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Dáil Éireann debate -
Thursday, 10 Feb 1955

Vol. 148 No. 2

Supplies and Services (Temporary Provisions) Act, 1946 (Continuance) Bill, 1954—Second Stage.

I move that the Bill be now read a Second Time. The Bill is a short one which proposes that the Supplies and Services (Temporary Provisions) Act, 1946, which is due to expire on 31st March next, shall be continued for a further period of a year. The Bill also proposes to repeal a section of the Act of 1946 relating to guarantee of borrowings by State-sponsored bodies which is no longer required, as separate legislation has been enacted dealing with this matter.

When a similar Bill was introduced by my predecessor in 1953 he announced that no further extension of the powers conferred by the Act of 1946 would be sought as it was proposed that such powers as were still required would be conferred by separate legislation.

The Act of 1946 enables the Government and Ministers to make Orders for the control of essential supplies, including control of prices, control of exports and the reduction or suspension of customs duties and various other matters. It was hoped that permanent legislation conferring these powers would have been enacted before the 31st March next and that as a result the Act of 1946 could be allowed to lapse. Unfortunately, the period of time which has elapsed since the Act of 1953 was passed has proved insufficient to bring before the Oireachtas the necessary legislation for this purpose. So far as my own Department is concerned, it is essential that control of prices and control of exports should be continued and it is unlikely that the situation will arise at any time in the foreseeable future when such powers can be allowed to lapse. Unless the Act of 1946 is renewed these powers will lapse on 31st March, 1955, and this is a position which could not be allowed to arise. The question of new legislation in respect of these matters is at present under investigation. I can assure the House that every effort will be made to present permanent legislation to the Oireachtas as soon as possible.

As regards other Departments, the Minister for Agriculture requires to retain a number of controls relating to the dairying industry and the marketing and distribution of agricultural produce, and the Minister for Local Government requires the continuance of certain controls relating to road traffic matters. It is hoped that permanent legislation in relation to these matters will be presented to the Oireachtas as soon as circumstances permit. In all, it is expected that about ten Bills will require to be introduced and enacted by the Oireachtas before the Supplies and Services Act can be allowed to lapse. This is a formidable legislative programme and some of the matters concerned require the most careful consideration. I need only mention that the question of a permanent system for the control of prices is one which requires the fullest consideration before proposals are submitted to the House.

In these circumstances, it would be impracticable, and indeed in conflict with the public interest, not to provide for the continuance of the Supplies and Services Act for the further period proposed. I should mention that a number of Acts have already been passed conferring powers which had hitherto been conferred by the Act of 1946. These are the Exchange Control Act, 1954, and the Agricultural Produce (Meat) (Miscellaneous Provisions) Act. 1954, which replaced powers formerly operated under the Act of 1946.

The House may, therefore, be assured that it is my desire and the desire of the Government to dispense with this temporary legislation as soon as possible. Already practically all controls which could be termed emergency controls operated under this legislation have been terminated. The Acts are now being availed of only for the purpose of operating such controls as will be required permanently. I am, therefore, asking the House to continue the life of this legislation for a further period up to 31st March, 1956. I hope that it will not be necessary to come to the House next year for a further extension of the Act, but it will be appreciated that such an extension may be necessary if the formidable legislative programme to which I have referred has not been completed.

Mr. Lemass

I think it is most unsatisfactory that the Government should come to the Dáil to ask for a renewal of the Supplies and Services Act and in a manner which indicates that even the 12 months' extension for which the Bill provides may not be all that they will need, and that we will have a further extending Bill next year. I, as a Minister in the previous Government, held strongly the view that it is more than time that the Government relinquished the very exceptional powers that were given to it by the Dáil to deal with the war and post-war emergencies. This Supplies and Services Act is the residue of these powers. The Government of which I was a member had taken a firm decision, which it had announced to the Dáil, that the Act would not be renewed from 31st March next, and every Minister in that Government was made aware of that decision and informed that, if there were any powers he was exercising under that Act which he required to retain after 31st March, he had to produce to the Dáil and secure acceptance by the Dáil of proposals for legislation conferring these powers.

It is quite clear that no similar decision has been taken by the present Government. The Government has taken the easy course of proposing a continuation of these wide emergency powers, and, in so doing, suggests that a further continuation of them next year may be needed. In order to express our strong disapproval of the attitude of the Government in that regard, we propose to vote against the continuation of these powers. I am aware that there are powers being exercised which cannot be relinquished without some consequence. May I say that I have always believed that the road traffic regulations made by the Minister for Local Government under the Supplies and Services Act were an abuse of the Act and that it would be exceedingly difficult to justify these regulations on the ground that they represent provisions necessary for the preservation of the welfare of the country?

I think that many of the powers which are exercised at present by the Minister for Agriculture and the Minister for Social Welfare under this Act are being so exercised because in these Departments the effort to replace these emergency powers by permanent legislation was not made. The only real problem that arises in connection with the termination of the Supplies and Services Act is the future of price control. Indeed, as Deputies who were in the previous Dáil will remember, it was mainly the manner in which the Government used these powers and the effect of the use of these powers on the level of prices that were discussed when the annual renewal Bill was submitted.

I do not know to what extent the present Government considers it necessary to continue into permanent legislation powers that are now being exercised under the temporary Supplies and Services Act, but the sooner the necessary change to permanent legislation is made the better. There is an obligation on the Government in this regard. There is an obligation on them to secure these powers by legislation which they are prepared to justify to the Dáil and the public, legislation which will contain the normal safeguards against the abuse of the powers by the Government or individual Ministers.

The powers given by the Supplies and Services Act to the Government and individual Ministers are far too wide to be given by the Dáil in present circumstances. No responsible Minister would consider in this year 1955 in the circumstances now prevailing coming to the Dáil and asking for these powers if they did not exist. They, are, however, retaining them by the simple process of not allowing them to lapse. I know there are individuals in the Government and groups of civil servants in every Department of the Government who do not like relinquishing their powers at any time and who, when they have the legal authority to interfere with the activities of private citizens, like to retain that authority whether or not they exercise it. The actual process of getting rid of the powers can only be completed if there is in the Government somebody determined that he is not going to allow the usual excuses to be made in justification of delay. The forces of inertia in any Government Department are very strong. They can only be resisted by somebody who has made up his mind that it is a good thing for the Government and the country that these exceptional powers should no longer be retained.

The fact that the Government have these powers, whether it is using them or not, is helping to build up in the minds of the people the idea that everything is to be laid at the door of the Government, that they are not expected to do anything to solve their own problems and that anything that causes any trouble to any section of the community can always be settled by a Government Order, which, if made under this Act, does not even have to be justified to the Dáil before it comes into operation.

I have said that the only effective powers now being used so far as I know and so far as the House knows under this Bill are concerned with the regulation of prices. It is precisely the failure of the present Minister for Industry and Commerce to bring proposals for permanent legislation to set up effective machinery to control prices to which I want to direct the attention of the House. We had a Bill similar to this under discussion in the Dáil in the past and, as I said, it was mainly the ineffectiveness of the powers held by the Government to prevent prices from rising that was the topic of the debate. It was the present Minister who on that occasion and during the election campaign which put him into office pledged himself to produce to the House what he described as an efficient and effective system of price regulation to replace the ineffective and inefficient system which the previous Government, he alleged, was operating.

When he came into his office he found there the draft of a Bill for legislation dealing with permanent price control. In so far as he required the advice of officials who were familiar with all the problems of price regulation it was available to him. A great deal of thought had been put into the problem of how best the Government could protect the public against unduly high prices in normal times both before the war, during the war and after the war. There was no real difficulty for the Minister to produce this more effective and efficient system of price control which he promised if he wished to do so.

He is doing the very reverse of what he promised to do. He is proposing in this Bill to continue for another 12 months and longer the inefficient and ineffective system he denounced. There is a vague suggestion that at some time some alternative proposal may be presented to the House "if circumstances permit". What does that phrase mean? I have never tried to conceal my view that the widest powers given to the Government in relation to prices will not enable it to prevent prices going up if economic forces are driving them up or prevent prices going down if economic forces are driving them down.

But that view of mine was challenged here on many occasions. When the Supplies and Services Act was last discussed in the Dáil, speaker after speaker from the Fine Gael and Labour Benches stood up to argue in this House that the only reason why prices were going up then was because the Government would not use the powers it had to prevent it. They set out to prove that it was within the capacity of the Government to prevent prices going up if they wished to do it. They alleged that prices were going up because we wanted them to go up, because we refused to take the obvious means available to us to prevent it. How quickly their views have changed!

Only last week Deputy Costello, the Taoiseach, instructed the Fine Gael Ard-Fheis in regard to the weaknesses of the Government's power to control prices and how really ineffective any Government must be in relation to a rise in prices caused by international circumstances. They did not say that a year ago to the people around the country when they went electioneering. The view they held then is on record. I invite any Deputy opposite to go into the Dáil Library and take out the debate on the Supplies and Services Bill when it was last before the Dáil in 1953.

There are Deputies opposite who participated in that debate. They should have the common sense and discretion to go back and read what they said then. On that occasion Deputy after Deputy reiterated the opinion that prices could be brought down by Government action and that the only thing which prevented them coming down was the failure of the Government to take that action. On that occasion Deputy Costello, as he then was, did not talk about how powerless the Government was in relation to prices. We could not then imagine the picture we saw yesterday of Deputy Norton, the Minister for Industry and Commerce, standing up to reply to question after question from Deputies as to why prices were going up, and explaining that he could do nothing about it. We who saw Deputy Norton talking about prices from those benches only a year ago, never expected to see him in the humiliating position he was yesterday.

The various promises made by Deputies now supporting the Government in relation to prices have already been brought to the notice of the Dáil. They are, I am sure, still fresh in the minds of the Deputies who made them, but we have very little indication yet that any serious attempt is going to be made to fulfil them. I do not suppose there is any Deputy supporting the Government in any doubt that those promises they made to bring down the level of prices got them a majority in the election, and enabled them to put in this Government of their own choice. I am quite certain that there is nobody in the country who does not believe that it was the definite character and the widespread nature of these promises that snatched the marginal votes, and put the Fianna Fáil Party over here and the various Coalition Parties over there. Having made those pledges, they must either now fulfil them or justify to the country their failure to do so.

It is not good enough for the Taoiseach to go down to the Fine Gael Ard-Fheis to say that the Government has no real power to control prices. That is what we were saying, and saying with far more experience of the problem of the control of prices, only a short time ago. We never contended that the Government could prevent prices going up when wages and material costs and the prices of imported goods were going up. But Deputy Costello then said that all these factors could be neutralised or reversed by some action of the Government. He committed himself in the most definite way to the people of this country, that if he became head of the Government here that that Government would bring back prices to the level at which they were in 1951. Every Deputy sitting behind the Minister now made those promises, made them in the form of a personal pledge from himself to individual electors.

Mr. Lemass

Deputy O'Donovan must have given those promises to the electors that he would cut——

We promised the electors that we would do our best.

Mr. Lemass

Well, your best has hardly produced any results, one way or the other. The cost of living is still going up and prices are still rising.

Would you like to contest them again?

Deputy Lemass must be allowed to make his statement without interruption.

Mr. Lemass

Specific pledges were made that prices would be brought down and the cost of living reduced. Are we now getting from the Parliamentary Secretary a repudiation of those pledges, that those pledges were not given?

I have said to the Deputy that I promised the electors I would do my best.

The Parliamentary Secretary will have an opportunity to explain.

Mr. Lemass

I am concerned with the pledges given by the leaders of the Parties. The leaders of those Parties expressed the intention of their Parties to bring down the level of prices, not to prevent prices going up, but to reduce prices—not merely to stabilise them but bring them down. There was a promise to bring down the level of prices to where they were in 1951. There was certainly no lack of clarity about the promises to bring down prices, anyway. Not a single price has been brought down by Government action since last June, except the price of butter. So far as the price of butter is concerned, we have not yet been told how the subsidy is to be paid. No indication has been given by the Minister for Finance or any member of the Government how the money to provide the increased subsidy is to be raised.

Let me be quite clear about our position in that regard. We have no objection whatever to the Government subsidising the price of butter, the price of bread or the price of tea, or any other commodity, provided they are honest with the people, provided they make it clear to the people that the money to provide subsidies does not fall from Heaven, that it must come out of the pockets of the people —either now or later. It may be good policy to take money from the people for the purpose of subsidising individual prices. There was a time when the Government of which I was a member thought it was a good policy because we considered that the general national well-being would be promoted by so doing; but we have never attempted to deceive the people, we have never tried to make them believe that the reduction in prices through subsidies was something which was being achieved by sleight of hand, or that there was any source from which money to pay subsidies could be derived except from themselves.

If there is ever to be realistic approach to political problems in this country, an attempt to get the people to understand the realities of those problems, then that fact has got to be explained to them. The device of subsidising butter on the dishonest plea that the cost of the subsidy could be recovered by economies or preventing a rise in the price of tea by borrowing from the banks, is objectionable from every possible viewpoint, but it is mainly objectionable in the sense that it represents an attempt to trick the people, to make them think that these enormous sums of money could be found from some source, except their own pockets.

The position which arises in this regard is becoming very interesting. We have had this operation in relation to tea, a postponement in the increase of the price of tea which world market conditions would require until September next, by the device of authorising Tea Importers, Limited, on Government guarantee, to borrow money from the banks to meet their losses. We are being told, on the authority of Deputy James Larkin, that the decision of the Government was taken on the insistence of the Labour members. In the journal of the Labour Party published by the Dublin Regional Council of the Party there is a signed article by Deputy James Larkin in which he says that was a Government decision, but the decision was made only because the Labour Party was in the Government. Again, that while the device adopted for the reduction of the price of butter may have been, he said, a Government decision, it was Labour policy. Well, we will perhaps have something to say about what is now Labour Party policy in that regard, but it is quite clear that these two measures were adopted, not because the majority of the Government believed in them, but because a minority of the Government insisted on them for Party political reasons, and regardless of the consequences either to the national finances or the national well-being. That decision in relation to tea has all the hallmarks of a stop-gap decision. It was quite clear the Government had deadlocked, with the Minister for Finance, and some of his colleagues refusing to scrape the bottom of the Exchequer to find money to meet the cost of a tea subsidy, and the Labour Ministers insisting that no matter how it was done the price of tea should not be allowed to rise. The only possible outcome of that deadlock was this decision to put the matter on the long finger and let the banks carry the baby until September next, even though it will mean that eventually the public will have to pay one way or the other, more than they would otherwise have had to pay, because of the postponement.

What I have said lends a point to another article in this Labour Party journal. There is an article here on the front page headed "Lemass's offer to Fine Gael", and the purport of this article is to say that a recent speech of mine was an offer to Fine Gael and apparently in the minds of the spokesmen of the Labour Party the most abominable thing which any political Party could do, the surest way of sabotaging the interests of Irish workers, is to enter into an alliance with Fine Gael. "Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael," says the Labour Party organ, "have more in common with each other than they have with Labour. Labour will keep on fighting its own policy whatever Fianna Fáil or Fine Gael may do". How naïve do the Labour Party leaders think their followers are? How stupid do they think they are? Do they believe they can convince the people who voted for them in the election that Fianna Fáil is gone to the devil, can no longer be relied upon? Why?—because they are actually thinking of an alliance with Fine Gael? Who put Fine Gael in office? Who is keeping them in office— the writer of this article, the writers of this paper. Deputy James Larkin and his colleagues are the people who put the Fine Gael Party back into power, revived them when they were dying, to bring into operation policies which they say Labour will keep on fighting against.

The only claim that has been advanced by these Labour Party leaders to justify their action in entering into that alliance with Fine Gael, in putting the Fine Gael Ministers into control is that by so doing they have got two decisions, one to prevent a rise in the price of tea and the other to subsidise the price of butter. The Labour Party policy in relation to prices is changing also and in their new declaration of policy I note a very familiar ring. Mr. Norton's policy, as described in this paper, "Norton acts on tea prices", is set out to be stabilising the cost of living. Could you credit it? When I introduced the Supplies and Services Bill of 1952 I attempted then to forecast that by 1953 prices would become stabilised, that the various forces which were working on prices were neutralising each other and that by the end of 1953 we would have a stabilised position so far as prices were concerned. When I brought in the Supplies and Services Bill of 1953 that was my claim, that by then prices had been stabilised and I was denounced by the then Deputy Norton and all his colleageus because they said I held out no other prospect than that the price level would be stabilised. A reduction in prices was what they said was required and it was a reduction in prices they promised the electorate.

Is this the main hope of the Government now, to keep prices stabilised at the level at which they were in May, 1954? In so far as this journal issued by the Dublin Regional Council of the Labour Party speaks for Labour Party policy that is the limit of their hopes and Deputy Larkin, who apparently is on the editorial board of this paper, no doubt supports that particular orientation of Labour's outlook.

Deputy Larkin issued a leaflet during the election and it was not the stabilisation of prices he promised. No. 1 on his programme was this: Reduction of the present price of bread, butter, tea and sugar, four essential commodities in daily use. Will the Minister, who is both spokesman of the Government and the Labour Party or any of his colleagues, tell us if there is any prospect that the price of bread, tea or sugar will be reduced as promised?

It was a very poor excuse for the Minister to offer in relation to this problem of tea prices that the price of tea here under the Fianna Fáil Government was lower than the world price and consequently there was nothing the Government could do about it. We told them it was lower than the world price and they would not believe it. Deputy Dillon, now Minister for Agriculture, occupied four hours of the Dáil's time when the 1953 Supplies and Services Bill was under discussion to show how easily we could get down the price of tea here by merely allowing the British to send it in from London. The whole force of their argument was that we, by our centralised purchasing, were keeping the price of tea above the world price. Deputy Barry, on the opposite benches, used to wax very eloquent on that in the local Cork paper. Do you remember the time he filled columns of the Cork Examiner: if only Tea Importers were abolished, if there were access to the London market, how much cheaper tea prices would be? Did Deputy Barry since discover that the reverse was the case, that the price of tea under the Fianna Fáil Government was the lowest in the world not because it was subsidised, but because good business methods were applied to the work of importing it? Now the world price of tea has gone up and what the Government is going to do about that we do not know apart from this postponement of the decision until September, apart from this device of borrowing money at interest from the banks which the consumers of tea either as tea drinkers or taxpayers will have to pay back. That is the limit of their aim, to stabilise prices by one trick or another irrespective of what problems are going to be left for their successors to solve. Bread, butter, tea and sugar, these were the specific commodities that Deputies opposite promised would be reduced in price.

May I again remind the Labour Party of the pledge given by their spokesman, Deputy Seán Dunne, that they would not enter into a Coalition Government unless they got an assurance in advance that that Government was going to bring down the price of bread, butter, tea and sugar? I again ask, did they seek these assurances, did they get them and, if so, when are they going to be implemented? I know the normal reply of Coalition propagandists when this question of prices is raised is: "We cannot do everything at once. Give us time and we will redeem all these promises." There was no question of time when they were making them. There was no limitation of that kind on the pledges which they gave to the electorate. Their undertaking was that these prices would come down immediately. Deputy Seán Dunne's pledge was that they would get the undertaking that prices would be reduced before they even joined the Coalition Government.

What time do they need? When I asked that question here last July I was told it was not even reasonable then to ask the Government to prepare a time-table. Is it reasonable now? This is many months after they took office. Every Minister is sitting comfortably in his ministerial chair. He now knows all the problems of the Department of which he is in charge. Can we now ask him to say when we can expect any attempt to reduce the cost of living? The cost of living has gone up since they came into office. The official price index number is higher than it was in May, 1954. Almost every day new price rises are being recorded. The Order Paper carries many questions by Deputies about price increases and these increases apply not merely to foodstuffs but to other articles such as fertilisers, feeding stuffs, bicycle tyres, and so forth. Hardly a day passes that, when you open a paper, you will not find that some other commodity is going up in price. There may be factors outside the Government's control which are producing that situation, but it is not the situation they promised to bring about—and what are they going to do about it? Are they going to do anything about it except wash their hands of it, as the Minister for Industry and Commerce did yesterday when he was questioned by a member of his own Party, as well as by Deputies on this side of the House, about these price increases? Does he think it is a sufficient answer to the voters who supported him to say: "My powers do not extend that far."

"The Prices Advisory Body reported that there was justification for the rise in prices.""The matter is under constant review." Do these replies represent the sole attempt that is to be made to fulfil the glowing and numerous pledges that were given only a few months ago to the electorate? I must confess that all the indications are that the public are still prepared to accept from the Government the excuse that they want time before they can fulfil their pledges but they are not accepting it now as readily as they were a few months ago. A couple of months hence and they will not accept it at all unless the Government are prepared to specify a time—this year, next year, 1957 or 1958—within which they will carry out their specific undertaking to reduce the prices that prevailed in May, 1954, for bread, butter, tea and sugar.

The price of butter was reduced and when the Minister for Finance came here with his proposal to bring down the price of butter by means of a Government subsidy he said he hoped that in this year the whole cost of the subsidy would be met out of economies. When the Dáil reassembled after the summer Adjournment, I asked the Minister for Finance to specify what economies he had made up to then. He replied that he had made none and that in fact it was impossible to give any indication of what economies might be realised before the end of the financial year. What economies have been made since? I say here that only one economy has been attempted by this Government and that is the reduction in the price of wheat. Not in a single Department of the Government —from the Department of the Taoiseach down to the Department of Lands—has a single real economy been recorded. I say on the contrary, that the costs of administration in almost every Department have gone up. I say that, in a few weeks' time, each one of these Departments will come with a bill for administration for 1955 higher than that which they presented for 1954. The Book of Estimates is almost due to appear. That prophecy of mine will soon be tested as to its accuracy. We shall have that book in our hands presumably before the end of this month. Unless something has happened, of which no indication has been given to the Dáil or to the public, every Department will be showing higher administrative charges. In many places that may be due solely to the increased remuneration paid to Civil Service staffs; it may be due to larger staffs in some cases.

Is any serious attempt being made to achieve economies? Let me remind Deputies opposite that this was something which, a few months ago, they were saying was very easy to do. There was no secret about the extravagance, in their view, of the Fianna Fáil Government. They could name the Departments in which they felt it was possible to save not thousands, not hundreds of thousands but millions. Perhaps, it is no harm, once in a while, to remind the Deputies of what they said in that regard. Here is what Deputy McGilligan, a former Minister for Finance, said in this House:

"We believe and we have given evidence of our belief that the Budget is taxing the citizens not only to cover ordinary expenditure but to produce a surplus. Fine Gael representatives have gone through the Budget and have produced figures to show that at least £10,000,000 more is being taken from the public by a process of underestimating revenue and overestimating expenditure than is required. If we could get the present Government out by July 1st, a new Minister for Finance could, in a ten-minute speech, save £1,000,000 a minute and thus wipe out the £10,000,000 that was being asked for. I do not even despair of being able to save another £5,000,000 as well."

Let me quote from the fountain-head, the present Taoiseach, Deputy J. A. Costello, who said in this House:

"I have demonstrated"

—there is no question about guessing or hinting—

"that there are in the Minister's calculations something between £9,000,000 and £10,000,000 of overtaxation in this cruel and, as I see it for that reason, unjust Budget."

Ten million pounds is a lot of money. Personally, I do not think it is possible for any Minister for Finance in any single year to reduce public outlay by anything approaching that figure. But the Deputies opposite promised to do it in ten minutes. They say that money was being taken unnecessarily, that it was not required—that, by a process of overestimating expenditure and underestimating revenue we were budgeting for an unnecessary surplus. Has their experience been that expenditure was overestimated or that revenue was underestimated? How is it that the level of Government spending at this moment is running about £6,000,000 more than it was a year ago? If we had overestimated the costs of administering the various services of the Government, how is it that this Government is spending £6,000,000 more a year to operate the same services? Where do you think you are going to get it?

This Government, which has endeavoured to convince the people that there was £10,000,000 there which could be given back to them in a short time, have shoved up the cost of administration by £6,000,000 a year. That is the only result of their economy effort to date. Nor was the revenue underestimated, as the Minister for Finance has been caterwauling about during the past few weeks. No doubt he had hoped that there was some underestimation of revenue and that he could do what Deputy McGilligan was able to do in 1948, that is, build up a bogus reputation for efficiency by giving back a Budget surplus a month before the Budget was due, a surplus that the Budget would have shown anyway. It is true that the Fianna Fáil Budget for 1947 produced a surplus of £6,000,000. That was because the recovery in trade from the postwar depression proceeded more rapidly in that year than we thought likely when the Budget was being prepared.

