undetected economies—and undetectable.
The most remarkable of all the methods and devices by which the Minister proposes to balance his Budget this year, and to finance these reliefs, is by extracting from C.I.E. a sum of £1,500,000. This is remarkable in itself. I can imagine the statements that would be made by the Minister if he were over here if Deputy McGilligan had the effrontery to put forward this proposal to balance his Budget. I can imagine the scorn that he would pour forth. To speak of putting the State into pawn would pale into insignificance when he came to characterise that piece of financial rectitude if done by anybody other than himself.
What is proposed in this Budget is to extract from C.I.E., a body that up to this year had existed on the taxpayers, a sum of £1,500,000. Some time ago, the Minister's colleague, the Tánaiste, when speaking of this body, stated that it would have to get something between £1,000,000 and £2,000,000 by way of subsidy to keep it going in perpetuity. That body which, according to the Minister's colleague, required for its continued existence constant resort to the taxpayer, is now, if you please, to pay £1,500,000 to balance the present Minister's Budget. There is a more remarkable feature in it than that, because the net result of the operation proposed by the Minister was referred to by him in his speech yesterday. In the course of his speech he said, "that £1,000,000 or so will be repayable to the Exchequer in respect of previous years". He said that he had already made provision for £500,000 which is to be extracted from it and, therefore, he says that "the total relief to this year's Budget is of the order of £1,500,000". "The £1,000,000 or so" is, according to the estimate, more than £1,500,000.
The reductions in taxation afforded by the Minister's proposals in this Budget amount, as he stated yesterday, to a sum of £893,000. The cost of the reduction in bread and flour prices amounts to £900,000. With these sums, amounting altogether to £1,793,000, the, Minister proposes to give the reliefs contained in the Budget. In other words, the reliefs contained in the present Budget amount to £1,793,000, and of that C.I.E. is to give £1,500,000 or so. In other words, C.I.E. is balancing the Minister's Budget and giving the reliefs contained in the Budget—a most remarkable performance! Can anybody credit that—that the Minister's Budget is being balanced by C.I.E.? What would the Minister say if any Minister for Finance other than himself had the effrontery to come in and balance his Budget by means of extracting money from a concern that according to his colleague—and certainly according to a lot of people— and according to himself in previous years was dependent on the charity of the taxpayer for its continued existence. But that very board is balancing the Minister's Budget this year. £1,973,000 is the amount it will cost to give the reliefs that are given by this Budget and £1,500,000 or so is being furnished by C.I.E. Is it going too far to say that such a proposal is dubiously novel? But there is something of even greater significance contained in that proposal. Again the proposal underlines, emphasises and justifies the charge that we made two years ago in regard to the Budget of 1952/53, that it contained unjust overtaxing. Here we have the Minister basing his case for extracting £1,500,000 from C.I.E. on the basis that they should repay something in respect of previous years. We insisted that the proposal for the repayment of these renewals and so forth for C.I.E. were matters proper for borrowing. We urged that on the Minister in 1952 and he scornfully turned us down and said it was contrary to all the principles of financial rectitude, and he provided for two years' moneys out of the taxpayers' pocket only to do the very thing which he now says it was not necessary to do. He is now getting back from them the money that the taxpayer had to pay and which the taxpayer had been overtaxed to pay in the last two years. That money is now being repaid by the dangerously-novel method of finance which the Minister proposes.
Deputy McGilligan, when he was speaking on the Budget of 1952 at column 1155, dealt with the Minister's proposals as regards C.I.E. and he dealt with the charge that has been repeatedly demonstrated to be utterly false in this House and elsewhere throughout the country—that Mr. McGilligan's last Budget of 1951 had a deficit in it of £6.7 million. He dealt with that charge, but that charge is repeated again in the Minister's statement yesterday—that there was a £6.7 million deficit. He repeated that charge that has been demonstrated to be utterly unsustainable and completely false. Deputy McGilligan dealt with it at column 1155 and it is not necessary for me to repeat the entire statement that were made by Deputy McGilligan to refute the charge that there was a deficit of £6.7 million. I quote only that portion of the speech of Deputy McGilligan which dealt with the proposal for C.I.E. and I want Deputies to remember this, that the £6.7 million alleged deficit that the Minister referred to in his Budget speech of 1952 and which he repeated yesterday, contained an item in respect of moneys for replacements in C.I.E. and although the Minister is now taking back £500,000 from C.I.E. he still repeats the charge that there was a deficit of £6.7 million.
Deputy McGilligan, at column 1155 of the Budget debate of 2nd April, 1952, Volume 130, said:—
"I accept no responsibility for the bulk sum of £845,000, part of the £2.3 million that was said to be the charge in respect of C.I.E. losses during the year. Part of that was stockpiling, according to the statement made by the Minister in this House. Part of it was the best estimate C.I.E. could give of future charges for replacement and another part of it, almost £400,000, for extra charges of a replacement type, in addition to operating losses during the year."
Notwithstanding our efforts at that time to get the Minister to see that that was no part of current expenditure and matter proper for borrowing the Minister insisted on putting it in that year and the following year and he has now found it a pool from which to get back from C.I.E. the money extracted from the taxpayers by unjust and excessive taxation.
I again emphasise that we were justified in the charge we made in 1952 that this country was unjustly and unnecessarily overtaxed by the Budget of that year.
Another item that the Minister takes into account this year is deductions from the estimates for expenditure in reference to matters which are proper to be met by borrowing rather than taxation. What did he say in 1952 when he was full of financial rectitude about that and sneered at Deputy McGilligan's proposals? At column 1134 of the 2nd April, 1952, he said this:—
"...a distinction would be drawn in the Budget statement between current and capital expenditure and, in a prefatory note to the Estimates for Supply Services, it was pointed out that only in the context of the Budget would a full Estimate of Exchequer outlay on capital and current account be available. I am by no means satisfied that all of the voted expenditure described by the previous Government as `capital' merits that description."
I will repeat that sneer at Deputy McGilligan:—
"I am by no means satisfied that all of the voted expenditure described by the previous Government as `capital' merits that description."
And later on he goes on to say:—
"In this Budget, therefore, I propose to present the figures on current and capital account on the same lines as were adopted by the previous Government, leaving over to a later stage in the rehabilitation of our finances the determination of the extent to which it is strictly justifiable to treat items of recurring voted expenditure as proper, even in principle, to be financed by borrowing."
Here he does what he said he would have to give grave consideration to in 1952—"the extent to which it is strictly justifiable to treat items of recurring voted expenditure as proper, even in principle, to be financed by borrowing". Here he is doing it in this Budget. Why were not these things done in 1952? Why were not all these matters to which I have referred done in 1952? If they had been done it is possible to say that the load of taxation that has been raised from the taxpayers over the last two or three years would have been very appreciably lightened.
In accordance with the suggestion that he made in his speech yesterday, the Minister proposes by one means or another—leaving out of account altogether his fantastic proposals about C.I.E.—to balance his Budget by making deductions from the estimates of expenditure of no less sum than £5,750,000. He takes £800,000 by way of deduction for defensive equipment. We asked him to do that in 1952 and to relieve the taxpayer to that extent —of £800,000—and he refused. This year he does it. £950,000 is to be found by specified deductions from the estimates of public expenditure by way or economies or otherwise and then this sum of £4,000,000 for overestimation, amounting in all to the sum of £5,750,000.
That sum is to be got in that way and it is to be utilised in relief of the taxpayers and in giving the reliefs contained in this Budget. Had those methods been adopted in these three respects in 1952 the taxpayers could have been saved the imposition of £5,750,000 and the net estimated savings on the food subsidies could have been saved, or else the penal taxation imposed by the Budget of 1952 could have been very appreciably reduced.
Why was it not done? It was not done because the Minister, in his desire to denigrate and depreciate the achievements of his predecessors, the inter-Party Government, had persuaded himself that this country was facing imminent bankruptcy. He misread the economic signs and the economic statistics. He forgot that he was handed over by the inter-Party Government, in 1951, a country that was one of the three creditor nations in Europe. There were only two other countries in Europe at that time that were creditor countries. We handed over a country which was solvent and one of the three creditor nations in Europe. He wanted to denigrate and depreciate the achievements of the inter-Party Government and in this House he declared that we were facing ruin and bankruptcy. The position was desperate to the point of despair, or some such phrase as that. He refused to see what were the actual facts. He misread the signs. He diagnosed illness in the economic body that was non-existent. In any event, he provided the wrong remedies.
I ask Deputies to recall what he said about the balance of payments, the balance of our international account, and the possibility that was then existing or to be anticipated of an increase in our exports so as to bring about an easement in the disordered balance of payments which he said existed at that time. Remember, we on this side of the House drew his attention to the fact that the very thing he was worried about, the disorder in our international balance of payments, was even at that time rectifying itself. What apparent disorder existed was due to the fact that, because of the Korean war, we had stockpiled and the country had stockpiled. That very fact involved destocking, and destocking should ease the situation from the point of view of imports, and the Government got the benefit of the stockpiling and the destocking so far as the necessity for imports was concerned.
But that was not the real error they made. What did the Minister say about our prospects of increased agricultural exports? At column 1123 of his Budget speech on the 2nd April, 1952, he stated:—
"While we may expect some increase in export prices, the immediate outlook in agriculture would not justify us in counting upon any material increase in the quantity exported. The trade deficits for January and February of this year provide little ground for optimism, and it seems clear that, without an improvement in personal savings and a reduction in inflationary Government finance, the deficit in the balance of payments will remain excessive."
The Minister, therefore, framed his Budget and his economic policy upon that statement, that he was not justified in counting upon any material increase in the quantity of agricultural exports. What has been the result? Due to the policy of the inter-Party Government, led by the then Minister for Agriculture, we have had so much agricultural exports that we have reached the point where the Minister can say that the exports have gone up by 33? per cent. and that in point of fact we have reached a record in our agricultural exports, due to the policy of the inter-Party Government, which he refused to admit. Even the Minister for Finance cannot deny that the actual animals, whatever they were, and our agricultural products, whatever kind they were, came to fruition as the result of the policy pursued at that time under the leadership of Deputy James Dillon.
And not having their throats cut to the tune of £80,000 a year.
These are some of the outstanding features of the present Minister's proposals contained in this Budget. Might I recall now another statement which he made in his famous Budget speech of 1952? At column 1121, he made this remarkable statement:—
"A highly disturbing element in our economy is the continuing rise in the cost of the public services which in recent years has been very steep."
The public were invited to assume that he was going to deal with that situation by the rigorous and austere proposals he was imposing on the people by that Budget. On the eve of a general election, we hear very little about austerity proposals, and even the Taoiseach denied that they ever existed. The people know they were austere proposals. The Minister by that statement invited the people to consider that in his financial and economic proposals, which were based on the soundest principles of financial rectitude, he was going to see that this highly disturbing element in our economy, namely, the continuing rise in the cost of the public services, was certainly going to come down.
Let us see what happened. We go back again to these Tables issued yesterday in connection with the financial statement. In the last completed year of the inter-Party Government, as shown in Table VI, it will be observed that the actual expenditure of the inter-Party Government was £85,345,000. Let us take last year in which the present Minister and his colleagues in the Government were in charge of the finances of this country, when they still had, presumably, this bogey in their minds of the highly disturbing element in our economy of the continuing rise in the cost of the public services, when it rose from £85,000,000 odd in our last year to £121,000,000 odd. The Government that was complaining of the highly disturbing element in our economy, the continuing rise in the cost of the public services, as the result of their handling of the nation's finances in that period of years caused the public services to rise from £85,000,000 odd to £121,000,000. It is estimated according to the Table that next year if they continue in existence there it would be raised still further to a figure of £125,697,000. In the year after the Minister made that statement in which he referred to the highly disturbing element in our economy of the continued rise in the cost of the public service the expenditure on public services rose in one year thereafter by no less a figure than £40,000,000—that is in the second column of Table VI. It is relevant and proper to ask where is the money gone to and what have we got for it. That is the cost of the expenditure, but look at some of the other matters that we have to consider.
Every year since the first Budget of the Minister for Finance they have received—and the figures can be obtained again from these Tables to check it—a sum of £20,000,000 in taxation over and above what was got from the people by the inter-Party Government. In those years they got £20,000,000 extra in taxation or revenue. This year they are giving back to the people by one halfpenny decrease in the price of bread, costing the taxpayer £900,000, and in reduction of other kinds, £800,000, making in all, say, £1.8 millions, so that is what the Minister refers to in his speech as the first fruits of the Fianna Fáil policy of bringing order back to public finances. This year they are going to be up £20,000,000 less £1.8 millions. £18,000,000 odd of taxation is still going to continue on the people.
Surely not. Surely there is borrowing.
What have we got for all that? In addition to that the Ministers of the present Government have borrowed twice the amount of money borrowed by the inter-Party Government, and they have paid about four times the amount in interest, and we will be paying that for 20 years or more.
Paying it to our own, not to the foreigners.
And what about the rates? Let me first give some figures for the information of Deputies. During the three years of the inter-Party Government, 1948-49, 1949-50 and 1950-51, the total net borrowings of central government and local authorities amounted to £28,000,000, most of it raised at the figure of 3 per cent. During the three years of the present Government, that is, 1951-52 to 1953-54, the total net amount borrowed is around the figure of £65,000,000, the bulk of it raised at 5 per cent., so that the annual charge in interest alone on borrowings in the recent period of three years of the present Government is nearly four times as great as it was in our time, and that will continue for 20 years.
Where is the £40,000,000 Marshall Aid?
Take your medicine.
Look at the rates. Look at the amount of local rates that are being collected in accordance with Table VI during the régime of this present Government. In the last year that we were in office, 1950-51, the amount of rates collected was £11,600,000 approximately. For 1953 the amount collected in rates was £15,250,000 approximately; and it is estimated that in this year the amount of rates collected will be £16,250,000; so that as a result of the present Government's operations on rates alone the amount of rates collected rose, or will rise if they are still in office next year, from £11,600,000 in the last year of our administration to the sum of £16,250,000. What have we got for all that? What has the country got for that except increased unemployment, emigration, instability of business, insecurity in trade, restriction of credit, and general uneasiness and hardship on every section of the community?
The Minister in the course of his statement yesterday referred to the fact that there would be a new loan required this year. The Taoiseach announced some time ago that a new loan would be necessary every year. There was not one single word said about the rate of interest at which the present Government if they were in office would raise that loan. Does not everybody in all sections of the community know and realise in their own persons and their own pockets the effect which the abnormal amount of the rate of interest and the policy of dear money inaugurated by the present Minister for Finance has upon them? What chances are there of getting that loan at any reasonable rate of interest? What is the use of getting any amount of money at the rate of interest at which money has been borrowed in recent years by the present Government and by the Minister for Finance now in office?
The Minister in the course of his statement indicated certain improvements in the economy—that there have been slight improvements. He referred to the fall in the cost of living, but everybody knows that the cost of living at the present moment is the highest in living memory in this country. He referred to the fall in unemployment. In all these matters where he referred to improvements or so-called improvements the relative times were not the last year of our administration but they were the last year of this Government's administration, last year, 1953. He compared 1953 with 1952 but did not compare it with 1951. It is of some significance that even in that year 1953, the year which according to the Minister's statement we are supposed to believe was the most prosperous in the nation's history, a year of progress in industry and agriculture, of increased trade and higher incomes, he had to admit in the course of his speech yesterday that they had either failed to realise or were afraid to face up at the beginning of last year to the staggering amount of unemployment that was the inevitable and direct and necessary result of the policy that they had put in operation in 1952 in regard to unemployment.
The Minister in his statement said yesterday that one other item which helped to unbalance his Budget was the large supplementary sum voted for social insurance to cover a short-fall in the contribution income of the social insurance fund. That is nothing but economic jargon to conceal the fact that what happened really was that there was far more unemployment caused by the policy of the present Government for which they had failed to make proper provision at the beginning of the year, and they refused to have to admit that, and they covered it up by jargon of that kind—"shortfall in the contribution income of the social insurance fund." Short-fall in that contribution meant unemployment of a staggering character which they refused to face up to and which was caused by the direct and necessary result of their own policy. The Minister, as I said at the outset, failed in his approach to the problems confronting the country to use the Budget which is recognised in modern economic thought as being a potent instrument of economic policy. He has given no indication of what the economic policy or the financial policy for the future is to be if he is still in charge, unfortunately, of the nation's finances.
There is no indication of what the difficulties which undoubtedly face this country are or how they are to be solved. There is going to be no easy road for this or any other Government that succeeds it. If we were to take the picture presented by the Minister in his statement yesterday at its real value, ignoring the false facade of prosperity he put upon that picture, the outlook for the future would be bleak indeed. After three years of austerity, three years of human suffering and misery inflicted by the policy of the present Government and in particular the financial policy of the present Minister for Finance, the best that can be done on the eve of a general election is the few comparatively trivial reliefs that have been given at the expense of C.I.E. The Minister failed to notice, or if he noticed failed to refer, to the significant fact that the figure for external trade for the month of March shows an increase in imports and a reduction in exports. Is that any indication of an adverse trend or what is the explanation of it? It is remarkable that the Minister for Finance did not touch on that aspect in the course of his review of the economic administration of the country or the so-called prosperity which we are supposed to enjoy.
We have many difficulties to face. Nobody in opposition can know the real truth or have the full facts of the financial and economic situation or what has been done by the Minister with the money extracted from the people over the past three years. At all events, whatever the difficulties may be, they can be solved only by some Government other than the present and by some financial and economic policy other than that operated by the present Government, a policy that has caused so much suffering and misery to every section of the community. It is to be hoped that in the next few weeks that situation will come to a happy end.
Deputy Costello's speech was remarkable for what he did not say and for how cleverly he avoided the real issues before the country, the real problems that affect its prosperity in the long run. All round the country one can see the slogan: "Vote for Fine Gael for better times and lower taxation" but the complaint of Deputy Costello to-day, when he was presented with the Budget and had to face it, was that we had not higher taxation.
How do you make that out?
He said that we were giving too good a time to too many people.
A Deputy
In Cork.
He complained about the expenditure on the Civil Service and the amount that we were paying civil servants.
I asked how you got rid of the money and what we got for it.
The Deputy, I take it, would cut them down.
Your leader said he was going to do that.
And you want to give them better times.
We hope so.
By cutting them down?
We will not say how.
But the Deputy is going to increase taxation.
Not at all.
He complained about the Minister providing £4,000,000 for overestimation which he said was far too high—fantastically high, I think he said. If the Minister does not allow £4,000,000 and goes back to the Deputy's £2,000,000, which he very tentatively suggested, it means that we would have to increase taxation by £2,000,000.
He could get it from C.I.E.
Deputy Costello is running out because, not having said anything, he is afraid he will be asked questions. There are other Deputies also going out. They are all running out as fast as they can, because they do not want to face the real issues that are before the country in relation to this Budget and in relation to our general financial and economic life. The Minister for Finance could, of course, have brought in a Budget something like the Budget that was brought in by the Coalition Government in May, 1951, in which the Deputy left it to future Governments to pay the deficit of £6.7 million that was staring them in the face. Instead of doing that, the present Minister has brought in a Budget which shows that he is facing up to his responsibilities. He collects in taxation the amount of money necessary to pay the current expenses of Government. How are we going to decrease the amount of money we collect in taxation? By cutting existing services? By going back to the standard of social services which the last Coalition Government left? We could save several million pounds if we did that. The Minister could give great relief in taxation if he was prepared to shut his eyes to the expenditure for this year. When the Coalition Minister for Finance was about to leave office, after the Coalition had burst up in April, 1951, he refused to budget or prepare to collect taxes to meet the commitments that were staring the Government in the face. The result was that he left the incoming Government with a deficit of £6.7 million. Although he knew that there was a Civil Service award about to be put into operation, he made no provision in the Budget for it. He left many other services as well without any provision and the net result was that in that year we were left with a deficit of £6.68 million.
