The Deputy's phrase was then (Parliamentary Debates, Volume 35, No. 2, column 426, of 4th June, 1930):
"...we find that the outstanding fact concerning unemployment in this country is that it need not exist at all."
Two years later the Deputy came into power and for all the period that he was in the Government that has been rejected he carried an average of 65,000 unemployed with an emigration total that was rising year by year. At the same time there were people being pulled into both the Army and the police here in order to exhaust those who were otherwise going to fill the ranks of the unemployed.
I said, in a broadcast, some of the things to which Deputy Lemass referred. Some of those things, I suggest, are good enough to bear repetition here. I referred to a statement made at the start of the election by the national organiser of Fianna Fáil that:
"If this election is made a bread-and-butter one, it means the Irish people have become a nation of whingers and crawlers weeping over the price of their bread, butter and tea, and so on, and discarding their proud national heritage for a bottle of beer."
I quoted that and said I thought it was part of the right of the populace to remove a Government when they thought that that Government had imposed upon them hardships through increases in the cost of living which they believed to be unnecessary. I did go on to say I did not think myself that that was the whole of the controversy in the election. This effort on the part of Deputy Lemass in this resolution to concentrate upon promises that were never made about immediate reductions in taxes, is an effort to gloss over the more ugly side of the picture that must present itself to Deputies now in the Opposition. I did recall to those whom I addressed that when the 1952 Budget was brought in it was not based upon any necessity with regard to the balance of payments. That had been referred to and put at one side. When the then Minister for Finance came to speak of the entire withdrawal of certain subsidies and the reduction of the subsidy on bread, he put it on the basis that the Government had given great consideration to the matter and as they found that the increased salaries and wages that people were getting were in advance of the increase in the cost of living since 1939, there was no moral or social justification for subsidies. On our side we phrased that as a budget proposal to increase taxes on people's food by withdrawing subsidies on the ground that people were too well off, and that was what that Budget meant.
One can wonder why a Government was annoyed at the people being too well off. The answer to that is that the policy pursued by Fianna Fáil over the years, a policy which had started before the war and which had been continued during the emergencies of the war, was always a policy of keeping wages and salaries of those who gave their services to the community in return for those wages and salaries at a certain low level and not allowing them to advance. But when the hardships became so severe that the people were inclined to kick against them, then the policy became one of giving subsidies so that the people would become more dependent still on Government favour and Government aid and the Fianna Fáil clubs could get their enthusiasts going propagating the theory that it was only the efficiency and benevolence of Government that kept the people from feeling these hardships to which the lowly level of wages and salaries had brought them.
That policy was continued down the years and that policy was put into operation again in 1952. Nobody listening to me can deny that the philosophy of 1952, and its hardships, was that in the Coalition period the people had become too well-off because in our time salaries and wages had increased and taxation had been lowered; and the people were being paid in coin which carried something more in the way of value than it had in 1947 and, at the same time, they were getting more subventions in the way of increased wages than they had ever had in the days of Fianna Fáil.
That was the mood in which the Fianna Fáil Government approached their Budget in the year 1952. The real point that affected the people, as I understand it, during the election was not really—although it counted with a great many people—the crushing burdens that the year 1952 and its Budget had imposed upon them. There came to the people this year a new realisation of what progress should mean and the lack of progress there had been in this country when Fianna Fáil ruled over it. Remember, they became the Government in 1932 and they ruled continuously until 1948. They always said, as Deputy Lemass said here this evening, that there was no other way of living except according to their system and that no policy would bring more ease to the people's lives than the policy they were adopting. The people were misled by their speeches and their propaganda. But the chance came in 1948 when the inter-Party Government was formed and in the three years during which we directed things we gave to the people not merely a better performance but an awakening to the realisation of what Government could really mean. We got home to the people through our performance and through our activities what really could happen if the Government seriously put its mind to making economies in directions in which money was being spent wastefully and extravagantly; we showed the people what could be done if the Government put themselves to the task and applied the savings they got either to a reduction in taxation or to bettering the lives of the people in some way, particularly the lives of those who were living on small emoluments.