If the Budget had been allowed to take its normal course, the fact that that surplus had emerged from the Budget, would have become obvious and the relief in taxation could have been given in the normal way, but Deputy McGilligan brought in his proposals for the disposal of the surplus a month or five weeks before the Budget was due and got for himself a reputation on which he has been trading ever since. Deputies opposite are continually claiming that this was the great achievement of the first Coalition Government, this relinquishing of taxation which was not necessary and which had been imposed unnecessarily by Fianna Fáil in 1947. If it was imposed unnecessarily in 1947, it was because we had not got the ability to foresee what direction the trend of events would take that year. We budgeted conservatively, as was our duty in the circumstances then prevailing. We knew precisely what the position was in 1954. Deputy Sweetman thought he would get a windfall similar to that which Deputy McGilligan had got and that he could build up a reputation for himself as a financial genius, but he found that the situation was quite the reverse, that the capacity of his colleagues in the Government to spend more money is so great and that they are spending money at such a rate, that he has got to face the job of expanding the revenue by one means or another if the Budget of this year is to be balanced.

Were there Deputies opposite who six months ago thought that economies in the Government were possible? Were there any who thought that economies would be sought or who supported the view, that we ourselves held at that time, that the cost of Government had gone as high as it should be allowed to go, and that no matter what service had to be curtailed or what benefits were to be withheld, they were not going to allow the cost of Government to go higher until the national income had been expanded? There were Deputies who went further and said the cost of Government had to be brought down. Did they contemplate then that they would see themselves in February, 1955, sitting behind and supporting a Government, which has already pushed the cost of administration £6,000,000 beyond the highest point ever reached under a Fianna Fáil Government?

When Deputy Sweetman came here last June to introduce the butter subsidy and talked about finding economies, was he accepting before the Dáil an obligation to impose these economies on his colleagues so that the £1,250,000 required for the subsidy would be provided without having to turn to the taxpayer? Instead, however, of bringing down the cost of administration by £1,250,000, he has allowed it to go up by £6,000,000. Is there not an obligation on him now to come in here and apologise to the Dáil for misleading them and to put forward his proposals for the continuation of that subsidy, if it is to be continued, or is the cost of the butter subsidy to be met by a reduction in prices to milk producers similar to that enforced in the case of wheat producers?

I do not know what the Government's intentions are regarding tea. Can we extract from the Minister for Industry and Commerce by any means a statement of his intentions regarding the price of tea? Is it going to be allowed to go up in September? Is the money which will by then be due to the banks against the losses of Tea Importers, going to be provided out of the Exchequer or are tea consumers to be asked to make it good plus interest? We are informed by Deputy James Larkin in the Labour Party journal that the Labour Ministers are the bosses, that they are in control and that what they say must be accepted by their Fine Gael colleagues, that it is what Deputy Norton says that counts and not what the Minister for Finance may say. I should like Fine Gael Deputies in this House to subscribe to this Labour publication issued by the Dublin Regional Council of the Labour Party. It would do them good to learn the utter contempt in which they are held by their Labour Party allies. Mind you, in so far as some of them may be getting a bit too big for their boots, one glance through that publication of their inter-Party colleagues would cure them of any such tendency.

Here, anyway, we have a proposal to continue the Supplies and Services Act, the Government holding on to these powers, dangerous powers, which the Act gives them on the plea that it is necessary to do so in order to prevent prices going up. While that is Deputy Norton's plea, his leader, Deputy Costello, has justified his position before his Party Ard-Fheis on the ground that not all these powers, wide though they are, are sufficient to enable the Government to prevent prices going up when international circumstances are operating to produce that result. I do not know if we are ever going to get from the Minister for Industry and Commerce this more efficient and more effective system of price control that he promised the electorate to replace the one that is now in operation and that would cease to operate by March if this Bill were not passed. The Minister is wrong in saying that if the Act lapsed all powers of control would cease. There is on the Statute Book a Control of Prices Act and there is machinery which could again be brought into operation for which there is full statutory authority and which would be just as effective in controlling prices as the Prices Advisory Body.

What is the Prices Advisory Body but a screen for the Minister? Does the Minister think that he is released from all his undertakings to the public to bring down prices, if he can come here and state that the Prices Advisory Body says that costs have gone up and that consequently prices must go up. Is that not the equivalent of wrapping himself in a white sheet so that nobody can see what is underneath it? What is underneath it, I am afraid, is cynical amusement at the gullibility of the unfortunate people who listened to these pledges and promises from Fine Gael and Labour platforms during the election and who were induced to vote for Labour Party and Fine Gael candidates. If there is any sincerity in him or in his colleagues or in Deputies supporting the Government, any desire to fulfil their obligation to the public to whom they were speaking in that intriguing way nine months ago, then they will take the opportunity of this debate to give a precise programme for the implementation of these pledges or else they will finally and formally abandon them.

The obvious lack of interest which Government supporters in this House have in this annual measure is in itself the greatest sign that they have already abandoned any hope of fulfilling a single one of the pledges responsible for bringing them to that side of the House. The Minister to-day has not a single member of his Party to sit in the House to listen to this most important annual statement of policy which they were so anxiously awaiting and were prepared actually to use on Party platforms for the past three years. This measure was delayed some months. Those of us who were here last year when a similar debate took place and heard the announcement made by Deputy Lemass who was then Minister for Industry and Commerce, that such legislation would not require to be continued after 1954, believed that the postponement of this debate was due to the fact that certain legislation was being introduced which would replace this measure and that it would not be necessary to have it brought before us for acceptance in an amended form.

It is now obvious that not merely has the Minister not considered introducing legislation to replace this measure, but he contemplates that this type of measure must continue for the coming year, and possibly longer, because he says it is a formidable legislative programme which could not be visualised going through the Dáil in a very short time. Apart from that lack of responsibility, if one may put it that way, the most important thing which the country will note from this debate—indeed, the most important thing to be noted from every debate which brings within its scope the subject of price control— is the anxiety on the part of every member on the Government side of the House to deny that he ever made a pledge or a promise to reduce the cost of living. Not alone will the people be surprised to discover that this instrument is not being availed of by the present Government to reduce the cost of living, but they will be exasperated to learn how anxious every Deputy who supports the Government is to get away from the promises he made and, in fact, to deny emphatically that he ever made any promise or held out any hope which would lead the people to believe that this Government stood for a reduction in the cost of living.

The report of the Fine Gael Ard-Fheis had in it a stupid statement to the effect that the storming and stunting of the past was over and the people could now settle down to a period of stability and long term policy. That is capable of only one interpretation and that is that all the storming and stunting on the part of the present Government and its supporters when they were on this side of the House is now over; indeed we know that that storming and stunting is now over and that it was voluminous, varied and frequent while it lasted. It is now over and the Government, having secured a fairly comfortable majority, can tell the people to go and take a running jump at themselves: "We will stay here as long as we can and we will do nothing about the promises we made". That is what is meant by long term policy. That attitude may work all right for a time, but those of us who went on the hustings this time last year cannot fail to remember what we were up against in fighting that election. Do the Deputies opposite think that the people forget the form that campaign took and the opposition we had to face?

As I have said before, I was surprised that so many people, particularly the housewives, went to the polls to support Fianna Fáil after they had been told off every platform that they had a choice, on the one hand, of supporting a Party which stood, as was alleged, for higher prices and a higher cost of living and, on the other hand, of supporting Parties which, as was alleged, stood for a lower cost of living and a reduction in prices, to say nothing of a reduction in taxation, better social services, and all the other impossible promises. It was a tribute, and a very high tribute, to the intelligence of the electorate that so few of them were swayed by such promises.

I remember in Donegal listening to a Fine Gael speaker asking his hearers what the position would be if they found themselves in a town where the shops on one side were charging a certain price for tea, bread, butter and sugar and the shops on the other side were charging a higher price for the same commodities. What they were being asked to do on 18th May was to take their choice of standing by the people who would give them higher prices or vote for those who would give them lower prices. Yet it is these people who to-day deny that they ever promised a reduction in the cost of living.

In the history of this State, no Government ever got into power through the medium of as much falsification as the present Government. The people are growing doubtful as to what politicians mean. They are despairing of public men in general. The people who supported Fine Gael last year are now going around saying: "Oh, one is just as bad as the other." Some of them admit they were fooled, but they will never be fooled again. It is a good thing that they will not be fooled again but in the meantime considerable damage will be done; and the Deputies opposite are prepared to cling to office so long as they can muster a majority here.

What of the Labour Deputies who made such a volcanic outburst against the cost of living during the last general election? Deputy Lemass has quoted here to-day some of the statements made by the leading spokesmen of Labour on that occasion. I have here an advertisement issued in Dublin by some of the Labour Deputies. To emphasise the ease with which the promises that were made could be put into effect Deputy Dunne ends his election circular with the slogan: "If Dunne cannot do it, it cannot be done". He must now tell the electorate that Dunne could not do it, and it has not been done; otherwise, he will have to use the time that is yet at his disposal to ensure that Fine Gael honour the promises and the pledges given to the people last May.

The people in Dublin listened to a condemnation of the prices of foodstuffs. These prices could not be condemned in rural Ireland. Indeed, the price of wheat, the price of sugar, and the price of meat were quite popular subjects in the rural areas. High prices were condemned in the urban areas in order to secure the support of urban communities, but prospective candidates kept quiet about these things in the country. I listened to their speeches in Donegal and the Deputies opposite talked mainly about what Fianna Fáil proposed to spend on rebuilding Dublin Castle and providing an autobahn from Dublin to Bray. No mention was made of those things in the city where the unemployed marchers were calling for employment. Different circumstances were used to bolster up whatever case had to be made in the rural areas, in the larger towns and in the cities. Having secured the votes, all these Parties came together to form a Government— not the Government that was promised but any kind of Government under the aegis of which they could dish out whatever they liked from day to day. That is exactly the position in which the country finds itself now. There is not a single Labour Deputy here to defend the Minister and the policy which he pretended to stand for on that occasion and there are very few members of the House, if there are any members—and I have the greatest admiration for the few members who seem to face up to a situation of which they should be ashamed—who do not listen here for weeks on end to a debate on this annual bit of legislation. When the Fine Gael Deputies spoke from this side of the House they made speeches calculated to convince the people of the country that we, when on the other side, were responsible for measures which resulted in an unnecessarily high cost of living and that we were deliberately increasing the price of foodstuffs from day to day. These speeches were being used by members of the Coalition Government on the election platforms and they had their effect when the time came.

But you cannot fool all of the people all of the time. There is now nothing from the people who made those complaints against Fianna Fáil from this side of the House but a chorus of denials. They have been saying, as Deputy O'Donovan said a while ago, that they did not promise the people to reduce the cost of living or to reduce the price of foodstuffs. If they had gone out on their platforms and had said: "We cannot control the prices of foodstuffs any more than Fianna Fáil had done and we have no plan for a reduction in the cost of living," they would now be sitting very comfortably here, still making their speeches and still accusing Fianna Fáil of being responsible for the increased cost of living. They would not have been returned to Government.

Instead of disillusioning the people about the pledges they have made within the past 12 months with regard to the cost of living they now enter into a chorus of denials about these pledges. They take no responsibility for what could have been done or what might have been done to have the cost of living reduced. Although it might be a bad thing for the country, to Fianna Fáil it is a blessing in disguise because now we are able to tell the people from this side of the House that at all times we were doing the best we could to stabilise the cost of living and that we were using at all times the machinery at our disposal which could be directed to that purpose.

The Fine Gael Ard-Fheis was told recently that the Government is ineffective against the rising cost of living and the increased price of foodstuffs. The only hope now seems to be that something will happen as time goes on—the Micawber situation of waiting for something to turn up. The price of tea is to be kept down until the local elections are over. Then something may happen. But in any event the taxpayers must pay the rise in the cost of living—the rise in the cost of tea—and, in addition, they must pay the bank interest which will have accrued on the overdraft of Tea Importers, Limited, incurred to keep down the rising cost of tea. Surely the people who talked at the Fine Gael Ard-Fheis about storming and stunting must now realise that they are past masters of that and that the electorate generally must listen to storming and stunting from them. The people must realise that not merely has an effort not been made to bring down the cost of living, but actually that the cost of living has been allowed to rise and to run higher until it has reached new high levels. I do not think that any single member of the Government can sustain statements which they made from their platforms when soliciting support in April and May last year. I doubt that any Government in this country has ever succeeded in electing themselves by a greater set of false promises than did the present Coalition group which now form the Government.

Excuses are being made now for the situation which exists because things did not turn out as they should. The recent flooding has been used as one of these excuses and it seems that Noah's flood has been repeated. Speeches of Fine Gael Deputies now give the impression that everything is blamed on the floods and the weather. But surely we shall be able to deduct the paltry amount provided by the Government for the relief of hardships due to the flooding disaster when we get in the Book of Estimates in the very near future a resume of how much was spent to relieve flood hardships. Members of the Government are now trying to justify themselves by saying that they never made the promises that they did and they are using the floods as an excuse. There can be only one explanation and that is that these people now realise that they can no longer fool the people. When during the last election campaign they promised that they would reduce the cost of living and accused Fianna Fáil of responsibility for an unnecessarily high cost of living, they knew they were fooling the people and they realise now that they are in another Dunkirk, to put it that way. They are saying now that they made no such promises. They say now that they merely indicated to the people that something might be done.

References have been made here to a new cynicism on this side of the House. I am amazed at this new cynicism that has begun to assert itself on the other side of the House by those who try to get it on record and who try to inform the rank and file of the electors that we got into power through false promises and that the Party opposite had to give up this side of the House purely because they made no such promises. Fianna Fáil Deputies have been saying that the promises made down in Cork in the by-election and in the Louth by-election, which together were instrumental in the change from one side of the House to the other, were responsible for our getting into office. I and the other speakers in my Party and in the other Parties who now form the Government made it very plain and explicit in our speeches in Cork that we did not make any promises. It was explained that if there was anything a sensible Government could do to reduce the cost of living it would be done and when the Taoiseach came down to Cork in both the by-election and the general election he told the people that we did not hope to get back into power on promises which afterwards we might not be able to implement.

Deputy Brennan has told the House about the chorus of denials that we have made. You do not have to turn to this side of the House to find a chorus of denials. If Deputy Brennan had been in Cork on the eve of the polls he would have found a large advertisement in the local paper, inserted by his own Party, warning the people of Cork to cast their votes for Fianna Fáil and quoting speeches made by Mr. Costello which intimated that the members of the inter-Party groups were not making promises that any specific foodstuff would be reduced in price by any specific amount. They warned the people not to vote for the inter-Party groups because we could not make promises. To-night Deputy Brennan has spoken about the floods and he seems to convey that the damage done by that disaster had made the financial situation easier.

We have heard Deputy Lemass taking the same line as Deputy Brennan and I am quite sure that other Fianna Fáil Deputies who are not here at the moment will come in later and will try to convince the House and the country that we of the inter-Party Government are here because we made promises and that now we do not implement them. I want to get it on the record that we did not make promises and that the chorus of denials that we made promises does not come from this side of the House but came from every Fianna Fáil platform in every constituency during the election. I am quite sure that Deputy Brennan, who sits there smiling, issued the very same threat in his own constituency and warned the people of his constituency not to vote for the inter-Party candidates because Mr. Costello or any of the other leaders refused to give a promise to bring down the cost of living.

Nearly nine months have elapsed and the Coalition has not given birth to "the promised land". The last time these matters were debated in detail the excuse was that there had not been time. It is not my intention to read quotations from speeches made by the various members of the Coalition Parties and the various promises they made. Other speakers have referred to them far more ably than I could.

On 9th June, just a week after the present Government came into power, coffee went up to 6/- a lb., an increase of 4d. On 20th July, cocoa went up by 8d. a lb. By the 29th September the cost of living had increased by two points and reached the highest index figure ever known in this country. In September the price of turf increased by 5/- a ton; flake meal, from 57/- to 65/6 a cwt.; lard, from 1/1¼ to 1/7; peas, a lb. tin, from 1/4 to 1/5½; potatoes, which were 10/6 this time last year, are now 18/6. Even pickles increased from 16/3 to 18/8 per dozen jars; carrots from 5/- to 12/6; bacon increased by 8/- a cwt.; chocolate by 3d. per lb. Meat is going up to fantastic heights. Eggs have gone as far as 7/6. Cabbage, onions, tomatoes, cheese have increased in price. Even paraffin oil has gone up by a halfpenny. There has been an increase in the price of oil and petroleum products and many other items which I could mention. Tyres and tubes are shortly to be increased.

In face of these figures the members of the Coalition sit there with smug complacency. It is my firm belief that there are members of the Coalition who believed their leaders before the last general election and who in their hearts genuinely believed that these promises, made by their leaders, could be kept. Now, evidently, the case made by the Fine Gael section of the House is that no promises were given. Deputy Barrett from Cork has gone to the greatest trouble to prove that neither he nor the Taoiseach, Mr-Costello, gave any promises in Cork City. I happen to have here an advertisement published in the Cork Examiner before the last general election. It was headed: “To lighten your burden vote No. 1 Barrett”. Deputy Barrett has just stated that lower taxation was never promised by him or by his Party and that he never said that such a policy could be attained. Here is the quotation:

"A vote for Barrett is a vote for a Party that stands for a policy of lower taxation and greater prosperity and which has proved during its years in office that such a policy can be put into operation."

That is but one of the promises and quotations. There are pages and pages of them here. As I have said, I firmly believe that the rank-and-file supporting the Coalition know in their hearts that they have been let down by the leaders. I honestly think that the only solution is for the present Government to say to the electorate: "We believed we could do these things. We now see from an examination of the position during our nine months in office that we cannot do them. We cannot keep the promises we gave you." And they should go to the country once again. I would very seriously ask the Government to take into consideration the future well-being of the country as a whole and, before the month of February is out, declare an election or, at any rate, declare an election at a very early opportunity.

The position has become so critical in the country, both in the urban areas and amongst the agricultural community, that if the Coalition did go to the country they would not know what hit them. It would be the end of Coalition government in this country for all time. God forbid that a by-election should be necessary but, should one take place, there is no doubt as to the answer which the electorate in any part of the country, Dublin, Cork, Limerick or anywhere else, would give. They would show in no uncertain manner their feelings about the complete sell-out by the present Government.

There are people—we all know them —who have no great political ties, who have no great knowledge of economics but who will definitely vote for the Party from whom they expect to get the most. The ordinary man-in-the-street, who has no political ties with one political Party or another, could hardly be blamed if he fell for the promises given so liberally from all the sections now making up the Coalition Government at the last election. He has been sorely disillusioned by the increases in prices, a long summary of which I have read out, that have taken place since last June. Where it will end is anyone's guess.

Deputy Lemass dealt with the position as regards the subsidy on tea which is costing £1,250,000 and on which the interest alone will be over £50,000. It has been stated by Government supporters that it was highly necessary and could not be avoided. They stressed the fact that the price had to be paid because of the cost of production in India and other tea-producing countries and that the increase was a just increase because the workers had to be paid for their toil. This is the very Government that forgets the dairy farmers in this country, the producers of one of the largest sections of agricultural output. The dairy farmers have been completely ignored. They have been treated in a most antagonistic manner by the present Minister for Agriculture. It is not good enough. He condescendingly meets the Irish Creamery Milk Suppliers' Association and he tells them that he has not the report of the Milk Costings Committee. I am very sorry the Minister for Agriculture is not here, but I have put down a question for next week which he will perhaps answer. I ask him is it a fact that the number working on the Milk Costings Committee has been reduced by 90 per cent. of the number working in our time. If that is so, it may be two or three years before we get the report of the Costings Committee if the Government do not take my advice and go to the country before then.

The complete apathy of the Minister for Agriculture will have the most serious repercussions on the dairy farming industry. No later than last week, just outside Limerick, there were over 25 in-calf heifers slaughtered. That might not be of great concern to the Minister for Industry and Commerce but I want to emphasise that the dairy farmer has been one of the mainstays of our agricultural economy down through the years. It is about time the Government woke up to the fact that if something is not done very quickly the day will come when much greater inducements will have to be given to the dairy farmer than they are seeking now.

There are good prospects in the coming months for the export of chocolate crumb, due to certain changes which have taken place in the British market, and that will continue to alleviate the position somewhat. Nevertheless, I would urge the Tánaiste to consider seriously doing something for the dairy farmer, irrespective of the delays which exist in the coming into operation of the report of the Costings Committee.

I do not wish to be destructive in my criticism. I am fully aware that the Irish Creamery Milk Suppliers' Association and other bodies interested in the dairying industry can do a great deal for that industry, besides an advertising campaign for drink more milk, by devoting their attention to increased production and such methods. Unfortunately, for some reason best known to themselves, they have not given sufficient attention to increased production in that line as yet.

On the position of unemployment, I saw that a Government spokesman said recently that unemployment has fallen by 5,000 in recent months. I am not sure whether that figure is correct or not, but if so I know of no new venture which is being sponsored by the Coalition which would merit the credit of such a decrease being given to the present Government. In June, 1953, there were 64,000 unemployed. In October, 1953, a few months later, a downward trend was very apparent when it dropped to 50,900, a drop of approximately 14,000. It appears that emigration is higher than ever before and everywhere—in Dublin, Limerick and the rural areas—every week Deputies must know of people leaving in greater numbers than ever for Britain. As regards the City of Limerick, I draw the Tánaiste's attention to the fact that the Limerick Clothing Factory has had to dismiss a large percentage of its workers. These depend for their employment on contracts for uniforms for the Department of Defence, the Gardai, the airports and such like and it is in the Minister's hands to deal with these problems.

Deputy Brennan said that the Fine Gael spokesmen before the last general election used an analogy of two sides of a street—of a shop selling beer, cigarettes and tobacco on one side and a shop selling across the street at twice the price and said: "Was it not only natural that the people would go into the shop selling at the lower price?" Well, that is only logic; but the electorate on the next occasion will be the fair trade commission to judge this question and I sincerely hope that they will get an opportunity again of showing their disquiet and disgust at the conduct of affairs by the present Government

There was one promise made by the present Minister for Defence, Deputy MacEoin. I have no hesitation in saying that the present Government supporters got quite a deal of support from this statement He was speaking in Louth and is quoted in the Midland Herald of the 15th May, 1954:—

"Fine Gael believed the best way to make the country prosper was to reduce taxation, to raise the standard of living and to give the people the necessities of life at the cheapest possible rate—Fine Gael would take taxation down to the position where the people would be able to bear it. As long as he was alive, no member of Fine Gael ever told a lie from a public platform and none of them ever would."

Then he went on to say that the position of the rates in local authorities had got to such extremes that he and his Party would definitely advocate that no further increases should take place. Everything points to increases in the rates of every local authority throughout the Twenty-Six Counties. The fact that the Health Act was not implemented in full last year contributes in some measure to those increases, but nevertheless under all other headings it would appear from the reports of the estimates committees which have been set up by certain local authorities that the rates on this occasion are going to be pretty high if the estimates are adopted

I feel that the question of rates would not arise on a Supplies and Services Bill. The question of rates would be more relevant to the Department of Local Government.

I will raise that with the Department of Local Government. I would draw the attention of the Tánaiste to that point of the alleviation of taxation on local ratepayers.

The only matter I will quote in full here is that Fine Gael speakers seem to go out of their way to stress that at no time did they give any promises. I would just mention one point. Just when it was obvious that a Coalition Government was going to be formed—I quote from the Irish Press of the 1st June, 1954, and which says:—

"The following is the full text of the Fine Gael statement:—

. . . . . . . . . . .

. . . . . . . . . . .

(2) Recognising that the main issue in the general election was the question of prices, the Parties forming the Government are determined to reduce the cost of living in relation to the people's incomes and in particular to effect a reduction in the prices of essential foodstuffs. As an earnest of their intention in this respect it is proposed to reduce the price of butter in the near future and a detailed announcement of the Government's proposals will be made in the next fortnight."