Deputy Costello complained that by allowing for overstimation this year a sum of £4,000,000, the Minister was allowing far too much. Last year the Minister made an allowance of £3.5 million for overestimation; in actual fact it turned out to be £3.6 million, or £100,000 more than he had estimated. This year, with the total increase in Government expenditure on the various services which the State now performs for the people, it is reasonable to add £400,000 to the out-turn of last year and to increase the £3.6 million actually realised in savings to the sum of £4,000,000. Deputy Costello was not satisfied with that. He wants to put up placards all around the country about lower taxation, but here he wants the Minister for Finance to increase taxation by £2,000,000—not to give these reductions he is providing but to increase taxation by reducing the estimate for overestimation.
Deputy Costello complains about the fact that the general election was not declared a month ago. It is easy to see why he has a complaint in that regard. He would have much preferred to go around the country telling the people that Fianna Fáil were overtaxing the people, that they should make great savings, that his Party would make great savings; but he did not want to face a crossexamination in the Dáil as to how he proposed to make them and when I started to ask him a few questions after his long speech on the history of 1952, he ran out of the Dáil. I am perfectly certain that there is no single member of the former Coalition Government who will face up to the question as to what they would save in the services provided in the Book of Estimates or what taxes they would increase in order that the country should pay its way.
This Government, if it had the same reckless attitude to the responsibility of government as the Coalition, could have given the people over these last few years better times, easier times, lower taxation; but they could do that at the price of injury to the permanent interests and the permanent prosperity of our people. No individual in his ordinary private life can have a good time by spending his savings or his father's savings and not have that spree have an adverse effect on his own future and his children's future. The Coalition kept taxation at a low level by handing on commitments to future Governments to pay their debts. This Budget which the Minister for Finance introduced yesterday could be £4,000,000 less, if the previous Coalition Government had paid their way and had not handed him a deadweight debt of £90,000,000.
At 3 per cent. or so.
On which we had to pay over 4 per cent. a year. The Deputy justifies handing on £90,000,000 of deadweight debt simply because he thinks we had to pay only 3 per cent. We had to pay over 4 per cent. and will be paying it for the next 40 years. Portion of that debt will have to be repaid in dollars and that is a difficult currency to collect in these days. The Minister for Finance, of course, could have a very much nicer Budget, instead of giving these reductions in income-tax and on bread which Deputy Costello calls contemptible reductions. He could have made them greater by adding to the deadweight national debt. The Minister for Finance, as always when he was Minister for Finance, acted up to his responsibility.
He tells the people that if they want these social services and other services they must be paid for, whether by the present taxpayers or their children.
Deputy Costello referred to the "insignificant" decrease of ½d. in the 2-lb. loaf. When the Minister reduced the subsidies in order to pull the country's finances together and it resulted in the 2-lb. loaf going up by ½d., it was not "insignificant" then. From every platform all over the country you could hear the denunciations of that ½d. increase.
Threepence, not ½d.
At one point the loaf went up by ½d., about a year and a half ago, and all over the country they were doing dervish dances, they actually had loaves on the tops of sticks around Dublin complaining about that increase; but when it is decreased it is "insignificant" and "contemptible". We could reduce the 2-lb. loaf and the 1-lb. loaf and the flour very much more. We could abolish, as Deputy Dillon and a lot of the Fine Gael people want, the policy of wheat growing and so get a very cheap loaf. Our farmers are getting about £40 per ton for wheat and the American wheat is costing us about £30 delivered.
You paid £48 for American wheat before.
I know, but we are paying £30 now. Deputy Dillon objects to our paying the farmers £40 or anything like it. Deputy Dillon's boon companion, the second candidate in County Louth, was growling all around the constituency about the subsidy we had to pay the Irish farmers to grow wheat. His solution was to use Deputy Dillon's policy of depending upon the export of other agricultural produce in order to get the money to buy cheap wheat. We could adopt that policy. We would require only £18,500,000 worth of dollars to buy the wheat from America at the present price. It would take another £8,000,000 to buy the sugar and the feeding stuffs that we produce from our beet fields. Deputy Dillon would like to wipe out the hundreds of thousands of acres that are under wheat and beet and depend upon getting an increasing sale of eggs and butter and bacon in the British market to get £26,500,000 to buy these things. I would like any Deputy on the opposite side to make a calculation as to how many dozens of eggs——
At ?.
——even at ?, we would have to export to England in order to get £26,500,000 to buy the wheat and sugar and foodstuffs at present being produced from our wheat and beet fields. That is the calculation. Which of the Fine Gael and the Labour people support that policy? Which of them are against it? We know Deputy Dillon. We know that he got his way before, in spite of the lip service that a lot of the Labour people and Clann na Poblachta and some of the Fine Gael people gave to the development of Irish agricultural resources. We know that in their three years they allowed Deputy Dillon to reduce the tillage of this country by over 500,000 acres. If they can conspire and get the people to reelect them in such numbers as to allow them again to form a Coalition, will they allow him to reduce tillage in these next three years by another 500,000? Is that 500,000 going to be the acreage under wheat and beet?
On a point of order. May I call for a House? We would like to see the Fianna Fáil Party for the last time.
We would like to see the ex-Coalition Ministers, wherever they are. Have they fled?
Notice taken that 20 Deputies were not present; House counted and 20 Deputies being present,
Let me repeat the question which Deputy O'Sullivan thought he could avoid answering by calling for a count.
The people will answer it.
I suppose Deputy Hughes is prepared to advise the people as to how to answer it.
Certainly.
And Deputy Hughes will advise the people that, according to Deputy Mulcahy, if they get the chance again they will put Deputy Dillon in as Minister for Agriculture.
Exactly.
That is correct.
The cat is out of the bag now.
We can expect then the Dillon policy of reducing tillage, as he did the last time by 500,000 acres.
He will not welsh on it.
We can expect all this growling about the price of butter to result in an offer to the farmers of a reduction in the price of milk to 1/- a gallon. Deputy O'Sullivan would be satisfied with a guaranteed minimum of 1/- a gallon.
For five years.
What is the guaranteed minimum now?
?.
The Minister should be allowed to make his speech in his own way. Deputies will get every opportunity.
The Minister has been asking questions.
Deputies need not asking questions.
There are other little items that Deputy Dillon would gladly put into effect if he, as is proposed by the Coalition, were made Minister for Agriculture again. I expect Deputy Hickey, for instance, will support him again in reducing tillage by another 500,000 acres.
I will be asking you some questions before you are finished. You have said very little so far.
Deputy Hickey is always very voluble, but he will not answer whether he will support Deputy Dillon in doing that or not.
From what the Minister is saying there is very little indication as to how he would deal with the affairs of the country.
Deputy Hickey wants to go down to Cork and grow wheat in every field and put a power station in every bog and beet in every field that is not under wheat but when he is asked the question as to whether he will support Deputy Dillon in cutting out the wheat and the beet and the peat he is very mute.
Deputy Hickey has a sound mind about what should be done.
Even though the Deputies will not answer questions here, the people are not such——
Is not that provocative?
The people will answer, do not worry.
The Leas-Cheann Comhairle prevents us answering questions.
The Leas-Cheann Comhairle does not prevent Deputies from answering questions. The Standing Orders of the House do.
The Chair is there to administer them.
Deputy Corish has got to the point where he calls to his aid the Standing Orders in order to avoid answering questions. He will have time enough between now and tomorrow afternoon to take a few notes of the questions he is being asked and to answer them. Deputy Costello would not answer them when he was on his feet and had the right under the Rules and Standing Orders to answer.
He would not do it. I expect in any Coalition, if it were brought about again, the result, in regard to social services, would be pretty well what happened the last time. The national health insurance stamp was increased but the national health benefits were not increased and it was left over to this Government to increase the sickness benefit by 27/6 in the case of a man and a wife and five children, without taking into account the children's allowances. The Labour Party, as in charge of social services in the Coalition Government, increased the national health stamp but they did not increase the benefit of 22/6 and they left it to us to find the 50/- that the man and the wife and the five children get in disability allowance at the present time. If there is going to be lower taxation in the Fine Gael style, as they did before, I expect they will endeavour to bring down the 50/- towards the 22/- which they were paying.
And reduce the old age pensions again.
Do not mention old age pensions.
They reduced them before.
Fine Gael does not change its spots. It may put a little whitewash over them occasionally but, fundamentally, it does not change its spots, and you can see from Deputy Costello's speech and other speeches that what they are dying for is to get into the position of getting a couple of Labour people to sit quietly in a couple of Ministries while they reduce these things again. They will do it all with a great flourish of trumpets and very long and detailed arguments such as Deputy Costello treated us to to-day.
Another complaint that I heard Deputy Costello make was that we were reducing expenditure on the Army this year by £1,000,000. In the last year of the Coalition, 1950-51, they spent on the Army £4,228,000. Last year, we provided for the Army services £8,200,000—just £4,000,000 more —almost double.
What was spent?
It was practically all spent. The year before that, we spent £7,000,000 as against the £4,000,000 spent by the Coalition. We spent £3,000,000 more and this year we have provision in the Book of Estimates for £8,207,000. The Minister for Finance proposes to effect a saving on that, with the consent of the Minister for Defence —a saving that will not affect the growth in strength of the Army from the very weak force that was left to us by the Coalition.
When we ask Deputy Costello what he proposes to do in the financial year 1954-55, and future years, he growls about what happened in 1952. He will not tell us what services the people are going to have in 1954-55. He will not tell us the level of taxation he would have in 1954-55 if he had his way. All he does is to growl about alleged overtaxation in 1952-53. For weeks here, and from platforms all over the country, we heard Deputy Costello complain about the "overtaxation" which the Minister for Finance provided in the 1952-53 Budget. What was the result? Instead of having the £10,000,000 saving which Deputy Costello said we would have because, he alleged, we were overtaxing to the tune of £10,000,000, the outcome of that financial year was a deficit of £2,047,000. In other words, Deputy Costello was out in his calculation to the extent of £12,000,000—and yet he still says that we should not have taxed as much as we did in 1952-53. He says, in effect, that we should have a higher deficit than the £2,000,000, because that would have been the result of any decrease in taxation in that year.
What was the situation which faced the Minister for Finance in May, 1952? He faced a situation in which we were running through the savings of our people—savings held abroad and in gold—at the rate of £60,000,000 a year. The decrease in our net balance of payments in 1951 was over £60,000,000. Did Deputy Costello want us to continue to have a deficit in our balance of payments to that extent? We could continue to do it for another year, because we still had a little left unspent of our net savings abroad. However, if the Minister for Finance had to carry on in that way, we would have been left a net debtor nation. If as a debtor we wanted to build up our resources either of industry or agriculture and wanted to buy foreign machinery or raw materials we should have to go to some foreign country on our knees and ask them to give us a loan in order to enable us to pay our way. The Minister for Finance quite rightly decided in May, 1952, that the current expenses of Government should be met by current taxation. Had he followed the advice given by Deputy Costello at that time to reduce taxation by £10,000,000, instead of a deficit of £2,000,000 we should have had a deficit of £12,000,000 in the Budget and a deficit of perhaps £40,000,000 or £50,000,000 in our balance of payments because that is the result of too much money being around the country instead of being devoted to national production.
Although we had over 70,000 unemployed who would not be let work——
Deputy Hickey need not talk about the 70,000 unemployed. What we are trying to do now and what we have always tried to do is to create a situation here where every person born and reared in this country can have a reasonable chance of finding a job in Ireland. However, we cannot conscript them to work or to stay in Ireland and when Deputy Hickey was supporting the Coalition Government I might remind him that all they did about emigration was to set up a commission to find out the causes of emigration. That commission sat for three years without putting in a report. That was the only single contribution to the solution of the problem of emigration that the Coalition Government made. They set up a commission.
You have not got the report yet.
They did not know the causes of emigration. They did not know that fewer men are required to attend to 500,000 acres of grass than are required to attend to the same number of acres under tillage. They did not know that if you stopped the extension of the Drogheda and Limerick cement factories you would increase emigration to the extent of the number of persons who would otherwise be employed in the production of our cement, rather than have Belgians or English producing it.
Do not tell me anything about the cement factories.
What is wrong with the cement factories?
Nothing at all, but——
Then why are you talking about them?
Will Deputies please cease interrupting? They can contribute later to the debate if they wish but they may not do so by way of interruption.
They did not know that one way of helping to solve emigration was to put the chassis factory in Inchicore going rather than sell the machinery to the British, the French and anybody who would buy it— machinery which was bought for dollars but which the Coalition sold for sterling, although Deputy Hickey does not like pounds sterling——
Who told you that?
They did not know that people could be employed to earn dollars by flying dollar passengers across the Atlantic Ocean. The Coalition Government sold aircraft for sterling that we had bought for dollars: they sold them for Deputy McGilligan's "waste paper". The people of this country are not interested so much in 1952 and 1953 as they are in what will happen in 1954 and 1955. 1955.
That is true.
The question is this: Are the Fine Gael people going to keep Deputy Hickey quiet while they cut down these social services by throwing Labour a couple of seats in the Cabinet or, perhaps, if they come back with as few as I think they will, a couple of Parliamentary Secretaryships, as they kept them quiet for three years? The Coalition Government promised an increase in the social services but the only increase we saw was the increase in the price of the national health stamp. For three years they promised better health services, with no result. We are giving the people plenty of time to ask this question—because they will ask it. As a matter of fact one of the reasons why I was altogether in favour of extending the time for the general election was for the purpose of ensuring that the people would have time to ask Deputies this question: If they are growling about the extent of the Government services and if they feel we are collecting too much money to pay for Health, Social Welfare, Agriculture, Industry and Commerce, and so forth, on what services or services do they suggest we should cut down? That is a fair question and the people recognise that it is a fair question.
The Dublin Castle scheme.
The Dublin Castle scheme, which is a scheme to provide healthy working conditions for the civil servants rather than have them working in a tumbling building, is costing about £50,000 this year.
It is probably going to cost about £750,000 over whatever number of years are necessary. Are we not to build any houses for civil servants? Are we to take the line that we must not improve the conditions under which civil servants work? Are we to allow the buildings to fall down upon them or are we to do as the Coalition did——
It is a bad time to be building castles.
—and when they wanted extra housing for 1,200 civil servants steal a bus station? That is how they got over it, but you cannot go on stealing bus stations every year. They are just not there and we must provide reasonable accommodation for the Civil Service.
It is easier to steal £1,500,000 from them.
The Deputy, I take it, is not satisfied with this Budget—he wants an extra £1,500,000 added on for the civil servants, if he thinks we have stolen £1,500,000 from the civil servants.
From C.I.E.
The civil servants, the Deputy said first. I know the Deputy too well. I remember him coming in here some months before the remission of the dance-hall tax came into operation and saying that a dance-hall proprietor had told him of the thousands of pounds he had made from the Minister for Finance. He said that in July and the dance-hall tax remission did not come into operation until a month after the Deputy had spoken. He was caught that time and he has been caught on this occasion, except that he has changed his step. He is afraid to admit that he interrupted me to say that we stole £1,500,000 from the civil servants.
He said nothing of the kind.
Deputy McGilligan and the rest of them are growling about what we stole from the civil servants——
£1,500,000 from C.I.E.
Is the Deputy in favour of increasing taxation in order to give the back pay to the civil servants?
Does the Minister want an answer? I am not in favour of taking £1,500,000 from C.I.E. and closing a branch line in my constituency in the same year.
They have no £1,500,000 to take.
Would Deputy MacBride be in favour of increasing taxation in order to pay this money to the civil servants?
I would be in favour of paying decent wages to State employees and keeping my promises to State employees.
Even by increasing taxation? If we are to add all the inferential promises made here about increased State services, we will have a pretty bill for increased taxation instead of the lower taxation which we see on the placards all around the country.
I am not in the least surprised that people outside take such a cynical view of this institution.
The people of this country are not cynical about the institution as a whole. They know that we have here an unfortunate situation in which the Opposition is split into a number of small Parties who cannot make up their minds what to say to the people, what to promise the people and what the policy is to be if they get power to form a Coalition in 1954 and who, instead, spend their time talking about the Budget of 1952. That is an unfortunate situation. Surely, if we are to have real democracy in this country, the people have a right to know the alternative policies that are put before them.
What policy did you put to the people before the general election of 1951? None.
The policy we put before the people has been there since 1932. We stood against any oath of allegiance to a British king when Deputies opposite were trying to ram it down our throats and when they shot and bayoneted very many people in order to put it down their throats. They know that we stood against any of that sort of business. They know that we stood for increasing tillage and giving farmers a fair price; they know that we were in favour of taking care of those in greatest need and they know that we counted the unemployed for the first time in 1932—they had not even been counted before that; they know that we restored the cuts in old age pensions and did something for blind pensioners; they know that we introduced the widows' and orphans' pensions; they know that we introduced legislation to ensure proper conditions of employment; and they know that we introduced children's allowances.
And the Wages Standstill Order.
And they know that all the time we had the opposition of Fine Gael. What is worrying the people now is whether, if Fine Gael with their mentality are to get into power again, they will be able to keep the Labour people as mute as mice as Deputy Dillon said they were——
The Labour people will be able to look after themselves.
——whether they will be able to keep them as meek as mice while Fine Gael put into operation the old Cumann na nGaedheal policy about which they are laughing and smiling at present. The people are not, in my opinion, going to be led away by the silence, the avoidance of the issues, on the part of the various groups in the Opposition. Deputies need not run away with the idea that, because Fianna Fáil were defeated in a couple of by-elections, that in any way foretells the results of a general election.
What is the general election for, then?
To get rid of a few people like you.
There are a few going already on your side, without even trying.
Deputy Corry should allow the Minister to continue without interruption.
I remember that, in Tipperary, in 1947, we got 17,000 votes against 38,000 secured by the Opposition groups at a by-election and, at a general election three months later, we doubled our figure to 34,000, while the other people came down by 5,000.
Can the Minister remember Louth?
What is going to happen in Louth will happen there, no matter what I say or the Deputy says, but my impression is that generally throughout the country the people are——
Fed up.
——fed up with the Opposition tactics—fed up to the neck —and do not like to be taken too obviously for "goms".
Have they not got a very odd way of showing it?
They do not believe that the ordinary decent workers and farmers of this country should allow themselves to be dominated by a group of lawyers in secret. They believe that the lawyers should be put in the dock, put in——
Go on—put in the dock.
——and made produce a policy which they can see. They do not want the games that went on before the election of 1948 when Deputy MacBride could go around the country proclaiming his republicanism and then negotiated in the Four Courts and round about with the principal architect of the Coalition who, at one time, at column 41 of the Official Debates on the 3rd May, 1932——
On a point of order. May I ask what relation this has with the Budget?
It has little or none.
They will not allow this conspiracy to be repeated. They allowed Deputy MacBride to conspire and form the Coalition with a man who said in the column I have just quoted:
"I will not stand up when you play the Soldiers' Song, because I detest it, and it is associated, in my mind, with horrors...”
That was Deputy Dillon.
All this will probably be said in another place.
In my opinion they could not be said in a better place.
Could we get to the motion before the House?
Yes.
That would be more like it.
I want to know from the Opposition speakers who are going to talk whether they support Deputy Costello in the House in calling for more taxation by a reduction in the Estimate for overestimation and, if so, whether they are going to go out and put up a new placard over the placard they have all over the country about the lower taxation.
Which one is that?
The one dealing with "better times and lower taxation".
That is it.
That imprinted itself on the Minister's mind.
It did. There is no doubt that is what everybody would like to give the people.
And we are going to.
And we will do it in a way in which it will redound to the permanent prosperity of the country. We do not want merely to give, as we could easily do, better times and lower taxation to the people this year and, perhaps, half of next year. What Fianna Fáil has always tried to do is to make the people pay——
That is right.
——that level of taxation which is necessary in order that this country might be built up and have its resources improved to give a better time to the generations of Irish people for thousands of years to come. We do not want to reduce taxation to the point when we can be kicked around by anybody outside who would want to control our policy. We do not want to have better times for a year or a year and a half at the expense of having to go on our knees or our children having to go on their knees when they want to buy machinery or raw materials from some outside creditor nation.