We also inaugurated schemes of national development. These schemes were met with the most vituperative propaganda ever hurled at any scheme since the days of the electrical development of this country and the inauguration of the national beet factories. We were told our schemes for national development were putting the country into pawn and we would see the sign of the pawnbroker displayed all over this city in respect of our proposals. We were told that the projects were either not fit for capital to be employed upon them or else our capital was being extravagantly used. There was even criticism of where that capital came from.
In 1951 the Fianna Fáil Government returned to power, with the aid of a few Independents, and immediately on their return they accepted our entire programme of national development and stopped criticising our projects and the way in which we had procured money for them and the objects to which we had applied that money. But in 1951 there was a comparison upon which the people could play their minds. It was no longer a question of pledge against pledge or promise against promise. There was then the possibility of comparison, for one could see the advances that had been made in the three years of inter-Party government and these could be put in balance and weighed against the failure to achieve during the years 1932 to 1947.
I prophesied that the recent election would show a new development of political view in this country. I believed that what happened in 1948 was no mere accidental interruption of Fianna Fáil rule but meant in itself a decisive change in the Party affiliations of a great many people. If one analyses the reason why that decisive change took place I believe it will be found that a certain part of it can be rested upon the promises we made, promises in which we glory and which we will in time carry out, to reduce the cost of government and the cost of living to the people. As far as the people are concerned they realised from the comparison with our three years that there had been no development nationally in this country from the years 1932 to 1948. They looked at the old-time promises and they saw how they had been deceived. They looked at our modest promises in 1948 and they saw the record of achievement. It was easy for the people to make a comparison.
Let me put it in this way: I think it is the easiest way in which to get the people to realise just what the difference between the Parties was. From 1932 to 1947 the Government ruling in all those years borrowed from the community something in the neighbourhood of £20,000,000 for national development at something over £1,000,000 per year. We came to power and we found unused material, unused resources, unused men and unused money. We put all these things together and in our three years we went to the people three times for a loan at easy interest rates and we got enough money to carry on our projects. Here and there, we skimmed off an odd bit as we required it from American funds that had come to our hands. In three years we had not merely a programme but an achievement in the way of national development unequalled over the 15 years of Fianna Fáil rule.
In 1951 when Fianna Fáil came back to power they accepted our programme. They could not get money after they had spent what we had left behind us. They tried to get money and eventually they had to put themselves into the hands of the money-lenders at exorbitant rates of interest and even at those exorbitant interest rates they failed to get the full amount they required to carry out their programme.
Again, we find as we did in 1948 a position entirely different from the position we left behind us in 1951. In 1948 we found debts awaiting us and the proceeds of our first National Loan had to go to the payment of the debts that our predecessors had left us. When we left office in 1951 we did not leave behind us what Deputy de Valera, first of all, called debts but subsequently agreed were commitments; we left the Fianna Fáil Government in 1951 £24,000,000 of American money and their own capacity to borrow, if that was a real capacity.
Once more, we find ourselves faced with enormous debts left to us by our predecessors, they having run themselves into the position where they apparently had succeeded in terrifying those who were the owners of savings because of their repeated requests for money. Having done that, they decided to finance themselves by enormous short-term borrowing. This has led to the load of debt that we have now to take upon our shoulders. That is what we have to meet. Once again we are faced with the problem that we had to face in 1948 of having a programme of development and of not having funds but a debt left behind by our predecessors instead of the easy situation in which we left them in 1951.
When Deputy de Valera in the old days talked, as he did, of our debts in relation to balancing the funds of which he had been put in charge, but eventually changed his word to "commitments", let us see what these commitments were. They were commitments to spend money on building houses, on building schools, on attending to the telephone system of this country and the electric and turf development of the country, reclaiming land, promoting industry and looking after the harbours of the country. Those were, if he likes to call them that, the debts. We are glad to call them a programme of schemes of development, schemes that apparently had never occurred to him during fifteen years of uninterrupted power. Then he set himself to carry out the plans that we had made and to follow the particular schemes that we had initiated.