That was on the 1st June. On the 2nd February of this year at the Fine Gael Ard-Fheis, as reported in the Irish Times of the 3rd February, the Taoiseach is quoted as follows:—

"Referring to the cost of living, Mr. Costello said they were fully conscious of the limitations on the power of the Government to regulate prices, particularly when increases were due to world economic forces or conditions beyond their control. Their policy was to control, to the extent that was prudent and possible, such economic forces and to mitigate their impact on the people."

We gave no undertaking, he said, that whatever happened there would be no increase in prices but we will not sit back and say to the people—as our predecessors would have done—that they must bear the whole burden. What we have endeavoured to do and what we can continue to strive to do. is to cushion the people at least in part against wild fluctuations in prices or to increase their income so as to enable them to meet them.

I ask any fair-minded Deputy to compare these two statements and say whether Fine Gael did in fact give these promises and would they not be honest enough now to turn round and say to the country: "We find ourselves in such a position that we are not able to keep the promises which we gave you. We have now decided to go to the country and there will be a general election early in March."

In so far as Deputies opposite have dealt with the Bill itself, I think it is correct to say that the only Deputy who has attempted to speak on it has been Deputy Lemass and his reasons for opposing the passing of this Bill and what he states are his Party's reasons for opposing the passing of this Bill seem to me to be some of the most extraordinary things that have been mentioned in this House for some time.

Deputy Lemass's contention is, firstly, that this Bill is being continued for too long, secondly that it embraces powers which would be otherwise enacted or should be otherwise used by the Government. In the second contention he uses the example of the road traffic regulations and he says in a rather specious way that he has always considered that these regulations are an abuse of the power given by the Supplies and Services (Temporary Provisions) Act. As far as I am aware the Road Traffic Act regulations for which this Act provided were enacted in 1942, 1943, 1944 and 1945 and Deputy Lemass comes in in 1955 and he says he always thought this was an abuse of the power conferred by the Supplies and Services (Temporary Provisions) Act and for that reason he and his Party must oppose the Bill. Deputy Lemass and his Party had three years from the last of those regulations, six from the first, before 1948 in which they could have removed that abuse—three and six years, respectively, in which I think that Party certainly thought they had a leisure time and a strong position in which to remove any difficulty or abuse. I would not blame them for not removing that abuse from 1951 to 1954. I think Fianna Fáil during that period was so actively concerned with retaining power and had so many difficulties within the ranks of its own followers that it would not be reasonable to suggest what might be a rather minor matter should have been remedied during those three years. But certainly during the earlier period they had ample time if this is an abuse of the Supplies and Services (Temporary Provisions) Act to remedy it, and it does not seem to be keeping faith with the general public, or of any great assistance to this House to come forward in 1955 and say:

"I and my Party must oppose this Bill because, among other reasons, it takes power which should be otherwise used or enacted and one of the things we would have done was to make provision for the enactment of road traffic regulations otherwise than under this Act,"

when in fact such a long opportunity has been afforded to the Deputies opposite to remedy that if it is an abuse.

The other basis on which Deputy Lemass spoke about the Bill itself and purported to oppose the passing of this Bill is that it should not be continued any longer. That is an extraordinary statement. This Act was passed in 1946. I think it is probably true to say that it was passed mainly as a result of efforts of Deputies who are now on this side of the House to prevent the continuance of the Emergency Powers Orders and the Emergency Powers Act to which Deputy Lemass and Deputies opposite had been so devoted for so long. It was passed in 1946. It was continued every year up to 1953. There has not been any real denial—there cannot be—of the Minister's statement when he was introducing this measure that it will take considerable legislation to replace the powers contained in this Act. That fact is apparent from the provisions inherent in the Act itself and is one of the reasons—and the only reason in addition to the one I mentioned—which the Deputies opposite gave for opposing the passage of this Bill. They say that in the seven months from last June this Government should have passed the legislative programme necessary to replace this particular Act. In that respect it may be of assistance and it may be of use to remember that a large part of the commencement of the session of this Dáil since last June was occupied by the presentation of the rather unsuccessful farce of the Fianna Fáil Party opposing their own Budget, and if we are now to be charged with neglecting or delaying or failing to replace this Act with a considerable legislative alternative—which is what must be done—it seems to me that the Deputies opposite should search their own consciences as to what I call the rather unsuccessful presentation which occupied so much of the time of the House on the Financial Resolutions in the summer session.

With regard to the debate in general, apart from Deputy Lemass the other speakers have spoken not strictly to the Bill, though they have been, of course, in order. They spoke more on the general powers under the Bill, but Deputy Brennan has given us—possibly inadvertently—the secret of the debate we are in the process of having this evening. Deputy Brennan said it was very difficult or "not easy"—I cannot know which was the expression—for them—that is the Deputies opposite— to forget the difficulties which they faced in the general election of 1954. I can believe that. I believe they will never forget it, but it does seem harsh that this House should be so much occupied with what I can only call the sorrowful recollections of Fianna Fáil Deputies of the general election of 1954 and the difficulties which they then faced. We have had this debate about the election of 1954 over and over again and it does not improve with time nor with use and it does seem to me that by this time, having had the leisure of opposition, the Fianna Fáil Party might be expected both by this House and by the country in general to have evolved something more constructive than the sort of public post-mortem on the general election.

With regard to several specific matters which have been mentioned by the Deputies opposite, one was the price of tea. I think it might be of assistance if we had a little more clearly what the Fianna Fáil Party's attitude on the price of tea really is. If I heard Deputy Lemass's view correctly it would appear to indicate that if he were on this side of the House and in the Minister's seat now, that rise in the price of tea which came on the world market and which I think represents 1/4 per lb., should have been passed straight on to the consumers and that no machinery existed, or no effective step could or should have been taken, in his view, to prevent the passing on of that load to the consumer. I have the privilege to represent the same constituency as Deputy Lemass and I think the constituents there would be interested— there, and in every other constituency, certainly in the towns and cities of this country—to know if Deputy Lemass's attitude on this question is the same as the attitude of the others in his Party and if in fact—as appears almost certainly to be the case from his speech—that he believes the rise in the price of tea should be passed on to the consumers.

He did not say that at all.

If he did not say it, or does not say it, it is about time that either he or somebody else put forward some suggestion as to how that could be avoided. This Government has avoided until next September passing the blow on to the consumers in regard to the price of tea and if the Deputies opposite, or Deputy Lemass, or any other Deputy has any suggestion as to what they would have done other than what the Government has done, it is about time that we heard it. If they have not, it is about time that they should cease criticising or attempting to criticise this Government for the steps which have been necessarily, and I think properly, taken with regard to the price of tea.

Deputy O'Malley has mentioned that the unemployment figures show a decrease but that there is no new venture which would appear to take the credit for that decrease. That seems to me indicative of one of the difficulties which beset this country during the period of Fianna Fáil Government in that, when a problem of unemployment, a period of depression, arose, the only answer ever given by a Fianna Fáil Government was a new venture—and the newer and more spacious the better. They do not seem to realise and never seem to have appreciated the prospect of injecting new life and new expansion into existing ventures, into existing trade, commerce and production in general. I believe that the decrease in unemployment and the general increase in trade prosperity which was so strongly indicated by the terms of and the subscriptions to the loan in the autumn of last year—these good barometers of prosperity in this country—are directly attributable to the steadying influence of the policy of the Government.

I do not believe that, in a debate of this description, one need go further than a consideration of those better standards in relation to a study of the advances made within the last seven months. Within that period, trade, production and commerce have been steadied and are being expanded, and I believe that neither I nor any other Deputy on this side has any reason, as Deputy Brennan suggested, to be in any way slow or ashamed to come in here and defend the record of a Government, coming in with a Fianna Fáil Budget already delivered on to its lap, which, within seven months, can claim to have brought about a reduction in unemployment, can claim to have steadied the market for money and to have steadied the credit of the Government with the people by borrowing money at the right rate and can claim, in addition, to have reduced the price of butter and to have saved the ordinary consumer from what would have been a harsh blow resulting from the world price of tea.

It is a great pity that Deputy Finlay was not a candidate in the election before the last election when his advice on the tenor of this debate would have been very well delivered to his present colleagues. I have here before me the Official Report of the debates on the Supplies and Services Bill of last year, and, in every page of it and by every Fine Gael Deputy, there is not only a reference but a concentration on the cost of living. If the real purpose of the Bill was lost sight of then, as I am sure Deputy Finlay would agree with me had he read those debates, it applies far less in the case of the present date. If the Deputy at his leisure will open Volume 142, he will see on almost every page of it the wailing and caterwauling of the Fine Gael and Labour Deputies about the cost of living, as it then was. I should like to remind Deputy Finlay that the cost of living then was two points less than it is at present, and, if there was justification in 1954 for criticism of the Government of the day in relation to its policy and the effect of its policy on prices, very much more so now is there justification for the Opposition to criticise the Government who were then the Opposition.

With regard to the Bill itself, Deputy Lemass has indicated the intention of this Party to vote against the Second Reading. He gave as his reason the fact that he thought it was high time the Supplies and Services Act should cease, and, in introducing the Bill last year, he gave expression to the same opinion, and, as an earnest of his belief that the Act should be determined, he mentioned that one Bill had already been introduced to take from the Minister for Finance powers which he had been given under the Supplies and Services Act. In addition, he stated that every Minister in the Government had been charged with the preparation of legislation to put into proper statutory form the powers he was deriving, whether properly or—I will not use improperly; perhaps not quite in accordance with a strict reading of the powers given—in order to obviate the necessity for passing this Bill during the present term.

The Minister has given some indication of the volume which the necessary legislation would amount to and I have no hesitation in accepting his word that it would be formidable, but nevertheless I would be prepared to bet here to-day that little or nothing has been done to tackle that problem. He has admitted that, even at the end of next year, when the time comes for this Act to cease its operation, he may be forced to come to the House again to ask for another extended term for it. Unfortunately, this Act coincided with the Rent Restrictions Act of 1946 and that is another Act that seems to be following the same course of being the subject of renewing enactments year after year when the time has long since passed for a permanent form of legislation.

It took 21 years to get the Defence Forces Act put right.

Mr. Lynch

Were it not for Deputy Collins and ex-Deputy Cowan, perhaps it would never have been put right. Another reason why the Second Reading of this Bill will be opposed from these benches is, of course, the eternal question, as it now is, of the cost of living, and not simply the cost of living of itself, but the cost of living related to the manner in which the present Government got into power. I am not going to parade before the House the leaflets which were stuffed into the letter boxes and under the knockers of every voter day after day and week after week in the by-elections and the general election of last year. Deputy Barrett tells us that no promises were made. They did retract from the situation they had created in the months preceding the last general election, a situation in which they duped people into the belief that they, and they alone, would be effective in reducing the cost of living if they were given the opportunity of being a Government. They have had that opportunity for seven months—admittedly, not a very long period—but surely it was long enough, having regard to their statements not only on the election platforms, but in this House, to afford them an opportunity of showing some earnest, apart from this token reduction in the price of butter, of their intention to reduce the cost of living. On the contrary, the cost of living has risen, with the exception of butter, in respect of almost every other essential commodity.

Again, I am not going to trot out every individual increase. I need only refer to some of them. Turf, on which most of the poorer sections of the people, not only rural but urban, depend for their fuel and heat, has increased by 5/- a ton and by 7/6 in some parts of the country. Flake meal has gone up from 37/- per cwt. to 65/6. That increase is operative at the present moment. Potatoes, one of our staple diets, have increased from 10/6 to 18/6 a cwt. How, in the light of these prices, can Deputy Finlay accuse the Fianna Fáil Party of not keeping faith with the public? If ever faith was to be kept with the public it is incumbent upon and the duty of the Deputies supporting the present Government to show something better than decrying the attitude of Fianna Fáil to this Bill, and to show something better than trying to criticise and divert the attentions of this House from the burning question of the cost of living.

It behoves them to indicate in a strong fashion to their Ministers that they and the people they represent are not satisfied with the manner in which the present Government are tackling the question of the cost of living. In the months before Christmas we heard criticisms from various sections of the people about the fact that the cost of living was not decreasing. Members of the Fianna Fáil Party were asked why they did not raise these matters in a more vociferous manner in the House and outside the House, but Fianna Fáil were quite prepared to give the present Government in the first four or five months a chance, as the Parliamentary Secretary to the Government said very recently, to find their ministerial feet. In that speech it was from then on that all the good things that we had been promised in the by-elections and the general election were going to come, from about a fortnight ago.

We were told to vote Fine Gael for better times. I wonder how many people, no matter how well off their salaries appear to make them, think they now have got from Fine Gael the better times they were so glibly promised? Unfortunately for the people, particularly having regard to the question of employment and the cost of living, the times have turned out to be very, very bitter times.

Week after week in the Sunday Independent we saw letters from Mayo Housewife, Galway Citizen and a Kilkenny Sufferer decrying the efforts of the Fianna Fáil Government in controlling the cost of living, decrying the increase in this commodity and that commodity or decrying the fact that the prices of some essential commodity for the table or some household needs were not being reduced as the people thought they should. I wonder what has happened to those who contributed week after week in the Sunday Independent to the Voice of the People? The Voice of the People has become very silent in recent weeks and months on that very burning question as it appeared to be seven and eight months ago. Apparently, those people—many of them I have no doubt are directly employed by the Sunday Independent—have been diverted to some other form of journalistic activity in the hope of turning the minds of the people away from the promises made by the Party they sponsored and have been sponsoring since their existence.

Deputy Finlay asked what Deputy Lemass or what Fianna Fáil would have done with regard to the present price of tea. I am glad that Deputy Barry is here because had Deputy Lemass accepted Deputy Barry's advice as given public expression to in the House by Deputy Collins the price-of-tea problem would not have arisen in the last six months but 18 months ago, when Deputy Barry, before he had the intention of becoming a candidate in the last general election, asked Deputy Lemass, who was then Minister for Industry and Commerce, to go back to Mincing Lane and buy his tea there instead of permitting Tea Importers, Limited, a non-profit making public company, to buy direct from Ceylon and those other countries of source. Deputy Barry told us then that had he been permitted to go to Mincing Lane and buy direct from the merchants there he would have been able to put tea on the tables of the housewife in Cork at 1/- and 1/2 less per lb. I wonder if Deputy Barry would give the Minister for Industry and Commerce the benefit of his advice so freely given in the Cork Examiner and through Deputy Seán Collins in the House 18 months ago? The people of Cork have been anxiously awaiting that reduction in the price of tea.

Was not tea available cheaper then in larger stocks?

If tea was available cheaper then——

At that time there was not the same scarcity in the market.

It might have been available at a slightly cheaper rate. Tea Importers were then buying in bulk, getting the cheaper tea in one place and buying the dearer tea wherever they could get it. By blending the tea, they levelled out the prices and so maintained a fair price for the tea throughout the whole country and over a much longer period.

The Deputy can be very naïve when he likes.

Deputy Lynch is in possession.

I wish to refer to one journal that supports the present Government. Only a few days ago, on the 29th January the Cork Examiner published a leading article and tried to cushion the blow they apparently felt was inevitable in relation to tea prices. I wonder what the tenor of this article would have been 12 months ago? It says:—

"When the Government's plan for stabilising the prices must end with September—unless before then supplies increase and prices fall— consumers could minimise the effects of the higher prices by drinking less tea or using it more economically. After all, a pound of tea will yield 200 cups of it, which would mean but a halfpenny a cup if tea were 8/4 a pound. A reasonable rise in the price of tea itself should mean little increase in the cost of living. We got on very well when the ration was two ounces a week and people were automatically encouraged to to get the most out of it. By cutting down wastage a rise could be neutralised as an influence in the actual cost of living."

All very good advice but not advice that would have been so readily given had a different Government been in power at the present time.

Deputy Finlay seems to suggest that the remedy adopted by the Minister was something that all the country were looking forward to, but this £1,250,000 which tea importers were authorised to raise will have to be paid some way before September. All the Deputies opposite know there is only one way of raising money for subsidising any particular commodity, and that is out of taxation. Everybody, no matter how poor or unfortunate his circumstances, at the present time, is a taxpayer. Will we be given an indication in September how this £1,250,000 is to be raised?

A Deputy

We can give it to you now.

On what particular commodity will this £1,250,000 fall by way of taxation? Will we be given no more information about it than the other £2,000,000 that goes towards the subsidisation of butter? Will we be given no more information as to where it would come from? Unfortunately, I think the Deputies opposite are becoming much more indiscriminatory about the effect of subsidisation and taxation on their ordinary lives. They know that every penny that goes towards the provision of subsidies on any commodity, whether it be butter or anything else, will ultimately have to be paid for by themselves. I am not critically minded enough to hope that the price of tea will be reduced by September next.

The Singhalese Prime Minister gave as his opinion in the past few days that the price of tea would fall by reason of a much better crop. I hope that will be the case, and I hope that this £1,250,000, to be provided out of taxation one way or the other, will not be a recurring blister on the people of the country. I think Deputy Lemass referred to the Taoiseach's speech at the Fine Gael Ard-Fheis a short time ago. I could give another speech when he was in office in 1948, and after Deputy Morrissey, the then Minister for Industry and Commerce, said quite reasonably and honestly, that the effect the Government could exercise on the rise in prices could only be very small. Many of his colleagues in the Government and many of the Deputies who supported him were not prepared to believe Deputy Morrissey, purely for political purposes. But the Taoiseach now appears to have come around to the belief that his hands are practically tied by the impact of world economic influences on the cost of living. The Taoiseach of course in opposition came out much more strongly on different aspects of administration that can properly be discussed under this Bill. I remember him very well as he sat in the bench here telling Deputy MacEntee that he had imposed deliberately, without justification, a burden of £10,000,000 by way of taxation, that need not have been imposed at all. I know that he went further than that, that perhaps we could save £5,000,000 more by a bit of prudent financing. In the last fortnight both the Taoiseach and the Parliamentary Secretary to the Government have informed us that revenue even in the last five months is down by £1,000,000, I think, but expenditure has increased by £5,000,000. Therefore the Fine Gael estimate of 12 months ago when the Budget was being discussed is not only the £10,000,000 that he said could be saved, not only by the £5,000,000 extra that could be saved by prudent administration, but also this £5,000,000 extra by which Government expenditure has increased. In other words, £20,000,000 is a fair estimate of the mistake that Fine Gael made in their estimation.

What about the £1,500,000 that Deputy MacEntee was going to get back from C.I.E. to balance his Budget?

I am sure the Deputy read the C.I.E. accounts for the last financial year, that by reason of diesel traction policy a saving of £1,000,000 was effected.

What about the £1,500,000 that Deputy MacEntee was going to get back——

Deputy Lynch must be allowed to make his speech.

I do not intend to prolong this debate and go over the same lines too much, because there are other speakers coming after me who will have enough to say, but, nevertheless, when all the Deputies opposite were here they took an understandable pleasure in rubbing it in as much as they could. I do not like rubbing it in, but I do not mind having a little tilt at any rate. It will be interesting to see in three or six months' time, when public opinion will be gradually whipped up, and gradually becoming disappointed in its expectation of the wonderful relief and the wonderful times they were promised, this Government will find itself in a very difficult position. Deputies supporting the Government will find themselves in a most embarrassing position when they come to meet their constituents in many parts of the country, particularly Deputies who live in urbanised areas, particularly the cities.

I do not think anybody would deny that the cost of living was a major issue on which the people voted a change of Government early last year. It was something which will have a large influence on the destinies of political Parties and on the aspects of Governments in some years to come in this country. Fianna Fáil had tried to aim at stabilising prices in so far as this could be achieved. The Fianna Fáil Government advanced the theory, and in particular Mr. Lemass, that the most desirable situation to achieve was stabilisation of prices. A sharp rise or a very sharp fall would have a very serious effect on the economy of the country.

I do not think anybody, even a person who never studied economics, would fail to realise what a sharp fall in the cost of living would mean. Such a fall fortunately or unfortunately does not appear to be likely, but what is likely is that there will be an increase, although it may not be sharp. Unless the Government now can grapple with it and unless they can come up to the people and say that they have some machinery or legislation that they can propound as being effective, they will have to look to their laurels. Unless they can give some indication of maintaining stability or at least effecting a slight reduction in the cost of living I am afraid their turn will come at the next election, and that they will be facing another Fianna Fáil Government on the opposite side of the House.

Mr. Barry

I do not think I can stay out of this debate.

I was hoping you would come.

Deputy Lemass and Deputy Lynch singled me out for particular attention, and although I do not think tea is quite so important, I will occupy my time talking about it. In the first place I must congratulate the Minister on the steps he took to deal with the situation. I think those steps were liked by the people. I would like to hear from the other side what steps they would have taken in similar circumstances. Almost all my life I have been dealing in tea. It has always fluctuated in price and that fluctuation is helped by considerable speculation. I believe the present price of tea is a completely false price. When the present tea crop is picked I am satisfied the law of supply and demand will operate and the price of tea will come down.

Now you ask us how are we going to finance the present deficit. We are going to do precisely what Deputy Lemass did in 1952. We are going to balance the loss on dear tea by buying very cheap tea. In 1952, Deputy Lemass bought many million pounds of very cheap tea on the English market. He did not go to India. He bought it at 1/2½ a lb. and when Deputy Lemass reminds me this evening that I wrote a lot of letters to the Cork newspapers on that matter, I may say that those letters were all asking Deputy Lemass or asking anybody to tell me what happened that 1/2½ tea. When I said here in this House when I was first a member that it was sold by an importing group at 3/- a lb. Deputy Lemass said: "Nonsense". The tea was sold at 3/- a lb. or more because the cheapest tea that was sold by the importing group was 3/- a lb.

Were these prices not married to higher tea prices?

That is precisely what happened. Some very dear tea was bought and they had to buy cheap tea to make the price fair.

Tell the Gurranebraher ladies about it.

The Gurranebraher people would listen to me about tea. We will average the price of tea and I am sure that hope of mine is shared by Deputies in the benches opposite. I am sure they do not want to see the price of tea increased.

On the contrary.

The law of supply and demand will provide a remedy in this case. Deputy Lynch referred to my campaign for being permitted to buy tea freely myself in any country in which I chose to buy tea. If we grew it in this country there would be something to be said for limitation or direction of sources of supply, but we do not. I think it would be a very good thing if a greater number of people were permitted to buy tea and there was no monopoly created. There is, at present, a scheme which was arranged before Deputy Lemass left office as Minister for Industry and Commerce to permit a small group of people to go to the East to purchase tea. On paper it seemed all right. Anybody could buy tea there, anybody with £50,000. There are very few of that kind of tea merchants in Ireland. I thought I should kick up a row about that situation because I thought it would be better if a number of people were allowed to bring tea into the country also. If they could not buy it in Amsterdam, London or Calcutta as others could they would go out of business very quickly, but they could try to give our people generally and the people of Gurranebraher, to whom Deputy Corry referred, an opportunity of getting cheaper tea.

They are still waiting for the 2/- tea you promised them.

Order! Deputy Barry is speaking.

He had an opportunity of making that point last week.

The Deputy will have an opportunity of making his point later on without interruption.

I think they are very disturbed about this tea situation and very annoyed about the solution we have provided for the people. It is an irritating political fact and there is a sense of annoyance about the whole discussion. Deputy Lynch spoke about giving the Government a chance and said that he did not like to rub it in. What kind of performance took place on the Budget debate? Was that giving a chance to new Ministers at that time? I was astonished to find that such a pantomime could be conducted and I think this debate is largely tending to shape itself on the same lines. Fianna Fáil were not defeated in the last election by any campaign about prices; in fact Fianna Fáil were defeated first in 1947 and the people have rejected them in every election and by-election since. I have no doubt that when the time comes for this Government to go to the country, over four years from now, the result of that election will ensure that Fianna Fáil will still be sitting on those benches opposite and that we will be sitting here.

It is interesting to hear Deputy Barry, who presumably is a tea dealer, giving his opinion in the House. Deputy Barry had an opportunity last week of going before the Fair Trade Commission and telling the Fair Trade Commission where he could buy tea cheaper than Tea Importers Limited. I suggest to the Deputy that if he had the interests of his constituents and his customers at heart he would have done that. It might not be as spectacular as introducing elephants into Cork but it would be a move in the right direction.