Those of us who have been in public life for a long time and have made a study of the matter have seen in the past a few very clear examples of what happens to nations which get into the position of having no external savings to fall back on. I myself saw representatives of the New Zealand Government coming to England in 1938. A mere £30,000,000 was falling due and they wanted to raise fresh money in London to repay it. They were told to go home and tighten their belts and that there was no £30,000,000 coming to them. Fortunately for them and unfortunately for the world, a few weeks afterwards the whole European and world situation blew up. Their young men were required and they were told to come back to London and they would get the £30,000,000. They did and they got it.
It is scarcely three months ago that I saw an article in a financial paper where a small country wanted a loan in a certain financial centre. They were told that they really were not deserving of loans because they would not let in foreign capital and because they had too high tariffs on the goods of this nation coming into their port. I do not want this generation or the next put into the position that if they wanted to buy some machines or some raw materials they would have to go to such a financial centre and be told that the tariffs were too high.
We are facing that position.
Or be told: "You will only get the loan when you reduce your tariffs" or otherwise please the country that had the credit. Deputy Hickey need not think that paying our way by the savings of our people in the form of external reserves is anything unique in Fianna Fáil. Every Government in every country which had the long-term interests of their people at heart rather than a little political gain took trouble to keep their external reserves at a reasonable level. Ours are not fantastically big.
They are only about £100,000,000. At the present time we are importing nearly £200,000,000 worth of materials, and if anything happened to the terms of trade we could go through that like a flash and be left in debt.
In 1951 we went through £60,000,000. Another one and a half years of that and we would be a debtor nation and in the position of the countries I have described. We do not want to get into that position deliberately. We want to see the resources of our country built up. We know that a private individual or a nation can build up their resources more rapidly when they have a little bit of capital to fall back on.
I must say it was very amusing to hear Deputy Costello—Deputy Hickey, I am sure, was listening to him—complaining about the rise in our adverse trade balance for the last few months. He was almost as alarmed about it as he was in 1948 about the adverse trade balance that occurred in 1946 and 1947. Although we had built up £160,000,000 of external assets during the war, when we exported and could not import, Deputy Costello was alarmed and despondent and wanted to take the most drastic action to save our balance of payments in 1948. I want to warn the House that Deputy Costello is back again to that particular point.
He complained to-day about the alarming increase in the adverse balance of payments. An adverse balance of payments means that we are importing more than we are exporting. Deputy Costello during the last couple of years he was in office and in order to cover up his inflationary finance boasted about the effect of an adverse trade balance. He then called it the "repatriation of our external assets." It was an "investment in human welfare," but you cannot have the liquidation of our external assets without an adverse balance of trade. To-day Deputy Costello complained about the adverse balance of trade whereas in 1949, 1950 and the early part of 1951 he boasted about the adverse balance of trade by means of which they were repatriating, as he called it, our external assets. The people, if they are wise, will require from the Opposition group——
They are wise now after yesterday.
——a statement of policy which they will agree to put into operation if they get into the position of forming a Coalition again. In 1948 Deputy Blowick was going around Mayo and other parts of the West saying that they would never form a Coalition and complaining about the "bad odour" that was in the Dáil when he came into it because of the other Farmers' Party that had been gobbled up by Cumann na nGaedheal. The Labour Party were also denouncing the idea of Coalition. Deputy Norton denounced Fine Gael—"join with Fine Gael, that out-moded, reactionary Party"; he would never have anything to do with them. Deputy MacBride was all out for Deputy Dillon's blood. He would not touch Deputy Dillon or anybody like him who would not stand up for the Soldiers' Song.
The people are not going to allow a lawyer's trick to delude them again. I would like to see the Opposition not too strong but reasonably strong. I do not want them wiped out altogether, and I would advise them if they want to avoid being wiped out to put some little face on it. They will have to offer the people some alternatives to the Fianna Fáil policy, and the people are entitled to it if there is anything in democracy. Not only must the people mark their ballot paper for a candidate but they must also mark their ballot paper as deciding between two policies offered. I advise the Coalition to give them that opportunity or they will come back with very much fewer numbers than they have at present.
It would suit the Minister for External Affairs to sit up and take notice of what is happening in his own Party rather than be concerning himself about the Labour Party or any other Party in the House. The one significant thing I heard in the Minister's speech was the statement to the effect that Fianna Fáil policy was designed to give better times to the people to come. It always seems to be Fianna Fáil policy to give better times to the people to come but surely it is not unreasonable to expect that the people who have to contend with everyday difficulties should be attended to. Whilst it may be all right to plan ahead—we can plan ahead for decades and decades of years—the people want to see some results and I would submit that they have not seen results in the last three years.
The Minister for Finance in his Budget speech yesterday, a speech that was contained in about 50 pages of manuscript, dealt with the economic situation as he found it in the country and having made the Budget proposals to the House, concluded with the sentence: "On these accomplishments the Government stands." Of course, if he is to depend on any of his accomplishments yesterday in his Budget proposals I have a fair idea how he, the Government and the Party will stand. But the people are not going to judge the present Government alone on the announcements that were made by the Minister for Finance yesterday and certainly a large number of them are not going to believe one tenth of the contentions he made with regard to the present position of this country. They are going to judge Fianna Fáil and the Government on their record over the past three years.
One of the most important things on which any Government ought to be judged—I think everybody in the House will admit this—is on their achievements with regard to the provision of employment. I do not think the Government have a happy record in that respect. I do not suggest that when we as a political Party were part of a Government we achieved Utopia in that particular difficulty but we certainly did much more than has been done in the last three years. The record of the Fianna Fáil Party in the last three years with regard to their failure to provide employment has been a very sorry one indeed. It seems to me that we always hear from the Fianna Fáil spokesmen that this country is either turning the corner or is at the crossroads. Ever since the Fianna Fáil Party took office and during their 16 years of office——
Nineteen years.
Nineteen years, the people have been promised better things, but have not seen all these things that have been promised. I do not deny any advances that are being made but I do say that the substantial advances that could have been made were not made in 15 years of Fianna Fáil office, and in the last three years especially when they had a very good opportunity to do things that they promised in 1932, they did not do them.
It is not much consolation for people who are now unemployed with no prospect of work or no consolation for thousands of people who have now, unfortunately, made their homes in Britain to hear from the Tánaiste, Deputy Lemass, or from the Taoiseach himself, that we are at the crossroads, we are turning the corner and we are planning for a better life for people in ten, 15 or 20 years' time. The Minister for Finance yesterday clapped himself on the back and boasted of it as an achievement that unemployment compared with last year had decreased by something like 12,000. Was that a fair comparison, especially when one remembers that in one particular month last year, February, we had a bigger unemployment figure for this country than we had since 1939? We had 90,000 Irish men and women who could not get work here in their own country. The comparison would have been fairer if he had gone back to 1952, 1951, 1950, 1949 or 1948. There is enough of a choice there. In April, 1951, there were 54,900 persons unemployed and in April, 1954, there were 74,800 unemployed, an increase of 20,000 odd.
Did you make any allowance for the extended register?
I will make the allowance for that but I cannot give it in actual figures. We have not got them. Apart from these statistics that have been given and that show this colossal increase, we have the evidence of our own eyes at the employment exchanges in every city and town in this country.
Did you look for any workers there?
What do you mean by that?
Did the Deputy look to see could he get a worker?
Is the Deputy trying to say they would not work if they got work?
No, but I have been looking for them and I could not get them.
I wonder where these 74,179 people are at the present time.
I would like to know that myself.
The Deputy had better ask Dr. Ryan, Minister for Social Welfare, because he gives us the figures every week and he said there were 74,000 unemployed last week.
Signing on at the exchanges.
What does signing on mean? It means they are available for work, suitable for work and genuinely seeking work.
A certain type of work.
I wonder what type these 74,000 are. I know there are builders' labourers.
All of them?
Not all of them. I know there are agricultural workers included in that number in the rural areas.
Could the Deputy describe them?
Order! Deputy Corish must be allowed to make his own speech in his own way without interruption.
I am speaking as a result of experience and from example in my own constituency. The Minister for Social Welfare says there are 74,000 seeking work at the present time.
And neither Deputy Briscoe nor Deputy Killilea believes that.
I did not say anything of the kind.
Deputy Corish on the Financial Resolution, without interruption.
Let us go a little bit further than the statement that the Minister for Finance made in relation to unemployment. Again, on the figures issued by the Minister for Social Welfare and by the Office of Central Statistics we know that the average number of unemployed in 1951 was 51,000; in 1952 it increased to 61,000; in 1953 it increased to 70,000 and at the present time it is slightly over 74,000. If we are to judge the Government on their record with regard to employment, I do not think we need go any further. Neither do I think it is a record of which they can be proud. Coupled with the unemployed—this has often been stated, but it is no harm to state it once more—we have the numbers who have been forced to emigrate. I do not want to exaggerate the figures, but a State Department gives the average yearly figure of emigration from 1946 to 1951 as 24,600, a very substantial number indeed. I think all of us will admit that. Last year, according to the figures given by the Taoiseach in reply to a parliamentary question, approximately 33,000 were forced to emigrate. The Taoiseach admits that those figures cannot be checked, but I think the figure will be generally acceptable because the information was given by the Taoiseach in reply to a parliamentary question.
As far as employment is concerned, the Government has a very, very sorry record indeed. As far as prices are concerned, I do not think it is necessary to go into the figure in detail. It is somewhat amazing that the Minister for Finance can come in here, as he did yesterday, and announce on the first page of his Budget statement that the cost of living fell and prices generally were smoothed out. It may be that prices dropped a point in relation to the cost-of-living figure. Who forced up the cost of living? If it dropped by a point, it dropped by a point as compared with what it had been forced up to by the Minister for Finance in April, 1952.
The whole country was looking forward to this Budget. What do we find? We discover that the only real concession—as the Minister for External Affairs described it a minute ago, a contemptible concession—is the reduction of ½d. on the 2-lb. loaf. That reduction is given by a Party which in the general election of 1951 complained that the cost of living was too high. In the town of Ferns I heard the Minister for Finance describing to his audience how little a person could now buy for £1 as compared with what could be purchased when he was Minister for Finance in 1947. He is the man who 12 short months afterwards in his Budget in 1952, increased substantially the price of tea, bread, butter, sugar and flour. He is the Minister for Finance in the Party, the leader of which said that they were pledged as part of their policy to retain the food subsidies, who throws this insult to Irish housewives and Irish wage earners of a reduction of ½d. on the loaf of bread.
Well may this Budget be described as the "½d." Budget. The Minister proposes to make a concession with regard to beer. We wonder to whom this concession will go. Is it to the firm of Arthur Guinness, a firm which made a net profit last year of £1,000,000? Is it to the licensed trade? What absolute provision is there in the Budget to ensure that it will go to the licensed trade? The Minister merely says that he expects the reduction will be passed on.
He has arranged it.
Deputy Briscoe says he has arranged it, but the Minister did not give us any evidence on the point, despite being questioned with relation to it yesterday. He did not give us any real evidence as to whether or not this reduction will be passed on to the licensed trade. There is no question about it being passed on to the consumer.
It is not intended to go to the consumer.
Like Deputy Norton and others, I welcome the concessions that have been given with regard to income-tax. Those concessions have been long overdue. They were overdue from 1948 to 1951. I have no hesitation in saying that, but the Minister's statement that 40,000 people will be relieved is just a huge joke. So far as the reduction in the price of bread is concerned, that reduction was forecast by the national organiser of the Fianna Fáil Party. I think he gave a fairly good indication at the time although none of us seemed to take the hint. Speaking at a Fianna Fáil Party Convention on last Sunday three weeks he is reported in the Sunday Independent as having said:—
"If their opponents succeeded in making this a bread-and-butter election it would mean that the Irish nation is becoming a nation of whingers and crawlers, weeping over the price of bread, butter and tea and exchanging their proud national heritage for a bottle of beer."
If it is any information to the Minister for Finance and the Fianna Fáil Party generally, the people are crying over the price of essential foodstuffs.
As far as we in the Labour Party are concerned, we propose to make it a bread-and-butter election. As far as we are concerned, no matter what our position is in the Dáil, and no matter what our numbers are, we say that the prices of these essential foodstuffs must be reduced because the people in our own constituencies and the people whom we canvassed in the last three or four weeks are more concerned about the cost of living than they are about practically any other problem in the country.
Will you tell us how you are going to do it?
You were able to get the money for Tulyar.
That is cheap. I believe that the Deputy is serious and I would like to know what he has in mind as to how they will do what he says.
I am not trying to keep any secrets from Deputy Briscoe, but I remember an occasion when Deputy Lemass was sitting on the Front Opposition Bench. He was asked a somewhat similar question as to how such and such thing was to be done. Deputy Lemass stood up and said that it was the duty of an Opposition to criticise and make suggestions, but that it was the function of a Government to put forward their proposals for the raising of money.
But you say you are going to be the Government.
I am not making any prophecies at all to Deputy Briscoe.
Deputy Corish should be allowed to speak without interruption.
I remember Deputy Dr. Ryan saying in the House that he was going to bring in a comprehensive scheme of social insurance, and that no insured worker would have to pay a penny. On that occasion he did not describe how he was going to do it. We did not discover until April, 1952, that he was going to give the people a comprehensive scheme of social insurance by drastically increasing the prices of tea, bread, butter, flour and other essential foodstuffs. As far as we are concerned, it will be a bread-and-butter election, no matter how much Fianna Fáil want to avoid it.
The Minister for External Affairs made great play with the oft-repeated allegation that the last Government left Fianna Fáil with the debt of £6.7 million. One may contrast that with the estimate by the Minister for Finance last year that he was going to save £3,500,000 on the Civil Service. If the Minister had been able to make that saving, then one must assume that he would have had much more money to distribute yesterday. Last year, he assumed that he was going to make that saving on the Civil Service, but yesterday the utmost that he could assume was that he was going to get £1,500,000 this year from C.I.E. We have all heard the moaning and the groaning of the present Government about the plight of C.I.E., and the burden it is on the Government and the taxpayers of the country to provide subsidies for it. I do not think anyone seriously believes that C.I.E. will contribute £1,500,000 to the National Exchequer next year.
These are the only few remarks that I want to make on the Budget proposals of the Minister for Finance. Personally, I think it is rather futile for us at this stage to be trying to make points in debate. It is rather futile to be trying to discuss the Budget proposals since we know that in a few weeks' time the people of the country will decide on them. I am not going to prophesy what is going to happen. As I said in the beginning, I suggest to the Minister for External Affairs that he should be more concerned about the difficulties in his own Party. As far as we are concerned, we will make up our minds independently of any other Party. The taunts that are made from any side of the House make no difference to us. We are an independent political Party and will make up our own minds as to whether or not we will support this, that or the other group or as to whether we will participate with, or merely support one. That is a decision which the Labour Party, as a whole, will make for itself and in doing so it will not be dictated to or be influenced by any other political Party in the country.
I have already indicated, in broad outline, my general views in regard to the Budget. There are, however, one or two points which escaped me when the Minister had finished reading his Budget statement. I know that the reduction of a ½d. in the 2-lb. loaf of bread was intended to be a bait to the weaker section of the community, to the working-class people of the country who do not happen to be as well off as the other portion of the community. It was a very small gift. I think it was Deputy Flanagan or Deputy McGilligan who christened the Budget on the spot as the "Halfpenny Budget". I realised very quickly that this was merely restoring the ½d. that had been added on, not by the Budget of 1952, but by an Order made by the Minister for Industry and Commerce some eight or nine months ago, so that in effect the Budget is merely restoring the price of bread to the same position as that in which it had been placed after the 1952 Budget.
So far so good. I must say that at the time I had not followed clearly the implications in the Minister's proposals in regard to C.I.E. Now, it is clear that, while he is giving £900,000 back to the taxpayers by way of the ½d. off the 2-lb. loaf of bread, he intends to collect £1,500,000 from C.I.E. We talk of C.I.E. as if it were some outside body, some institution or other that had no relation to the public; but I would like to know who is going to provide C.I.E. with £1,500,000 for the benefit of the Minister for Finance? I imagine it is the ordinary public who use the buses in the City of Dublin and elsewhere. Accordingly, while the working classes are being given a ½d. off the 2-lb. loaf of bread, they are going, apparently, to be fleeced a penny or more on their bus fares, because that is the clear implication in the Minister's proposals.
Nonsense.
He gives £900,000 by way of a ½d. off the loaf of bread and he finances that transaction by saying that he will get £1,500,000 from C.I.E. Presumably, his collector will go to C.I.E. and say: "You will have to make £1,500,000 available to me in the course of a year." I do not think that C.I.E. have any source of income other than what they collect off the public either by way of freight charges or bus fares. As most of us who are city Deputies in this House know, it is the Dublin public, it is the working classes of the City of Dublin that, in effect, pay a large proportion of the losses sustained by C.I.E., so that in effect it is the public in Dublin, the working classes in Dublin, who will have to pay for this ½d. off the loaf of bread.
A ½d. will be put into one pocket but probably a penny or twopence will be taken out of the other pocket through an increase in C.I.E. fares.
You know that is wrong —what you are saying.
I know that is right and if Deputy Briscoe had the interests of his constituents at heart he would have prevented the Minister for Finance from demanding more money from C.I.E. because he must know that inevitably the result must be an increase in bus fares in the City of Dublin. C.I.E. will have to find £1,500,000——
I will answer you afterwards.
And either the Minister for Finance is trying to cod the public into the belief that C.I.E. is going to make £1,500,000 or £1,000,000, or he is serious. If he is not serious and is trying to mislead the public, trying to cod the public, then he is not responsible and should not be Minister for Finance. If he is serious then he has to get this money from C.I.E. and I do not see that C.I.E. is in a position to obtain money from any source other than the travelling public and our experience has been that it is usually the bus passengers in the cities and more populous areas who are mulcted to pay for the deficiency on other services. So that if Deputy Briscoe was really interested in his constituents who are already paying excessive fares to C.I.E., he would have pressed the Minister for Finance into leaving C.I.E. alone.
You will be surprised when you hear my answer.
I will be surprised at no answer that Deputy Briscoe gives in this House or elsewhere. I know too much about him.
Do not try to get personal now.
Let us deal with the Resolution. Personalities must not come into this debate.
Then Deputy Briscoe must keep quiet but if Deputy Briscoe wishes it the other way he can have the whole history. I have plenty of experience of him.
I hope Deputy Briscoe will make his own speech and not interrupt.
Notice taken that 20 Deputies were not present; House counted and 20 Deputies being present,
I hope that when the Minister for Finance concludes he or, indeed, I hope some of the members of the Government, possibly, before the Minister for Finance replies will tell the House and the country how the Minister for Finance expects C.I.E. to find this additional £1,000,000 or £1,500,000 which will enable him to take ½d. off the loaf of bread.
Returning to the Budget generally, it has long been recognised that one of the main functions of a Budget is to be an instrument whereby the economic policy of the country is forged. The Budget and the economic policy of the Government—any Government—are the main instruments which are used by a Government to create certain economic conditions in the country. It is well recognised that the budgetary and economic policy of a Government can create employment and unemployment at will. It is recognised that the budgetary policy and the economic policy of a Government can control the amount of purchasing power of the public. In our case, not only does the budgetary policy of the Government and the economic policy of the Government generally control unemployment but they also control emigration, because the true unemployment position is always concealed by the heavy emigration drain. I was interested listening to the Budget statement yesterday in trying to ascertain the trends of economic policy which the Government was pursuing. The economic policy pursued by the Government since 1951 has been that laid down by the Central Bank in 1951, a policy which had a two-pronged aim.