The only thing he could not do was to get, in the easy way in which we got it, the finances, so that these schemes could be carried out in an easy way for the community. It was that, I think, which struck the populace at the last election, that there were people who had not merely promised, but had performed, people who had shown that this country was in need of development, people who had definitely put to work idle men and resources with the plentiful money that there was, and who got results from all that.
Those three years can be compared, and will always bear comparison, with the 15 arid years of Fianna Fáil. As far as schemes of development are concerned, they woke up to only one or two things when the war came. When the meagre resources of this country, undeveloped as they were, were found wanting during the war period, then there was a hurried, bustling, expensive and extravagant move of trying hurriedly to extemporise what should have been done by plans, early made, and in course of fruition and of being carried out, when the war came.
It was that comparison which, I say, struck the people, and it is that comparison which has got the Deputies across from me where they are. As long as that comparison lasts, and that comparison will be deepened by future achievment, Deputy Lemass and those around him will have many weary years in which they can read back through the quotations from our speeches. But these will be discarded as time goes on, as achievement matches the promises that we made. We await the people's verdict eventually on that.
We have no reason to believe that anyone is going to be fooled by this motion. We do not believe that anyone who reads the motion or the list of quotations will believe that there was anybody on this side foolish enough to say that big reductions in taxation, immediate reductions in taxation, were practicable. We believe they are practicable. We believe they can be achieved in a certain time.
Deputy Lemass did me the honour of quoting from a broadcast of mine. He said that I had made this remark, that "economies amounting to several million pounds could be secured without much effort for the relief of the community". He stopped at that. I want to put my view on the last Budget this way. Deputy Norton, the Tánaiste, to my mind, put the correct phrase on the Budget that was introduced by the Minister for Finance in the last Fianna Fáil Government early this year. He described it as "a bucket-shop arrangement". It was a bucket-shop arrangement. We are going to make it an honest Budget. That is going to be a terrifying task, but it will be done. Did anybody who listened to the then Minister for Finance speaking of £4,000,000 of economies unspecified think that he was going to make them as well as the near-million pounds of specified economies? Did anyone really credit it, that they were going to be secured by that Minister?
There is the quotation from the present Taoiseach at Ringsend that "it was not a Fianna Fáil habit ever to economise". I myself had promulgated to the electorate, to whom I spoke, the view that the Budget would only be balanced if these £4,000,000 of economies of an unspecified type could be secured and if, in addition, the £1,000,000 from C.I.E. and the other things could be brought into hand. I said that, if Fianna Fáil were returned, the pretence at economies would be abandoned, and that the country would then be faced with a Supplementary Budget in the autumn in which frankness would then develop on the Fianna Fáil side, and they would say that they found it impossible to secure these economies and that there must be a further reduction in the subsidies.
I myself believe that economies, when State expenditure rises to such a height as it is at, can be achieved, but do not forget what we have got to achieve. We have got honestly to get the economies which the Fianna Fáil Minister for Finance never intended and never believed he could get. I believe they are there. I believe, in addition to that, that the £1,500,000 required this year for the butter subsidy can also be found. I believe that can be done by a Minister who is anxious to achieve economies, who looks for them and tries to insist on getting them.
We are told by Deputy Lemass that the whole thing is impossible. I think it was somewhere about 1947 that he first thought of this particular explanation which he gave to-night, that 95 per cent. of the whole expenditure of the State carried in the Estimates is on wages and salaries. If that be correct—of course it is not correct— then Deputy Lemass comes to his immediate conclusion that any economies made must be made as the expense of the wages and salaries item in the Estimates. That means, naturally, the sacking of civil servants, economising on the personnel of the Civil Service, and in no other way. While he was making these remarks we interrupted to ask if that was the way in which it was intended to achieve the £4,000,000 of economies? Of course, that had to be evaded, and we were told "No"—that that was what was called overestimation.
It appears to be peculiar that the ex-Tánaiste can accept £4,000,000 as being the correct figure for overestimation, and say that he will not accept £5,500,000 as being also fairly correct in regard to overestimation. He told us that the only way in which we can economise is by savings, and that the only saving we can do is in the personnel of the Civil Service. In my broadcast, I said that:
"While, however, there can be little doubt that savings in the cost of Government amounting to several million pounds per year can be secured without much effort for the relief of the community a distinct change of policy is required and a new outlook on the part of Ministers demanded if the reduction in Government expenditure of £20,000,000 and upwards, desirable in everybody's interests, is to be achieved."