We do not, of course, wish to see the price of tea increased. Deputy Barry asked us what alternative we had other than borrowing money from the banks. I would suggest there is an alternative: you could increase the incomes of the people to enable them to pay the increased price for tea— that was also one of the promises which the present Government made; you could cut down taxation which would enable them to pay an increased price for tea, and you could increase the wages of labouring people—quite an easy solution, far better than going to the banks and borrowing it and living in hopes, like Micawber, that the price of tea will fall. That is not the opinion of all the experts who write for the foreign papers that the price of tea will fall. No doubt it is a useful piece of propaganda for some of the evening papers to quote the Sinhalese Premier as saying that. Of course, it is an excuse like: "Live horse and you will get grass."

Do you think we have got the Premier of Ceylon to help us?

Shall we say he gave you added inspiration.

A very accommodating gentleman.

The Supplies and Services Bill gives to the Deputies on all sides of the House an opportunity annually of examining the work of the Government in the field of prices and I do not suppose it can be denied by any Deputy in the House that there never was an election fought which was fought so specifically on prices as the last election, and what about the promises? It is all right to make promises at the cross-roads but we have all the promises here on paper and when any Party comes before the people with a programme with the express intention of putting that programme into operation it is up to them as a Government to honour their bond and not to come back making excuses that we are hoping for a decrease in the cost of living next September depending on the world price fluctuations of tea.

Deputy Barry's word is not good enough for the public of this country, nor do we on this side of the House accept it. I am sure the housewives of Dublin, Cork and the various other cities and towns throughout the country will be considerably annoyed when they come to realise the significance of the device the Government are using to throw dust in their eyes and to pretend that they are bringing down the cost of living.

The Prices Advisory Body is a fraud. It was founded on fraud, and it is being maintained on fraud. It was founded by the present Minister on fraud.

And maintained by the last Minister.

It was founded by the present Minister on fraud to throw dust in the eyes of the public and to give the impression that there was something which he could do about prices which, in his heart, he knew he could not do. Any thinking member of the public will realise to his cost, later on, that not alone is he paying the increased price for tea, but that, in addition, he is paying the interest on the money borrowed to bolster up the assumption that tea has been cheaper.

This Bill gives us an opportunity of expressing our disapproval or otherwise of the Government's policy, if they have a policy. I doubt if they have a policy of their own: they have a borrowed policy. They have been content to work on our policy. They have stolen every point from our programme and tried to tell the people that it is their policy. They have been very successful in their propaganda. The Coalition Minister for Finance was all the time in the workshop manufacturing more and more promises for every tout down the country who supported Fine Gael to put across the people at cross-road meetings. We can take it now that the Labour Party are content to remain under that delusion and to go as far along the road as is possible until they are found out. We hope that that day is not far away.

A number of the Deputies opposite alleged, in the course of their speeches, that no promises were made regarding the cost of living during the general election. Deputy O'Donovan was one of those who stood up and refuted the suggestion that he made any promises. On a frosty morning during the by-election he came down to Clogher Head in County Louth and promised the electorate there that, should the Coalition be returned to power, not alone would they decrease the cost of living but they would reduce taxation and, to boot, they would increase the people's incomes and create an era of prosperity the like of which the world has never known.

The method used to bolster the price of tea can be applied in other directions as well. Some Deputy on the Government Benches remarked that the Government were very successful in their flotation of the National Loan. They were. However, if they were successful, they were working on another man's wound. The success can be attributed to the previous three years' administration—and it took three years to bring the country to that stage of stability wherein you could float a National Loan at 4½ per cent. It is no thanks to the present Government that they were successful in getting the money for the National Loan. I suggest to Deputies on the Government benches that a few more manoeuvres like the device of borrowing money from the banks to bolster the price of tea will not calculate to help them towards a successful future National Loan.

We heard so much about the cost of living during the general election that it would be too bad if we on these Fianna Fáil Benches allowed the present Government to forget their promises. We would be failing in our duty to our constituents and to the housewives of the country in general if we did so. In my view, it is up to Fianna Fáil to press home to the public on every possible occasion the fact that the present Government took office on the grounds that they proposed to reduce the cost of living—without any devices and without borrowed money. We should keep before the public the fact that the present Government took office on the grounds that they proposed to increase social welfare benefits and to cut taxation by £15,000,000. The last Minister for Finance in the Coalition Government, Deputy McGilligan, went down to Radio Éireann when he was in opposition and broadcast that statement in his election address. Furthermore, he said he could save £10,000,000 with a ten minutes' speech. It is now up to Deputy McGilligan and his colleagues on the front bench of this Coalition Government to save us that £10,000,000 and to save us an increase in the price of tea without having recourse to borrowing. It is up to them to save us and to cushion us against an increase in the price of every other commodity from tea, all along the scale, to feeding stuffs. It is difficult to understand the mentality of a Government that will have recourse to a consumer subsidy in order, if you like, to help the foreign capitalists of Ceylon, India and other countries while, at the same time, they refuse to subsidise their own producers.

It did not take this Coalition Government long before they let the axe fall on the Irish farmer's neck on the grounds that he was a speculator. There is no word about that when the Government are considering a subsidy for the capitalists of Ceylon. It is quite all right in that case. Deputy Barry said we do not grow tea in this country. We do not grow tea but we grow wheat—and when the Government were looking for an economy they were not long about finding where to let the axe fall. Those price increases are not confined to tea.

There is no increase in the price of tea.

There will be.

There will be. Do not worry. Furthermore, not alone will we have to pay for the increase in the price of tea but we shall have to pay interest on the money borrowed and that is the worst feature of it. It would be better if you increased the income of the people to enable them to pay the increased cost of tea by increasing social services, by cutting taxation and by freeing them from the income-tax collector. You would not be looking to pick their pocket in the Budget——

Working on a Fianna Fáil Budget.

You will not, next April. Then you will have to stand on your own feet.

Please God.

You will have to exercise your muscles there.

Brains might be more useful than muscles in the framing of the Budget.

They might, but you have not displayed a lot of them so far.

Wait and see.

You will need to bestir yourselves.

We will take tea with you.

Deputies opposite said that no promises were made during the last election, regarding the cost of living. I suggest that the whole emphasis was on the cost of living and on the 1952 Budget and that there was a re-hash of that at the Fine Gael Ard-Fheis when supporters of Fine Gael were inclined to come to fisticuffs over the reduction in the price of wheat.

I think you are mixing up two Ard-Fheiseanna.

I am entitled to go by what I find in the Press. In order to preserve unity some fellow had the brainwave to suggest that Fine Gael would do the needful. Here is some of the literature distributed during the last election.: "Lighten the burdens and vote for Barrett". That was one of the leaflets distributed during the Cork by-election.

"A vote for Barrett is a vote for a Party that understands that policy, a policy of lower taxation and greater prosperity, and which has proved during its years in office that such a policy can be put into operation".

"A vote for Collins and O'Sullivan is a vote for a Party that understands that policy, the policy of lower taxation and greater prosperity and which has proved during its years in office that such a policy can be put into operation".

That was a repeat to the letter of the leaflet distributed in the Cork City election. Then the Labour Party sent round a circular during the election which stated:

"The Labour Party will neither associate with nor take part in any Government that will not so amend the position as to make bread, butter, tea, sugar and other essential foodstuffs again available to the people at prices which they can afford. The Labour Party is openly pledged to that policy".

We raised their wages instead.

If the Labour Party was openly pledged to that policy they must have reneged it because the Labour Benches are significantly empty this evening——

That might be your fault.

——when one of the primary measures to come before this House is under discussion. They show no interest in the trend of events. They are not concerned with the increase in prices, with the load of taxation or with the difficulties that beset the people at the present time.

I think the Deputy is annoyed that the price of tea did not go up.

Do not bring me back to tea. I have made my position on that clear enough. I say that I welcome a reduction in the price of tea if it is brought about by proper means.

Why do you not drink light beer?

Deputy Carter should be allowed to continue his speech without interruption.

I do not, however, approve of the methods of the present Government, which simply amounts to throwing a fistful of dust in the eyes of the people. They say: "Look at Jack Horner sitting in his corner, eating his Christmas pie," and try to throw dust in the eyes of the public, well knowing that the price of tea can go sky high next September. At the same time, they are keeping the Prices Advisory Body in existence at the public expense to hold a little inquiry now and again, so that when questions are addressed to the Minister for Industry and Commerce in this House regarding the cost of living he can say: "Well, I am taking certain steps. I am having an inquiry held by the Prices Advisory Body but they have put it on the long finger." That is the attitude of the present Government towards the question of wages, social services, taxation and the cost of living. I suggest that if they persist in that attitude they will soon find that there is a certain level of intelligence amongst the electorate and that throwing dust in the eyes of the people does not pay in the long run.

There is one thing in which the Fianna Fáil Party has always been consistent—in sheer brass neck. I heard Deputy Carter bemoan the situation because we endeavour to cushion the shock of the impact on our people in the light of our known experience, while the very Party to which the Deputy belongs, completely reneged in respect to one specific and solemn undertaking which they gave to the Irish people, namely, that they would not interfere with subsidies. That was a promise that was blown sky-high overnight. It is largely because of the repudiation of that pledge that to-day we have to grapple with the difficulties which exist in regard to the cost of living. We now hear this flaunting hyprocritical concern for the people by an Opposition which was responsible for the catastrophic blunders and messes that we had to clear up when this Party was last in the Government, some of which indeed we have to start to clear up again now. I remember, for instance, the weevily oatmeal that was able literally to shift on its own feet from one side of a store to another and which cost the people £750,000 without any benefit being derived from it. I can also recall some of the grandiose schemes conceived by Fianna Fáil to build magnificent structures that could be of no value to the nation. Deputy Carter when talking about the cost of living would be well advised to remember some of these wild-cat schemes. The toughest job this Government had to undertake since it went into office, was to try to excavate some of the morasses that confronted it. One cannot come into office with a legacy of three years of expediency from a Government of panic decisions, and try to give the people new hope immediately. We know perfectly well now from the financial returns already issued that the Budget of Fianna Fáil last year was "cod." I was in the House when it was introduced and I so described it then. I know now that that description was completely and unfortunately true.

How are you going to reduce taxation on the Irish people? There is only one way it can be done—by ridding the administration of the type of worthless expenditure which will show no return to the nation. The way to improve the conditions of the Irish people and to bring their standard of living up to the level that Deputy Carter wishes to see, when they would have better incomes, is to see Irish capital, Irish money and Government money going into schemes from which not only permanent benefit will inure to the country but in which there will be worthwhile employment for the people engaged on these schemes. That is something that Fianna Fáil never understood or never did. They were too busy with either grandiose schemes, costing anything from £2,000,000 to £12,000,000 or "poky" little schemes of local preferment, to get down to the task of diverting Irish money and Irish efforts into worthwhile development at home. It is easy to say glibly that we have done nothing in regard to the cost of living. Mark you, the few earnest tokens that have come are certainly allaying public worry. Deputy Lynch talked about the voice of the people being silent now. He failed to realise that the only reason why the voice of the people is silent now is because the people have done their job; they have made Fianna Fáil a permanent fixture in opposition for the duration of this Dáil. The people are waiting now in order to give the Government an opportunity to stabilise our economy, to clear up the mess and go ahead with the task of Government. A promise was never made that we could overnight, by waving a magic wand, deal with the cost of living. Only one promise was made and that was the promise that the burden of taxation would be reviewed, that money would be diverted into worthwhile national capital development and that all that could effectively be done to curb rising costs would be done. Week after week, month after month and year after year Fianna Fáil will see that promise taking on the semblance of a reality they cannot now conceive. Where rising prices cannot be curbed some increased measure of prosperity will be given to the people so that they will have the capacity to meet the demand made upon them.

I give the Opposition a timely warning: year after year Fianna Fáil Deputies will see a policy put into effect, a policy based on a solid foundation, aimed at improving the national wealth, and not just a policy based on some popular effort. That policy will aim at improving the land, at investing money in drainage and in effective services—money which, in the last analysis, will enhance the capital value of the nation as a whole.

We know perfectly well that Fianna Fáil are in an awkward position in relation to this measure. Whenever they talk about the cost of living they do so against the background of their own catastrophic failure as represented by the bleak, black Budget of 1952. By the removal of the subsidies they placed on the people an extra burden of taxation. That was done with wanton flippancy. As a result of that Budget we experienced the skyrocketing of prices of essential foodstuffs such as bread, butter, tea and sugar against the background of what might be described as a Dickensian relief of taxation on dancing. But the Irish people fortunately were given an opportunity of assessing the capacity of the Fianna Fáil Government on that bleak, black Budget of 1952. From 1952 until the fall of the Government in 1954 the people saw more and more panic economy coming into effect. It is naïve on the part of any Party to prate about the cost of living to-day when they know that from 1951 until 1954 the whole national structure was under the control of a dead hand, and it was under that dead hand that the situation was created which renders it virtually impossible for the present Government to deal with outstanding difficulties in a short seven months, to say nothing of having to tackle the new difficulties that are arising.

I think the Government has done well in reducing the price of butter. The Government is right in cushioning the impact of a sudden rise in the price of tea. The Fianna Fáil Party may be quite wrong in their anticipation that the price of tea will rocket in September next. They may also be wrong in their anticipation of difficulty in leavening the cost that may become operative between this and September. Generally speaking, the people take the view that the Government is making an effort to stabilise the prices of essential commodities. Some may say that we are not tackling other problems. I think we have given a reasonable earnest of the direction in which we intend to move. There are many things that govern prices, things that need close investigation. Nobody ever thought that the Government per se, or by legislation, could in fact control the cost of living. In some ways a Government can put a brake on rising prices but, in the main, prices are the result of competition; and that is particularly true of those commodities that we must import. While the Government may not be able directly to control the cost of living, by the rapid elimination of cartels and rings, prices will tend to find a new level; in that direction we know that certain investigations have been held and certain investigations are being held. I do not think there is any fair-minded Deputy in the House who will not appreciate the fact that this type of investigation and this type of hearing-of-the-facts in relation to profit margins, distribution costs, etc., in certain commodities is awakening the public to a sense of where effective measures can be taken to make some reduction in the costs of commodities. I think that the Minister should endeavour in every way possible to speed up these investigations.

Deputy Carter has tried to throw some kind of a slur on the Prices Advisory Body. It was set up, it is true, under the inter-Party Government of 1948. It was maintained and continued under the Fianna Fáil Government of 1951 to 1954. It may be that it has not been able to achieve all that might have been hoped but it certainly has done some worthwhile investigations and I feel the sooner the Government realises that there is scope for more investigations into costs the sooner we will be able to realise that there are certain groups, associations and cartels deliberately forcing up prices. The sooner that is found out and realised the better and the quicker will the people as a whole get a fair deal. It is no good for the Deputies on the Fianna Fáil Benches to bemoan and bewail about the cost of living. The cost of living as it exists to-day was a legacy left to us by Fianna Fáil. It is a legacy that was handed on to us by an economy in which the people were reeling under the impact of taxation and suffering from a dearth of leadership and in which every possible unrest consequent on that lack of leadership and economical instability was apparent. I say now that it has been a great effort on the part of the Government to be able to steady the ship, stabilise the economy of the country and get the people back again into a spirit of confidence, pleased and willing to co-operate and help in an effort that will lead to better government for all sections of the community.

Fianna Fáil can never get away from one thing and that is that the main steep rise in the cost of living with which we are faced to-day was a deliberate and hurtful impact and an economy brought about by their own Minister. People may ask why we did not reintroduce subsidies or something of that nature. We have got to remember this: that once the blow was delivered in the way it was by the Fianna Fáil Government, that once the complete impact was allowed to fall, it was impossible to repair the ravages of that policy. Now, Deputy Carter is worried about social welfare and social welfare benefits. He may rest assured that by the time this Government leaves office he will be again over there bemoaning increases that we shall have given or, for political purposes, bemoaning that we did not give better increases than we may be able to give. The people of this country have no need to fear. Work will be done, possibly in an undramatic way but in a systematic way, that will in its ultimate analysis see the national income expanded and national prosperity enlarged. Worthwhile schemes of improvement of our land, of drainage of our land, of improvements of our forests, of schemes which will be effective in bringing wealth to this nation, will have been attained. You will see them progress and in the ultimate analysis, when you have to face the electorate again, you will see that all the promises we have made of efforts to reduce taxation and to give people more money to spend and the nation a better and more fruitful lead, will have been fulfilled, possibly not to the extent to which Deputy Barry adverted but to an extent in which fairness will have been rendered under a real economic policy.

Deputy Collins finished up on a rather bleak note and I should like to point out particularly to him that there were many things to which he failed to refer—to the extravagant and systematic promises which he made in his constituency in the last election. In every issue of a provincial newspaper known as The Southern Star Deputy Collins and his colleague, Deputy D. J. O'Sullivan, had an advertisement on behalf of Fine Gael in which they claimed or promised reductions in the prices of beer, spirits and tobacco. They also promised in these advertisements an abolition of the means test and old age pensions at 60 years of age. He made no reference at all to these things here to-night and I feel sure he now realises he has a very long road to travel before he has fulfilled these extravagant promises to his own constituents in West Cork.

At the beginning of this debate, Deputy Lemass made a statement and later on reference was made to the same subject by Deputy Finlay. Between the two statements there was a very wide gap—a big divergence. Deputy Lemass pointed out the danger of the continuance of wartime legislation by Order. Recently, in the debate during the Committee Stage and passage of the Local Government Bill, Deputy Major de Valera and Deputy MacBride pointed out the dangers which had arisen and which might creep into that Bill—that not alone might there be legislation by ministerial Order but that there might be an extension of that type of legislation in the form of departmental letter. Listening to Deputy Finlay to-night one need not know what type of constituency he represents because he kept very far away from the broken promises made by the Government. He kept very far away from the broken promises made to the agricultural community.

When the present Minister for Agriculture rode through the constituency making the most extravagant promises on the prices which he would guarantee he told the agricultural community, both through propaganda literature and advertisements, that he guaranteed the farmers he would maintain at least the prices guaranteed by the Fianna Fáil Government. He guaranteed that these prices would be maintained if and when the inter-Party groups formed a Government. Everybody associated with the agricultural community knows only too well what has happened. Deputy Dillon at every chapel gate, fairgreen and cross-road said to the farmers: "Travel with me along the inter-Party road and I promise I will dazzle you with prosperity." These were the promises he made. There was the incongruous figure which he painted of the Irish farmer, the fellow in the brown boots, navy blue suit and fedora hat, whom one could see roaming around the country, not in Prefects or Anglias but in A 40's and Somersets. Deputy Dillon does not seem to be an authority on good dress for males. What is a fedora hat? Where is it made? Is it made in Deputy Dillon's constituency for a particular type of farmer or is it available to the Irish agricultural community in general?

I do not think it is relevant to this debate, whatever kind of hat it is.

The most extravagant promises were made by Fine Gael, including a promise that the status quo established by the Fianna Fáil Government would be preserved. In regard to wheat, they guaranteed the 1948 crops.

They did not.

In a rather ambiguous advertisement, they went further and guaranteed that price for five years.

They did not.

You did, indeed.

I am asking, not for a lawyer's interpretation, but the average Deputy's interpretation. Fine Gael, in 1948, gave a five-year price guarantee for wheat. "The price fixed this season is in accord with that policy and will be paid by Fine Gael. Fine Gael, as a Government, will give another five-year price guarantee." What would that convey to the ordinary reader but that the price which had been given in 1948 would be maintained for a further five years? There was no question of review of price; it is a very carefully-worded advertisement and was open to two interpretations. Now, at this stage, when the farmers are tricked, the lawyers say that the farmers' interpretation is not the interpretation and the farmers are now expected to accept the lawyers' interpretation of the Fine Gael propaganda at that particular period.

Like their price leaflet.

The price is guaranteed.

Deputy Costello stated that Fine Gael guaranteed the prices which the Fianna Fáil Government had agreed to pay for wheat, that the price guaranteed by the Fianna Fáil Government would be paid and that the new Government would continue to provide security for the farmers with a long-term guarantee. What is the long-term guarantee which the farmers got? No sooner was Deputy Dillon fixed firmly in the saddle than he proceeded to put the guarantee into operation. He started off by reducing the price of wheat by 12/- a barrel. That figure does not represent the actual reduction. In 1953, which might be taken as a normal wheat year, 18 per cent. of the farmers qualified for the top price; 48 per cent. were cut by 2/6; 24 per cent. were cut by 5/-, and 10 per cent. were cut by a figure in excess of 5/-. With the increased use of the combine, it may be assumed that that figure of 18 per cent. will be substantially reduced. One can assume that farmers will be fortunate if they have received 65/- a barrel for wheat.

In this House Mr. Dillon challenged the manure manufacturers to increase the price of manures. There are lists which show increases in phosphate, nitrogen and potash. In other words, the costs of production have increased despite the fact that Deputy Dillon, as the agricultural leader of the inter-Party Government, tried to convince the farmers that he had a key to perpetual prosperity for them. On the basis that the acreage and the production next year will be the same, the Minister has deprived the farmers of between £2,000,000 and £2,250,000. Is that the way in which the Coalition Minister will increase the prosperity of the farming community?

There have been substantial increases in the cost of compound feeding stuffs, in the cost of cotton meal, but no increase has been given to the farmer. I repeat that no Government can remain long in office if they believe that they can create national prosperity by reducing the income of the agricultural community. It was on such a policy that the inter-Party Government in 1951 broke. It will be on that issue again that this inter-Party Government will dissolve into the political mist.

One would imagine from Deputy Collins' remarks that seven months were only seven days but the promises which were made were so extravagant that they would be impossible of fulfilment in 70 years. Taking the sheaf of newspaper advertisements by which the votes of the people were solicited one wonders how they risked trading on the intelligence of the electorate. We will help to remind them when an opportunity presents itself of the extent to which the Government have carried their promises into operation.

The agricultural section of the community is the one section which has suffered at the hands of the present Government. On the very same day on which a sortie was made at the agricultural community the Government introduced legislation to make provision to implement another extravagant promise by which they sought the votes of a particular section of the community. No Government can hope to succeed that strikes at the section of the community which is the producing section. Unfortunately, in this country a disproportionate number of people are engaged in unproductive work. The emphasis seems to be on making the going easier for that section of the people and on striking at those who are at the basis and at the foundation of the nation's economy.

It was Julius Caesar who remarked in the opening of one of his books that all Gaul is divided into three parts. For the purposes of paraphrase I would like to say that Fianna Fáil recollection seems to be divided into two parts—that one part is that which they choose to remember and the other is the part which they choose to forget. I do not think that the Fianna Fáil Party in opposition to-day, when speaking on this Bill, have recovered to any greater degree from the shock of their defeat, which they displayed so bitterly during the Budget debates of some months ago. It was likened to shell-shock by Deputy McGilligan, speaking at that time on motions brought in here, in willy-nilly fashion, without any regard to public stability, without any regard to the trust that the people were placing in him, by Deputy Lemass. It is no great feat surely to ask a Party such as Fianna Fáil is to remember that they themselves came into power originally in 1932 riding on the greatest avalanche of false promises and mighty expectations that were ever launched on an unsuspecting electorate.

They were all fulfilled.

Deputy Carter speaking here this evening was quite positive in his assertion that every point in the policy of the present Government that had been put into operation by them was stolen from his Party. If that be the case, then this debate could end on that note because Fianna Fáil would have no complaint if the stolen points were being put into operation on this side of the House.

The quiet confidence with which this Government is proceeding, with the degree of efficiency that is necessary in turn to inspire the confidence of our people, is what really annoys the Opposition here to-day and every day and which will continue to annoy them with what probably will be a lessening degree when time begins to teach them that false promises—really false promises, made to delude and to deceive—are not the things that will pay over a long term—unless you are able to support them, as they did over a long term policy, with bribery, corruption, intimidation and all shapes and forms of Tammany Hall and Castle Hack. That is why they succeeded during those years.

Is a charge of that kind in order?

The charge is a political charge against a political Party, not against an individual Deputy. Perhaps the Deputy would address the Chair.