Firstly, its aim was to increase unemployment and emigration, presumably for the purpose of maintaining low wages conditions, and the other prong of the economic policy advocated by the Central Bank was the reduction of the purchasing power of the public to enable the maintenance and accumulation of substantial foreign assets. I think now anyone examining the Report of the Central Bank will agree that these were the two main objectives of those who drew it up and that they considered it necessary in order to achieve these conditions to maintain a large unemployment pool, keep wages down and also necessary to reduce purchasing power so as to build up foreign assets. For the purpose of achieving that two-pronged aim the Central Bank advocated certain measures and the Government has faithfully and religiously carried out those measures. It advocated first the rigorous restriction of credit, the removal of food subsidies and additional taxation on consumer goods for the purpose of reducing the purchasing power of the public and the Government systematically took these steps.
I, therefore, examined the Budget statement and proposals of the Minister for Finance against that background to find out was that policy still being pursued by the Government. And it still is. You cannot say that taking a ½d. off the 2-lb. loaf and adding twice as much to bus fares probably, is a change of policy. The policy outlined by the Minister is clearly one which maintains the objectives set out by the Central Bank. That is why yesterday I expressed surprise that the Minister had made no reference to the attitude of the Government in regard to the expansion of credit.
I was anxious yesterday to ascertain whether the Government was in that respect also still pursuing faithfully the advice given to it by the Central Bank and its economic advisers. The Taoiseach and the Minister for Finance made a rather vain attempt yesterday to deny their own declarations in that regard. I am sure by now they have accepted that these statements were properly quoted by me in the House.
I think it is well, however, to review very shortly the position in regard to the restriction of credits. I raised this matter in the House time after time. I raised it on every economic debate and I raised it on every possible occasion in this House. For a long time the Taoiseach denied that there was any restriction of credits, denied it completely. His next line was that he did not know whether there was or not. I think, however, that now it must be admitted that there was a restriction of credits. He has never given a categorical indication himself that he wanted to see an expansion of credit. The Minister for Finance in his Budget statement yesterday remained completely silent. That must be taken in conjunction with the fact that the Central Bank had given very specific directives that, in their view, rigorous credit restriction by the banks was necessary and in conjunction with the declaration made by the Minister for Finance himself, a declaration in which he said: "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." That is a clear indication of the view which the Minister for Finance, who was the spokesman of the Government in these matters, took and was an indication to the banks that in the view of the Minister for Finance credits should be restricted.
There has been an extremely effective restriction of credits for quite a while. It might be well if I recall to the House that even the Government's own newspaper had reported on the restriction of credits which was taking place in the country. On the 18th October, 1951, the Irish Press in an article headed “Banks Close on Credit” stated:—
"It was becoming increasingly difficult to get credit from banks for the past six months, and within the past two months this tightening of credit facilities has been intensified."
That is no mere idle propaganda from some anti-Government source. That is from an article in the Government's own newspaper, a newspaper to which the Minister for Finance himself contribues articles from time to time.
What is the date of that article?
The 18th October, 1951. We had, too, a number of very interesting articles published in the Sunday Press by the former chairman of the Industrial Credit Corporation, Mr. Colbert. I do not want to weary the House with long quotations, but I think it would be well to remind the House of some of these quotations. In the course of one of these articles, under the heading “Says Former Industrial Credit Chief,” Mr. Colbert reviews certain references made by the Tánaiste in the course of a speech, and goes on to say:—
"Mr. Lemass may have been referring to the astonishing fact that four of our leading banks have their headquarters outside the Twenty-Six Counties—two of them in London and two in Belfast—and that another leading `Irish' bank is totally Britishowned, or he may have had in mind the raising of the Irish bank rate following the increase in the Bank of England rate—which I for one regarded as quite uncalled for."
These are Mr. Colbert's views; they are not my views. Mr. Colbert went on:—
"Then, again, he may have been referring critically to the restriction of credit here on the directive of the Bank of England—an action which, again, I consider was also quite unnecessary."
It is very hard for the Taoiseach or the Minister for Finance in the light of these articles to come here and pretend that they did not know there was any restriction of credits. I have relied on articles published in the Government's own newspaper so that they could not plead ignorance of them.
This credit restriction policy was very effectively carried out. Some Deputies, I am sure, will have seen a document circulated on the 4th February, 1953, by the Department of Finance. The Department of Finance sent out portion of a report compiled by the O.E.E.C. dealing with the financial conditions of this country. From my experience I know that reports of that nature are the result of information supplied by our own Department of Finance. This report was prepared by a committee on which Ireland was represented. From my experience of the O.E.E.C. and international organisations, I know that no report would be issued by them which was disapproved of by the country concerned and that there was consultation and discussion before the report was issued. Therefore I am prepared to accept that the views contained in this report are a true reflection of the view of the Government expressed through the Department of Finance to the O.E.E.C. I do not think I am putting it on a higher level than it should be put. That was a very interesting report and I would advise Deputies who may not have seen it to try and procure a copy and read it. On page 7 we are told that the purpose of the 1952 Budget was to replace a deficit on current account in the 1951 Budget by a balance, and thus—I would like Deputies to mark these words—"to obtain a reduction in the volume of consumers' expenditure"; so that the purpose of the Budget of 1952 was to reduce the purchasing power of the public. That was the aim of the Central Bank according to themselves, and it became the aim of the Fianna Fáil Government.
The report then goes on in the next paragraph to say: "The effect of budgetary policy on demand has been supported by a tighter monetary policy"—that is, by restriction of credits.
"In March, 1952, the rate on bank advances was raised from 5 per cent. to 6 per cent., that on bank deposits from 1 to 1½ per cent., and the bank rate from 2½ per cent. to 3½ per cent. The volume of bank advances fell by 2 per cent. in the second quarter of the year. The tighter credit policies now prevailing have no doubt, to a minor extent, been responsible for the change from accumulation to the running down of stocks."
So now, I think, the cat is out of the bag. We have it here in this document that the purpose of the Budget was to reduce the purchasing power of the public, and one of the ways in which that was to be achieved was by a tighter money policy, restriction of credits and increases in the bank charges; and that has been done, and done very successfully.
Then on the next page there is a very enlightening sentence that I think I must quote before passing from this report. It deals with the question of manpower and emigration, and says:—
"The fact that unemployment has not reached serious proportions is largely due to continuing heavy emigration."
I have no criticism of this report. It is an objective report of the position here and of what the Government policy was, and I am afraid still is. But in the light of these documents and the light of references to which I have referred I think it is somewhat difficult for the Taoiseach or the Minister for Finance to come into this House and deny that they had favoured credit restrictions. My concern was that in this Budget they had failed to give any indication to the banks that they wished to see expansion of credit. And expansion of credit is in my view the only immediate solution which offers itself for the creation of employment and for the development of the country. This country has been starved for investment. There could be a certain amount of Government capital investment in certain schemes. There is always a danger that we may overdo that, but from the long-term point of view the only way to promote a higher rate of investment in the country is by a very substantial expansion of credit policy. This is contrary to the policy pursued by the Department of Finance and the Central Bank over a long period of time. It is the old equation as to which is more important—to keep an accumulation of sterling assets in London, probably depreciating in value, or to try and keep boys and girls at work in this country. I have no doubt as to the choice which I would make.
Some Ministers have in the course of speeches recently sought to suggest that the very high rate of increase in prices here was occasioned by circumstances outside the country, that the cost of living had gone up more in other countries than here, that there was nothing the Government could do about it, that as a matter of fact indeed we were very lucky to be living in Ireland because if we were living somewhere else the cost of living might have gone up at an even greater rate. Occasionally I am inclined to accept statements when they are made by persons in responsible positions in a categorical fashion—to accept them, believing them to be true. It always strikes me as surprising that any person holding a responsible position should make a statement which is capable of disproof. I accepted the statement that the cost of living had gone up proportionately in other countries as much as it had gone up here, and that it had probably gone up even less here than in other countries. I accepted that statement till one day I was rather interested to see exactly what was happening the cost of living in other countries. I took the trouble to get the relevant statistics, to find that those statements were untrue, and completely untrue, that according to the O.E.E.C. statistics—which I think are reliable and comparable because they have been prepared on the same basis—from February, 1951, to August, 1953, which was the last date for which figures are available, our cost of living had gone up from 102 to 124—that was an increase of 22 points—and that was a higher increase than in any one of 16 other countries. In Portugal the cost of living had gone down by 2 per cent. during that period; and indeed if I am not mistaken the Taoiseach and some of his Ministers were in Portugal this year, so they should have been aware of that. In Belgium from February, 1951, to August, 1953, the cost of living had gone up by 4 per cent.—4 points, rather. In the Netherlands, in Switzerland and in the United States it had gone up by 4 points. In our case it had gone up by 22 points in the same period. In Germany it had gone up by 5 points, Luxembourg 6 points, Canada 6 points, Denmark 9 points, Italy 9 points, Turkey 10 points, Sweden 16 points, Britain 19 points, France 20 points, Norway 21 points, and Ireland 22 points—so that those statements were completely untrue. I do think that in political controversy we should at least be able——
Oh, get off it, get off it. Deputy. Everybody knows your form in political controversy.
I know the Minister for Finance's form and I know that he was one of the first persons to rely on credit restriction to justify his own viewpoint, which has resulted in the Minister for Finance's policy, but succeeded in driving thousands upon thousands of young people out of the country, and I know that he does not care about them.
The Deputy is just misusing the O.E.E.C. figures. He can be answered. Every single word of what he is misusing will be answered. He is using a selected list of statistics.
If I am not mistaken it is the Minister for Posts and Telegraphs, now interrupting, who has been going around the country preaching, saying that the cost of living had not gone up as much here as elsewhere.
Nothing of the kind. I have never used selected statistics.
These are not selected statistics. They are statistics published by the O.E.E.C. which the Minister can get. They give the cost-of-living figures in every country from the month of February, 1951, to the month of August, 1953. I shall, if the Minister wishes, quote the figures for each country in detail.
If the Deputy goes back a year, the figures change. If he goes forward for one year, the figures change again.
Deputy MacBride.
The Minister for Posts and Telegraphs has been doing most of his bleating around Westmeath—God help the people of Westmeath——
They have been saved from Deputy MacBride in two elections.
I do not know if they will continue to save the Minister for Posts and Telegraphs for very long, by all accounts. These figures have been prepared by O.E.E.C. They are based on an index of 100 in 1950. I had better give the figures again so that the Minister and Deputies can check them for themselves. In February, 1951, taking the base as 100 in 1950, the figure for Portugal was 99; in August, 1953, the figure had gone down to 97. In Belgium, in February, 1951, the figure was 106 and in August, 1953, it was 110. In the Netherlands, in February, 1951, the figure was 106 and in August, 1953, it was 110. In Switzerland, in February, 1951, the figure was 102 and in August, 1953, it was 106. In the United States, in February, 1951, the figure was 107 and in August, 1953, it was 111. In Germany, in February, 1951, the figure was 103 and in August, 1953, it was 108. In Luxembourg, in February, 1951——
These figures have no relation to one another.
I know the Minister for Finance does not like this. He denied a statement which he made here yesterday and he was proved to be wrong.
I have the quotation here and I can show the words were a paraphrase of what your colleague said.
The Minister is not going to prevent me from reading these figures. I am not going to be deprived——
(Interruptions.)
The Minister for Posts and Telegraphs will get an opportunity of making his statement later.
The only argument which Fianna Fáil Ministers have is to deny a thing, when it does not suit them to admit it. The truth does not matter; it is quite immaterial. If they are proved wrong, they still maintain they are right. To continue with the figures; in Luxembourg, in February, 1951, the index was 104 and in August, 1953, 110. In Canada, in February, 1951, it was 106 and in August, 1953, 112. In Denmark, in February, 1951, it was 107 and in August, 1953, 116. In Italy, in February, 1951, it was 106 and in August, 1953, it was 115. In Turkey, in February, 1951, it was 99 and in August, 1953, 109. In Sweden, in February, 1951, it was 109 and in August, 1953, it was 125. In Britain, in February, 1951, the figure was 104 and in August, 1953, it was 123. In France, in February, 1951, it was 108 and in August, 1953, it was 128. In Norway, in February, 1951, it was 108 and in August, 1953, it was 129 and in Ireland in February, 1951, it was 102, while in August, 1953, it was 124. In Ireland it had increased by 22 points, a higher increase than in any of the other countries named.
It increased by 12½ points during your period of office.
I am afraid the Deputy is wrong. The index did not go up that much. If the Deputy would look at the figures he would save a lot of argument.
That is what they issued from Mount Street.
I have quoted these figures in such detail only because it has been said by the Minister that the cost of living had gone up less here than in any country in the world.
Will the Deputy say what was the cost-of-living index in May, 1951? I will tell you.
How much was it?
It was 109.
Was that 12½ per cent. increase?
In February, 1951, it was 103 and it had jumped by almost 6 per cent. after three months under the Coalition Government.
Give us the figures.
It had not gone up by 12½ per cent.
Deputy MacBride is in possession.
I take it that in his more serious moments the Minister for Finance does not believe what he said in his Budget statement yesterday— certainly the country does not believe it—that last year was one of the most prosperous years the country ever had. I am sure he does not believe it nor, I am sure, does he believe that the cost of living fell. Certainly the public do not believe it. I think that we ought to have some sense of realism in these matters. The cost of living has increased in the last three years by something over 20 per cent. In regard to the value of social services, the truth of the matter is that, by-and-large, the benefits which people now receive in the way of old age pensions or unemployment or sickness benefits now, in terms of real money, are lower than they were before the war. Indeed, the man who interrupted from the Gallery last evening——
The Deputy should keep off that because that man in the Gallery was invited by a legal member of the Opposition. He was neither unemployed nor hungry and he was applauded by the Deputy.
He certainly——
He was neither unemployed hungry nor ill-fed.
He was not invited into the House by me. I did not know him. I did not know his name nor had I ever seen him before.
We cannot have a discussion on yesterday's incident in the Gallery. It does not arise on the Resolution.
I defy the Minister or the Taoiseach to get up and tell any unemployed man in this city with a wife and two or three children how he is to live on 38/- a week.
Would it not be better to ask him how does he exist?
Ask Deputy McGilligan how did he exist under his Government.
It is all very well for Deputies and Ministers to come in here to interrupt and behave like a crowd of naughty schoolboys. Remember, you have over 70,000 people unemployed. Many of them are on the borderline of starvation. The only outlook for them is emigration. Again, let me remind you that this thing of saying that you have no reliable information in regard to emigration is all balderdash. It is quite true there are no reliable statistics, no positive statistics in the definite sense, but the returns of passenger movements by sea are a clear and reliable guide as to the trends of emigration. Again let me refer you to these figures in case some Deputies are not familiar with them.
In 1950 the outward balance of passenger movement by sea was 17,854 and by 1953 it had risen to 31,113. That is to say that 31,113 more people took a boat from Dún Laoghaire or from Cobh or North Wall to leave the country than came in. That is a pretty good indication of the trend of emigration. It is quite true that other people may go from Derry or Belfast, they may emigrate from the Six Counties and we have no records; so it is not a complete guide but it is an indication of the trend.
There is one other matter I wish to deal with before I conclude. When I came in yesterday I did not come armed with figures and what I said was denied. In referring to the review made by the Minister for Finance on foreign trade, I indicated some concern at the falling off of exports to America and to countries other than Britain. I think that is an extremely serious matter. I have since looked up the figures. This was promptly denied yesterday when I mentioned it. It was laughed at; the Taoiseach split his sides laughing at it; it was all nonsense and there was no truth in it. I do not want to weary the House with too many figures.
The Deputy never does anything else but weary the House.
I know the Minister does not like this.
The Deputy poses to be a highly superior person. We are bored by it.
He would not interrupt otherwise. If he were merely weary, he would doze without listening to me; but he does not like this, so he interrupts every few minutes and behaves like a childish schoolboy, a rather badly brought up schoolboy.
He will soon get a more comfortable seat—over here.
Do you find it more comfortable? If so, you are not likely to change it.
In the last year of the Fianna Fáil Government's rule before the change of Government, in 1947, the total exports to countries other than Britain, from this State, were £4,499,000. In 1951, through the inter-Party Government—and, if I may take a certain amount of credit there, through my own efforts and the efforts of Deputy Morrissey—that figure rose from £4,499,000 to £13,033,000. It was trebled in a period of three years.
Do not forget that Deputy Dillon did something, too, in the export of meat.
Deputy Dillon was not very much concerned in his Department with exports to countries other than Great Britain.
He certainly was not.
We did not export an awful lot of agricultural goods to such countries.
We are in agreement for once—that Deputy Dillon was never concerned with exports to other countries.
They do not like this and want to prevent me from getting these figures out, so naturally they interrupt. By now we are accustomed to these tactics. By 1951 we had succeeded in trebling exports to countries other than Britain. By 1953 where are we? By 1953 that figure has fallen by £3,000,000 to £10,703,000. Would anyone opposite tell me those figures are not correct? Come on, let somebody deny them. Will anyone deny it? I have the Taoiseach's reply here to a question last week. Will anyone deny that the figures are correct? We find that our exports to America have fallen off, despite the Tánaiste's visit to America.
When I first became Minister for External Affairs, I found that our total exports to the American Continent amounted to £361,000, that they were practically non-existent. By 1951 we had built them up to £3,716,000. By 1953 they had gone down to £2,934,000. I think that is a dangerous trend. From the point of view of the economic independence of the country —which the Minister for Finance has so often referred to—it is vital that we should develop other markets throughout the world, that we should not be economically bound, hand and foot, to Britain. Therefore, I deprecate anything done by the present Government to try again to divert our trade exclusively to Britain. Probably a certain amount of the fall in our exports to countries other than Britain—and particularly the fall in our exports to America—is due to many of the irresponsible statements made by the Minister for Finance himself in regard to America, with the able assistance of some of the Deputies in this House. I deprecate that trend and I think that some effort should be made to try to build up our exports to countries other than Britain, or at least restore them to the position in which they were in 1951.
I am afraid I have spoken longer than I intended, but that was probably due to some of the interruptions.
I propose to alter the programme I had for speaking to the House to-night on this Budget, by beginning with Deputy MacBride. When he started to speak he apologised for his rather meagre contribution last night. But since last night he had an opportunity of studying the Budget statement and therefore he was now in a position to come here and tell the House and the country what it meant and what it did not mean. He started off in a most dishonest fashion, by attempting to make it appear to the public that the payment to the Exchequer from C.I.E. was going to be made by an imposition of an extra penny on bus fares in Dublin.
We have not been told now.
A seasoned lawyer who gets up here and says he read this Budget statement carefully, perused it and understood it, drives me now to read the particular page of the Budget statement dealing with that point, so that the House will know how far they can rely on anything stated by Deputy MacBride. The Deputy said that C.I.E. were going to have extracted from them in this current financial year £1,500,000. The Deputy will not stay here to be educated—he knows he has misstated it. This particular reference in the Budget statement is quite simple. I propose to read it, so that I cannot be accused of misinterpretation. Remember, Deputy MacBride alleges this seriously and hopes to start a scare that there is going to be a penny increase on bus fares in order to enable C.I.E. to meet the demand for this £1,500,000. The statement is very simple. It is on page 29 of the financial statement of the Minister for Finance:—
"For several years past it has been necessary to make Exchequer issues to C.I.E. to cover operating losses, interest and other revenue charges. These issues were made on request, subject to adjustment when the accounts of the year became available. The accounts for 1952-53 were published last autumn; and the examination of them has shown that the requests for subsidy payments from the Vote and for Central Fund advances to meet debenture interest had been framed on the assumption that a large proportion of expenditure on renewals and replacements was chargeable to current revenue. It would appear, however, that various items to which the board proposed to apply the funds received from the Exchequer were proper to be borrowed for under the Transport Act of 1950 which authorised the issue of up to £7,000,000 of State-guaranteed stock."
That is not what you said in 1951, though.
I will deal with what I said in 1951 when I have finished with your ex-colleague, Deputy MacBride. The statement goes on:—
"This limit of £7,000,000 was, indeed, fixed in contemplation of the need for C.I.E. to overtake heavy arrears of renewals and replacements, as well as meeting some additional capital expenditure.