I had said earlier that:
"When State expenditure has risen to its present heights there must be economies ready to hand for a Minister who is serious in his quest of them and knows how to go after them, but when Mr. MacEntee, in emphasising his attitude towards such economies proclaims that every Government Department has been instructed to ‘review its personnel to this end' he not only shows that he has the wrong approach to this matter but he must arouse in the minds of civil servants the fear that they, with C.I.E. employees, are marked out as brands for economies."
I have spoken several times on this matter in this House, on this and on the other side. I want to repeat briefly again my view with regard to the considerable reduction in Government expenditure which must be achieved if the people of this community are to be allowed to live decent lives. I believe that can only be achieved by a considerable reduction in the interference that has now taking place in the people's lives by Government. That was the policy which Fianna Fáil had, a philosophy which they accepted, a policy which they pushed year after year with the result that we have what I have described as mammoth Government Departments interfering extravagantly and uselessly in the people's lives, and which are not a help to them in their search for better conditions. I have said that to carry out the programme which I think is possible, but only possible over the years, that a reduction of these Departments may appear to mean a reduction in Civil Service personnel. I myself, when I had anything to do with the Civil Service, gave a promise that, as far as any economies that I was inclined to seek were concerned, they would not be at the expense of the personnel of the Civil Service.
I pointed out to the people who appeared to have qualms about the practicability of that programme that there is an annual wastage in the Civil Service—you have those going out on pension, those coming up to retiring age and womenfolk getting married— of somewhere about 1,500 people, and that that wastage can be utilised towards a reduction of Government Departments without doing any single serving civil servant any wrong. As far as I am concerned, and as far as I have any influence with the present Government, if there are any economies, I think the civil servants can take it from us, and I will urge this, that there will be no economies made at the expense of the servants of the State in any Department or in any sphere of government. But it is possible to get, as I said, these mammoth Departments put back where they belong. We can stop their interference with the lives of the people, which can, I believe, give desirable economies of the £20,000,000 to £25,000,000 type. But let nobody believe—nobody can believe —that the programme can be carried out this year or next year. If it is done at the end of our time—if we have made some progress towards achieving it in our first period of office, we will carry it to completion in our second.
I need not ask Deputies not to be alarmed by the hysterics we have listened to on the other side with regard to this motion. It is not believed in. Deputy Lemass—at the tail end at least—had the honesty to admit that. He said he did not believe there were any economies that could be made unless you do certain things which, of course, you would not allow us to do. Therefore, moving this motion of his is complete hypocrisy. He does not believe it could be carried out. It was a pretence to show that we said certain things and that we will be met by the recoil of our own promises. To-day's debate shows that there was no quotation—or only one— in which the word "immediate" was used, and very few in which there was any setting of time to this programme we have and intend to carry out.
Deputy Lemass is simply—as he was in 1948—something in the nature of a shell-shocked person. One would have thought his experience in 1948 would have put him in better form to meet adversity. It was explained to me at that time that certain of the Deputy's early speeches in Dáil Éireann after the 1948 election could not be regarded as coming from the real Deputy Lemass and that he was an election-shocked—the equivalent of a shell-shocked—person. One would have thought experience would have bettered him and that he would be better able to meet the experience of a change of Government, more particularly when the result has been so decisive. It was proportional representation, and most people, with the exception of the ex-Taoiseach and one recruit think it desirable to keep proportional representation going. With that there cannot be a landslide in a community like ours but the nearest thing to a landslide occurred in the last election. It was a result far beyond even the fears of the Opposition Party and beyond possibly the expectations of some of ourselves. But it was a good result and a result which will give us time to develop, slowly and cautiously but with plenty of appreciation of the people's needs and the hardships they are suffering, the programme for their betterment. That programme we will carry out and we will not be bustled or rushed into a wrong approach by any hysterical tactics such as we heard when the present motion was being moved to-day.