A truth is always something that will bring to their feet people who smart under the allegations of the truth. Even in opposition I am sure that Fianna Fáil must recognise—as any Party must recognise, whether in opposition or in Government—that the effects of policy cannot become apparent at once and whether it is seven months or, as Deputy Moher is likely to put it, seven days, it cannot possibly take effect in such a short period of time. When promises were being made, as they are alleged to have been made by the Party opposite during the recent campaign, they were not made to show that any immediate effect was going to result from a change of Government. Deputy Dillon has been accused here of roaming the country asking people to travel the inter-Party road and saying that he was going to give them prosperity.

I do not think that Deputy Dillon's efforts in that direction up to now, in the agricultural side of our community, can be questioned. Uproar comes from the benches opposite, but only from people who live in those constituencies which made their contribution to the 500,000 acres under wheat out of a total of arable acreage of 12,000,000. Perhaps it would be well if the Opposition Party were to try to find out what the effect of this stabilising of the price of wheat has had and is having on the people who live and toil on the other 11,500,000 acres where they do not grow any wheat.

Comment has been made on the National Loan and its success has been daringly—characteristically daringly— attributed to the previous three years of government. Well, I think that remark does not require any analysis and does not require any refutation. The people subscribed to the loan, bravely launched by the Minister for Finance, in spite of would-be economic prophets and in spite of the shaking of heads of prominent bankers and economists; it was a success and it is the greatest tribute to date of the confidence of the people in the present Administration.

As Deputy Finlay has already told this House, on the question of tea there are two things that could have happened if Fianna Fáil were in power. You would either increase the price of tea or, on the other hand, you could subsidise it. It is up to somebody now, speaking for them, to say straight out what exactly they would have done instead of what has been done.

That is a six-mark question.

We would not go to the banks, anyway.

What about Fuel Importers?

Is there a voice from the Labour Party at last?

They were conspicuous by their absence until now.

Conspicuous, too, from the other side of the House, because every possible gibe and tilt they can possibly evoke is evoked to try to drive a wedge between the Labour Party and the other Parties that form the Government. I am quite sure every intelligent member of the Labour Party realises only too well the origin of those gibes and the purpose for which they are made. I am sure that the Labour Party know at last, after long experience in this House and having supported different Administrations here, in which Party and group of Parties they can place their trust for an ultimate solution of their problems, together with the necessary restriction on what they would call the capitalist approach. Those on the other side of the House have expressed it as the duty of Fianna Fáil to bring to the minds of the people at all times what they call the false promises that were made by us on this side of the House. I heartily wish, for my Party's sake and the sake of this Government, that we and all the Parties forming this Government had at all times that quicksilver shifting ability to be able to jump on the escalator of political preferment and advance our own causes by false promises such as have never been exemplified in any country except in this, and exemplified strongly by the Fianna Fáil Party.

For instance, in the by-elections and in the various speeches of Deputy MacEntee promising that there would be no interference with the price of beer and that there would be no——

Quote the reference.

Speaking at Rathmines——

He said it at Rathmines on the 29th May, 1951—do you deny that?

A Cheann Comhairle, a reference like that, I think, should be quoted. I submit that as a point of order.

Deputy Lindsay, so far as I can understand, does not purport to quote.

On these questions that have been asked——

Perhaps the Deputy would allow me to speak. Deputy Ó Briain has raised a question of order. As far as I understand it, Deputy Lindsay is not purporting to quote: he is simply stating that a Minister of a former Government said a certain thing which he is not purporting to quote.

But when he is asked for the quotation is he not bound to give it?

He is not purporting to quote——

But he is purporting to paraphrase, and, I think, paraphrasing incorrectly.

We all paraphrase each other's statements.

But he is paraphrasing, I think, incorrectly.

I accept the ruling of the Ceann Comhairle that I am not purporting to quote. I am mentioning by way of reference what a Minister of a former Government said in a public speech. But I want to come to something about which I myself have personal experience, a false promise which I am asked to instance. There was a by-election in North Mayo in the constituency which I represent in 1952 and the leader on the industrial and commercial side of the Fianna Fáil Party went to the town of Ballina to make a speech. Things were rather evenly balanced at that time in that by-election but on to what I have already been describing as the escalator of political preferment jumps Deputy Lemass with a factory of which he had not and could not have had the slightest knowledge of its ultimate attainment at the time he made that speech. There were Deputies opposite who went round without the same moral certainty at that time with pale yellow leaflets—"Work for 350 people," thereby implying not that 350 people would get work but that everyone they interviewed and everyone to whom Deputy Lemass addressed himself on that particular occasion would be the recipient of the prosperity that emanated from the good news. That is the kind of false promise which has had an effect——

It was not a false promise.

Sure the factory is not there yet—what are you talking about? He promised a biscuit factory to Ballina and it never came off.

They did not even make a dog biscuit.

Deputies beside Deputy Lindsay should not be interrupting. Deputy Lindsay on the Bill.

There has been talk from the opposite side of the House of throwing fistfuls of dust in the eyes of the people. Do the people opposite forget the whirlwinds of dust that they roused up in various elections from 1932 onwards and do they forget the methods by which they sought to let that dust get into the eyes of the electorate? That is the part of their recollection to which I take exception. These are things they do not want to remember but they want to paint a picture of themselves on the opposite side of the House wearing halos, admittedly too tight for them and consequently hurtful and making them give the odd scream such as they gave in this debate and others since the change of Government, and showing that all the ruffianly conduct is on this side of the House. This kind of holy hypocrisy, self-adopted, does not make for good Government or good administration. The function of an Opposition, to say the least of it, is to make reasonable contributions to the debates of this House and to remember their own defects and by remembering those defects to see how they can make better contributions. That is not done by reminding the Government of their mistakes and reminding them of possible mistakes and almost urging on this House and on the people that nothing short of a perpetuation of mistakes can result from this Government and that only the advent to Government again of Fianna Fáil can restore prosperity here.

There is one very important feature about this present Administration. It is a good omen in my opinion, and it is that the people are silent. With the exception of an occasional racketeer here and there in the wheat business, the people are otherwise displaying a contentment which they have not known before——

Senator McGee, for instance?

And it is that expression of contentment together with the full subscription of our National Loan which we on this side of the House rightly regard as approval of the quiet and unobtrusive work that is being done by the Government.

The various Ministers of this Government deserve, I think, the best wishes and heartiest congratulations of all people on all sides of this House for their efforts to do things since the change of Government, efforts, mark you, which were marred by climatic conditions and various other things which would not be happening in a normal year. Our people are satisfied that the work is being done. They are satisfied that money allocated for various projects is being spent on projects which will add to the wealth of the country. They are satisfied that no longer are things being placed in different parts of the country in a haphazard fashion, there to curtail a loss of votes on the one hand, or here to increase some little pocket of votes on the other hand. They are satisfied that public moneys are now being fairly distributed between all sections of the people and they are satisfied that when we on this side of the House are endeavouring to get any project on foot it is not a biscuit-factory project suddenly worked up to win a by-election.

They are satisfied that it is by hard work and honest endeavour that countries can be ruled for the betterment of all the people in them and that when the histories come to record the change of Government in this instance they will record the successful emergence of our people from that deliberate avalanche of false promises, bribery, corruption and intimidation as the greatest miracle of our time.

In listening to some of the speakers on the Government side of the House this evening I could not believe that such a change of front would come about in a few months. As a matter of fact during the last election in my constituency in County Dublin the bidding was so high from all Parties in the field that they had nothing to do but put out Fianna Fáil and as soon as Fianna Fáil was defeated there would be pie in the sky to which the people need but stretch up their hands and they—the Opposition of that time—were the people who had the magic wand to bring it down. No thinking man or woman in the country could say that Fianna Fáil during their term of office increased taxation for taxation's sake. Unfortunately, in 1951, when they took over the reins of office in this country, they inherited a very dishonest electioneering Budget. They found themselves in the position of having to straighten out things after three years of inter-Party Government, three years of dishonesty, because when we gave them over the country in 1948, we gave it over in a sound financial state. Production was going ahead and we had adopted the same policy as all other nations had adopted that ever achieved anything, that is, we tried to protect our own industries, tried to develop the natural resources of the nation, both from the agricultural point of view and from the point of view of the creation of employment by the establishment of factories with reasonable protection. We also tried to encourage the tourist trade, but if anybody thinks that there were any representatives in any Parliament in the world as much misrepresented as we were then, he has another guess coming.

I have often paid the Deputies making up the inter-Party to-day the compliment of saying that they were past masters at misrepresentation. It is all very fine to say: "I believe I would be able to do a good deal better with my economic policy than you have done," and to argue it out on its merits, but the most dishonest promises that could ever have been made were made and the most dishonest criticism carried on by the members of the Government. I want this to go on the records of the House again; in 1952, the Fianna Fáil Party, with the Independents who then supported us, had to do the hardest thing that any Government ever had to do. We had to put the interests of Ireland before the interests of our own Party, and if that was not honesty, I do not know what it was. It would have been very easy for us, if we had wanted to play a dishonest political game, to let things slide, but this country is ours and we want to hand it on in good shape. Let our contribution so far as the State is concerned and so far as the welfare of its people is concerned be as honest as we can make it.

I have heard a number of speakers from the Fine Gael Benches denying that they ever said they would reduce the cost of living immediately. I am not one of those who expect miracles from any Party. I knew they could not work miracles, but they were dishonest enough to say they were able to do all these things and that we took up the attitude we took up because we were vicious. That is why I challenge them and say they were dishonest and that it was complete misrepresentation. So long as you have that approach, that philosophy, we cannot go ahead as quickly as we would like to. The ideal of every public representative, no matter what side of the House he sits on, is to see that this country will be better for the people who come after us. His ideal should be to contribute something worth while and the only basis on which that can be done is to put the country in a sound economic condition.

To that end, we tried to increase production on the land and in the factory; we tried to build up schools, hospitals and houses and to do all the things worthy of a Christian State, a State which our forefathers went to premature graves to make possible, as, during our term, a number of men have gone to early graves. Yet we had during the last election people who knew better, people with education and a good background—all decent men in their own way—stooping to the political dishonesty of saying they were going to provide something in the nature of a Utopia, that they were going to increase production, reduce taxation, increase old age pensions and bring about that Utopian state at once. Surely they did not believe that, and surely they did not think that we were so ignorant on this side as not to avail of any opportunity to bring about improved conditions here.

The first thing they did was to strike a hard blow at what we believed was a social necessity, in the form of the Health Act, and in that regard they misrepresented us again and tried to bring in things into the debate on that Bill that should not be brought into any debate in this House. We should have argued the thing on its merits, and should at least have been honest enough to do the things which we believed were essential for the Irish people and not bring in third and fourth parties from outside the House, because we were sent in here to do a certain job of work and should be big enough to do it. Every other day I have examples of the pagan system that still exists when some of our people are sent to hospital or some poor man wants treatment.

I am afraid that does not arise on this.

I am only dealing with policy. I have here extracts from some of the speeches of Deputies who made promises. We find the Minister for Education at Inchicore saying:

"Dublin can now strike a decisive blow against overtaxation, the high cost of living and the resultant distress caused by the present Government."

That appeared in the Irish Independent of the 12th May, 1954. Then we have my colleague, Deputy Rooney:

"After the election, Fine Gael will again put into operation a policy designed to increase production, reduce taxation and thereby reduce the cost of living."

I do not know whether they want to decrease taxation or increase production. In fact, it is the reverse they have done. The Labour Party would lower food prices by bringing back the food subsidies according to their advertisement and Deputy Costello, the Taoiseach, would reduce taxation and prices by applying a policy of production. I do not see——

That is your trouble.

——that we in Fianna Fáil failed to apply a policy of production. We were the first to initiate a policy of production. The keynote of our political programme all the time was to increase production. We can never in this House be accused of not trying to increase production. Every single thing we did in this House as far as an economic policy was concerned was to increase production. When we left office in 1948 production declined because the agricultural industry did not get much encouragement during that period. At the present moment they are getting less. The people were asked for support so that taxation might be reduced and some easement granted in regard to the burdens which weighed so heavily on them. Why did they not state to the people that they would do it in a certain way? Labour stated that they were going to increase the subsidies and thus reduce the cost of living.

But all was very vague. Then you had the secret document concerning the lb. of sugar and the price of the pint which was sent around to every house. When the canvasser called to the house, he also had a nice little word to say about putting the commodities back to the old prices if his candidates were elected. That was the type of stuff we had to put up with in the areas where we went up for election. I made no promises. I simply stated what we would do. We would try and do our best and be as honest as we could with the Irish people and endeavour to make their lot better than it was. I said that it was too bad that we were forced into the position we were in but that we had to do what we had to do having been forced into the situation. In my constituency they gave me over 10,000 votes. If the inter-Party Government adopts a constructive policy which will be of benefit to the Irish people they will get our support. Deputy Lindsay spoke about the National Loan. In that connection we supported the National Loan in every way we could. Our leader spoke for us. Any constructive policy that was proposed while we were in opposition was supported by us if that policy were in the national interest.

One of the things we are anxious to discuss is how the present inter-Party Government got into office on false, insincere promises. They now find themselves up against it because the money they thought was there is not there. They said they would reduce taxation and the cost of Government. They were going to increase social services. I heard Deputy Barry speak a few moments ago. He is a man who got a great vote in his own constituency in Cork. He blatantly said that they never made any promises. The little parcels were nicely turned out in the coloured propaganda sheet sent around.

Royal blue.

Different colours.

That is the kind of stuff we have listened to. I heard some of them in my own constituency crying about the poor man's pint. I thought some of them would never stop crying and I thought others of them wanted a glass of whiskey to revive them they cried so much. We would all like to see the poor man's pint and the price of tea, sugar, bread and butter cheaper. We on this side of the House want to see the price a great deal lower. We increased production. When we went back into office after the 1951 election there was many a factory in Dublin in which the looms were idle and a number of people disemployed. We gave protection to them and increased the production of these factories. We did the same so far as the agricultural industry was concerned.

In my own constituency there was a big production of tomatoes and when I raised my voice on behalf of the tomato growers Deputy Dillon told me I was interested in the vested interests. I wanted more tomatoes to be produced until such time as we might have enough for the needs of our people but because I tried to do that I was told I was interested in the vested interests. Was it sympathy for the vested interests that prompted me to try to get a loan for a glass house for a poor man and encourage him to do something for himself?

That matter can be more relevantly raised on the Estimate.

I will return to the Supplies and Services Bill. As far as we on this side of the House are concerned, we have done everything that could possibly be done to increase production. We did everything we could to make a better Ireland and had we got an opportunity of putting our full programme into effect I have no doubt but that we would have succeeded. Only then we were forced into an election. If the people had been left to reason out things in their own way we would have got that, and of course with the kind of literature that was going about we had very little hope.

It is always amusing to see Deputy Burke particularly when he washes his hands in public and appears as the Simon Pure of the Fianna Fáil Party. This evening he appeared in the role of chief caoiner at the wake of that Party. Deputy Burke allowed epithets such as dishonesty, misrepresentation and false promises, to roll very trippingly off his tongue. I think it is fair in that atmosphere to test out the record of Deputy Burke's colleagues both as Government and Opposition, and see how they fare when judged from the very high standard set by Deputy Burke.

Before I come to that I would like to inquire from Deputy Burke and his colleagues whether or not they have yet made up their minds if promises were made during the election or not. I have a very clear recollection of Deputy Lemass shouting himself hoarse on Radio Éireann and nearly blowing us out of our rooms listening to him telling the electorate that he could not extract any promises from Fine Gael, that Fine Gael were making no promises, and that if anyone supported Fine Gael, if they went to office, it would be by the fact that Fine Gael could not be charged with making any promises.

Deputy Childers—I think I am right in saying so—was on exactly the same lines. Deputy Childers endeavoured to drum into the ears of his listeners that, so far as Fine Gael was concerned, they were not making any promises to the people. I heard other Fianna Fáil speakers during the election on the same theme. To-night the theme is quite different. To-day we have dished up to us the kind of tosh that Deputy Burke was talking. We are told about reckless dishonesty, about misrepresentation and about false promises. I want to know if the Fianna Fáil Party have made up their minds and have come to a decision on the matter yet, whether they have decided if promises were made, whether they have decided that it is better politics for them to launch their attack on the basis that promises were made and had been jettisoned. It would not be for the first time that the policy of their leaders was jettisoned during the general election when they were bewailing the fact that no promises were made.

Deputy Childers has not entirely jettisoned his leaders, because he unbosomed himself quite recently to the Technical Students' Literary and Debating Society in Dublin. In the Sunday Press of the 23rd January, Deputy Childers told his young audience that during the election Fine Gael promised nothing in the hope of attracting the conservative vote. I hope Deputy Childers will participate in this debate, and before he does so he might pass around to the Deputies sitting behind him the fact that those are his views. The Deputy goes into matters with a very thorough mind and does a great deal of research. His considered opinion is, or was on the 23rd January, that during the last general election Fine Gael made no promises for the purpose of winning the conservative vote. However, that is Deputy Childers's view last month, when all the hurly-burly and excitement of the election were over, giving in his precise way his calm, detached view, his calm, detached judgment of the election campaign, that Fine Gael made no promises.

It would, I think, be worth Deputy Childers's while to pass the word around instead of passing around the document which has floated from hand to hand in the benches opposite ever since this debate started. I would be glad to see some Fianna Fáil Deputy with the courage of originality. So far, everyone who has spoken has been ceremoniously presented with exactly the same document and told exactly what extracts to read from it.

There is a rather important point which no doubt, quite inadvertently, Deputies opposite are overlooking in this discussion. I want to remind them of it. I think it is within the knowledge of every Deputy in the House that for a number of years before the last general election was held it was quite clear that the people of this country did not want the Fianna Fáil Government which was then in existence. Constituency after constituency in by-elections had their say and expressed their view. One after another they notified Fianna Fáil to quit. Fianna Fáil brazened it out for three years or a little bit more, until ultimately the people of County Louth and Cork City told them to get out of office. That occurred early in the month of March. At that time the Fianna Fáil Budget had not been introduced, and an invitation was issued to the Government by the then leader of the Opposition, Mr. Costello, and was framed in a motion discussed in this House, calling on the Government to get out and get out quickly. The Fianna Fáil reaction to that was that they refused to get out, and built up an argument on the premises that it would not be right to get out until they had an opportunity of passing their Budget and until the electorate had the Fianna Fáil financial proposals for the next 12 months before them, and could pass judgment on it. With that kind of argument Fianna Fáil retained office.

The point I want to make is this and any Deputy can contradict me on it. Fianna Fáil could have quite because they knew they were going out of office anyhow, three months earlier. They could have enabled the new Government to frame their Budget for the ensuing 12 months. Instead of that they very deliberately saddled the incoming Government with a Fianna Fáil Budget without giving the incoming Government any opportunity of putting their financial proposals before the House and the people.

Remember that in so far as we are discussing budgetary policy, or the effects of it, the effects of the economic policy which has been in operation, we are discussing the effects of Fianna Fáil policy and Fianna Fáil Budgets. We should not overlook that, and when Deputies opposite start wailing as they have been doing, remember they are wailing because of their own sins. There were a few changes made since this Government took office. I think it is only right that we should ask the Fianna Fáil Deputies who are so vocal in this debate to express their views on those changes and tell us what they would have done. Let us take the question of butter. Butter has been reduced. Would Fianna Fáil have reduced the price of butter had they been in office? Will any Fianna Fáil Deputy have the courage to say whether they could or would not have done it?

The Labour Party take credit for that.

I do not care who takes credit for it. I say: more power to the Labour Party.

They forced you into it.

Of the 12 points published before this Government was formed one of the points on which all Parties were agreed was that butter would be reduced in price in the near future. It was reduced and I do not care who gets credit for that. Speaking as a Fine Gael Deputy I want to say I am very glad of the fact that there is in charge of this Bill and in charge of the Department of Industry and Commerce, Mr. William Norton, a Labour member of this House. I am glad if only for the political reason that the evidence of the sincerity of this Government in their aim to reduce the cost of living or to make people's incomes better able to bear it is that we are all very glad to march behind the leadership of a Labour Deputy in endeavouring to achieve that objective. I do not care who gets credit for the reduction in the price of butter. All I am asking is this—it is a fair question and it is a question to which I am not going to get an answer—what would Fianna Fáil have done about butter? How do Fianna Fáil stand to-day with regard to the price of butter?

How are you going to pay for it?

If, as would appear from Deputy Cunningham's interruptions they are opposed to the steps which this Government have taken in relation to butter, is it unfair then to assume that if by any miracle a Fianna Fáil Government found itself in office to-morrow, they would jack up the price of butter on the consumer again? Let us turn to tea. What would Fianna Fáil have done in relation to tea?

Tea on tick.

Deputy Cunningham will have to cease interrupting or leave the House.

What would Fianna Fáil have done in relation to tea? Would they have increased the price of tea? Do they believe the Government were wrong in what they have done? What is the alternative? What is the Fianna Fáil proposal? Let us be constructive about it. Have Fianna Fáil any ideas on the subject other than to shout: "Tea on tick"? What is Deputy Cunningham's policy or Deputy Childers's policy? Do they stand over an immediate rise in the price of tea? Do they believe the Government were wrong to endeavour to cushion the public against any increase which may come and which is not by reason of factors over which this country has control? We are not going to get an answer to that question: how do Fianna Fáil stand with regard to tea?

Fianna Fáil Deputies in this debate have been criticising—and they are perfectly entitled to do so—Government policy, but why not examine their own consciences for a while? At least it may be said that this Government and every other Deputy standing behind the members of this Government are endeavouring to keep down the cost of living. They are endeavouring to protect the public from rising prices and they are sincere in that. The public know they are sincere in it. If prices rise with this Government in office it will be only against the very greatest effort made by members of this Government and the public know that.

Place against that the record of the Deputies opposite when they were in Government. The cost of living rose, the cost of essential foodstuffs rose; tea, butter, bread and sugar, everything rose. They did not rise by accident. They did not rise despite the efforts of the Fianna Fáil Government. They rose because of the deliberate policy of the Fianna Fáil Government. In their Budget of 1952—and let me relate this to what Deputy Burke was saying about dishonesty and mispresentation—by deliberate policy Fianna Fáil increased the price of essential foodstuffs and they did that notwithstanding the fact that nine months earlier after the general election but before they were elected a Government when they were fishing for the votes of a few Deputies in the Dáil who could make or break them, they published on the front page of every newspaper in this country their solemn declaration of policy, the policy they would implement if they got the necessary votes to form a Government.

Is there any of them now who would be prepared to deny that one of the points of that policy, that one of the solemn pledges given to the electorate and given to this House was that there would be no interference with food subsidies? Was that not one of the pieces of bait thrown out to get the necessary funds to form a Government? Deputy Burke talks about political dishonesty, false promises, political misrepresentation. Nine months after giving that solemn pledge to the Irish people and to Deputies in Dáil Éireann they introduced their first Budget in which they slashed food subsidies and by deliberate Government policy raised the cost of living on the unfortunate people of the country. During the course of that general election how many Fianna Fáil Deputies, how many Fianna Fáil leaders, including their future Minister for Finance, threw up their hands in horror at the very suggestion that if Fianna Fáil got back to office the cost of living would increase, the price of beer and tobacco would go up? You remember how vehemently they denied that, how they endeavoured to assure and reassure the electorate that no such thing would happen under Fianna Fáil.

Let us adhere to the question of subsidies for a moment. We know that Fianna Fáil gave that pledge to the Deputies of this House when they were in a position to form a Government and I do not blame the House for believing that that declaration was seriously intended, that it was an honest declaration which would be honestly implemented because, in dealing with this very Bill in this House the last time he was in opposition, Deputy Seán Lemass had given his views that, so far as he and his Party were concerned, they would never hesitate to vote money for food subsidies if the Government required it. Speaking on the Supplies and Services Bill, 1950, as reported in the Official Debates, at column 1309, Volume 123, of the 23rd November, 1950, Deputy Lemass had this to say:

"The justification which the Government offer for the continuation of the rationing of bread, tea and sugar, despite the fact that supplies of these commodities are abundant, has already been debated here. I think this system of differential prices is undesirable. Not every Deputy shares that view, I know, but I would strongly urge Deputies that they should press upon the Government to get away from it as quickly as possible. If it does mean more money for subsidies to make tea freely available, to increase the supply of bread at the subsidised price, I see no objection to voting it here."