Now, the accounts of C.I.E. have shown an increase, year by year, in the provision of depreciation, until by 1952-53 it reached a figure of £1,483,000. On the other hand, Sir James Milne in his report considered that the average 1945-47 allowance under this head of about £800,000 was more than adequate. The line which in my view should be taken on this is a simple one. Where gross profits are sufficiently high, it is sound policy to make the largest possible allocations from profits to meet expenditure on replacements and renewals; where, however, profits are non-existent or inadequate and public funds are, in effect, being called upon to supplement revenue, it is necessary in protection of the taxpayer to take a less liberal view. This is particularly so where, as in the case of C.I.E., expenditure to overtake arrears of renewals may, under legislative authority, be charged to borrowing.
Up to the close of 1951-52, in recognition of the straitened financial position of C.I.E., almost all of the exceptional outlay on renewals was borne directly by the Exchequer. The position regarding expenditure on renewals in 1952-53 and 1953-54 is under discussion; in both years the Exchequer appears to have borne expenditure which would more appropriately be a charge to public borrowing."
That is not what you said in 1951.
I will deal with 1951 later.
You burst a button then when somebody else said it.
What I said in 1948, probably, the Deputy means.
Not at all.
The Minister's statement goes on:—
"The information we now have indicates that the Exchequer would already have benefited from the marked improvement in the traffic receipts of C.I.E., but for the greatly increased charge against revenue for renewals—necessary though these were to make good arrears of proper maintenance and replacement. The position in fact is that, before allowing for depreciation and other charges, a working loss in 1951-52 has been converted into a working profit in 1953-54.
C.I.E. is liable under Section 30 of the Transport Act, 1950, for the repayment to the Exchequer of moneys advanced from the Central Fund to meet interest payments on Transport Stock. The aggregate amount advanced for this purpose to the 31st March, 1954, was £1,924,000."
You used to say it was £2,000,000 a year.
The statement continues:—
"The improvement in the financial position of C.I.E. which is an occasion for congratulation to all concerned, raises for consideration the question of repayment by the organisation of some of its liability to the Exchequer.
The precise extent and form of the necessary adjustments in favour of the Exchequer are at present under consideration, but I am satisfied that no vote payment in respect of operating losses and revenue charges will be necessary in 1954-55 and that £1,000,000 or so will be repayable to the Exchequer in respect of previous years. I have already allowed for £500,000 of this repayment in the estimate for non-tax revenue and, as the total relief to this year's Budget is of the order of £1,500,000, I should, at this point, take account of the remaining £1,000,000."
So C.I.E. is now going to subsidise the Government instead of the Government subsidising C.I.E.
Deputy Morrissey was not in the House when his colleague or ex-colleague or possible future colleague—he is welcome to him; they are all welcome to him—stated categorically, having, as a learned lawyer, studied this, burnt the midnight oil, that he extracted from that statement that that £1,500,000 would come by way of increase in transport fares.
Where is it going to come from? Where is C.I.E. going to get it?
They have already got it.
They have not and the Minister knows they have not got it and I know they have not got it. Perhaps Deputy Briscoe will tell us now where it is going to be got, if not from fares.
I see the Deputy has also read this and has also misunderstood it.
I am asking the Deputy to enlighten me as to where they are going to get the £1,500,000 for the Government.
Certainly not by putting it on the fares. Do you want me to read it again?
No.
Does the Deputy dispute the statement of the Minister that the losses of 1951-52 have now been turned into a gross profit in 1953-54?
I not only do not believe it but it is a complete perversion of the whole position.
If we are to take it that a financial statement of this kind of a Minister for Finance has to go on record as a document containing a deliberate misstatement of facts——
Yes.
——then I am afraid we are dealing with people who are in public life in a manner that I do not understand.
All I am asking is where is the £1,500.000 going to come from?
Deputy Briscoe might be allowed to make his speech.
He said it is very simple. I do not understand it.
It is very simple. I have read it. It requires no explanation. Certainly it does not require an interpretation such as Deputy MacBride has put on it. That is only an attempt on a par with what the Deputy did when he was leader of a Party seeking the confidence of the people in 1948 when he produced a film depicting the misery of our people. He had the audacity to think that the people of our country were of such a mean mental state that they would believe his propaganda when he showed pictures of buildings in Dublin being torn down by the Dublin Corporation to be rebuilt and substituted by flats. He showed a torn-down wall in his film.
I thought Senator Hartnett was the producer and Deputy Dr. Browne was the principal actor.
He showed the slums of Dublin. He showed also a rusty plough in an abandoned field as his evidence of Fianna Fáil's contribution to the development of agriculture. That is a type of propaganda which may have deceived a certain number of people in 1948. The proof that the deception was discovered was the vote he received in 1951 when he was removed from the top of the poll to near the bottom.
By traitors.
The vote in 1954 will count.
It will. I am prepared to say now that I believe the people of this country will not fall a second time for misrepresentation.
Hear, hear!
They know now what is misrepresentation. I represent in this Dáil and I hope to represent again, a working-class district of the City of Dublin—and that will be as a result of intelligent people scrutinising carefully this time what has been said to them by people who have deceived them in the past. So much, therefore, for Deputy MacBride's reference to the improved position of C.I.E. and Deputy Morrissey's cheers and his "Hear, hear" to the Minister's statement that the situation in C.I.E. has improved. Either he believes it has or he does not.
Of course it has improved.
Very well then, if it has improved it has improved.
Yes.
And how do you count improvement in C.I.E. unless you measure it in terms of pounds, shillings and pence and in terms of the employment given to workers in that concern?
They have not £1,500,000 and I want to know where they will get it. I put them on the road to improvement. It is on the machinery we gave them that they improved.
The Minister concluded his reference to C.I.E. by pointing out that dieselisation has been a great help towards bringing about the improved position.
Hear, hear!
I should like to remind Deputy Morrissey of what I said about C.I.E. when that Bill was brought in. At that time I pointed out that the decision to cut out the acquisition of diesel engines was delaying prosperity. It was only after 1951, when Fianna Fáil resumed office, that the policy of dieselisation was properly implemented.
That is not true. You are getting the Minister into more trouble. Five diesel engines came from America. Where are they now, and what is being done with them? Tell us about that.
I recommend Deputy Morrissey to read the speeches made as a result of the suggestion that C.I.E. would not be allowed to spend the capital necessary for the complete dieselisation of the——
I know the facts. The present dieselisation scheme was started under our Government.
Order!
The Deputy is challenging me all along the line. I know more about it than he does.
Be patient.
I should hope that the ex-Minister for Industry and Commerce, who had the responsibility of bringing in a Bill to this House with the object of trying to put C.I.E. on the road to prosperity, would know a little bit more about that side of it than merely a person who represents the public in an area where they work in C.I.E.
According to the Budget, it was a good Act.
The Deputy made C.I.E. a bankrupt concern.
I should love to make a speech on that.
The Deputy will have an opportunity of making his speech. He will be able to criticise what I have said. Deputy MacBride talks in a sort of superior manner—away above the heads of the masses. It is like something that you read about in connection with the aristocrats in ancient France.
It is just that it is above your head.
Deputy MacBride talks about external assets. He waves his hands and talks about bringing them back. He talks about how this Government is, in his estimation, bowing down to the gods of the Central Bank and taking dictation from them as to what to do and what not to do. He talks about our having £400,000,000 in external assets. According to the latest report which I have, we have something like £400,000,000 in external assets—but we owe about £250,000,000.
Including Guinness's Brewery.
Therefore, all we can really call our own for net transfer back here will not exceed £150,000,000. That is all you can bring back and you can only bring it back to employ it. That particular matter has been discussed and discussed——
On a re-check, tell us what we have and not what we have not. I think there is no genuine check.
A blank cheque.
I am afraid the Deputies of the Labour Party, among themselves, take a different interpretation out of words. Deputy Hickey is talking about "check" and Deputy O'Leary is talking about "cheque". They are talking about two different things. Deputy MacBride talked about the restriction of credit by the banks. He quoted from a series of articles. He mentioned the names of some of the authors and just said of the others that they had appeared in the Irish Press. The latest information I have is that in March, 1952, our joint stock banks had advanced for all purposes £122,000,000—which is recorded as the highest figure ever in the shape of credit accorded by the banks. In December, 1952, it had fallen by £5,000,000: it had gone down to £117,000,000. In December, 1953, it was up again to £119,000,000. There is always bound to be fluctuation.
When the farmers are sowing their crops and making their arrangements for a good harvest they probably borrow from the banks. When they sell their harvest and have a good crop they pay off their debt and put a little bit on deposit. That is why our deposits on the farming side are on the increase and it explains certain fluctuations. Time and time again, this Government have stated—and the previous Government agreed and stated likewise—that any pressure by a Government on the banks to reduce credit has never been done by the Government as a policy. It may be something the banks do themselves. We have discussed that on a number of occasions: I do not want to discuss it now. However, when Deputy MacBride comes in here and makes the silly allegation that our Government, through the Central Bank, are influencing the ordinary banks to restrict credit so that the purchasing power of our public will be reduced, all I can ask is if anybody believes that statement or if anybody believes——
I believe it.
The Deputy should have waited until I had finished the sentence. I was going to ask if anybody believes that if Deputy MacBride is sane and not daft, he believes it himself.
I do.
You do not come into that category at all.
Not only do I believe it but I know it to be true.
Is Deputy Briscoe aware that every farmer who has asked for credit since Fianna Fáil took Office in 1951 has been refused credit?
The farmers were never as well off.
No thanks to you. You did your best to pick their pockets.
Deputy MacBride talked about exports to America. He talked about the increased turnover with countries other than Britain in exports. He patted himself on the back as being one of the two—he and Deputy Morrissey—who were responsible for the increase of trade—and not a word of praise for Deputy Dillon. I want to say to Deputy Dillon's face that I know he had some interest—at one time, anyway—in trying to help the development of the export of meat to America. The development of that trade did create a big part of the turnover of our exports to America. Why? Because of the Korean war. It was because of the number of American troops abroad that had to be fed with meat and meat products and because of a situation of shortage of supply of meat in America that we had a bumper few years here. People buying cattle, slaughtering and exporting them in carcase form to America were making as much as ? per lb. net. That is perfectly true and Deputies know it. That is a business which grew up overnight and which has since crawled down a little.
We know that you on that side killed it.
I suppose the Deputy will hold us responsible for the ending of the Korean war. We fought them to a standstill and they had to give up— the Americans and the Communists. That is the war which the Deputy, when he was a Minister, was a party to describing as a mythical war when it was drawn to the attention of the then Administration. We had nothing to do with the stopping of that war——
It does not arise on this motion.
——but we do, at least, know that wars, when they are expected or are being conducted, affect world prices of all commodities and there was bound to be an effect on the price of commodities such as those we have for export, commodities which are essential in war-time, namely, foodstuffs.
Deputy Costello spoke here this evening and I was again amazed by the bad brief to which he had to speak. I wonder who prepared that brief? Just imagine an ex-Taoiseach saying here, seriously and categorically, that the total borrowings of the inter-Party Government in their three years were £23,000,000 and that the borrowings of the Fianna Fáil Government since 1951 was in excess of that amount, having reached a figure of £28,000,000. That was the categorical statement made by Deputy Costello, as if none of us here or in the country had ever heard of the $128,000,000 borrowed from America, the equivalent of £40,000,000, in their three years. What was the reason for leaving that transaction out? Is it not a fact that £40,000,000 were borrowed which were to be the greatest contribution to the prosperity of this nation for ever?
I take it that the Deputy does not wish to misquote the ex-Taoiseach and the future Taoiseach. What he said was:
"During the three years 1948-49, 1949-50 and 1950-51, the total net borrowings of the Central Government and local authorities amounted to £28,000,000, most of it raised at 3 per cent."
He does not include the £40,000,000 borrowed from America.
These are the words he used and they are quite accurate.
If there is to be a comparison made between the borrowings of one Party during their administration and the borrowings of another during theirs—Deputy Dillon is always talking about "busted" flushes—why withhold that card? Why keep that ace in the hole?
In the next sentence, Deputy Costello said:
"During the three years of the present Government, that is, 1951-52 to 1953-54, the total net amount borrowed was around about £65,000,000, the bulk of it raised at 5 per cent."
The Deputy was not here the whole time his ex-Taoiseach was speaking.
I was.
I was here the whole time the future Taoiseach was speaking.
I was here and Deputy Dillon's statement is correct.
Deputy Costello made two statements——
He said that you borrowed £65,000,000 since you came into office and that is correct. If it is not, deny it.
Does the Deputy know that it is correct? Is he prepared to assert that it is correct?
Yes.
Deputy Briscoe is in possession and he can disprove it, if it is not true.
Deputy Blowick cannot make a speech at this stage.
What Deputy Briscoe should realise is that we cannot borrow ourselves into prosperity.
That is an old cliché which Deputy Hickey uses at every street-corner.
It is a fact that we cannot borrow ourselves into prosperity.
The Deputy does not even know how to get away from the meaning of it. I, too, could quote a lot of clichés.
Will the Deputy deny that it is so?
Will Deputy Hickey control himself and allow the Deputy in possession to make his speech?
I was saying that Deputy Costello made a comparison between the borrowings of the inter-Party Government, or Coalition, in their three years of office, and the borrowings in the past three years by Fianna Fáil. He said that the borrowings in these three years amounted to £28,000,000.
Net.
What happened the book-keeping transaction of the $128,000,000?
The present Taoiseach described it as an act of unprecedented generosity on the part of the American people.
If Deputies will not allow Deputy Briscoe to speak, I shall have to ask them to leave the House. These interruptions are completely out of order.
He is looking for them.
I take it that Deputy Blowick is amazed by his beginning to realise what is being said and what the facts are. Deputy Costello also referred to the rate of interest which, in the case of their borrowings, was 3 or 3½ per cent.
Three per cent.
We know that the Marshall Aid Loan, if it costs us anything in the rate of interest, taking into account the fall in the value of the £ since, will cost us at the rate of about 6 per cent.
Nonsense!
Put down a question for immediate answer before you go to the country and have the information so that you can check it. Is it not a fact that we borrowed dollars to be repaid in dollars, that we sold these dollars to Britain for sterling and that, notwithstanding the fact that we have to repay in dollars—no great part of them were used when we sold them— the £ was re-valued since then, so that we have to pay back the dollars at a greater cost to us from the point of view of the pounds necessary to provide them and the same applies to the interest. There is your 3 per cent. for you. How can a body of people who consider themselves sufficiently responsible and serious to form themselves into a Government, or to hope again to be a government——
We are going to be.
——forget on a serious occasion like this that they borrowed £40,000,000?
One hundred and twenty-eight million dollars.
Deputy Costello also spoke about the question of secret agreements or no agreements.
How much of the £40,000,000 did you spend?
All the dollars had been spent and had been sold to the Bank of Ireland. The whole transaction was the result of secret negotiations with the late Sir Stafford Cripps.
You spent £24,000,000 of the Marshall Aid money in seven months.
And what did he do with it?
Mr. Brennan
Deputy Dillon spent it in one afternoon.
It seems to be a fact that if you touch a person on a tender spot, he will squeal and shout loudly.
Is that why the Minister for Finance got up to intervene?
It is quite obvious that Deputy Sweetman has a number of painful spots at the moment, and the shouting will not ease them or alter the result.
The Deputy knows what I think the result is going to be.
We will discuss that privately, you and I.
Couéism.
I am ready.
And so am I. Deputy Costello and certain other Deputies, including Deputy Dillon, were very concerned at question time about agreements between this Government and the British free market, as if one could make a contract with individuals who have the right to buy or not to buy as they wish, and to seek to get goods at whatever price they can get them. These Deputies wanted a contract with such people.
With whom else would you make a contract?
You cannot make a contract between a Government and individual people in any market.
What is happening with regard to pigs?
Will it put Deputy Sweetman in good humour if I tell him that I know absolutely nothing about pigs, human or otherwise?
That is the truest word spoken this day.
There is a contract in existence in regard to the buying of pigs.
There was a contract made a certain number of years ago.
In 1951. It lasts until 1956.
Correct. I suppose there will be some means by which the contracting parties will endeavour to keep the contract. The position now is that there is no contract on beef.
There is a contract on the others.
There is no contract in regard to pigs.
Why?
There is an agreement now that the Irish producer or shipper —I do not know exactly who—will get on the English market a price not less by so much than that paid to the British producer.
There is no such agreement as far as I know.
I should like to ask the Minister for Finance a question.
He knows nothing about it.
I should like the Minister for Finance to answer this question.
The Minister is not listening to you. Minister for Finance, Deputy Briscoe is talking to you.
I want to ask the Minister for Finance whether he could tell the House if any agreement exists between the inter-Party Government and Sir Stafford Cripps on their dollar transaction at the time?
There is a quite definite agreement. As a definite result of the negotiations which took place in 1948, it was agreed that you should borrow that money.
That was not the question the Deputy asked at all.
Was that agreement made known to the Dail?
What contract?
Or any other secret contract such as the contract to sell the dollars.
The Minister did not say that.
The dollars the inter-Party Government got were sold by agreement with Sir Stafford Cripps long before they were needed.
The Deputy is as daft as a coot. He is as daft as a halfpenny watch. The Minister for Finance is laughing at him because he knows the Deputy is as daft as a halfpenny watch. I do not blame him.
There are many things on which I would wager.
The Deputy should not indulge in these personal remarks.
I know. Deputy Briscoe does not think I think he is as daft as a halfpenny watch. I am speaking figuratively.
The Deputy is out of order in speaking at all.
I am not taking offence at all. I should like to make this wager. If Deputy Dillon and I were to go to a psychiatrist I would come out certified sane and he would not.
The lad always thinks that. He always thinks he is the sane man.
There is not a man or woman in Grangegorman who would not say the same thing. That is their greatest grievance.
Would the Deputy come back to the motion now?
I am interested in this Budget statement—very interested.
No one would ever guess that.
This document is not a document which is produced for the purpose of an election because if it were it would be a whole lot better. We could have had a concealed deficit of £6,000,000 or so, so that if we did not come back our successors might have to deal with it, just as we had to do when we came back after the 1951 election. It is a balanced Budget.
That is another way of saying you made a mess of it.
Deputy Costello to-day challenged the statement that the 1951 Budget was a balanced Budget and that there was no deficit in it. He also challenged the accuracy of the statement by spokesman on this side of the House that there was a substantial deficit due to certain causes, one of which Deputy Morrissey must know about. The expected loss to C.I.E. was not included in it.
This is not a subject about which it is wise to talk because it might make the Minister embarrassed.
After reading page 29 of the Minister's statement.
Deputy Dillon has an imagination which I envy. Six weeks after he sat in these benches as Minister for Agriculture, he was taking world-wide credit for the sudden large increase in the production of eggs. In other words, he claimed that our hens were his hens. To-day he tried to take credit for the fact that we had the best agricultural year ever in this country because of his work when Minister for Agriculture three years ago. He has it both ways. If we leave him a sufficiency of hens to lay an increased number of eggs, they are his eggs.
The Deputy is going to leave us a lot of dirty eggs.
I would like the Deputy who interrupts in a loud voice to say what he means clearly.
He did not slaughter the calves, anyhow.
I will come to that. I am not afraid to deal with that. An attempt is being made on the eve of the election to convert this Budget debate into an election platform.
Oh, dear!
"Oh, dear," says Deputy Morrissey. Deputy Morrissey knows that better than anybody.
Of course it is.
Why was the election put back for the Budget?
The election was put back for very good and sufficient reasons, and I am glad.
Because the back benchers kicked.
I was one who thought we should have the election immediately. The Deputy knows that. I was very sorry it was being postponed, but I must publicly confess that I was wrong and that the Taoiseach, in his decision to put it back, was right.
We all thought the Taoiseach wanted it at once.
The Deputy suggested the Taoiseach made up his mind to do one thing and that the back benchers forced him to do another.
That is right.
Now he is suggesting the reverse.
I am suggesting that the Taoiseach wanted an immediate election and that the back benchers wanted it deferred.
That is the way it is done in the Coalition.