Was it any wonder, then, that, when Fianna Fáil solemnly proclaimed their intention not to interfere with subsidies, Deputies of this House and the people of the country as a whole would accept their word? A couple of years later, after the black Budget of 1952 was introduced—after the then Government, by deliberate action, raised the cost of living and increased food prices—there was a very different story to be told and we find Deputy Lemass—who, I am sure, Deputy P.J. Burke would consider as the very paragon of consistency in politics—saying, as reported at columns 1299 and 1300 of Volume 130 of the Official Report:

"I do not know if Deputies have ever considered these subsidies to be a permanent arrangement. They were certainly never introduced as a permanent arrangement."

He then continues, and deals generally with the Fianna Fáil excuses for introducing that Budget and slashing the subsidies. I mention this matter principally because of the type of speech that has been made here by Deputy P.J. Burke and some other Deputies.

If we take it that Fianna Fáil have now made up their minds on the question of subsidies, on the question of food prices generally, then are we not entitled to assume that the Fianna Fáil policy now is that they would stand for putting back the butter price to what it was when they were in office, that they would stand for allowing tea prices to rise up and up and up, without any effort being made to keep a check on them? That is clearly the Fianna Fáil view. They have not the courage to say it. I have invited Fianna Fáil to say what they would do with regard to butter and tea if they were in office but, as I mentioned before, I doubt if my invitation to them to answer that question will be accepted. It is extraordinary that, in the context of the speeches which have been made by Deputies opposite in their onslaught on the present Minister and on this Government, we find Deputy Carter making the statement that everything this Government has done has been stolen from Fianna Fáil policy. He says that the inter-Party Government have stolen every point of Fianna Fáil policy.

Deputy Carter also stated that the Prices Advisory Body was founded in fraud and maintained in fraud. There is a difference, and I think a very big difference, between the approach of the present Government to matters of general policy and the approach of Fianna Fáil—and I do not think that this can be repeated too often. During their years of office, and even during their last period of office, Fianna Fáil demonstrated that, as a Government, they were extravagant. We have heard in this House before of the Fianna Fáil plan for a new Parliament Buildings, which plan proposed to devastate a large area in this city at a cost, at that time, of somewhere in the region of £11,000,000 or £12,000,000. We have heard of the Fianna Fáil proposals for spending £4,000,000 or so on the rebuilding of Dublin Castle. These are just two examples of the Fianna Fáil mentality which immediately springs to my mind. There are others. I have never heard an adequate or satisfactory explanation as to why, in that black Budget of 1952—when Fianna Fáil increased the price of bread, butter, tea and sugar—they made a present of some hundreds of thousands of pounds to dance hall proprietors in this country. As I say, that has been the Fianna Fáil approach. Certainly, there can be argument for it as a policy. I believe it is the wrong policy for this country. I believe that, as far as we are concerned, just the same as any other country, the Government must cut the cloth according to their measure, I believe that, so far as we can, we must endeavour to limit our ideas to the capacity of our country. It may be a grand thing for prestige purposes to have new Parliament Buildings, to rebuild Dublin Castle, to have a transatlantic air service, and so forth——

On a point of order. I want your direction, a Leas-Cheann Comhairle, on this. The Deputy is discussing the whole of Fianna Fáil policy. I trust that we shall be given the greatest possible scope now as the debate has gone far beyond the matter of the cost of living. I am glad to hear what the Deputy has to say, but I would point out that the scope of the debate has widened.

The debate has not been confined to the cost of living.

So long as you are satisfied, a Leas-Cheann Comhairle, that we can extend the scope of the debate almost indefinitely——

The Chair will always point it out to any Deputy if he is getting outside the ambit of the debate.

Deputy M.J. O'Higgins is hitting too hard for Deputy Childers now.

I am making the point that it may be—and I have no doubt that a person such as Deputy Childers would be able to do it—that a certain argument can be put up in a logical manner for that kind of mentality and that kind of policy. I am merely saying that I believe it is wrong policy. I am quite satisfied it is a policy which this Government are not going to pursue. Deputy Childers points out that this debate should relate principally to the question of the cost of living. I have dealt in a simple way that everyone will understand with my views as to how the cost of living rose under Fianna Fáil. I have shown that it was not an accident, that it was not something beyond their control, that it was not something that just happened; I have shown that it was something done by deliberate Government policy. Fianna Fáil Deputies resent the fact that that has been pointed out. When reminded of the fact that their own leaders proclaimed that they could not extract any promises from Fine Gael to get prices back to the 1951 level, a number of Fianna Fáil Deputies come along with a different argument and say: "All the election propaganda was an implied promise to get prices back to the 1951 level." It was not. Fianna Fáil resented that speakers on this side of the House, during the general election, reminded the electorate of the facts to which I have referred— reminded the electorate that a Fianna Fáil Government was responsible, by deliberate action, for increasing the prices of food. Fianna Fáil did that. Are they ashamed of it now? They should be ashamed of it, I agree. Are they prepared to admit they are ashamed of it? If not, why this resentment at being reminded of the fact that they are the people responsible for bringing prices to the level they are to-day and for making more difficult the job of the present Government to get those prices down. I just want to say that, so far as we Deputies supporting this Government go, we are quite satisfied that the Government will make every effort to get prices down.

We have no hesitation in saying, and I make a present of it to Deputies opposite, that it is the policy of Deputies supporting this Government to get down the cost of living and, if they are not able to do that by an actual reduction in prices, to endeavour to achieve the same objective by putting people in a better position to withstand the present cost of living. That is the policy of Deputies supporting this Government. No Deputy opposite has so far, despite the document they are circulating from one to the other before they rise, been able to give any quotation to show that there was ever a promise that these things could be done immediately. Of course they cannot. No one with any common sense would expect a Government that has been six or eight months in office to be able to put into operation their whole policy. This Government have put their policy before the people and before the Dáil. It will take time to implement it and I am satisfied that they are making an honest effort to do that.

I have referred already to the fact, and I shall conclude by referring to it again, that Deputies supporting this Government and the public have particular confidence in the Government's efforts to reduce the cost of living by reason of the fact that the present Tánaiste, a Labour Deputy, is in charge of this Bill and in charge of the Department over which he presides. We are glad he is and we wish him the very best of luck in his task. So far as we are concerned—I speak for myself and for my Party—he will get the most wholehearted support and help from us during the course of his term of office as Tánaiste.

This debate has ranged around the rise in the cost of living but, as a number of things have been said by speakers on the opposite side in regard to the atmosphere of the election, I imagine that we are entitled to reply. I come from a constituency where, with the same poll which we had in 1951, we increased our vote by 1,000 so that my head, if bloody, is still unbowed as far as the election is concerned. As the House knows, the decrease in the Fianna Fáil vote took place mainly in towns where the cost of living was the principal subject in debate and discussion. The key to the whole election, as I think everyone knows, and as may be seen from the statements of leaders of Fine Gael, was the atmosphere created among the people in their own homes. The atmosphere created, beyond all doubt, was that prices were artificially maintained in the same manner as a blown-up balloon, that they were artificially maintained deliberately by the Government, that the Government of the day, for some crazy reason apparently, deliberately wanted to maintain prices at an artificially high level and that if a new Government got in, the balloon would burst and prices would collapse. No matter how cautious the statements that were made by certain of the Fine Gael leaders when the Press was present and when the official policy of the Party was declared, the atmosphere created by the canvassers and at local election meetings, where no journalists were present, was that prices would come down and come down immediately if there was a change of Government. I myself heard Deputy MacEoin, speaking in a remote part of County Longford, when there were no representatives of the Press present, give a perfectly clear indication that prices were artificially maintained and that there would be an immediate reduction in the cost of essential commodities and in taxation if there was a change of Government. Therefore, I want to make it clear that it is impossible to describe in one word or in one phrase the atmosphere of the election.

We have now a new principle of democracy in this country. We have one major Party officially promising nothing but distributing pamphlets and carrying out a canvass in an atmosphere of promising everything. We have, linked with that major Party, a minor Party which promises everything—reductions in the price of food and reductions in taxation on an elaborate and exaggerated basis. When a sufficient vote is secured for the Parties to coalesce and go into office, if the cost of living cannot be brought down, because of influences which everybody knew were present in relation to prices, they start to carry out a new form of propaganda to suggest: "If prices are stabilised, we have then carried out our promises." As I have said, that is our experience. Deputy Norton, the Minister for Industry and Commerce, has been the king-pin in the maintenance of the Government and Deputy Norton has already begun to state, at functions at which he has been the guest of honour, that he knows that prices have been stabilised, as though that were a fairly good implementation of the promises made during the election, forgetting the fact, of course, that prices were becoming stabilised in this and every other country in the world while we were in office and towards the end of our period in office.

Deputy O'Higgins dealt with some questions relating to the dance hall tax. That is a hoary old one to bring out of the bag. Everyone knows that the dance hall tax was remitted because it was impossible for the Revenue Commissioners adequately to collect the tax. Deputy O'Higgins spoke as though the amount involved in the remission of the dance hall tax and the taxes imposed on beer and spirits were equivalent whereas the reduction in the dance hall tax represented merely one-eighth of a penny in the price of a pint of stout. The two elements—the effect of taxation on the price of stout and the revenue received from the dance tax—had no relation whatever. Of course, it was a nice thing to say at election time to people who know nothing of national economics and who never read the Estimates, that the dance tax was equivalent to the increase in the price of stout. It was good election propaganda.

Deputy O'Higgins spoke of what he alleged to be the extravagant proposals of Fianna Fáil and he mentioned in that connection the rebuilding of Dublin Castle. The rebuilding of Dublin Castle was meant to be a long-term project. It was meant to be, in the ultimate, a measure of economy designed to prevent the eventual construction of far more costly buildings. It was one of a series of schemes which were to be put into operation at times when the level of building by the Dublin Corporation fell below normal because of difficulties of site acquisition and other factors. There have been, as Deputies know, cyclical variations in the rate of building in Dublin for various reasons, particularly in the rate of building by Dublin Corporation. That scheme was to have been introduced as a measure to provide employment in the event of there being a cyclical fall in the number of persons employed in building and was to be eventually utilised as an economy measure, as a measure whereby civil servants could be housed in a manner which in the long run would be most economical. I think most people recognise that fact; but if Deputy O'Higgins raises the issue, then we must reply. Deputy O'Higgins also suggested that Deputy Lemass was inconsistent in his views on subsidies. Fianna Fáil by their very acts have never completely opposed the principle of subsidy since the end of the war. After they left office there was still an enormous subsidy to keep down the price of bread. That was maintained not because we believed in general in the principle of subsidy but because we believed that subsidies could be applied rightly in certain circumstances. We believe that, taking it by and large, it is far better if the economy permits wages to rise rather than maintain subsidies. But it is not always possible in certain economic circumstances for wages to rise, particularly if that rise may adversely affect the export volume of the country's products. Again, wages may not rise sufficiently and subsidies are, therefore, a device particularly useful in time of war when commodities are rationed and useful in time of peace to be applied in the light of existing circumstances.

Now conditions have been abnormal both in other countries and here since the end of the war and, as a result, the subsidy principle was regarded by the Government as a device to be got rid of if wages could rise, and one to be maintained to the extent to which the Budget would permit and to the extent to which wages could not rise and could not, therefore, compensate for an increase in the cost of living. It is quite useless for Deputy O'Higgins to take statements made by Deputy Lemass out of their context because the record of Fianna Fáil is perfectly clear. In the case of bread, where wheat is the commodity, wheat has risen more than any other product of an important character since 1938, and the subsidy was retained. I think it amounted to some £8,000,000 in the last Budget, so that nearly 8 per cent. of the total Budget was, in fact, related to wheat subsidy.

We must once more give an analysis of the attitude of the present Government towards prices and, as I have said, this analysis is one that has to be given in three parts. The Fine Gael Party's official policy was to promise nothing, but pamphlets down the back streets contained an implied promise that there would be an immediate reduction in the cost of living. They implied something more; they implied there was a target which the Government would attempt to reach, and that target was a reduction of prices back to the 1951 level. The implication was that the entire increase in the price structure was something for which Fianna Fáil was wholly responsible and that, if a new Government was returned, sooner or later prices would go back to the 1951 level. This cost-of-living trick has been played twice and each time we have been the sufferers. Each time we happened to be in office when there was not only here but in every other country in the world an inflationary tendency—a period when prices were rising—and I think it is just as well to remind the House in that regard of what happened on a previous occasion and to compare that with the circumstances of the last general election.

During the Second World War, prices rose steadily here and all over the world from 1939 to 1943. In 1943, up to 1946, they remained reasonably stable. But efforts were made to show that the Government then in office had neglected the interests of the people. All sorts of criticisms were used in the 1943 election. It was said that the cost of living need not have risen; although it had risen everywhere else it need not have risen in this country. For three years it remained more or less stable. Then in August, 1946, and into the following year, prices rose by 10 per cent. The Government, of course, was made responsible. Down every back street the cry went up that the Government was responsible for any increase that takes place in the cost of living in peace time and that increase, even if it had been justified in war time, was in peace time due to the deliberate neglect of the Government in controlling the cost of living. It is not easy to explain to people who have no inclination to study economics that when a war ends and money is liberated, money is more freely available than goods and that in every country price increases take place, price increases which are disappointing to the householder and the housewife because they believe that now the war is over there should not be these sudden price increases. It is, of course, difficult to answer an argument of that kind. All an Opposition has to do is simply say: "Look at the price of this" and "Look at the price of that." The answer is one which has to be carefully measured against the known facts of world economics, a subject which is both dull and boring in the extreme to the average person.

At least 50 per cent. of the propaganda during the 1948 election was based on a promise to reduce the cost of living, not by a margin of 2 per cent. or 3 per cent. but to be brought down with a crash; it was alleged that it could be broken because it was artificially maintained. The Minister for Industry and Commerce, Deputy Norton, made speeches suggesting there were thousands of profiteers, rolling around the country in large cars, who should be prosecuted. He alleged that if any Government but Fianna Fáil was elected to office there would be widespread prosecutions, all these rich industrialists would be brought to book and the cost of living would be brought down materially.

I suppose the one single individual in the history of this State who did most in support of the cost-of-living ramp was Deputy Seán MacBride, who, with an utter disregard for truth, promised through his Party to reduce the cost of living by 30 per cent. and to effect that reduction by means of subsidies. A simple calculation would have told him that, at a time when the Budget was under £60,000,000, that would mean an additional £30,000,000 in taxation on the consumer. But that promise was made and, although the other Parties did not go quite so far, there was a lurid suggestion in 1948 that the whole of the price increase was unnecessary and that rich profiteers were paying lavish sums to the Fianna Fáil war chest; if they were caught there would be some pretty publicity in the newspapers and the result would be a rapid decrease in industrial costs and the level of prices of industrial products, with immense advantage to the public in general.

What happened? There were no prosecutions. No profiteers were found. The largest decrease in the cost of living was that effected by Fianna Fáil who increased the subsidies towards the end of 1947, thereby securing a reduction of 3 per cent. in the cost of living; and thereafter the cost of living remained stable not only here but in other countries because goods became more plentiful and from 1947 until 1949, when the £ was devalued, there was a general stabilisation of prices everywhere. During that period there were some protests. Deputy Larkin at the Trade Union Congress in 1949 said he was not satisfied with the administration of price control. He said that prices could be broken and should be broken. That was his statement. Now at that time this same Act was in force and apparently Deputy Larkin found it full of faults and found Deputy Morrissey, then Minister for Industry and Commerce, inefficient in his administration of the Act. Shortly after that the true facts came out when Deputy Morrissey, then Minister for Industry and Commerce, at a speech at a public luncheon said that the remedy to bring about price reduction lay after all in the hands of the public and for the first time the public were then told that the promises made could not be honoured. The most the Government could do was to see that the cost of living remained stable as in most other European countries with a few minor variations—I mean countries with balanced budgets and economies maintained by the normal processes of government and in which there were no unusual features such as inflationary policies.

The cost of living began to rise in every country in the world from the time the £ sterling was devalued and it is well it would be remembered that it would have risen if the Korean war had not occurred. Dollar goods became more expensive for sterling countries. The effect of the devaluation so far as price increases were concerned was naturally delayed so that the prices did not rise in the case of many commodities until 1950. After the start of the Korean war, in August, 1950, the cost of living rose all over the world. That period is now known as the Korean boom. Members of Parliaments all over the world have accepted what became known as the "Korean boom". At the end of three years it was an accepted feature in world economics. Nothing which would be effective to combat its influence on prices could be done by any Government in the world, but in this country Mr. de Valera was made responsible for its effects. The suggestion was that Mr. de Valera was in conspiracy with Joe Stalin, Mao Tse Tung, President Truman and other world leaders to create the Korean boom. In other words he was made responsible for the effect in this country of world circumstances and for conditions which had been brought about by international affairs.

The cost of living also rose during the period of the inter-Party Government's office. The prices rose steadily from August, 1950, to August, 1951. Then the election took place in the middle of the boom and members of the Fianna Fáil Party at that time directed attention to the promises made to have the cost of living reduced. Fianna Fáil made no promises whatever that prices could be reduced but pointed to the fact that the previous Government had failed to redeem its promises. As I have said prices rose steadily from the time of the Korean boom. Every country in the world was affected except those where the currency was as strong as the dollar, and prices rose slightly even in these countries. Prices rose at different periods in different countries. They rose not only in this country but as much in six other European countries whose social services and social security measures included subsidies. These Governments were forced to reduce subsidies. Before the period in which Fianna Fáil was in office the cost of living rose mainly in countries which had been forced to reduce subsidies in order to face the period of inflation. This state of affairs occurred in every one of the Northern European States. Some began to reduce subsidies in 1950, some in 1951, some in 1952. In some the reduction was a single effort; in others the reduction was gradual. But the process was going on everywhere and it was going on in countries of a predominantly Labour character. Reduction in subsidies took place in Norway and Sweden. Subsidies were being reduced everywhere. The cost of government had gone up in the different countries. Everywhere efforts were being made to have economic policy orientated so that the cost of living might eventually be met by a comparative rise in industrial earnings and through the compensation of social service benefits.

The process was absolutely continuous everywhere and I think it is just as well to recall how events progressed from official statistics at that time following the rise in the cost of living. Prices rose steadily and became stabilised in nearly every country at the same time as here. I suppose one of the most reliable organisations on which we could base a study of economic trends at that time was the International Labour Organisation, devoted largely to the interests of the workers, and I am proud to say it has been manned by an Irish secretary for many of its years of existence. Many of its conventions have been ratified by us. I will take some statistics from the International Labour Review. In the review the International Labour Organisation find it is essential when comparing prices to find some year as a base year—a year which could be regarded as fair to all parties, to employers, to workers, to Governments in office. They chose the year 1948 because for the two previous years there had been some degree of stability in prices following the war. It was also the year before the £ was devalued; it was the year before the Korean war. And so they recommend the year 1948 upon which to base the increase in prices which has taken place since that time. It will be seen how prices varied from country to country in respect of identical commodities. In some, prices rose by large margins and in others the margins were small. I will take Belgium, where from 1948 to 1953 the cost of living went up by only 6 per cent. the reason being that the Belgian franc was not devalued. The Belgian currency was very strong, as strong as the dollar, and for that reason the cost of living went up only by a very small fraction. We will now consider Denmark where the currency was devalued, a country on the whole run with splendid efficiency by what you might call a fairly Left-Wing Government, a country partial to the interests of the workers. The cost of living there rose by 24 per cent. during that period. I will now take France where Governments unfortunately were unstable and where the cost of living rose by 46 per cent. Then we come to Ireland and here the cost of living rose by 24 per cent.—exactly the same as in Denmark. Denmark was a country which while occupied during the war was not damaged physically to any great degree.

In Italy the cost of living went up by 16 per cent., the reason for the small margin being that there were few subsidies and those that were there were mostly ineffective. In Italy subsidies could not be afforded with the result that reductions in subsidies did not arise. In the Netherlands the increase was 22 per cent., about the same amount as in the case of Ireland, but in Norway the increase was 34 per cent. In the case of Sweden, a neutral country during the war, and a country run by a Government with a Labour character and with the most authoritarian method of economics, the cost of living rose by 30 per cent.—six per cent. more than in the case of this country.

In the case of the United Kingdom the cost of living rose by 28 per cent. We use the same money as the British people. Our £ is supposed to be worth the same amount. We pay approximately the same amount for foreign commodities. The increase in the agricultural price level during the period was approximately in the same proportions and we can ask ourselves how it could be that the cost of living could go up in Britain and not go up here by approximately the same amounts. I mention that because it seems to me self-evident that if in the sterling area in general the cost of living rose in that period by an amount equivalent to what it did here, it shows that the last Government was only responsible for the increase in the cost of living to the extent that they with other modern western European countries, for the sake of preserving a balanced budget and with an increase in wages in view, were compelled to modify the subsidies.

That is the general picture. I could go on quoting the whole of these figures from every country in the world. They show the same principle. There were roughly three classes of countries at that time: countries where there were no subsidies to reduce and where the cost of living went up least; countries where there were subsidies to reduce and where they were reduced and where the cost of living went up by about the same amount as here and then certain exceptional countries whose currencies remained strong, such as Switzerland, Belgium and the United States and then there was one exception too, Germany, which showed astonishing stability in its cost of living due to the fact that the German people were prepared to work at extremely low wages to restore the country and, as a result of the wage level remaining low during that period, their cost of living went up very little more than or at about the same rate as it did in the countries with stronger currencies.

As I have said, it does not matter how you study these figures, you will find during some of the individual years the cost of living went up more here than in other countries. You will find in other single years, comparing one year with another, that the cost of living would go up here less than in another country at one period and more in another, but you will find the general over-all increase was about the same as it was in other countries where the country was properly administered, where the budgets were balanced and, curiously enough, the increase was roughly the same in countries with the same sort of panoply of social services as ourselves, where the workers were safeguarded in the same kind of way and where they had arbitration councils or boards safeguarding the workers' interests and encouraging increases in wages where they were possible.

I wanted to mention those particular figures because they seem to me to be a valuable commentary on the propaganda that has been associated with the increase in the cost of living.

There are many other facts that could be given, facts which should be recorded in the annals of this House.

The International Labour Organisation also secured other sets of figures to show the incidence of the cost of living. They said to themselves: "Perhaps it is not quite right to compare costs of living using the cost-of-living index of various countries; maybe there are errors; maybe there are different ways of calculating these indices; maybe there were changes during the period." So, the International Labour Organisation prepared another set of figures and in this case they decided that one of the fairest ways of estimating the increase in the cost of living, or the impact of the cost of living, was to find out what was the average wage rate of an unskilled labourer in every country and, having established the weekly wage of the unskilled labourer, to find out how long that labourer took to earn a unit of an important commodity. The International Labour Organisation pointed out that perhaps that was the fairest method of all, that there could be no false comparison, that if you calculated how many hours it took an unskilled labourer out of his weekly wage packet to earn some pounds of sugar or pounds of butter or pounds of bread, that all the differences that might occur because of the different value of currencies or because of different methods of calculating the cost of living would disappear, that that would be an absolutely fair method which nobody could dispute.

It is very interesting to examine those figures for the period of October, 1952, which is the last available figure that I could find, after the subsidies had been decreased here and after the major increase in the cost of living had taken place. I do not think I need go into very great detail in regard to these except simply to say this, that the time that an Irish unskilled labourer would take to earn his sugar and his bread, two of the most fundamental commodities, would be the same low level as that of two or three other countries in the most favourable position in Europe. How can I put it? In October, 1952, it took a Danish labourer 21 minutes of his weekly wage to earn 6 lb. of sugar, and it took Ireland, Sweden and Norway 55 to 60 minutes to earn 6 lb. of sugar, and it took all the rest of the countries, some eight countries, a longer time to earn their sugar. In other words, we were in one of the most favourable positions.

If you take the subject of butter you will find that Denmark, Norway and Sweden came off best in butter. There the unskilled labourer could earn his butter a great deal more quickly than he could in the case of Ireland and England, who came next on the list. Of course, the reason is obvious. Denmark, Sweden and Norway go in for high milk-yielding herds, with a yield of some 800 to 1,000 gallons of milk a year and, naturally, they would be in a favourable position in regard to butter costs. But, after those three countries, Ireland and England came next and in every other country of Europe it took much longer for an unskilled labourer to earn a pound of butter. In the case of milk, Ireland was roughly in the same position as in the case of butter. In the case of mutton and beef, Ireland was the third in Europe in regard to this method of calculating. There were only two other countries where an unskilled labourer could earn a pound of mutton or a pound of beef in a quicker time out of his total wage packet.

I thought those facts should be mentioned here because, as I have said, during an election it is so easy to distribute the little yellow leaflets—they were yellow in my constituency, blue in others—comparing the prices of 1951 and 1954. How much more difficult it is to give a patient statement showing the cost of living had gone up in every country of the world, and when it became stabilised in some countries, roughly speaking at the end of 1952 and in other countries during the period of 1953, it also became stabilised in our country. When Deputy Norton says that he has achieved a measure of stability in prices, or that a measure of stability has been achieved, that is as a result of the fact that at the moment in the world at large, although there are upward surges of prices and although prices have gone up here in the case of certain commodities, a reasonable figure of stabilisation has been reached. As I have said, it seemed to me to be very important to mention these facts.

We next come to the question of the position of this country in regard to how the people lived during this period. You have noticed that members of the Government are already beginning to take credit to themselves for any good economic results that have been achieved in 1954. We hear the Minister for Industry and Commerce beginning to quote figures for trade, figures for production, as though the economic climate of 1954 could have been materially altered by the incoming Government, forgetting that they were working on our Budget, that all the live stock here were born before they achieved office, that for a Government which adopts the Budget of its predecessor and which makes only marginal changes in policy, which carries on the whole of the capital programme, which carries on the whole policy of reconstruction, it takes a longer time than that to alter the economic circumstances of the people. But already the present Government is taking credit for these things. We have already heard about the good production in 1954, about the success of the National Loan—although the National Loan could never have been successful unless the companies and the people had saved enough during the previous year and up to June, 1954, to invest In the National Loan. There is not a living economist in the world who would deny that loan can only be successful if for at least a previous period of six months, nine months or a year there has been some evidence of savings effected by public companies, private companies and by the public. And we are already told that the success of the National Loan was due to the reputation of the present Government.

Much was said during the time of election about the woeful state in which the people were living, much was said about the crushing taxation, about the appalling burden of costs, about the appalling cost of living and the high rate of unemployment. People were told they were living in a state of misery and that it was entirely unnecessary, that it was the result of completely unnecessary taxation. Unfortunately, the Government have damned themselves by authorising the publication of the Irish Statistical Survey. The publication of this survey had to be authorised at a specific meeting of the Government and the Government at that meeting had to say that every single word in this survey was accurate, that not a word could be disputed. That is the position in regard to the survey. The precedent for that was set by the present Taoiseach himself when the survey was commenced during his period of office. What does the survey show? It shows in almost every particular that 1953 was one of the best years there ever was in this country. That is not to say there cannot be better years; that is not to say we have anything like solved the problems of pockets of poverty, or of agricultural productivity. It is not to say that there are not many decades of work to be done before the nation will be as we would like to have it, but it is at least a step in the right direction. The present Government have admitted now that 1953 was an excellent year, showing excellent progress in almost every particular of our economic life. It is just as well not to have this volume lying fusty on the shelves of the Library in Dáil Éireann. It is just as well that some particular facts should be recalled in the House and laid on the Table of the House in the usual way through its publication in the volume of Dáil Reports. I would just mention a few things.

The total national income of the people increased in 1953 to a record high level. Most of that increase was related to an increase in prices which was also taking place during the Coalition period of Government. But at least the income of the people increased; there was no reduction in the income of the people. That is one of the facts they are forced to admit, that there was an increase in the national income. The next thing we find is that the personal expenditure of the people rose to a level—based on 1938 prices and making allowances for all the increases of prices that had taken place —the actual expenditure of the people calculated on the 1938 basic price level rose to the highest level in the history of the State, with one exception, which was the year 1951. The difference there was some 3½ per cent. and it will be found in the records of every well-run State in Western Europe that 1951 was a year of very great commodities expenditure, solely because of the stockpiling that took place in that period. With, as I have said, the exception of the year 1951, the personal expenditure of the people, based on 1938 prices, was at record high level, and there was no sign, so far as the people's spending was concerned, that they had not money to spend. However hard they found it, whatever difficulties were met in regard to the cost of living, they spent more than in any previous year, save the year when they were stockpiling at an enormous level.

We find next that the quantities of exports rose to a figure that had never before been achieved. The quantity of exports rose steadily until the exports actually were 14 per cent. more than they were in the previous year. We find, again, that the people imported more in 1953, in quantity, than at any other time since the foundation of the State—again with the solitary exception of the year 1951, in which every country on earth, through fear of war, imported large quantities of goods and, as a result, of course, afterwards there came the inevitable temporary recession in business which was found in Northern Ireland, in England and in every other country, until the piles on the shelves decreased and until normal buying could commence again. In regard to that, the position showed itself to be satisfactory.

In regard to the volume of agricultural output, the gross amount of agriculture also increased during that year. The net output remained practically the same, but there was a slight increase in the gross output and it was for the first time measurably above the figure of 1938, it was actually 7 per cent. above the figure for 1938. So that, although agriculture did not show the productivity we would like, there was nothing unhealthy about it. It was showing a small but beneficial change in the right direction.

In the case of industry, the volume of production for industry went up in 1953, in spite of all the difficulties of stockpiling and was at a record figure in the history of the State, so when all the difficulties with regard to excessive stockpiling were over industry was once more on the march. One can go on and describe other features of the national economy that were satisfactory. The industrial earnings of the people had already outstripped the cost of living back about half-way through 1948 and at the end of the period of our office the industrial earnings of the people had gone up higher than the cost of living, relating the year 1938 to the year 1953, not by a very large margin, not by a margin which we would regard as being the best we could achieve, but at least it could be said that during the long period when costs were going up steadily, during the war with the exception of three years and after the war for the reasons I have already stated, somehow or other the industrial earnings managed to rise until in actual fact, if you take 100 as the basic figure for 1938, the cost of living had gone up to some 226 and industrial earnings had gone up to 250. As I have said, there is nothing to boast about in regard to that figure; we would like to see it much more, but at least it showed that things were not altogether unsatisfactory.

Then we found also that the people consumed as much food as they consumed in any previous year. They consumed very nearly the same amount of drink and tobacco as in any previous year. We find that in spite of all that, in spite of the great difficulties which housewives faced in dealing with the cost of living—and everybody knows there were difficulties and everybody knows it is very easy to play upon the mind of the person who, not knowing and appreciating what is going on in the country to the full extent, faced increases of prices; and increases of prices can be felt very severely because they frequently lag behind increases of wages, so there is always a feeling during a period of rising prices that the housewife is being deceived or being exploited, and in nearly all cases, unless there is some automatic index system in regard to wages, as in certain countries, particularly in America, unless the index for wages rises simultaneously with the rise in prices, people naturally feel aggrieved —the fact remains that the personal savings of the people in 1953, their own personal savings, not company savings, not big company savings or small company savings, but the personal savings of the people rose to a record high level. The personal savings of the people in 1953 were four times what they were in 1950 or 1951. It amazes me when I think of the circumstances of friends of mine in every section of the community, how that could be correct, and if I were the Taoiseach and present at a Government meeting, at a meeting of the people who had to authorise this volume and had to admit that the facts were correct, I should consider going back to Dr. Geary who is one of the foremost living exponents of statistics and saying: "Are you quite sure of that figure?" Is it possible in the year 1953 when all these desperate things were supposed to be happening and when people were supposed to be screwed down by the extra taxation and unable to enjoy themselves that somehow or other by some miracle they managed to save four times more than they saved in 1950 or 1951. It is one of the figures that staggered me. I can only rely on the Taoiseach and the members of the Government for its authenticity because they have published the figures and they have authorised them.

Some people say that figures are dull and boring and that nobody wants to hear about them, but even though this book is rather boring and dull it tells, roughly speaking, how the people lived and in spite of all their difficulties in 1953 this book shows a reasonable enjoyment of life, a reasonable expenditure on goods and services, an expanding output of imports and exports, expanding production in industry and a very slight increase in agricultural production as well as an expansion of savings among the people. There is not a single word in this book which justifies the vastly exaggerated propaganda of the present Government during the last election. The disappointing features in this survey are virtually nil so far as election propaganda was concerned. As I have said of course, it is easy to spread the little yellow leaflets down the back streets because you cannot expect the average person to want to read this document and the average person is not trained to understand these documents and I am quite sure the average person is much happier because he does not have to read such documents.

Will the Deputy complete the picture? If that is true, if the people felt all this prosperity you mention in 1953 why did you lose the 1954 General Election?

I have just spent a considerable time explaining how the art of deception can cause a Government to lose an election.

That is a libel on the intelligence of the people.

The people in every country——

The people believed them.

And they were right and they are feeling the benefits now.

We will leave that to them until the next election.

The Irish people are just as human as the people of any other country——

And as intelligent.

There have been changes in Governments in other countries. There have been changes in many countries in the last few years for one reason or another and any Party is entitled to say that they were unable to get the people to appreciate the facts because the facts were difficult to explain and the facts in relation to an inflationary situation are always difficult to explain to the people. If prices did suddenly show an enormous decrease in this country that would be one of the worst things that could happen to our economy but that is not mentioned by the Government Party in the course of the election. One of the most disastrous things that can happen to a country as everyone knows, as no economist will deny, as no experienced politician will deny, is a severe fall in prices and if prices had fallen drastically during our period in office by the same amount as members of the Government said they wanted them to fall there would have been repercussions and side effects which would have very quickly affected the prosperity of the country. But, of course, prices are relevant and it is difficult to say what constitutes stabilised prices but everybody since the war has hoped that a situation would arise when prices would neither go up nor down materially but would remain level and that money values would remain equal and that that is the right way to bring about prosperity and not in shifting the burden from one class and passing it to another group or section. I think I have given a fair indication of the position.

What are the prospects for alterations in prices at the present time? During the time of the general election, the members of the present Government—those of them that promised reductions in prices, or promised extravagant reductions in prices—had available to them the advice, if they chose to seek it, of people all over the world in regard to price levels. I wonder how many reputable economists or bankers or heads of Governments in the world would have prophesied about February, 1954, the possibility of any substantial reduction in the prices of commodities on which our cost of living is based? I wonder how many would be found to prophesy reductions in these prices? I do not believe the Minister is going to be able to persuade either the Prime Minister of Canada or the President of the United States or the farmers who support them to break the cartel in wheat.

I believe the cartel in wheat has become a major feature of American policy and whatever marginal changes will take place—and there have been marginal changes—the cost of homegrown wheat is unlikely to alter so long as the Republican Party in America and the Liberal Party in Canada hope to retain the support of the farming electorate. It may have been noticed that during the summer there was an excess of wheat in America and that this was sold to badly-off countries, and it may have been noticed that there has been no considerable crack in the structure of the wheat cartel and that other exporting countries such as Australia and, I think, one other country, have decided that they also will support the price of wheat and although the British Government have said that they will not take their place in a future international wheat agreement at the present price level, it seems unlikely that the Minister will be able to persuade these parties to reduce their prices. Again, in February, 1954, when all the propaganda was going on, England was in a state of boom. Anybody could find out that ever since 1953 and in this year, there has been an industrial boom in England. There has been a tremendous increase in income, and anybody could have told the present Minister for Industry and Commerce that in February, 1954, it was unlikely that the British farmers were going to help the Government to see a reduction in prices of the commodities they produced where the price levels had some relation to our own price levels. Anybody could have told the present Government that so far as Europe as a whole was concerned, there was a very rapid recovery, and Europe was ceasing to depend to the same extent on dollar aid, and yet was receiving dollar aid; that so long as America continued to pump-prime Europe—even at a reduced rate—there was little likelihood of any notable reduction in prices of which they could take advantage, and that the only hope of crashing prices lay in imposing subsidies at enormous cost to the taxpayers. Of course, these things were disregarded during the election, and there again you can hardly expect the average man in the street to make an intimate study of the boom in England, the likelihood of its continuing, and of the rapid recovery in Europe and particularly in Germany, and the effect on ordinary consumers here. We, in Fianna Fáil prefer to be honest and to say that this is a very small world and that it is rapidly getting smaller all the time.

It is true to say that the President of the Federal Bank of the United States could, by a single stroke of the pen, have a greater effect on the price levels of commodities in this country than the present Government are ever likely to have unless they spend enormous sums of money on subsidies. It is time that the people of this country were fully aware of that fact—that a handful of men, the heads of about six international banks manipulating the currencies of the world are now more powerful than all the gentlemen on the Front Benches here in regard to the maintenance of or changes in international price levels and price levels in this country, and it is time that all of us grew up in regard to that, and did not send these little yellow leaflets down the back streets to people who will never know the President of the Federal Bank and who cannot be expected to know them or to understand their workings.

As I have said, I have given, I think, a fair picture of the general price position in the course of the past few years. I do not believe that anybody can speculate on what the Budget prospects may be at present, but I want to make this clear that, when Fianna Fáil were in office, we had the difficulties about which we have spoken many times of balancing the 1952 Budget. We found it difficult to offer any reliefs in subsequent Budgets, beyond valuable but marginal reliefs to income-tax payers in the lower brackets of incomes and a very slight modicum of relief, merely a gesture, in regard to the price of bread in the last Budget; but we did hope that, if the world remained at peace and if the foreign economic influences were favourable and our policy of reconstruction could continue, it would be possible to offer them reliefs. As production expanded, as world conditions became normal and as the inflationary influences of the Korean War passed away, we did hope that would be possible; there might be some budgetary relief, not this year but possibly next year.

There are two influences operating, one being the disastrous harvest. We are not going to make the Government responsible for that in the same way as Deputy Dillon made us responsible in 1947. We well recall Deputy Dillon taking office and taking as his base year for agricultural production the year 1947, and boasting every successive year of the increase in agricultural production until he had got it up to years of bad harvests. He got it up to the level of 10 per cent. below 1938 as it was in 1947, after two appalling years of bad harvests. He got it up in 1950 to the level it was at in 1945, after six years of war and absence of fertilisers.

That included turf.

And he boasted of the result of the effort he had made. As I have said, we are not going to make the present Government responsible for that bad weather, but the fact remains that, so long as a boom exists in England, there will be increases of taxation on the dividends coming in to investors in English securities in this country. It might quite easily bring the Government, either this year or next year, an extra packet of money that they would not otherwise have received, and the Minister for Industry and Commerce is already boasting of the 1954 advances, already boasting of expansion of trade. We cannot tell— it may bring about some improvement in the revenue not this year or next year, but if the Fianna Fáil Party had been in, we would have hoped to have given any reliefs that could be afforded at that time in the same way as the present Government may be able to give them, if not this year, next year, but, of course, you will see the present Government take full credit for the English boom.

They blame us for every rise in prices that takes place outside this country and they will, of course, in the same way take full credit for the tremendous tide of prosperity in Great Britain, and every single pound that comes back from invested money in England and that flows into the Exchequer, you will be told by the present Government, is due to the wise Government of this country. The Minister for Finance may not say it. We well remember the Minister for Finance in the year 1951 warning the country that there was an inflationary movement and that there would have to be some drastic changes in the economic climate, or else we would be in trouble. He made the speech apparently that was given to him by the able officers of the Department of Finance, but, of course, he took it all back later, and Deputy McGilligan has prophesied the possibility of saving £20,000,000 in the next Budget. We look forward to that.

Deputy McGilligan has also prophesied the prospect of the local authorities never incurring any more rate increases and General MacEoin down in County Longford envisaged the possibility that the Government would be able to take on some of the existing liability of the ratepayers. He did not mean a marginal one-quarter or half per cent, but something that would attract the electors of Longford. All these promises have been made. We cannot predict what the result of the Budget will be, but to the extent that it comes from boom conditions which have raised the level of cattle prices here and maintained prices of every kind and has caused the flow of dividends inevitably to increase in this country, they will take full credit for it; but there are other factors in connection with the Budget which may not be satisfactory, and it is impossible for us to foretell. All we felt was that, given the time and the opportunity, and given a period of reconstruction and a continuance of our services for the reconstruction of the country, some time in the course of either this year or next year, we might be able to offer some reliefs to the people because production increased.

I might add that the official policy of Fine Gael implies that prices can only be reduced by the increase of production—it is true that that was their official policy—was not written on the little yellow leaflets. There was no condition on the little yellow leaflets and one did not find at the bottom of the leaflets the statement: "This is true. These prices have gone up by this amount, but they will not come down, unless there is an increase in production". If they had written that on the leaflet, I would have had more respect for that propaganda, but you had the leaflet going down the back streets in contrast to the big conservative wise statements made on public platforms when the Press were present, and it is about that that we rightly complain and rightly protest. We believe that the Irish people will get used to propaganda of that kind in time and that, when there has been sufficient experience of this kind of propaganda, we shall gain the initiative.

Anyone who listened to Deputy Childers to-night could say that it is the typical speech so often put over by the Deputy. Nobody can fail to be impressed by the eloquent manner in which he can distort facts and select facts in order to present the case for his point of view and to impress those to whom he makes his case.

I will take him up on his last point. He complains that the inter-Party Government are already taking credit for the improvement of conditions which took place in the second half of 1954 during which the present Government were in office. He claims that the credit for that improvement in the second half of 1954 should go to Fianna Fáil who were in office during the first half of that year. He forgets that, in 1951, when Fianna Fáil took over for the second half of that year, the inter-Party Government having been in office for the first half, Fianna Fáil made sure to blame the inter-Party Government for the very high adverse trade balance of that year. The adverse trade balance of 1951 was approximately £60,000,000, but an examination of the figures will show that, of this £60,000,000, £49,000,000 can be accounted for during the second half of 1951 and they made sure to blame the inter-Party Government for that adverse trade balance in 1951, although they were in office during the second half of that year. Now, having been in office during the second half of 1954, they try to claim the credit for the advantages which have come to various sections of the community as a result of the policy operated by the inter-Party Government.

If we look back to the time when we had the inter-Party Government and compare it now, particularly in relation to the cost of living and the conditions arising from it, we will remember that one thing the inter-Party Government boasted about in June, 1951—when a change of Government took place, not by the majority of voters but by a few votes in this House, the votes of four Deputies who have since been rejected by the community and by the voters— was that we had reduced the number of unemployed by 38,000 persons in 38 months, three years and two months in office.

When we came into office there were 84,000 unemployed. When we left office, there were 46,000 registered unemployed. Strangely enough, this time last year there were approximately 80,000 unemployed. That has now been reduced to 73,000, which means once more that the number of people unemployed has been reduced by about 1,000 per month in the last seven months. It shows that the policy of the inter-Party Government has been positive in so far as the unemployed are concerned. That is point number one—the improvement that has taken place since the change of Government. The number of unemployed has been reduced by 7,000 as compared with last year.

Point number two is that the price of butter was reduced by 6d. per lb. by the deliberate policy of the Government compared with the deliberate policy of the Fianna Fáil Government which increased the price of bread by 3d. per loaf, sugar by ¼, tea and other commodities. Thirdly, the interest on housing loans was reduced to people who are trying with the aid of loans to purchase their own houses. Fourthly, the Government has already refunded to public servants almost £2,000,000 which was withheld from them by the Fianna Fáil Government, although by the deliberate policy of that Government the cost of living was increased on those people who, by reason of their contract of employment and their position, were entitled to an adjustment of their position in the form of an increase in wages.

Fifthly, the national loan has been a success. If we examine the figures we will find one reason for the success of the national loan last year. It was due not only to the confidence which the people have in the present Government and which they displayed by oversubscribing the loan but it was also due to the fact that never before had the farmers rolled up the mattresses and taken such an interest in the national loan as they did last year. Anybody examining the figures will find that the success of the loan was due in a great measure to the amount of money that was produced by farmers. It shows that they had confidence in the new Administration and that they were prepared to invest their money in it. I think it also shows that they had confidence in their Minister for Agriculture, because he was the person with whom they would be concerned.

I heard Deputy Childers many times selecting facts and using them to his own advantage. We must face facts but we must not follow the kind of line that Deputy Childers has tried to make us follow. It became obvious from his speech that it is futile for him to defend the policy of Fianna Fáil. It was put to the people last summer and rejected very emphatically. Not only was the policy of Fianna Fáil rejected by the people but the four Deputies who had no mandate to support the policy of Fianna Fáil in this House were rejected and nothing was heard of them since.

At least Deputy Childers now and then makes a very definite statement. I remember a number of years ago when he said that Fianna Fáil deliberately embarked on the economic war and, of course, the resultant cattle slaughter. To-night in his speech the burden of his complaint was that Fine Gael promised nothing, but that the voters reading a comparison of prices which was published by Fine Gael fell for the leaflet and regarded it as a promise. I hope that the other members of Deputy Childers's Party will take heed that he has definitely stated that Fine Gael promised nothing, and he is right.

Then we had Deputy Childers talking about the rise in the cost of living resulting from the Korean War. The Korean War started in 1950, and the Fianna Fáil Party in June, 1951, made sure to take advantage of a three points increase, not 23 points which took place afterwards, in the cost of living up to June, 1951. When the election took place, and although the Fianna Fáil Party did not get a majority in that election amongst the people they came into this House and secured on a promise to maintain subsidies for to control the cost of living, the votes of four Deputies calling themselves Independent Deputies, which enabled them to form a Government. With that slender majority and with the aid of three Deputies who did not get a mandate to support a policy which abolished a big part of the food subsidies they carried on here for three years. They spoke about the policy which they operated in this House although they had not got the mandate from the country ouside.

Deputy Childers was rather inconsistent when he said that it was the policy of his Party to advocate high wages which would enable people to meet high prices. Surely the Deputy and the members of his Party do not forget the wage freeze policy which was rigidly operated by this Party while at the same time prices rose rapidly and left a big margin between the wage level and price level with which people had to contend until the inter-Party Government was formed in 1948? Much of the improvement which Deputy Childers read out from the statistical survey sprang from the 1948 Trade Agreement.

The 1948 Trade Agreement had the effect not only of winning back for us the British market which was spurned and ridiculed in previous years by the Fianna Fáil Party but it also improved the position in so far as our manufacturers in this country were concerned. It gave us an opening into the British market which the 1948 Agreement prevented our Irish manufacturers from enjoying. The improvement which developed and commenced in 1948 can be traced right through the statistics in the book which Deputy Childers presented here to-night in order to make a case for his own Party and to offer a defence for the policy of Fianna Fáil which was rejected last year.

In 1948 when the inter-Party Government took office we had the lowest number of cattle in this country than we had for 100 years. When the inter-Party Government left office, as a result of winning back the British market with the 1948 agreement, we had the highest number of cattle that we had for half a century. We had also the situation in 1948 when people could only get 1lb. of rashers per week at a price, whereas when we left office we were actually exporting pigs. Similarly the national income was less than £300,000,000 when the inter-Party Government took office, and it was increased year by year during our three years of office until it had reached £450,000,000 on leaving office, and handing over to the Fianna Fáil Party, and to the Deputies who imposed a Fianna Fáil Government on the country at that time.

I heard Deputy Moher—I am glad I have him here now—giving us his agricultural speech this evening. He talked about the policy of the Fianna Fáil Government and claimed that it brought advantages to the country. I would like to remind Deputy Moher that when the Fianna Fáil Government took office in 1932, there were 750,000 farm workers in this country. When the Fianna Fáil Party were leaving office last June there were 250,000 farm workers in this country. If we examine the figures for the number of farm workers, starting in 1932, we can see a very drastic downward trend in the number of people employed on the land. They were run off the land by the policy of Fianna Fáil during the pre-war years, and that tendency has continued. We heard Deputy Moher talking to-night about the use of combines in connection with harvesting and the effect it has so far as bushelling of wheat is concerned. I believe on one occasion here, he boasted about the advantages of the combine and the fact that it would cut out labour.

I beg your pardon, I did not. I also had to challenge the Minister for Agriculture for ministerpreting something I said.