Deputy Briscoe should be allowed to speak.
An appeal is being made to a lot of young people to-day, who may be voting for the first time or for the second or third time, to have regard to what is called the cruel Budget of 1952 which scourged and whipped them and took all the joy of living out of life. I am pleased to say that I met quite a number of young people in recent weeks who recognised that it is not so long since a generation of Irish men and women were prepared to make any sacrifice in order that this country might be saved. They did not weigh the price of a loaf of bread against the sufferings they might endure in making their contribution whether it was big or small. Let us now come to the interjection by the Deputy from Wexford in regard to the slaughter of calves.
Connolly died for the workers of Ireland.
Yes, Sir. I will come to that also. We will deal with the calves first. We had a serious situation in this country, too, after the start of the economic war. The farmers were the hardest hit, but when they were appealed to for their verdict as to whether we should go on or the country give in, they returned this Party stronger in numbers than ever in order to fight that fight to a finish. They were prepared willingly and gladly to sacrifice their calves rather than give away the freedom of this country.
You gave them free beef and they did not want it.
The young people realise that that generation had to make sacrifices to secure freedom in this country. Having achieved that freedom in some part of the country anyway, it is the duty of those of us who belong to the generation that struggled in that period to lay secure foundations on which future arms might be built. We do not pretend we can build the Ireland we want to see in our lifetime or in the lifetime of one Dáil. We recognise we have a responsibility and the young people, in making the little sacrifices they are asked to make by paying perhaps a little bit higher than what the Opposition gentlemen tell them they should pay, are doing it gladly and willingly. They are helping to lay the foundations of a free Ireland.
They are emigrating out of the country.
Deputy O'Leary interrupts time and time again.
The Deputy is not unemployed. He is all right.
The Deputy must restrain himself.
Deputy O'Leary understands the position better than Deputy Briscoe because he represents the workers.
Deputy O'Leary must understand that Deputy Briscoe must be allowed to make his statement without interruption.
May I say this? I am very proud of the fact that I represent a constituency in which I am accepted by the working class as a good representative of the working man.
I doubt it.
There is no Labour representative in my constituency in the Corporation or in the Dáil.
It is a poor thing that Dublin can get no one but a man like him, not a Dublinman but a foreigner, to represent them.
I represent the workers.
I cannot listen to you because you know nothing about the workers. You do not come from where the workers are. You are living in luxury.
I will go down to Wexford to see you.
I will not say what the Deputy is.
It takes all kinds of people to make a nation and I suppose it takes all kinds of people to make even a Dáil, but I am sure that what is on one man's tongue is not shared by many. Deputy Corish spoke about the number of persons signing on the labour exchanges. At first he spoke about them as being unemployed people and unable to find work. He then altered that saying that they might not be able to find the kind of work they wanted. I must say I have had a bit of an eye-opener and I think there must be some change made soon in the method by which what are called unemployed people are registered in these registration offices. Recently we set up a special works committee in Dublin and we wanted to find out the incidence of unemployment in Dublin and the extent to which we could make a contribution to bringing about some relief. To our amazement we found that of the approximately 18,000 signing on the labour exchanges half of them were females and of these half were juveniles; the rest were adults, some of them married women who had to leave employment for a certain period and who went on the register. However, we were concerned with the male side and we found there were three categories signing amongst the male persons. There were boys; there were able-bodied men, and there were old, chronically ill people who could not possibly be employed on the type of work we required men for. We found that the maximum number of men suitable for the type of work we were undertaking did not exceed 4,000. In fact we believe it was somewhere around the neighbourhood of 3,500.
I began to consider this problem very seriously. It was quite obvious that ordinary house building, ordinary work such as a local authority could do could not bring full relief to the number of people signing. I suggest to the Minister for Social Welfare that he ought to take off the register all those old people, those unfit for work and unable to work, some of them rheumatics going to the labour exchanges on sticks, and put them on another register altogether—call it a register for sick people or something of that kind or for persons not suitable for employment.
Retired on pensions.
That is the proper thing to do. Give them retiring pensions.
As the Deputy knows there are a number of people who are unfit for work and certainly would not be employed. What is the sense in having these people signing up with no further attention being paid to them? I suggested privately and I say it publicly, that it would be far more charitable to everybody concerned and to ourselves to create some form of new register, even if it meant giving these people a slightly increased benefit more than what they are receiving now as unemployed people on assistance.
Then we come to another aspect of it. There are many young people in this city getting employment as messenger boys mainly at 14 years of age when they leave school. When they are 16 and the employer becomes liable to make a contribution to fulfil stamp requirements, he sacks them. Those boys then go and sign on at the exchange with no other knowledge and no other occupation in view than that of being a bicycle messenger boy. I have suggested again to the Minister for Social Welfare that it might be possible to give these young boys some slightly increased benefit in money on the condition that they would attend classes in vocational schools and be taught some form of semi-skilled work, instead of hanging around looking for occupations they cannot get, because as 16-year-old or 17-year-old youth's they certainly will not be considered for the work we want done in the building of houses.
Publicising and shouting that 70,000 people are unemployed is of no avail. Those who shout it either do not know the meaning of the figures or they have not taken the trouble to examine them in their own areas. I know that everybody wants to see people who are willing to work in employment, but there is no use in our attempting to deal with the figure of 70,000 when that number is not there at all. I say here and I say it before Deputy Larkin, who should be the best qualified person in this House to correct or contradict me, that the maximum number of men we can employ on what you call unskilled work will not exceed 4,000.
This is not a new situation. Everybody knows it. Deal with the 20,000 increase.
Deputy Alfred Byrne, apparently, does not know it because he gets up time and again and refers to these 18,000 people as 18,000 heads of families.
Did he do it on this motion? If not, it cannot be discussed now.
It was referred to by Deputy Corish and I promised him I would give him a little analysis of this problem as I understood it.
Why was something not done about it long before now?
Nothing has been done about it before in this House, not even in the three years of the Administration of the Deputy when he was going to abolish unemployment in 24 hours.
I reduced it to the lowest figure ever in this country.
Are we to take it now that if unemployment is, if you like, a sin against any Government of this country, the sin is going to be measured as to whether it affects 50,000 or 70,000 people? Are not the 50,000 just as badly off as the additional 20,000 would be, making it 70,000? What does the Deputy think he will get credit for there? The story of the big baby and the little baby—that is what it amounts to.
For what purpose is the Deputy trying to change the rules at this hour of the day?
I am not trying to change any rules.
The Deputy is trying to say that there are 4,000 unemployed instead of 74,000.
The Deputies opposite are going around screaming things they know to be untrue. There is no such thing as 70,000 unemployed.
There are 74,000. That is the official figure.
The Deputy admits my analysis of the Dublin figure, which reduces it to 4,000 males.
4,000 able-bodied males.
I do not admit the Deputy's analysis. Tell us about the 20,000 increase. That is the point.
I have listened very carefully to everything that has been said. I will go back again to Deputy Costello.
There are 66,000 males unemployed.
Are they grown-up males?
That is the figure in the industrial analysis of the live register as published the day before yesterday.
Then there must be 250,000 unemployed if that figure is correct. Let the Deputy first of all analyse it and, when he has got it clear, he can make a statement. Deputy Costello drew attention to the fact that the 1951 Budget——
66,000 males and 10,000 females; 76,278 persons of whom 66,049 are males and 10,129 females.
Deputy Briscoe is in possession. Deputy Briscoe on the Financial Resolution.
The last Budget to which Deputy Costello referred was 1951-52 and it amounted to £90,000,000. He drew attention to the rapid increase as between that Budget requirement and the present one. It rose in the next year to £93,000,000, then to £111,000,000, then to £108,000,000. But the Deputy did not go back to 1948 when the last Budget was £58,000,000. That was the time the inter-Party groups—singly, because they were not collective then prior to the election; and I exclude the Labour Party from this—were going to reduce taxation by £10,000,000; but in the very next year it went up to £64,000,000; in the year after that to £73,000,000, then to £75,000,000 and then to £90,000,000. Those were the people who were going to reduce taxation by £10,000,000 from £58,000,000.
What has this debate to do with taxation?
We are talking about the Budget.
The Deputy is talking about expenditure, audited net expenditure. He thinks he is talking about taxation, which he is not. We reduced taxation by £6,000,000 the first year we were in office, and we took 6d. off income-tax the year after.
Deputy Briscoe on the Financial Resolution.
I will come to taxation and to the hurt feelings of Deputy Costello about the suggestion that their Budget——
On a point of order. When a Deputy purports to quote an official document and describes it as a record of taxation, when the document is headed, "Audited Expenditure", is it not germane to intervene to say the Deputy is making a slight mistake?
Deputy Briscoe on the Financial Resolution.
I did not make any reference to any document.
The Deputy had the document in his hand and he shook it at us.
I did not make any reference to it. I had the document and I gave round figures from it.
Duncan's Ghost shook his hoary locks at Macbeth.
Shakespeare is not relevant to this Budget debate.
Deputy Dillon says this is a statement showing net audited expenditure on public services. Would the Deputy look at the last column? Estimated expenditure for 1954-1955: how did that become audited? The Deputy did not see that. Look at him now. Surprised! I can be just as smart as the Deputy.
That is not under the heading of audited.
The Deputy stated I was reading from a document showing the net audited expenditure.
Yes, but the last two columns are not under the heading of audited.
I did not subdivide it.
No, but the auditor did.
If the Deputy goes further he will find that 1953-54 is also not under the heading of audited.
Because it is supplementary and, therefore, excluded.
The format of this document is not in question.
Deputy Dillon has carried away with him some memories of the time when he was chairman of the Committee on Public Accounts, but he has lost a lot of his alertness.
Let us get on now with the Financial Resolution.
I was referring to Deputy Costello having indicated to the House that every year since Fianna Fáil came into office, following on the exit of the Coalition Government, national expenditure has gone up.
That is true.
And I am entitled, I think, to make the fair comparison that, notwithstanding the fact that Deputy Costello and his colleagues came in here on a promise that they would reduce taxation by £10,000,000——
Which they did.
——they, in fact, doubled it.
No. We reduced taxation.
I wonder who briefed Deputy Costello to-day. I wonder if it was his prospective colleague standing with him in his own constituency, who is supposed to be an expert on economics?
Who is briefing the Deputy?
I am not briefed by anybody.
The Deputy ought to confine his remarks to people who are in the House.
When a person becomes a candidate in an election he is just as public as anybody else.
Fair enough. He will soon be here to answer the Deputy anyway.
We must be prepared. He has already started his campaign and, in fact, has discussed matters publicly with me. Deputy Costello said, and whether he misunderstood his brief or was a bit tired, I do not know, that all the expenditure in this Budget requirement was coming out of revenue and taxation. I interrupted to ask what about capital borrowings. It is unfair to say that all this money is coming out of taxation. We admit we borrow a great deal for capital purposes; borrowing represents something like £36,000,000 of the expenditure envisaged in this Budget. Has not that been clearly stated? Must I read the particular page for those who burnt the midnight oil studying the Budget but failed to find the proper meaning of certain parts of it?
This Budget brings relief, and I am sure everyone is pleased that it does so, to those who were never intended to belong to the class of income-tax payers, namely, the ordinary working man or the white collar worker on the lower salary scales. The figure of 40,000 has been disputed by Deputy MacBride. He thinks the Minister put that in as a guess. How an ex-Minister could believe that the Revenue Commissioners and the officials of the Department of Finance would permit a Minister to put in a figure which was not correct passes my comprehension. I am glad to see that relief for 40,000 people. I hope that number will be increased. I know it will benefit certain people who were recently making representations to their trade unions because living-in conditions were reckoned a part of their income for income-tax purposes. From the figures which I have seen, this will go a long way to bring some relief there.
Deputy Costello also referred to the saving of £800,000 in expenditure on equipment for the Army. He apparently did not read the Budget statement properly. It shows clearly that, because of the fact that for two years prior to the return of Fianna Fáil, practically nothing was spent in the way of equipping the Army with the materials to make it efficient and reliable, money had to be spent on it. The money was spent and the position has now been retrieved, just as it has been in the case of C.I.E. In the case of the latter, the position has been substantially retrieved and Government expenditure is now drawing to a close. The same is true of the Army, and therefore it is right to create the saving which is represented by the figure that has been mentioned.
Deputy Costello also talked of austerity. I do not know what he calls an austerity Budget, or where austerity ceases. If you are going to make everything cheap you have to start somewhere and go down the line until even the very lowest figure can also be reduced. In view of the fact that consumer goods have to be purchased out of the earnings of the people, there is always a form of austerity, whether it be severe or otherwise. I conscientiously believe, and I am quite satisfied, that once the people understand why it is necessary to have even what appears to be austerity, so long as it is in the best interests of the country generally, it will not be mistaken by them and will be borne by them with goodwill.
The Deputies opposite hope, when they go out, to be able to appeal to what one may call the lower instincts of the people, and are going to make the election, as Deputy Corish said, a bread-and-butter election. I believe that the people, once they understand things, will be quite content to decide for themselves. They will decide as people with a pride in themselves and in their country, and are not going to decide on the basis of the suggestions made here.
Deputy Corish said that we had no right to impose severe conditions on the present generation when concerned with the question of planning ahead; in other words, that it was not right to make this generation bear burdens which were going to bring benefits to posterity. I do not think we would agree with that approach. If one may put it so, it is quite human for parents, for example, to bear burdens so that their children will have at least as good a life as they have had themselves, if not better. It is quite human for them to provide for the training and education of their children. The same is also true of the nation. We just cannot sit here and consider what we can do for ourselves from day to day without having any regard whatever for to-morrow or the generation that is to follow us. We have got to plan ahead. All that is part of our allegiance to the country. We want to make it by whatever means we can, a country in which future generations of Irish people can live happily, and one that will be a proud inheritance from those who went before them. Are we to dissipate every possible means at our disposal by not planning for the future just for the sake of our own immediate welfare? I do not subscribe to that. I would be quite willing to be rejected if I felt that was the opinion of the public, "Live for to-day for to-morrow we die."
There has been talk about prices dropping. There was a kind of groan rather than a cheer when the Minister, in his Budget statement, referred to the fact that there was now a drop, even if only a small one of one point, in the cost of living.
The Minister did not say that in his Budget statement.
What did he say?
Read the statement and you will see. He said that last year was one of the most prosperous in the nation's history.
The cost of living fell and prices generally were being smoothed out.
The cost of high living fell.
What does the Deputy mean by high living?
The Deputy is not so innocent as he looks.
I do not know what the Deputy means by high living. I have heard of people living low lives.
Is the Deputy supposed to finish at 9 o'clock?
I was not given any indication as to when I was to finish. If the Deputy is anxious to get in, perhaps he would listen to me without interrupting. He would then get in all the sooner. When the Minister referred to the fact that there had been a drop of 1 per cent. there were what I would call groans and not cheers. But, at any rate, we will be able to say that there is a beginning in the fall in the cost of living. We have now reached the stage where the peak in the cost of living has been reached, and it is on the way down, through Fianna Fáil.
The Minister for Industry and Commerce said that two years ago.
We have turned the corners and have crossed the hills.
Deputy Morrissey was a member of the Labour Party when ex-President Cosgrave used to say that prosperity was around the corner.
It was a lot nearer to it then than it ever was under this Government.
I come now to the beer reduction. I saw in the paper this evening a statement made by the secretary of one section of the Licensed Vintners' Association, and another statement by the chairman of another group of licensed vintners. I take it that Deputy Morrissey will agree that, if a candidate at the forthcoming election makes a criticism of the Budget, it can be referred to, particularly when it appears in the Evening Herald.
You do not want my permission to refer to your friends.
They are your friends. I have some amongst them, too. This is the report of a special general meeting of the Dublin (City and County) Section of the Licensed Grocers' and Vintners' Association. This meeting was held at the Gresham Hotel to consider the Budget. Mr. J. Hedigan, chairman, presided. The report goes on to say:—
"A statement issued afterwards by Mr. C.E. Reddin, secretary, said that the meeting recorded its emphatic protest against the failure of the Minister to remove the penal duties of 6d. per glass on spirits and 3d. per pint on beer imposed in the Budget of April, 1952, and called on the Government to take steps to do so now."
That is a peremptory statement I must admit:—
"The Minister in his Budget reduced the beer duty by 8/6 per standard barrel. This amounts to 6/- on a barrel of stout as sold to the trade and 5/- per barrel of porter. `It is equivalent to an average of ¼d. per pint on both commodities.'
The Minister stated that the cost of this concession would be £350,000. Divided between the 13,000 licensed establishments in this country the reduction works out at an average of £27 per year for each establishment."
I would like just to stop there. Does anybody believe that that thing is true?
No, it is 5,000 in one case.
That is quite right, it is 5,000 in one case. The Minister has so arranged it—according to this—that publicans are going to get £27 per skull remission. That is nonsense. Some publicans will sell a lot more than others and, consequently, they will have a bigger benefit.
Some dance hall proprietors got a lot more than others also.
I have a note about the dance halls also.
I just wanted to remind you.
I notice the face of the Minister for Finance is getting long.
I noticed no great screaming on the other side of the House because the Minister has, on this occasion, given the public-house owners a concession such as there was in the case of the dance-halls. The Deputies over there are not upset on this occasion.
The Minister himself said it was for the consumers.
I know that for a number of years past since the imposition of these increased duties a certain number of licensed premises were, through their owners, hot-beds of propaganda against Fianna Fáil. The line taken was that this Government was robbing the poor man of the pint, that the Minister was putting his hand in the pockets of the poor workingman whose only luxury was the pint. It now emerges that these same gentlemen who were crying to the public to beat Fianna Fáil—for their own sakes, mark you—had themselves approached the Prices Advisory Body to get permission to increase the price of the beer that they were complaining to their customers about as being too dear. The Minister has now come down on the side of the consumers and has said: "I think the beer is high enough and I would like you to withdraw your application to have the beer go up one penny a glass or a pint, and I will see if I can find some way to meet you." But the only concern of these gentlemen was not that the consumers got the beer any cheaper, but that they themselves got a better margin of profit on the sale of beer. Their grouse now is that it is not enough—not that they want to pass it on. As a matter of fact, I have been asked to ask the Minister to assure the House—and somebody else stated it here to-day—that when the Minister refers to "the brewers may pass this on" that it will be incumbent on the brewers to pass that on to the traders.
Has he answered the question yet?
I am asking it now and I trust he will answer it when he is replying.
People never seem to understand simple language and simple suggestions. I read the Budget speech—or rather I listened to the Minister making the speech because I had not the benefit of reading the speech as it was being delivered and I was not able to look even a few pages ahead so that I would be in a position to make my mind up quickly about something when it came up—but I understood, and I would like to be corrected if I am wrong, that the intention behind this reduction is to prevent the traders approaching the Prices Advisory Body for an increase in beer prices to the consumer and that this concession is intended to meet them.
How is it going to be passed on?
It is not going to be passed on to the consumer.
Oh, I see.
It is going into the pockets of the publican and they want to be sure that it is not going to go into the pockets of the brewers.
Now I suggest the Fianna Fáil Party should stand up and cheer.
The Deputy is making a difficult situation for the Minister much more difficult.
"The Minister sought to attach two conditions to the concession——"—this is what Mr. Reddin says:—"The first was that the trade should not proceed with its application for an increase in retail prices made by the association to the Prices Advisory Body in December last and which was withdrawn pending the Budget, when it was expected that a substantial reduction of duty on beer and spirits would remove any necessity for the trade to increase prices on the public still further." There is nothing about a reduction for the public: it is a case of, "We want it". These are the people who were supporting the inter-Party Government. These are the gentlemen who were abusing Fianna Fáil.
All of them?
No, not all. There are a great many in that organisation who are backing away and who now support us and are not a party to this.
Now, you are letting it out.
They will stop their propaganda.
If you look at your colleagues' faces you will see how you are doing. You are doing well.
"The second condition was implied in a reply made to Deputy Costello by the Minister in the Dáil last night, namely, that the trade should share the ¼d. with the public." I do not think that was stated.
It was not stated.
It was, and it was reported in the papers to-day.
It was not so stated.
The Minister for Health, Dr. Ryan, referred to certain reports in the papers already in the terms which they deserve. I understand the Minister never said anything of the kind.
Has the record been corrected?
Does the Deputy not accept the word of the Minister now?
No.
We have reached a strange stage of order in this House. There was a time when the Chair used to rule that the word of a Minister should be taken by the House.
With your permission, a Cheann Comhairle, I would like to be allowed to intervene in order to clarify Deputy Morrissey's mind on what I was supposed to have said in reply to Deputy Costello. I said nothing of the sort, but Deputy Costello, like the skilled lawyer that he is, tried to put words into my mouth. Deputy Byrne, following on the same line, tried to put the same words into my mouth. I pointed out that I was not managing or running the licensed trade and that the trade was getting this remission and were at liberty to do what they wished with it, but that I did hope they would be fair to the consumer.
Did you not say it was intended for the retailer and the consumer?
I said I hoped they would be fair to the consumer.
I want to correct Deputy Briscoe's reference to the Chair. The attitude of the Chair has not altered in respect of the veracity of any Deputy making a statement in this House. The veracity of every Deputy is accepted. That is the basis of all the discussion.
I am not accepting the Minister's amendment of what he said last night.
Deputy Briscoe has now been speaking for more than an hour. Deputy Aiken had an hour, and is it fair that Deputy Briscoe should take an hour and a quarter when the debate finishes at 5 o'clock to-morrow evening?
It is not proposed to limit Deputies' statements.
Deputy Costello, when he led off, said he had nothing to say on this Budget, that he was going to be very brief and going to deal with only two or three specific items and was rather contemptuous of the whole thing. But as minute followed minute he waxed eloquent and spoke for a considerable period of time.
About half the time you were speaking.
At least, the courtesy of the House was extended to him and he was not interrupted as much as I have been.
We have been very helpful to you.
This reduction in the beer duty is made for the purpose of meeting the request of the licensed traders in order that the public will be protected against their requesting an increase in the price of beer to meet their increased costs. It is a concession similar to what has been done in connection with matches. There are rising costs, possibly because of increased wages or the increased cost of materials and there is this body which Deputy Morrissey has some recollections of anyway.
On a point of order, Deputy Briscoe on at least three occasions has tried to suggest that I have some association with the licensed traders' organisation. I wish I had some association or some contact with that organisation, but I have not. I have very great respect for them though.
Deputy Morrissey is suddenly developing a very thin skin. He knows quite well that I had passed on from our friends, his and mine, the publicans, and I was talking about matches. When I talked about a body that he had some responsibility for I meant the Prices Advisory Body that he and his colleagues set up in order to put the profiteers behind the bars in Mountjoy for overcharging. No one could increase prices without showing just cause. Then he gets up and calls me a publican or something like that.
There was a much earlier reference to publicans and somebody else. The Deputy should tread very lightly when talking about publicans.
I do not know what the Deputy is talking about.
He does not know what I am referring to.
I do not know anything about it. I have never been put out of a pub.
Were you ever caught after hours?
Perhaps if the Deputy were put out of a pub he might know a little bit more about life.
I do not know what you are talking about.
Will Deputy Briscoe deal with the Financial Resolution?
Deputy Corish stated quite frankly that their Party, in whatever numbers they came back, would be concerned with reducing the cost of living. I asked Deputy Corish had he any idea as to how this could be done or in what way it was to be done. Deputy Corish reminded me of certain questions which had been put to the Tánaiste and to the Minister for Social Welfare when in opposition and the answer which they then gave, which was, if you like, "no information". But the fact is that the cost of living from the Government point of view can only be reduced when the Government are prepared to subsidise a number of commodities. If you are to reduce the cost of living and you have to employ the subsidy method, then the money has to be secured from somebody and somebody has to pay taxes for it.
The statement made by Fine Gael that they can reduce the cost of living and also reduce taxation is beyond the comprehension of anybody. It is true that a certain spokesman of Fine Gael in answer to a challenge by me said that if the price of beer and whiskey were brought sufficiently low the consumption would be so increased that there would be a means of reducing taxation even if portion of the income from the duties was used for subsidies. My answer to that is that I would hate to think that the future prosperity of this country was to be based upon the policy that the more the people drink the better off they will be.
It is a good tourist attraction.
It may be, but I am not prepared to subscribe to the policy that for the sake of reduced taxation and a lower cost of living the price of drink should be made so cheap that we would develop a drink-sodden race of people. We now come to the references made to social security.
Has the Deputy been put up to block out debate on the Budget?
Of course he has.
That is a fair question.
I have not been put up to block anything.
I will take the Deputy's word.
I give you my word. I made a number of notes while others were speaking, 28 pages altogether.
Tell us what page you are at.
I am at page 15.
Then I will have time for a cup of tea.
Pages 16, 17, 18 and 19 were dealt with by me in relation to Deputy MacBride.
You are at the last page then?
The second last. I think this is a good Budget, and from what I have heard from people I have met I think it has been very well received by most of our people. If an attempt had been made to deceive the people by a Budget that was not honest that deception would be found out before May 18th and we would have to pay the price for it. The people to-day are a great deal more educated in regard to municipal and State matters, and they are able to make up their minds as to what is best for themselves and for the country as a whole.
I am glad to see that in this Budget adequate provision is made to enable the City of Dublin to complete as rapidly as possible its housing programme. I am glad to see that provision is made to meet the increased demand for money by persons building houses under the Small Dwellings (Acquisition) Act. I am glad to see that the so-called myth of the National Development Fund is there in all its glory. As we know, it is operating in our area to the great satisfaction of these people, and bringing relief to numbers of people, and I am glad that provision has been made so that this will be continued for some considerable time. I am glad to see that provision has been made for extended health services for our people and for improved social welfare conditions. I shall be quite happy to go amongst my constituents without fear and tell them that I stand for a Party that is doing its best for everybody in this community and, particularly, for those who are least able to look after themselves, namely, the masses of our working people.
I believe that the Fianna Fáil Party recoiled from debate in this House on their financial record and the proposals they now make in this Budget.
I accept Deputy Briscoe's assurance that he was not consciously employed to prevent that debate, but I assure him that he was invited to intervene for no other purpose than to frustrate debate; and I invite him to read the report in the Official Report of this House of what he himself has said over the last hour and a half, and I defy him to read it through, because there was neither head nor tail to it, end or beginning.
Not even the interruptions?
No. I want to say at once that if this Budget statement is a true record of the financial condition of this country then we all might as well make up our minds to it at once, we are in a bad way. I want to ask the House to inquire what has happened to put us in a bad way. Three short years ago it was pretty generally believed, not only by our own people but by foreign observers who came here to see, that Ireland and her people were better off and had a better prospect than they had had for generations past. The wind did not cease to blow since 1951, nor the rivers cease to run, nor the grass cease to grow in Ireland. What has happened that has reduced us to the condition set out in this Budget statement? Consider what that condition is. We are invited to welcome tax remissions for the benefit of income-tax payers, publicans and match manufacturers, and the further subsidisation of bread, out of a fund consisting of £1,000,000 to be levied from the profits of C.I.E., other specific reductions of £950,000, general overestimation and savings, £4,000,000, a reduction in Army equipment of £800,000; and I ask the House was there ever a shakier foundation on which to found a Budget surplus of £30,000 than the £7,400,000 revenue that I have read out.
Let us begin with the £1,000,000 from C.I.E. C.I.E. are to contribute £1,000,000 to the Exchequer this year. C.I.E. was down in County Cork last week, eight members of its management committee, explaining to the people of a country town in Cork that, as there was a saving available to C.I.E. of £8,000 a year by closing down a branch line, which would involve every farmer who sold a beast in that town in the loss of 25/- a head, they could not keep the branch line open for another month. Their resources would not permit them to do so; but they are going to provide £1,000,000 for the relief of the Exchequer. How are these two tales to be reconciled to the taxpayers of this country? A rural community in Cork is to contribute 25/- a head on every beast they sell because C.I.E. cannot find £8,000 to operate the branch line, but the Minister for Finance says that his Budget surplus of £30,000 is founded on the confident expectation that out of their surplus profit this year they will provide him with £1,000,000. What is the meaning? We all know that is cod, but, mind you, there is a sinister element in the cod. Do not forget the record of this Government. Do not forget the havoc which Deputy MacEntee, Minister for Finance, deliberately wrought upon our people in order to discredit his predecessors. Do not forget that the Taoiseach, Deputy de Valera, and the Minister for Finance, Deputy MacEntee, were warned in this House again and again and again that the policy of the 1952 Budget meant throwing thousands into unemployment. They denied it, but the event proved that they were wrong, and they now admit that by providing relief works to draw back into employment those whom they cast into unemployment. They cannot bring back the emigrants. They are gone. Either that Government were not fit for their job if they did not understand that of which we warned them, or they did it with malice aforethought; and I say that that is the way they did it. They were not primarily concerned to throw men out of employment; but they were primarily concerned to denigrate those of us who had gone before them and they wanted to prove that the Ministers of the inter-Party Government were irresponsible and profligate, and for that base purpose they wrought great evil on our people.
Remember it is the same principle that actuates their allegation that this year's Budget can be balanced on a contribution of £1,000,000 from C.I.E., which says with the approval of the Minister for Industry and Commerce that they cannot find £8,000 to keep a branch line open in County Cork, because when that £1,000,000 does not inure to our administration when we take over from Fianna Fáil after the general election, the failure of C.I.E. to produce that money will be charged against them as a failure in the discharge of their duty in the management of C.I.E. Now listen. Surely the time for wreaking havoc on this country in order to vent private spites ought to be over. Surely if the picture contained in this Budget speech be true I have a right to ask the Minister for Finance how often does Fianna Fáil claim the right to take over this country, wreck it, and hand it back to somebody else to build up again? I say that this is the third time that Fianna Fáil has taken over this country, wrecked it, and is now about to hand it over to somebody else to try to get them to build it up again. There is no country on the face of God's earth which can stand a repetition of that performance.
I want to say that if I believed in the literal truth of the picture here portrayed I would have the gloomiest anticipation of the future of this country and all of us living in it. But I am encouraged to believe that when we take over the Government of this country much more will be possible than now appears possible under the dispensation of Fianna Fáil; and I am encouraged in that belief by my recollection of what the present Tánaiste and Minister for Industry and Commerce had to say in Letterkenny on September 14th, 1947. The Minister said on September 14th, 1947:—
"We are now entering four years of most acute difficulty in which economic disaster will threaten on every side."
Now that was his vision of the years from 1947 to 1951. We then took over the Government. Let us read the record of the economic disaster which he foresaw threatened on every side. Exports in 1947 were £39,000,000; in 1948, £49,000,000; in 1949, £60,000,000; in 1950, £62,000,000; in 1951, £81,000,000; in 1952, £101,000,000 and in 1953, £105,000,000. Who was right and who was wrong? We reduced taxation in that first year by £6,000,000. We took off the taxation that Deputy Aiken, the then Minister for Finance, imposed in the autumn of 1947, taxes designed to draw £6,000,000 into the Exchequer. In addition to that we reduced the rate of income-tax by 6d. in the £ and we increased the allowances for a variety of categories of persons under the income-tax code. Yet we had it to tell that while in 1947 the total outlay on education in this country was £6,000,000, in 1951, after we had reduced taxation and after we had surmounted the economic disasters which Deputy Lemass foresaw as surrounding us on every side, we found £9,000,000 per annum for education. In 1947 the charge for old age pensions was £3,700,000. After we had reduced taxation, the charge in 1951 and in the years thereafter was £7,021,000. The charge which fell on the Exchequer in 1947 for widows' and orphans' pensions was £798,000. After we had reduced taxation and surmounted this disastrous period, the charge in 1951 was £1,756,000. In 1946, the payment of State grants for housing amounted to £609,000 for the whole country; in 1947 it was £812,000; in 1948, £1,184,000; in 1949, £1,976,000; in 1950, £3,817,000; and in 1951, the last year of our administration, it was £5,806,000.
The gross agricultural output of this country rose from £111,000,000 in 1947 to £156,000,000 in 1952. Now remember this was the out-turn of four years which Deputy Lemass, the Tánaiste, had warned us in Letterkenny were going to be years of the most acute difficulty in which economic disaster would threaten on every side. The national income in 1947 was £300,000,000; in 1951 it was £373,000,000 and in 1952, £404,000,000. When we took office we found a situation in which there were fewer live stock on the land of Ireland than at any recorded time before in the 20th century, but during these four years we exported 405,000 cattle in 1948, 523,000 cattle in 1949, 591,000 cattle in 1950, 642,000 cattle in 1951 and 739,000 cattle in 1952. In the year, for which disaster was prophesied there were 3,900,000 cattle on the land. We increased our exports of cattle in every year and yet at the end of these four years, four years of presaged disaster, there were 4,037,000 cattle left on the land. Deputies may ask how did it come to pass. Because by our exertions, with the collaboration of the farmers, in three short years we had reduced the annual slaughter of calves which had taken place every year during the 16 years of Fianna Fáil administration from 80,000 calves a year to 8,000. The cattle that did not die constituted the wealth which went to build up these exports and contribute to the national income.
I quote these figures, not only to challenge Deputies in this House but to provide myself with the reassurance that the job that lies ahead is possible. I conceive that Fianna Fáil in the last three years has done immense damage. I recoil from the prospect of sharing in the task of trying to repair it but I plead the events of these four years, the subject of Deputy Lemass's prophecy, as a justification for hoping that we may yet succeed.
I ask some Deputy on the Fianna Fáil Benches to answer this question before the debate ends. After all the suffering that has been imposed—and no one will challenge that there has been a good deal since 1951—who is better off? What section of our community is better off to-day than it was in 1951? I think I am entitled to an answer. Is it not a striking thing that Fianna Fáil has the effrontery to allege against their predecessors that they burdened the people with taxes and that they prejudiced the integrity of the State by profligate finance, when the record is that the average amount collected for central taxation and by local authorities was about £82,000,000 in each of the three years, 1949-50, 1950-51 and 1951-52, and that that average figure has risen from £82,000,000 to £102,000,000 for the three years 1951-52 to 1953-54, and is still going up? Fianna Fáil would have us believe that the inter-Party Government was profligate in expenditure which led to to-day's standards. Let us define what is fundamental. There are two fundamentals in public finance. One is that annual recurring expenditure must be met out of annual recurring revenue; and the second and equally important canon of public finance is that it is not the amount which the State borrows that really matters, what matters is the purposes on which borrowed money is spent.
I challenge Fianna Fáil to mark down one single purpose for which we borrowed money to spend, which has not justified itself a thousand times. I invite Deputies of the Fianna Fáil Party now to go out and look at the projects on which a great deal of the so-called National Development Fund is being spent at the present moment, under the over-all orders to county surveyors to take down everything and spend money on everything but to spend it before the general election. Look at the footpaths wandering out into the countryside; look at the corners being excavated on the main roads of this country; contemplate the picture of the autobahn to Bray. Then I ask Fianna Fáil to ask themselves this question: "By that canon of finance, on what is the borrowed money being spent?" Their record is disreputable and they know it. The humiliation is that these relief works have been called into being to provide the livelihood for men who had permanent work three years ago and who are now chronically on the dole.
I do not know what reckonings Deputy Briscoe is able to make that half the people attending at the employment offices are cripples. I understood that people disabled by chronic ill health were entitled to get benefits under the Social Welfare Act as chronically sick people. I did not understand that anyone who was chronically sick was eligible for registration at the employment exchange. I understood he was entitled to receive benefit under what used to be called national health insurance.
Outdoor relief.
Is not a person chronically ill able to get benefit if his stamps are correct?
Not if he is over 70.
But is he entitled to be registered at the exchange if he is over 70?
He gets the old age pension.
Deputy Briscoe paints the picture that half the entire roll at the labour exchange in Dublin consists of old and crippled men who are not fit for work.
If you are past 60——
The Deputy and myself are nearly 60 now and we are well able to work. Or are we already ordered to the scrap-heap? A doctrine seems to be growing up around us now of a kind I never heard of before. I do not want to see any man who is sick or ill forced to labour, but it is an entirely new method to me for expunging the problem of unemployment, to say that those who are old and sick are all unfit for work. Maybe some of them are. I do not believe it is true that the bulk of the people registering at the labour exchanges ought not to be registered.
I want to warn this Dáil and the country of a very grave development of which we heard only to-day under the pressure of strong interrogation. Did any Deputy in this House know before to-day that the Trade Agreement of 1948, in so far as it applied to cattle and sheep, has been abrogated and that we have no agreement now? I did not know it. The Trade Agreement of 1948 with Great Britain in respect of cattle and sheep has been abrogated and we have no agreement now. We are simply in the position that we trade on the British market as best we can. I do not want to suggest for a moment that the Tánaiste or the Minister for Agriculture were actuated by any evil motive in accepting that position. I do not know their mind and I was not in their confidence. I know that when we made the 1948 agreement the preamble to it envisaged that there was mutual collaboration to maximise production and supplies of live stock and meat products from Ireland to the British market and to that joint purpose we jointly put our hand by the agreement of 1948.
Now, the present Minister for Agriculture says: "How can you carry on that agreement on an uncontrolled market?" But I made an agreement on identical terms for pigs and bacon in June, 1951, and that agreement is being carried on. It was expressed to operate until 1956. The Minister for Agriculture says to-day that when they were in London the question of pigs, pork and bacon was raised and that they carried conviction to the minds of the British Government that the British Government was bound by the agreement of 1951 up to and including 1956, and that although they were decontrolling pork, bacon and pigs this summer, they still had obligations which they must discharge under the terms of the agreement they signed with me in 1951. If it is possible to carry out the 1951 Trade Agreement in the new conditions, with suitable adaptation, in respect of pigs, bacon and pork, why was it not possible to renew the 1948 Trade Agreement, with similar suitable adaptation, to cover cattle, beef, sheep, mutton and lamb? Do not forget that as a result of the pig and bacon agreement our pigs are fetching 236/- per cwt., while the continental pig is fetching in exactly the same market about 189/-.
Are we wise to have let go, if it were possible to retain, the provisions of the 1948 Trade Agreement? Perhaps it was that the Tánaiste and the Minister for Agriculture were met with a blank refusal when they went to London. Did they use the weapons that we had left with them in pressing the British to honour the spirit of their bargain— that was, to do in respect of cattle, sheep, mutton and beef what they have been constrained to do by the terms of the 1951 agreement in respect of bacon, pork and pigs? Do not let any of us here say that the fault is to be laid at the door of our Ministers for I do not know and I do not want to minimise their difficulties or increase the difficulty of the task that lies ahead. But, does not the Minister for Finance and does not the Taoiseach think that the House is entitled to be told?
Before departing from that subject, I want to say—the Minister for Agriculture should take occasion to say it, too—I do not believe that the abrogation of the cattle provisions or the sheep provisions of the 1948 Trade Agreement will develop in any early collapse in the price of cattle or of sheep and influential warning should be given to our people forthwith not to be tricked, jockeyed or deceived into throwing their cattle away in the apprehension that the price is likely to collapse at an early date. I do not believe it will, and I do not believe it would be legitimate for any of us to spread that rumour abroad in order to persuade our people to vote one way or the other to their own detriment.
I remember too bitterly the vicious activities of certain Fianna Fáil Deputies in East Donegal when they went amongst their own neighbours and persuaded them to throw their modest modicum of oats on the market and sell them for half their value only to buy them back at twice their price the following spring just because they wanted to get votes. Do not do that to the small farmers of this country now for any reason. It is the duty of us all rather to sustain and protect them from any attempt to exploit them.