Another point is that Deputy Moher in his speech complained that there were not enough people in this country engaged in productive employment, but the figures which I have shown—if they were going to call farm workers productive —show that it was the policy of Fianna Fáil, if any, which has changed the class of employment, and the type of productive work at which they were engaged. I heard Deputy Moher complaining also about the reduction of the wheat price. He did not mention that the farmers in this country were getting a price for wheat in 1947 lower than the world market price, 55/- a barrel and 2/6 voucher, while at the same time Deputy Lemass paid 130/-a barrel to the Argentine Government for wheat in the same harvest season.

I would like some honesty from Deputy Childers when he is making a case regarding the cost of living. He took advantage of the rise in the cost of living which took place when the Korean war was at its height. Then the Fianna Fáil Party came into office and he now offers the excuse that the cost of living rose due to the Korean war, but he made sure during his campaign in 1951 to say that the Korean war was so far away from this country that it was wrong for the inter-Party Government to suggest that the three points rise in the cost of living was due to the effects of the Korean war in this country. We remember, I think, that blankets went up £5 a pair in the Christmas of 1950, and that was of course due to the fact that there was large scale purchasing of wool and wool materials by the parties engaged in the Korean war, in order to counteract the very cold atmosphere in that country. I would like to say that smooth water runs deep, and that this Government has been running on a level keel, with the quiet confidence of the people who are prepared to be patient and who are prepared to wait and watch the policy of the Government come to fruition. The Government is supported by the vast majority of the people. It is not supported by three or four props such as the Fianna Fáil Party had in the previous Administration. When the people got the chance they certainly took those three or four props from the Fianna Fáil Government, and with them a large number of those Deputies as well.

We noticed recently also that the Fianna Fáil Party was trying to make an issue of tea prices, but we have been asking Fianna Fáil Deputies, one after another, will they say what their policy is in relation to tea prices. Do they think that the Government should not try to hold the price as it is, and do they consider that it should be increased to an economic price, or do they consider that it should be subsidised? One thing or other must be done, either by subsidising further, or by increasing the price. Let us ask the Fianna Fáil Party across the floor which policy they stand for. We ought to get an answer to that.

It seems that the position regarding tea is not yet clarified. It is possible that tea supplies may improve within the next few months, and if they are going to improve I would ask that Party if it is not right for the present Government to hold the price steady for the people at the moment instead of imposing upon them a sharp increase in price?

We had the Fianna Fáil Government in office for a couple of years and we had also every week one crisis or another, which displayed that they did not have the confidence of the people. They were taking panic measures without giving due consideration to the implementation of a policy which would affect various sections of the community. We do not have a panic every week, and we do not have the crisis that we had when the Fianna Fáil Party were in office, because we have a Government which is prepared to stand its ground and prepared to advance in a progressive manner, instead of trying to cover up weaknesses in a policy which is not properly designed for the needs of the community.

Finally, I want to say that the people can look forward to better conditions, that they can look forward certainly to a better measure of security than they had for the three years under the Fianna Fáil Government, indeed for the years when the Fianna Fáil Government were in office previously. In the inter-Party Government there is a proper outlook amongst its members. You have not just a single Party such as Fianna Fáil bending to the whims of sections of the community who have them at their beck and call. You have a Government now representing all sections of the community and determined to work for the general good. I consider that this Government are entitled to be given support from the people in addition to the confidence which they enjoy at present which will enable them to make conditions better for all sections of the community.

Notice taken that 20 Deputies were not present; House counted and 20 Deputies being present,

I want to expose some of the untruths that were spoken here to-night. The first thing that Fianna Fáil has been accused of here—it was based on a lie which was carried on year after year until some poor foolish people over there nearly believed it was the truth—was all this extravagance in public buildings. I heard Deputy O'Higgins—I am sorry he is not here—repeating that falsehood here to-night. He said Fianna Fáil were going to build new Government Buildings at a cost of £11,000,000.

So they were.

There is another person who has just come in the other day and cannot help it. I will now read for the benefit of Deputy Mrs. O'Carroll and others the statement made by Deputy James Dillon, the present Minister for Agriculture. I am quoting from column 1027, Volume 97 of the Official Debates of 25th May, 1945:—

"Now, in connection with building, I have a few brief remarks to make. There is plenty of work to be done in regard to building, and I think it is a terrible mistake for us to shy away from undertaking great enterprises in the immediate future because they appear to cost a lot. This is a time when we should mobilise credit and use it boldly and resolve, if necessary, to repair it over the next 100 years. The extension of credit should not deter us from embarking on bold schemes at the present time, always provided that they are good schemes. As a start in that direction, one good thing would be to build a new Oireachtas, and it would prove to be an economy in the long run. We are eternally patching and tinkering with these buildings in order to make them adequate to fulfil the functions of an efficient Parliament. It is common knowledge that half the Deputies cannot find accommodation in which to write a letter. Even the Ministers' rooms are inadequate and they have not proper facilities. We are trying to get our meals in a restaurant which is built on top of the boiler-house, and in which no person could sit in the months of August and September. The permanent officials are obliged to sit in cramped quarters up at the top, and their teeth are made to chatter with the noise of the machinery in the basement, because we are trying to dislodge a beetle through the medium of a vacuum cleaner in the roof. I understand that the roof is now infested with beetles and that it shall have to be rebuilt."

That was the statement made in this House on the 25th May, 1945, by Deputy James Dillon, now Minister for Agriculture, and that is the only record that I could ever find of any proposal for anyone to build a new House of Parliament. I am glad Deputy O'Higgins has come in. Deputy O'Higgins is the gentleman who has caused this, because he charged us with preparing plans and going to rob the people by spending £11,000,000 on a new House of Parliament, and the only place he will find them is amongst the bats in the belfry of Deputy Dillon's "nut".

The Deputy should not make these remarks with reference to a Minister of this House.

I am sorry: Deputy James Dillon, Minister for Agriculture.

They were Fianna Fáil beetles.

Deputy Corry should be allowed to speak without interruption.

I am glad Deputy Rooney is there. I remember Deputy Dillon was only a very short time in this House as Minister for Agriculture in that year of prosperity that Deputy Rooney was speaking about a while ago when he happened to cross Deputy Rooney's path by throwing a few bricks into his tomato house. The Dutch tomatoes were brought——

I cannot see how the Deputy can bring in Dutch tomatoes on Supplies and Services.

Deputy O'Higgins started by telling us the results of the elections for the Louth and Cork seats. There was a time when he added East Cork to that. There are two Deputies from East Cork as a result of the last election. I have seen many faces over there and I have seen you come and go over a long number of years.

I think the Deputy should now come to the Bill before the House.

I am dealing with the statement made here by Deputy O'Higgins this evening, which apparently was quite in order. We were told that the people had passed judgment. I am quite prepared to leave it to the judgment of the people whether all those Deputies over there made promises or not. I am sure it was not because they made promises that we have a queue along Prince's Street lined up before Deputy Barry's tea house after the election and the people going in and shaking hands with him and saying: "Congratulations, Deputy. I am delighted to see you in and I now want a lb. of your 2/8 tea."

Those remarks should not be made by the Deputy. The Deputy should relate his remarks to the Bill.

I am giving the facts as they happened.

They may be facts but they are not relevant to the Bill.

Various Deputies on the Government Benches have said that they made no promises. I am telling the House what did happen. I am saying that it was not any promise that Deputy Barry made about reducing the price of tea that caused all the poor Gurranebraher women to come down and line up for the cheap tea as soon as he was elected. I am saying that it was not a picture of their big pint and the price written at the bottom of it that lined up all the boys immediately after the election looking for the pint for a bob. Yerra, no! It was not any promise at all that did that. Neither was it any promise they made that induced the unfortunate lads to come along and look for a reduction in the price of a packet of fags. No, they made no promise at all about that either! I am quite prepared to let the people judge—and, in my opinion, they are judging. They are judging what those promises meant.

Deputy Norton, our Minister for Industry and Commerce, told us that the one hope for this country was more agricultural production. I have heard it boasted in this House for many and many a year that agriculture is our principal industry. I should like to see any other industrialists in this country come up to Deputy Norton or to his Prices Commission——

The Minister for Industry and Commerce.

The Minister for Industry and Commerce. I should like to see any other industrialist have the position put to him as that Government have put it to the agricultural community. There was a 14½ per cent. reduction in the price of wheat—followed immediately by an increase of 12½ per cent. in the cost of fertilisers: I wonder where the Minister for Agriculture is to-day, because he said they would do it over his dead body. The impact of the two came together.

I understand, in relation to the Prices Commission, that it was customary, if it could be proved to that body that the costs of production of an article had increased, to permit that manufacturer to make an increase in the price. Here, however, is an increase of 12½ per cent. sanctioned by the Minister for Industry and Commerce in the cost of fertilisers and a reduction of 14½ per cent. in the price of the article the farmer has to produce.

A Deputy

What about conacre?

I do not know where Deputy Rooney has gone to now but we heard him tell us about the price of wheat in other years. The Irish farmer at the present day has been placed by this Minister for Agriculture in the position of a subsidising body for the Iraqian. That is the position. The Irish farmer is a subsidiser. He is the man who has to produce the cheap food so that the Iraqian's dust can be bought.

So long as it is not Argentinian——

I have here before me two documents which contain interesting information in relation to the price of Irish barley. The first one is headed "The Cork Milling Company, Ltd." The subject matter of this document is the 1954-55 Barley Crop. It states:—"Our standard price is 36/- per barrel or £18 per ton ex farm for barley with a maximum moisture content of 23 per cent." For barley containing higher moistures the relevant deductions were set out. That was the price for Irish barley. I come now to the second document. I might say that when we met the Minister for Agriculture, in an endeavour to get an improvement in the price, he told us about the small farmer in the West with the ten acres and the wife and six children who wanted cheap feeding for his pigs and he said he was not going to increase the cost of the feeding-stuffs by a halfpenny. However, from that very self-same Minister, who would depress the price of the Irish farmers' barley from 48/- down to 40/- and less per barrel, we had this state of affairs a couple of months afterwards. This second document which I have here was sent by Grain Importers (Éire) Limited to the Cork Milling Company on the 11th November, 1954. It states:—

"We understand some traders are in fairly urgent need of supplies of feeding barley"

—this was, now, since the Irish farmers' crop had been gathered in at 40/- a barrel—

"and in this regard the Minister for Agriculture has agreed:—

(a) That licences for the importation of feeding barley will be issued to Grain Importers (Éire) Ltd.

. . . . . .

As we write prospective sources of supply together with an indication of to-day's values"

—and this was in November last—

"delivered to the buyer's nearest working railway station are as follows:—

No. 2 Canadian Feed Barley: January/February arrival. Value per Ton: about £29 13s. 9d.— £30.

North African: January/February arrival. Value per Ton: ‘58/ 59' Kilos 3 per cent. dirt clause about £27 10s."

Up to £30 a ton was offered for Canadian feed barley, that is, 60/- a barrel, as against the Irish farmers' 40/-. The document continues:

"Iraqi. January-February arrival shipment—3 per cent. dirt clause— about £27 7s. 6d."

One feeder described Iraqin barley to me as only muck. Some years ago I had to show samples of the muck in this House—the last time Deputy Dillon was Minister for Agriculture. According to this document, the price is about £27 10s. per ton. That is a lesson. The Irish farmer gets 40/- a barrel while foreign barley fetches 60/-a barrel here. That is the work of this Minister for Agriculture—that this nation is paying to protect the farmers to the tune of £2,500 a year. When I raised that matter in this House on the Adjournment he told us: "Yes. I have to pay them any price they demand." That was his answer then. What steps is he taking now to prevent that condition of affairs from occurring again next year? He asks if, in addition to paying Deputy Norton's 12½ per cent. increase in the cost of fertilisers——

The Minister for Industry and Commerce.

Yes. In addition to that and in addition to the increased rate demand—on top of all that—the farmer has again to produce, next year, according to the Minister for Agriculture, feeding barley at 40/- a barrel.

I had an interview with the Minister only last week. The Minister made a statement in the House that he hoped the oat meal millers and the flake meal millers would contract for their supplies of oats in this country. As a representative of the largest farmers' organisation in this country, I, with others, endeavoured to help out the Minister. We had an interview with him in regard to that. We found that the total amount of oats required by the flake meal millers was 25,000 tons. The Minister, when we met him, was very emphatic on this: "I am not going to allow them to import a pound of oats. They will have to get contracts for that". We said, "Very well, but there is a much larger market in which we are interested. We are now prepared to contract for 150,000 acres of feeding barley. That is the requirements of this country in barley. We are prepared to enter into a contract for that and we should like your assistance". "I have no intention of allowing contracts for feeding barley to be given," he replied. Those are the facts. Lest the Irish farmer would succeed, under the contract system, in getting anything near the price that is at present being paid to the Iraqian, that is his agricultural policy. That is the policy under which the farmer is going to increase production.

I feel that the Deputy is getting into too much detail on agriculture.

I am giving the facts.

That may be. On the Bill before the House, the Deputy is entitled to discuss agriculture but not in the detail into which the Deputy is going.

Is there anything broader in discussing agricultural policy than the subject of what is going to become of the land of this country? Is it to go back into the ranching system or is tillage to be continued? By definite Government policy, the Irish farmer is to get only two-thirds of the price paid to the foreigner for what he produces and what must be brought in here if the Irish farmer does not produce it. That is the position. Is the land of this country to go out of tillage, to go out of production? Is that the idea of the Minister for Industry and Commerce? Is it his idea to have increased production by having fat bullocks grazing on the land of this country? That is the agricultural policy as envisaged by the Minister for Agriculture. That is his policy in regard to production in this country and if we want proof of it, the incidents to which I have referred are given as definite proof of the Minister's policy in regard to these things. He was quite satisfied that the farmer should get the sop of 25,000 acres for oats but when it came to producing something that would mean a large acreage, that would provide some outlet for the farmer instead of the wheat policy which they had killed——

The Deputy's remarks would be more relevant to the Estimate for Agriculture than to this Bill.

If, in a discussion in this House on Government policy, in regard to supplies we cannot discuss the largest industry and the largest source of supply in the country, which is the land of the country——

The Deputy is entitled to refer to agriculture but, again, I say not in the detail into which he has gone.

I heard Deputies this evening from 3 o'clock onwards speak in this House but none of them bothered to refer to agriculture. Very few of them are interested in agriculture. They all referred to the cost of living, but the cost of living affects the farmer and the agricultural community as well as everybody else. If you add to the farmers' cost of living, reduce his income by 14½ per cent. and increase his costs of production as the Minister for Industry and Commerce has done by 12½ per cent., where is he going to stand? What would his cost of living be?

On a point of order, the figures quoted by Deputy Corry as regards the increase in the price of fertilisers are incorrect and he knows it. You may misrepresent as much as you like now so long as I have got that on the record.

The Minister for Agriculture has stated in plain language that I have told a lie here. He has said that I have made a false statement and that I knew it to be false.

The Minister for Agriculture has not intervened in the debate.

The Minister for Industry and Commerce has stated that I made a false statement and that I knew it was false.

The Minister has pointed out that the Deputy's figures were incorrect.

And that I knew it.

If you do not, you ought to.

I am asking for your ruling, A Leas-Cheann Comhairle.

I have already given a ruling. The Minister has pointed out to the Deputy that his figures were incorrect.

And stated?

That the Deputy knew that the figures were incorrect.

Of course, he must know.

I feel that the Minister should withdraw that statement.

If he does not know, I shall give him the correct figures next week.

I am asking for a ruling of the Chair.

I am allowing for the fact that the Deputy is a simple fellow. I shall give him the figures next week. In the meantime, I shall withdraw the statement. Is the Deputy happy now?

I want to inform the Minister that I am used to this kind of thing after dealing for 28 years with various kinds of Ministers.

Poor Horace is hurt.

The figures I have quoted were the figures published last week by the Irish Independent and the Irish Press, and they were not contradicted since. These figures showed that there was to be a 12½ per cent. increase in the cost of fertilisers. If the Minister had any interest, which he has not, in the farmers who have to buy manures and if that statement was incorrect, as he says, and was published in the public Press, it was surely his duty to contradict it. He has not done so. He did not worry with that. In a nutshell, the cut in the price of wheat will cut the farmers' income by £2,250,000 this year. We had the Minister for Agriculture here moaning and wailing and groaning; he told us he had a headache for over a month because the farmers had grown too much wheat and there would be a surplus. We remember that, and we realise that during the past few months the price of pollard has increased by £7 10s. per ton. The price of pollard to-day is higher than the price the Government is prepared to pay for Irish wheat this year. Pollard is the skin of the wheat, and the price of that skin is more than the price the farmers will get this year for good wheat for human food.

What is the price of pollard?

£37 10s. per ton. Barley from Iraq is coming in at £30 a ton and the price of pig meal has gone up by £2 per ton. I could understand a Government being caught out and I could understand any Government being caught out and I could understand any Government having been caught out making provision against that eventuality in the future. What provision has this Government made against being caught out again? They have offered the farmer in the coming harvest £4 per ton less than he got when the late Minister for Agriculture, Deputy Thomas Walsh, was in office. We have never sold feeding barley at less than 48/- per barrel. That was the minimum price.

On a restricted acreage.

The present Minister for Agriculture increased the cost of fertilisers and in the next harvest he will pay the farmer £4 per ton less than Deputy Thomas Walsh paid them a few years ago. Yet, we are asked to increase agricultural production and this is the means adopted to bring about that increase. I suppose the Government acts on the theory that the hungrier a fellow is the happier he will work; that seems to be the present attitude. A guarantee was given over the radio by the present Taoiseach that the price of wheat would remain stable for five years. What has become of that guarantee? The present Government were scarcely warm in their seats when they reduced the price by 14½ per cent. They come in here now and say they made no promises. The poor ladies in Gurranebraher who lined up in Prince's Street for a fortnight are not bothering about Deputy Barry to-day. I do not think they are worrying too much about him to-day.

On a point of order. If a particular business concern can be identified I do not think it is right that it should be referred to.

I have already asked the Deputy to cease making these remarks.

It is only a minute since the Minister called me a liar and I did not hear anyone complaining about that. Pigs are down by over 20/- a cwt. and the price of pig meal has gone up. Then the people are promised cheap rashers. That is the picture. That is the position in which the agricultural community has been placed. I heard the Minister for Agriculture telling people down the country about putting the farmers into motor cars; at the rate he is going he will soon have them back on the ass and cart.

Talking about employment on the land, it will not take very many men to mind a handful of bullocks. That is the policy. Anything that provides labour will get the knock. I beat the Minister for Industry and Commerce and the Minister for Agriculture by one week in having the price of beet fixed for the coming year. That would have got a knock, too, so that they could reduce the price of sugar. I wonder will the Minister say I am telling an untruth in that? Beet was going to get a knock. As a matter of fact I think the Government had fixed the day, but I succeeded in beating them by a week. I know these things are nasty for the gentlemen over there. They are facts and they cannot be denied.

We heard a lot about a reduction in the price of butter but we know that in present circumstances, unless there is some immediate change in the price of milk, we will be faced again with the condition of affairs which I experienced a few times in the past; we will have the condition of affairs where a couple of calves will suckle every cow in the field and no milk will go to the creamery or anywhere else. That is the most profitable way to produce milk; put a couple of calves under every cow and sack the labourers.

A Deputy

That would be better than killing them.

I would remind Deputies that it is not necessary to answer Deputy Corry's statements as he makes them. Deputies will get every opportunity of making their own statements in an orderly fashion.

I had to sit here to-day looking at those gentlemen over there trying to whitewash a black wall and they were not able to do it. Now they are trying as best they can to pull their heels out of this case but they cannot. In this case, they cannot pull their heels out because this is the actual position. This is the position that prevails. I am more than anxious about the whole thing because, after all, if we have not got a populous and contented rural community it will not be long until the towns and villages feel the effects of it.

Hear, hear!

And if you are going to drive the people off the land that is what you will get—poor towns and poor cities. That is the definite agricultural policy of the present Minister for Agriculture, Deputy Dillon—abolish the plough.

And let the combines come into their own.

Deputy Dillon would like to see the farmer with his pig tied to the jennet's tail.

Like he was during the economic war.

I can quote the Minister's statement for that.

I am afraid that all this would be more relevant on an Estimate for the Department of Agriculture.

I am trying to point out the effects of this policy on the cost of living.

Mind would the jennet kick you.

I have not yet departed from my effort to point out the effects of all this on the cost of living, the impact of all this agricultural policy on the whole community. Before the Party opposite changed its name. before the name of Cumann na nGaedheal got so dirty that they had to wipe it out and get a new one, I remember seeing men walking the streets of Midleton and looking in the shop windows at the best brands of Liverpool flour. At that time there were six men working in the Midleton flour mills two days in the week. I saw the working out of that policy and I saw how it got on. We do not want to have a repetition of it. And I remember back in 1940 when the emergency was on here and when the then Taoiseach, Deputy de Valera, was giving out his agricultural policy in an effort to provide bread for his people—I remember what they said on the opposite side, I remember their statements. Deputy General Mulcahy declared that we could not remain neutral and another Deputy, now a Minister, told us that we would get plenty of wheaten bread in American vessels and in British vessels. These were the statements made then from the opposite benches. I am beginning to wonder just how serious the world position is to-day. I am beginning to wonder if the Irish nation can afford to abolish wheat-growing in the present condition of the world.

This certainly does not seem to apply to this debate.

Very little was said in those days about the effect on the cost of living, of the shelling out of our money for imports.

It was turned into a racket.

Refer to Senator McGee for stories of the racket.

I spent three and a half years here trying to get the previous Minister for Agriculture to give employment down in the town of Cobh in the sheet steel mill. That mill is nearly completed and the last time I asked a question of the present Minister for Industry and Commerce he informed me that he was waiting to have the corrugated iron tested out. It is tested out now and I am very glad to be able to say it has proved to be very good and to be a very saleable article as, if it is produced in Cobh, it should be, but I want the Minister for Industry and Commerce to try and get it going. He is a Labour Minister and a Labour Minister should surely be interested in giving employment. We have dumped into this country too many million tons of sheet steel every year while you have that factory there practically completed to-day, practically ready to go into production. Will the Minister now give the full speed ahead to that industry, to an industry on which his predecessor spent so much time, labour and money? After three years you have the nettles and the grass and the rust growing on this factory. Will he now open up that industry and give employment to another 150 Irishmen who will otherwise be going abroad? It is about those things that I have become very anxious and on which I want to hear the Minister for Industry and Commerce, in his reply to this debate. We do not want to hear any more promises about this and that. The people are the best judges on these things like they were about Deputy Barry's tea.

Again on a point of order, this is the fourth time the Deputy has referred to Deputy Barry's business activities.

The Deputy should know that these remarks are not in order and should not have been made.

I am sorry and I withdraw them. Whenever the Minister for Industry and Commerce is replying to the debate I want him to tell us about this sheet metal industry. I want an answer to the statements I have made and I want the Minister to give his imprimatur to this industry. Eventually employment in this industry could go up to 1,300, taking into consideration the tin-plate mill as well.

And the oil refinery.

That is all right. It will be there no matter how you try to stop it. I want the Minister to make a statement here telling us what he intends doing during the next 12 months towards putting that industry under way and consequently giving such a large measure of employment. But I am sure he is as greatly interested as I am in the labour aspect of the thing. Those are the things that are worrying my constituents. Those are the things my constituents want to know about and the things about which I would be very anxious the Minister for Industry and Commerce would tell us in his reply.

If I wished to deal with the promises of the Deputies on the opposite side I am sure I could give them a nice blow because I have very nice little pictures dealing with their promises on the lb. of sugar and the tobacco and the stout.

And the butter.

Yes, and the butter too.

Tell us about the butter.

These little pictures are all there and I can produce them. It is very little use in my opinion talking about reducing the cost of living for the man who has nothing to pay for what he is trying to get to keep him alive. And then we have the land tragedy. I hold that if this country is to prosper, particularly its towns, you should have a new industry established in each town once every 15 years in order to cope with the problem of the increasing population.

I move the Adjournment of the debate.

Debate adjourned.
The Dáil adjourned at 10.30 p.m. until 3 p.m. on Wednesday, 16th February, 1955.
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