The Minister for Agriculture has probably learned from his improvident winding up of Eggsports how easy it is for the rapacious to exploit our people. Do not let him stand wringing his hands and flapping while he says that while he knows the people are being exploited, he can do nothing about it. I never was so humiliated as when I saw an Irish Minister for Agriculture stand in that place and wring his hands and say that he knew that eggs were being bought for 18d. a dozen by unscrupulous people who were exploiting our people but that he could not do anything about it. Do not let him have that tale to tell again. He has only got six weeks to go. Let him contrive to look like a Minister for Agriculture in the meantime in any case.
He did not present a very pretty figure as he trotted to London with his fingers twined in the tail of the Tánaiste's coat but as he came back carrying his bag and looking obsequious beside him as the Tánaiste announced the agricultural policy of the future, I was sorry that he made himself party to what seemed to me to have been a deliberate deception of our people. I exhort him to exert himself now to prevent the damage that may be done by his fraudulent conduct that unscrupulous people should try to avail of it to exploit our people as some egglers did to exploit the egg producers of this country.
I want to know, and I think I have a right to know from the Government before this debate ends, why was it not possible to keep the 1948 Trade Agreement in respect of cattle and sheep in being in the new conditions when it has been admitted as being perfectly simple to keep the pigs and bacon agreement functioning, albeit on a free and uncontrolled market?
I want to refer briefly and indeed in conclusion to a few of the more outstanding observations of the Minister for Finance in this Budget statement:
"The year which has just closed has been one of the most prosperous in the nation's history."
May I suggest to Fianna Fáil T.D.s, hoary and new, that they would stimulate a great deal of interest in their election meetings if they would open them all by saying: "The year which has just closed has been one of the most prosperous in the nation's history"? May I suggest to them a canvassing slogan in the towns and villages: "It has been a year of increased trade and higher incomes"? I urge the Deputies, when they canvass Killybegs, say, or even Ballyshannon, Donegal, Kilcar, just to put their heads inside the door and say: "It has been a year of increased trade and higher incomes." There will be a lot of glassware broken in Kilcar if you do that. I beg of you to listen to this — page 4: —
"In an effort to stimulate the use of fertilisers and raise agricultural output substantially, the Government made arrangements to ensure the availability to farmers generally of credit for the purchase of fertilisers. The co-operation of the commercial banks to this end was readily secured and a special scheme was inaugurated by the Department of Agriculture..."
I wish to God you would line up the farmers who got credit from the joint stock banks under that scheme. Who knows a farmer who got credit under that scheme from the joint stock banks? The preliminary qualification was that he should be a credit-worthy farmer. Why should not a bank give credit to a credit-worthy farmer? What compliment was it to the Government? What else are they there for? How else do they make their money except by levying interest on credit-worthy farmers?
Just picture the Taoiseach and the Minister for Agriculture, again with his fingers twisted, this time in the coat tails of the Taoiseach, not the Tánaiste, meeting the bankers to know would they provide credit for the farmers, the bankers saying "Certainly sir, we will provide credit to credit-worthy farmers" and the Taoiseach saying: "Oh, that is awfully decent of you, my dear fellows, very kind. I will issue a statement to the papers. Thank you," and the bankers saying: "Not at all, not at all. Good morning sir, good morning." Really, life in this country almost reaches circus proportions.
Did you see the picture in the paper of the Taoiseach and the Minister for Agriculture, the Minister for Agriculture looking up with adoring eyes and the Taoiseach looking benevolently on the bankers and the bankers saying: "Certainly sir, certainly"? Thanks be to God, when the bankers came to visit us there was very little gratitude from one side of the table, and there was very little "certainly, sir" until late in the evening.
Page 10 of this document: —
"The recent negotiations undertaken by the Tánaiste and the Minister for Agriculture have been eminently successful and have removed much of the uncertainty as to the course of cattle prices after the British meat market is decontrolled. In fact, the agreement which was reached assures to Irish live stock the benefit of full British market prices."
We then asked the Minister for Agriculture: "What agreement?" and, if I may be pardoned for the vernacular, he said in substance: "Damn fool, there could not be an agreement", quite oblivious of the fact that the Minister for Finance had announced in his Budget statement that there was an agreement, that they made an agreement. Do I exaggerate when I say that the Minister for Agriculture to-day said that it was obvious to the meanest intellect that in the new circumstances there could not be an agreement? Is not that so? Would I be unduly severe if I described that paragraph in the Budget statement as being disingenuous?
Told to him by a rabbit.
I want to turn to page 22 of the Budget statement. Do you remember when Deputy Aiken used to say that the inter-Party Government had gone on a spending spree, that they had become intoxicated and had scattered public money far and wide? Listen to what the Minister for Finance has to say in this year of grace: —
"The record of national development in recent years is very satisfactory, not only because of extensive progress achieved but also because of the degree to which it has been defrayed from current savings.... The fruits of this capital investment are already appearing in the development of native fuel and power, in better roads and communications, in new houses in their thousands to replace unsuitable dwellings, improved amenities in the home and in farm and factory, modern schools and hospitals and more employment."
He did not think it right to include in that category the land rehabilitation project or the work of the Department of Agriculture — but my poor successor is so accustomed to getting kicked about the floor that he did not seem to mind.
A great deal of the capital spent in recent years has been spent on the land of Ireland. Is it not typical of the Fianna Fáil mentality that they referred to the houses, the farm and the factory, roads and communications, fuel and power, but that they never mentioned the land?
What is a farm?
It can be the kitchen or the building. The Minister talks of the "improved amenities in the home and in farm and factory". Does the Deputy call land rehabilitation an amenity? I call water in the kitchen, light in the bedroom, power in the byre, an amenity, perhaps, but it is not the land — and it is because Fianna Fáil do not believe in the land that they forget the land. It is true. To Fianna Fáil, progress, development and the creation of wealth means the building of a factory. It does not matter that the factory is for the purpose of assembling lipsticks. It does not matter that the factory, so called, is for the purpose of putting Aspro on a string. If it is a factory, if it is a building standing in a city, we are all meant to go out, uncover our heads and bow down to development. But if it is the land — what do Fianna Fáil care for the land? In their judgment, any business——
Mr. Brennan
Has the Deputy read the reference to wheat? He has a very important reference to wheat.
Yes, he has a reference to the fact that it cost him £1,000,000 to produce wheat this year which we shall have to sell abroad for half the price it cost us to grow it. Yes, there ought to be 3,500,000 to 4,000,000 barrels of wheat off this year's crop of wheat. Eating all of it we can, we will consume 3,000,000 of them but we shall have 1,000,000 barrels to reduce to seed or to sell abroad. The French are selling wheat to-day in London at £25 a ton.
Mr. Brennan
So you will not continue it?
We will continue, as we continued before, a guaranteed price for wheat. May I remind the House that I was only one week in office when I told every agricultural committee in this country that our Government's conception of democracy was not the size of the majority the Government had to govern but the degree of respect it showed for the feelings of the minority they defeated? Therefore, to carry assurance to the most obscurantist Fianna Fáil devotee in this country, we guaranteed the price of wheat, not for one year but for five years. Were we right? We were right, because we wanted to show them that in our hands they were safe, unlike the fate our friends experienced when Fianna Fáil were in power — their fences broken down, the gates opened, and civic guards——
And their cattle seized.
Yes. Page 26 of the Minister's Budget speech describes the adoption by the Minister for Finance of the Capital Budget Plan. I quote this sentence from page 27: —
"The White Paper shows that against a prospective revenue of £106,558,000 there is set, after deduction of £14,362,000 for capital services, a possible expenditure on Central Fund and Supply Services of £111,335,000."
Did you ever see somebody swallow a camel with less of a grunt? Even Deputy Beegan, who now sits judicially in the Minister's place, was moved to paroxysms of righteous wrath in 1950 when the capital Budget procedure was introduced in this House. He wept to see depravity in Government finance bring a Government of Ireland so low. What has happened? Why has he changed his mind? Has he been educated or has he determined to collaborate and to live in sin?
Like many people, I have indeed, for my education.
For a moment I thought that, like so many others, he had decided to live in sin. However, it relieves me to hear that, like so many others, he has received education. It is a very heavy burden to conduct his education at this time of Deputy Beegan's life but, you know, I suppose it is something we ought to be proud of though I am not——
There is not so much between us.
That is quite true. However, I should regard it as a serious reflection on me if anybody suggested that Deputy Beegan educated me. If Deputy Beegan says that I educated him, not only on the facts of life, but on rectitude and on standards of conduct, it is a revelation. But we cannot go on doing it at this expense time and time again. I want to refer to what I said at the beginning. This is the third time Fianna Fáil have wrecked this country and have proceeded to pass it on.(Interruption from the Gallery.) It is the like of you who would do it. I hope the Taoiseach recognises that it is not only his opponents up in the Gallery——
You cannot accuse the Taoiseach of planting that interrupter in the Gallery.
I do not grudge him his enthusiastic friend.
He was not very enthusiastic.
I like somebody who is loyal in adversity. Any man who has the spunk in him to say: "Up Dev." finds a soft corner in my heart. There is something decent about a fellow who sticks to the ship when it is going down and I like him better than the rat that skips off when he sees it is sinking — and, God knows, there are plenty of rats. There are fellows who salute me now when I walk the streets who have not seen me in the past five years. Every old political barometer in Dublin City is getting a cold in his head now from saluting me but, so far as I am concerned, they can keep their hats on. I have much more respect for the poor goof who has just been thrown out of the gallery.
I want to draw the Taoiseach's attention to this, because it is a grave matter. It has been a source of boasting on the part of the Minister for Finance and, indeed, of the Taoiseach himself that the adverse trade balance has improved, and it did. After the stockpiling done by our Government, increased agricultural exports plus the running down of accumulated stocks did effect a very striking improvement. I would ask the Taoiseach to look at the first three months of this year. Remember, when looking at the first three months of this year, import prices have been moving in our favour and export prices have remained pretty stable. They are pretty stable still because the volume of eggs going out has been trivial to date.
The adverse trade balance figures in the first three months of this year are up by £2,800,000 and the trend appears to be for them to rise. Bear this in mind: there stands between this country and utter disaster nothing but the capacity of our farmers to export profitably. This Party has said again and again that one of its prime purposes is to bring down the cost of living, because, unless you can bring down the cost of living, you cannot bring down the cost of agricultural production. Now that the Minister for Agriculture accepts the proposition that he is no longer able to influence the price of our live stock on the British market, remember that, unless our costs of production come down to meet the costs of our competitors in that market our profit margin may disappear and with the disappearance of our profit margin in that market, our exports will dwindle, and, should they dwindle, industrial activity will virtually come to an end in this country for want of raw material.
There is nothing between us and that dialectic leading to stagnation but the capacity of our farmers to produce profitably.
Produce more and import less — no wheat and no maize.
Surely the Minister will agree with me that the basic thing is to produce more of what we can export profitably?
Mr. Walsh
And import less. You do not like that.
That does not matter a damn. Why does the Minister for Agriculture say that it is a good and a desirable thing for Gentex in Athlone to bring cotton from Carolina and process it into cotton cloth for export to Great Britain or America——
Mr. Walsh
Why bring in £5,000,000 worth of wheat?
If it is good to bring in cotton from Carolina and process it in Athlone for export to Great Britain and the United States, why is it wrong——
Mr. Walsh
£5,000,000 worth of wheat from America.
——to bring in the raw material of increased agricultural livestock production, process it on a 25-acre farm and ship it to the United States of America or Great Britain for a profit? Why is it wrong to have a factory on a 25-acre farm, if it is desirable to have a factory in the town or village to be subsidised by the Exchequer?
Mr. Walsh
Sell in the dearest and buy in the cheapest market, and drive the people out of the country.
Why it it that the Minister will not only promote that, but is prepared to give £70,000 of a free grant to a factory in Kiltimagh to bring in tailors' clippings from Bradford, process them into shoddy yarn and ship the yarn to England for manufacture and congratulate the people who are giving industrial employment in that way? Why is it something to be subsidised, praised and admired to do that in a town or city, and why is it a crime, why is it wrong, for the small farmer, by his enterprise, to use all the stuff he can produce on his own 25 acres, and then bring in more raw material and process that on his little 25-acre factory and ship it at a profit to America or Great Britain? Why can we not think of the land of this country and the people who live on it as having the capacity to expand and expand and to build up greater and greater exports on which to build a higher and higher standard of living?
Mr. Walsh
And less imports.
What imbecility this is! What is the purpose of exporting, if not to import? Why send your goods to England, if you do not intend to get back from England something in exchange? Would the Minister have us feed them with pork, beef, eggs, butter, chocolate crumb and bacon and then say to them: "Write in your book that you owe us £100,000,000, £200,000,000, £400,000,000, £600,000,000 or £800,000,000," and every time we try to bring back £100,000,000 of it in the shape of goods our people want, to say: "No—import less and export more". Where does that lead to? If you are going to go on exporting and always importing less, does it not mean that the very substance of our people is ultimately going to be located in the bank vaults of New York, London and Paris?
What is the purpose of exporting, if not to enable our people to raise their own standard of living by commanding the services and supplies of the greater section of the world? What is the purpose of sending the product of our labour to foreigners, if it is not to make them labour for us? Is that not the whole end of international trade and is it not our purpose surely to manufacture here in Ireland, whether it be foodstuff or anything else, that which will command a price in foreign countries which will equip our people to command these foreign countries to furnish us with the things we want?
Mr. Walsh
Why should we not produce from our land what it can produce?
Exactly, and then add to that as much more raw materials, manufacture them, too, and ship them out, because the more we ship out, the more we are entitled to bring in, and the more we are entitled to bring in and able to pay for, the higher becomes the standard of living of all our people and the more employment we give in city and town.
Mr. Walsh
We lost 50,000 people from the land and 500,000 acres while you were sitting over here.
The Minister should buy a halfpenny book with the first halfpenny he saves on the loaf after 1st June.
It is suicide — utter economic suicide — to say that we should export more and more and import less and less. I beg the Minister to pause some night and ask himself what is the logical end of that. Is it not that we should ultimately convert all the wealth, actual and potential, of our people into sterile deposits abroad because we would not use them to purchase the things we wanted? Let him ask himself the question: what is the purpose of exporting at all? Surely the only purpose of exporting is to enable ourselves to import. Why else send your goods abroad? Let him ask himself does he now realise the economic insanity into which he has allowed himself to drift. Does he understand the meaning of the doctrine he lays down — export more and import less? The ideal to which he aims is that we should export everything and import nothing. Is that not the end? He says: "Export more and import less". Carry that to its logical conclusion and we reach a stage at which we export everything and import nothing.
What about the dangerous balance of payment trend about which the Deputy was talking?
Is the Taoiseach trying to come to the Minister's rescue?
The Taoiseach is an old dog for the hard road and he knows the Minister for Agriculture is making a fool of himself. I do not want to rub the Minister's agricultural nose in his own folly, but the trouble is that a great many simple colleagues of his accept these idiotic aphorisms as truth and there are amongst his friends— perhaps he himself believes it — those who believe that it is a sound aphorism to say: "Export more and import less", but it is standing on your head economically.
Mr. Walsh
Mind you, it pays good dividends.
Exactly, and that is where the Minister has gone daft. He would sooner invest money at 2 per cent. with the British Government and say: "Look at my lovely 2 per cent." than buy with the money the materials wherewith to employ, to house and to hospitalise our people or develop our land.
We were giving £5,000,000 of a gift to Britain at one time and there was no protest made by Deputies opposite.
Is the Parliamentary Secretary now referring to the land annuities?
Let us get back to the Budget.
Let us get back to the aphorism so aptly voiced by the Minister for Agriculture. Let us export more and more and import less and less.
Mr. Walsh
Of the articles we can produce ourselves.
Of course, it is time that the Minister for Agriculture mended his hand a little. Pop has just said "turn" and when Pop says "turn" you all turn together. As I know, Pop does not often get caught in a controversy of this kind. He tipped the wink to the Minister for Agriculture to mend his hand as he was getting into trouble. I sympathise with the Minister for Agriculture. It is economic imbecility of that kind which has made Fianna Fáil what it is. It is the belief in Fianna Fáil that there is a virtue in an aphorism of that kind which has wrought the economic havoc for which Fianna Fáil is responsible in this country. I think, as I think they think, they are finished.
I noted the Minister for Education in this morning's paper thanked God that the miseries he experienced as Minister for Education were shortly to be ended by the general election.
Mr. Walsh
Could the Deputy give an explanation as to the volume of output from 1950 to 1951 under his direction?
I am talking about——
Mr. Walsh
The Deputy is talking about something.
I am in possession. I am now talking about the disintegration of the Fianna Fáil Party. I have only five minutes left. I talked about a wide variety of topics.
Mr. Walsh
To-morrow is a new day.
I now propose to talk about the disintegration of the Fianna Fáil Party. I noted the Minister for Justice said that he proposed to postpone certain decisions so that his successor might have the responsibility of making them. I notice that Fianna Fáil has made up its mind that it is going to quit. I think it is good for the country that Fianna Fáil is going to quit.
The Deputy said the same thing about Sinn Féin one time.
I rather welcome Deputy Killilea's intervention. His second cousin interrupted me in Ballygar last Monday and I venture to assert that his second cousin will not interrupt me again for a long time to come. Deputy Killilea is welcome to interrupt just as his charming second cousin was in Ballygar.
The Deputy got a poor reception in Ballygar. The Deputy will not go to Ballygar for a while again. He got his answer.
I found the people, including Deputy Killilea's second cousin, extremely agreeable. I think Fianna Fáil is folding up. I prophesied two years ago that the general election would be held in June. I think it would have been held in June but for the two by-elections. I think the plan was that the present Taoiseach was to retire in June and hand over to Deputy Lemass, Minister for Industry and Commerce.
It is not the first time the Deputy prophesied that.
I think what I say is true.
I cannot see that this has anything to do with the Budget?
I think it has.
It has nothing to do with the Budget.
I think it has. Fianna Fáil's whole economic philosophy has brought them to the country now. I think they have done an infinity of damage to the people and the country. I admit that if I believed their diagnosis of the situation was accurate, I would recoil from any part in the responsibility of setting right what is wrong, but it is in the belief that they are as wrong now about the true state of affairs as their Tánaiste was in November, 1947, that I think we have a right to hope that with the final disappearance of Fianna Fáil we can make this country a decent place for decent people to live in. I look forward to the five years after this general election, when the land can be exploited and when the people can make a living on it and get from it the highest standard of living enjoyed by any agricultural community in the world.
It was most interesting for me to watch the attempt of the Leader of the Opposition to do the trick of standing on two horses without real reins while the horses were turned in opposite directions. I am sure he envied some of his predecessors in the leadership of Fine Gael who had, at least, only one horse to manage and not two. In those days to throw my mind back I could imagine——
If the Taoiseach would allow me to interrupt. It is now 28 minutes past ten and if the Taoiseach would like to report progress I am sure no one would object.
Let him finish the story about the horse.
Mr. Walsh
We like to have a little sanity after all the insanity.
It is a matter of complete indifference to me whether I have the next three or four minutes. If it was going to save the House and myself the need of any repetition and in order that when we resume to-morrow my initial statement might be connected, I would be willing to report progress but if there is anybody who wants to listen now——
Oh, yes.
——I am quite prepared to go on.
Téirigh ar aghaidh ansin.
Yes. As regards the attitude of the Leader of the Opposition, I said I was sure he envied some of his predecessors in Fine Gael who occupied that seat and who had at least only one horse to ride, or stand on its back circus fashion, and knew exactly what he was doing and where he was going. He did not have to use two contradictory sets of arguments.
I can easily imagine what his predecessors would have said had a Budget of this character been introduced in these days, but Fine Gael has changed its position and now they have to try to reconcile two things that are not reconcilable. They have to try, on the one hand, to suggest that there can be a considerable reduction in expenditure and, on the other hand, that there can be considerable development both of a capital nature and in social services.
These two things are not compatible, and those who say at the present time that they are going to have a Coalition are deceiving two sets of supporters. They are deceiving, in the first place, those to whom they promise a considerable reduction in expenditure and in the second place they are going to deceive those to whom they promise a considerable advance in social services and considerable development in capital formation.
Progress reported; Committee to sit again.